Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 2 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, March 9, 2009
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:39 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. My name is Senator Colin Kenny and I am the chair.
Before we begin, I would like to briefly introduce the members of the committee. On my immediate right is the Deputy Chair, Senator Pamela Wallin. She is a senator from Saskatchewan and was appointed to the Senate in January, 2009. She is an award-winning journalist whose career stretches back more than three decades. She is the deputy chair of the committee and also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
To her right is Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta. He was called to the Senate in April, 2000. He is known to many Canadians as an accomplished and versatile musician and entertainer. Senator Banks is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
To his left is Senator Wilfred Moore, who was called to the Senate in September, 1996. He represents the senatorial division of Stanhope Street/South Shore in Nova Scotia. He has been active at the city level in Halifax-Dartmouth and has served as a member of the board of governors of Saint Mary's University. He is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Bank, Trade and Commerce and the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
To his right is Senator Rod Zimmer, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has had a long and distinguished career as a businessman and a philanthropist. He has been a member of the Senate since August, 2005. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
To his left is Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin.
[Translation]
Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin is from Quebec. He is a lawyer and was appointed senator in June 1993. At the moment, Senator Nolin is the Deputy Chair of the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament.
[English]
On my immediate left is Senator Fabian Manning. He has dedicated his career to serving Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans at all three levels of government. He was appointed to the Senate in January, 2009. He also chairs the Conservative government's Atlantic caucus and is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
To his left is Senator David Tkachuk from Saskatchewan. He was appointed to the Senate in June, 1993. Over the years, he has been a businessman, a public servant and a teacher. He is also Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration and a member of the Senate Committee of Selection.
To his left is Senator Michael Meighen from Ontario. He was appointed to the Senate in September, 1990. He is a lawyer and a member of the bars of Quebec and Ontario. He currently chairs the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
To his left is Senator Grant Mitchell. He was appointed to the Senate in March, 2005. He is from Edmonton, Alberta, and he has had careers in the Alberta public service, in the financial industry and in politics. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources and on the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
To his left is Senator Joseph Day. He is from New Brunswick where he is a well-known private-practice attorney and engineer. He has served in the Senate of Canada since October, 2001. Senator Day sits on the board of governors of the Royal Military College of Canada. He currently chairs the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
Last but not least, at the end of the table, is Senator Norman Atkins. Senator Atkins was appointed to the Senate of Canada on June 29, 1986. He is a former president of Camp Associates Advertising Limited, a well-known Toronto- based agency, and was national campaign chair for the Progressive Conservative Party in the federal elections of 1984 and 1988.
Honourable senators, members of the viewing public and special guests, we are here today to speak with Lieutenant- General A.B. Leslie, Chief of the Land Staff. Following that, we will speak with Lieutenant-General Angus Watt, Chief of the Air Staff; and Vice-Admiral Drew Robertson, Chief of the Maritime Staff. They have joined us today in order to discuss, amongst other things, the challenges they face in their areas of responsibilities within the Canadian Forces and we are looking forward to hearing from them.
As I mentioned, our first witness today is Lieutenant-General Leslie, the Chief of the Land Staff. Lieutenant- General Leslie joined the Thirtieth Field Artillery Regiment while attending the University of Ottawa. In 1981, he transferred to the regular force and initially served with the First Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. Lieutenant-General Leslie also served on a succession of tours in Germany, Cyprus and Bosnia, and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for his actions under fire in August, 1995. Most recently, Lieutenant-General Leslie was appointed Commander of Task Force Kabul and Deputy Commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He assumed the role of Chief of the Land Staff in June, 2006.
Welcome, Lieutenant-General Leslie. We understand you have a brief statement. You have the floor, sir.
[Translation]
Lieutenant-General A.B. Leslie, Chief of the Lands Staff, National Defence: I apologize, Mr. Chairman, I did not have time to get my statement translated into English. I will be making most of my remarks in French.
I would like to start by thanking you for your interest in the strategic issues facing the army, which I have mentioned to the Chief of the Defence Staff and to the Deputy Minister of National Defence in January.
I would like to tell you that I very much appreciate the opportunity to answer your questions about the main challenges facing the land force command in the years ahead.
First of all, I think it is important to repeat that my main objective is to ensure that our troops are properly trained and equipped to successfully carry out the domestic and international operations assigned to us by the Government of Canada.
My mission is clear: to have a versatile land force that is combat-ready so as to meet Canada's defence objectives.
I am extremely proud of the outstanding achievements of the soldiers under my command. In addition, I would like to publicly acknowledge the exceptional support of the other elements of the Canadian Forces, without which we would have been unable to effectively carry out our various operational mandates and tasks.
The paradigms of the past based on the Cold War have changed a great deal. We have demonstrated beyond any doubt that we can adapt our doctrine and training quickly in order to meet scattered, complex operations focused on counter-insurrection missions. They have forced us to establish a responsive and rapid procedure for effectively integrating into our training the lessons learned in operational settings. This approach gives our soldiers the best chances of success in their operations and minimizes the loss of human life.
Despite the many successes we have achieved in recent years, the fact remains that there are so many demands on your army, that we are going to have to make some difficult choices if we want to be able to maintain the present level of operational commitment in the short and medium terms. For the army, there are four major categories of strategic issues I would like to talk to you about: personnel, education, equipment and infrastructure.
As regards personnel, this is certainly our most important resource within the army. Today there are many demands placed upon our soldiers to maintain the current level of force generation required for domestic and international operations in the short and medium term. The Canadian Forces have acknowledged this personnel requirement, and following the 2005-2006 budget, 3,075 positions in the expansion plan of the Canadian Forces for the regular force were granted to the land force command in order to increase our numbers.
However, our challenge is undeniably to recruit and train these new soldiers to fill the new positions. In fact, the number of soldiers in basic training within the Canadian Forces between 2005 and 2009 has gone from 7,770 to 10,750.
Since there seems to be no further funding for immediately increasing the reserves and since in the short term there is a ceiling on funding for civilian employees, including contract staff, the only way to improve our operational capacity is to increase the number of positions in the regular force.
Increasing the number of regular force troops within the army is still a veritable challenge. For example, ever since the expansion of the regular force began in 2005, when approximately 2,100 new positions were created, the number of trained soldiers has remained the same for the most part. This is a true reflection of the situation for all the Canadian Forces, with a constant level of approximately 52,000 trained soldiers since 2005. We can explain this level by a higher level of attrition in recent years. Between the 2003-2004 financial year and 2007-2008, total attrition rose from 6.5 per cent to 9 per cent. This increase can probably be explained by an aging labour force approaching retirement. This level of attrition can also be explained by the fact that the civilian market has realized the value of the skills that a soldier has acquired with 10, 20 or 30 years of experience. Companies are willing to pay for such workers.
Furthermore, the Canadian Forces have not been very proactive in introducing incentives to encourage their members to remain with the organization. Nevertheless, I am aware of some retention efforts that are currently underway.
Moreover, the establishment of new headquarters and non-deployable units has forced the army to fill several hundred positions that required highly experienced soldiers with considerable military knowledge. This organizational change occurred at a time when our soldiers are particularly needed within field units, regiments, brigades and training units. We absolutely cannot do without these people if we are to increase staffing levels within our operational units as quickly as possible.
What is more, these experienced soldiers play an absolutely key role in minimizing the rate of soldiers killed or wounded during operations. The army is short approximately 700 officers and 700 senior non-commissioned officers within the trades that it is responsible for. Under the circumstances, a number of strategic solutions have been suggested. In the short term, the Canadian Forces will have to either reduce their level of operational commitment or reduce the number of people working within static, non-deployable headquarters. One other option might be to reduce the number of headquarters within the Canadian Forces.
In the medium term, by mid-July 2011, we will have to explore the possibility of a well-organized and synchronized operational pause, in the space of less than one year. Nonetheless, it goes without saying that we still remain ready to carry out our various tasks domestically and internationally.
On a more positive note, the army is very encouraged by the enhancement of the Canadian Forces strategic recruitment plan. Recruitment stood at 6,400 in 2006, and we expect it to rise to 8,000 in 2009. This initiative should help us reach the higher numbers within the regular force that we have planned for 2011-2012. Currently, we are recruiting many soldiers. However, if we are to keep them within our ranks, it is absolutely necessary to ensure that we are taking good care of them, in an exemplary fashion, as well as their families.
In addition, in the short term, the decision by senior officers of the Canadian Forces to increase the preferred manning level for the infantry, the armoured corps and the number of master corporals in certain trades should pay off.
I would now like to say a few words about training. Over the past 24 months, the army has introduced more changes to individual and group training than in the past 20 years. These changes stem from the experience we acquired, particularly during operations in Afghanistan. These operations were complex and dangerous — 112 soldiers died and many were badly injured. The enemy changes its tactics quickly so as to cause as much harm as possible to our forces — several vehicles were destroyed — and they have no scruples.
Thus, we must provide our troops with highly rigorous and comprehensive training that is adapted to a constantly changing threat. Training soldiers up to a high level of readiness is more expensive. It requires time and money, and the equipment has to be available.
Our soldiers deserve the best possible training, and if there is an area where I am not willing to make compromises, it is definitely the area of training. Our troops absolutely must be ready for the tough missions. We must give them all the assets needed to carry out their mission successfully and come home to their families safe and sound.
Given this context, additional funding may be required to continue modifying and adapting our training, both individual and collective, so as to better respond to a threat that is constantly changing, and also to allow us to deploy new capabilities, depending on operational requirements.
I would now like to turn to equipment. Many, many people and organizations have done excellent work to procure new equipment for our soldiers, thus increasing their capacity to carry out their missions successfully and increasing their chances of survival during operations. These initiatives have greatly improved the morale of the troops. They are a tangible sign that the country is supporting its soldiers and giving them what they need to get the job done; this contribution from the government is greatly appreciated, and I would say it is highly responsible.
The main challenges relating to equipment are primarily availability, quantities and our capacity to refurbish. Owing to the current rate of operations, we are using our equipment at full capacity. It is being used in very difficult conditions. Often the vehicles that are brought back from the theatre of operations are in such bad shape that a very high level of maintenance is required. Often the vehicles require considerable repair time and many spare parts, or the level of repairs needed is beyond our capacity.
As for maintenance, the out-of-service rate for some kinds of vehicles is over 70 per cent. This rate is 33 per cent for light armoured vehicles; it is 76 per cent for the Coyote-type reconnaissance vehicles; and for other light armoured vehicles the rate is 100 per cent. These figures are from February 2009. As for the Bison-type armoured vehicles, the out-of-service rate is 73 per cent, and the rate for tanks remaining in Canada is 71 per cent. So those are the various percentages of vehicles that are out of service. Because of a lack of mechanics and technicians, we are unable to repair these vehicles.
This is a very serious situation, because the number of pieces of equipment to be repaired or replaced continues to rise dramatically, and the number of types of equipment is rising too. We are making far greater use of the equipment than what was planned when it was purchased. As a result, occasionally we must send the few vehicles that are available to our training sites, which is very, very expensive, to make sure that our troops receive essential training.
In this regard, reducing the amount of training provided to soldiers to solve the situation is certainly not a viable solution. We have now reached the point of requiring additional funding in the short term to hire civilian mechanics and technicians so that we can provide the necessary training to our military mechanics and technicians. Otherwise, the latter will not be available for operational deployments owing to a lack of training and experience.
The staff of the office of the Vice-Chief of the Defence staff is well aware that additional resources are needed to solve this problem. This being said, I am fully aware of the extent of the corporate challenges that this office must deal with. We may receive additional funding; nevertheless, once again the challenge will be to obtain available and qualified workers.
Finally, I would like to underscore the huge amount of work done by the staff of the Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel), Mr. Dan Ross, to improve the level of protection afforded by vehicles so that ultimately we will be able to better protect our soldiers. As a direct result of these efforts, dozens of human lives have been saved.
However, we can clearly see that in many cases, we have enhanced the protection afforded by our vehicles and thus reached the maximum allowable payload. Various options, including projects related to the land combat system of the future are currently being developed or are about to be introduced.
On behalf of the Department of National Defense, the army manages one of the largest, most varied and complex range of infrastructures within the Canadian Forces. A tremendous amount of funding is required to maintain these infrastructures, and it is clear that the required funds will probably not be available. Consequently, an enlightened, reasonable and well-thought-out approach is the key to success. However, when I assessed the army's strategic issues relating to infrastructure, I raised the fact that the procedure that is in place to get some projects approved is too cumbersome and takes far too much time and effort. Approval of projects is delayed for months, and sometimes even for years, which leads the department to absorb exorbitant costs.
Unfortunately, the resources that could have been used for building new facilities or acquiring new capabilities are often wasted because of the additional time and effort we must invest to change requests for bids for some projects. We have clearly identified the need to review and simplify the process for project approval so that we can make the maximum use of the financial resources allocated to infrastructure projects. The associate deputy minister who is responsible for infrastructure and the environment is currently developing a plan to improve the situation.
To conclude, I would like to state that our army is facing major challenges in terms of personnel and others issues.
We do recruit soldiers, but we keep them thanks to their families. The attention we give our soldiers and their families is key to personnel retention. In contrast, the greatest challenge remains the growing shortage of leaders who are experienced on the tactical level.
The land staff command is probably going through the most significant period of change in the past 50 years in terms of its doctrine, training, equipment and structure.
Despite all the difficulties, the army's soldiers, units and groups have proven their mettle in combat beyond a shadow of a doubt, and continue to display physical and moral valor in a dazzling fashion.
The value and professionalism of our soldiers is clearly recognized internationally by many of our allies and by the people of Canada.
Canada's troops are carrying out their duties during complex operations, both at home and abroad, in an exemplary fashion, and this is thanks to the unwavering efforts of thousands of regular, reserve and civilian members who have done an exceptional job of preparing them.
We are living in a time when being a soldier is very rewarding, because the sense of duty to the nation is undeniably extremely tangible and present
[English]
Senator Tkachuk: I have just a point of order. There is a page missing in Lieutenant-General Leslie's presentation. Would it be possible to get it? Page 10 was not included, at least in my package.
The Chair: I understand that. No one has it in their package. You do? Okay, then some members have it. We will endeavour to copy and distribute it.
Lieutenant-General Leslie, thank you very much for that sobering picture of the army. There is a great deal of interest on the committee's part.
Senator Banks: Thank you, it is very nice to see you again. Thank you for being here and for your presentation, which as the chair has said, is sobering in some respects.
Your pride in your people is more than justified. Everyone who is or who has been a member of this committee shares that pride. We have been to every significant military base in this country and overseas. We have never been other than totally impressed with the quality, commitment and skills of the people. They are, as you have said, admired by one and all, including those working very closely with them.
However, the difficulties that you face and that are faced by the army and some of the other services are of particular interest to this committee and have been for a long time. It is awful to reduce things to numbers, but it is important for us to understand the momentary snapshot. You have told us about the problems with maintenance of vehicles. I presume that is a people problem as opposed to a steel problem.
I think you said that the current strength of the army is about 52,000 members. Is that correct?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The current strength of the Canadian Forces is 52,000 trained members.
Senator Banks: What is the full complement of the force?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: May I refer to my notes?
Senator Banks: Yes. I am seeking the total force, the authorized complement at the moment, and then the actual number. With respect to the army specifically, I am willing to accept the numbers off the top of your head for regular forces, reserve forces and civilian employees.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The Government of Canada's stated intent is that regular forces should grow to 70,000. We are on track to do that. I will speak only in generalities for the Canadian Forces, but I will be specific for the army. The Canadian Army is somewhere between 67,000 and 68,000 regular members. A couple years ago, we had 65,000. Does that answer the first part of your question?
Senator Banks: Yes. In other words, we are getting there. We have been frustrated with how long that has been taking. We do not entirely agree with the number of 70,000, but it is moving.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: It is moving and for a variety of reasons. I share your frustration. It is, in part, attributable to attrition. Demographics being what they are, there are a variety of great soldiers and officers at the 10-, 20- and 30-year points in their career.
Senator Banks: And competition for their skills,
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: We produce amazing people and I will restrict my comments to the army. Young men and women and some not so young men and women who have literally made life and death decisions under incredibly complicated circumstances. The good news is that civilian industry is now much more aware of the talent pool that exists in the Canadian Forces. The bad news is that civilian industry is now much more aware of the talent pool that exists in the Canadian Forces.
To answer your question about the army, the regular army currently has 20,364 trained soldiers. On top of that, there are 6,235 currently on the basic training list. Until such time as they receive — as the name implies — a basic level of training, they do not join the army's ranks. They go through the chief of military personnel to get recruit training. Once they achieve a basic level, they go to the battalions and the regiments via the battle schools.
Senator Banks: This is a snapshot today?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: That data is as of February. In February, the reserve forces had 20,588 members and reserve growth is very modest. There are still about 1,000 positions to be allocated by the Vice Chief of Defence Staff in the near future.
Senator Banks: Are there civilians actually working in the army?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Absolutely. They are as much a part of the army as everyone else.
The number is 5,355, senator.
Senator Banks: The army has 26,600 people in it all together, including 6,235 that are in the pipe right now waiting to become operational.
How does that translate in terms of the capacity to fill the field units that are actually out doing the job? Are they short of people in terms of their optimum manning structure? When you send out a company, is it really a company? When you send out a battalion, is it really a battalion?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: There are two interrelated issues. The first is based on the hard lessons learned in the last little while. Quality is all important amongst the ranks of our soldiers, and they have demonstrated to all Canadians their own innate qualities as Canadians, but also as professional soldiers, be they regular or reserves.
There does come a time when mass has a quality all of its own, so we have increased the size of our companies, batteries and squadrons in the army. What has happened is, thousands of young Canadians have stepped up to the plate, both regular and reserve. They are populating these larger battalions, which is leveraging the growth of 3,075 additional regulars. Our ranks are filling with young men and women as riflemen, gunners and tank drivers.
Where we are in some dire straits is in the supervisory ranks, the officers and NCOs. Currently, to answer your question with specifics, we are short approximately 650 to 700, depending on how you count them, officers and close to 700 senior NCOs in army-managed classifications.
It will take time to produce them because, unlike some other professions where you can enter at a supervisory level, there is only one way to grow a 10-year sergeant and that is, as the name implies, 10 years of hard experience.
Senator Banks: Of those 700 that we are short in management, are they in the field, in the places where they need to be managing at the pointy end of the stick, or are they in Ottawa?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The vast majority of shortfalls are actually to be found in the army's battalions, regiments and brigades.
Senator Banks: Outside DND's headquarters here?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, sir.
Senator Banks: You suggested two things. You suggested in your remarks the possibility of a reduction in the numbers of people who are wearing stripes of various kinds in Ottawa.
I will ask a two point question: Could some of those people be used in the field to do those management jobs to which you refer? We do understand how important they are. Concomitantly, if that were so, it would imply that maybe we are a little bit overburdened in the National Defence headquarters here, and I would ask you to comment on how the restructuring of the command structure is going in that respect. Do we have the right people doing the right things with the right skills in the right places?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: To my mind, the priorities should be on filling those assets full of great young Canadians who will actually go and do practical things on the ground, whether it is domestic or international operations.
Every organization, especially of a certain size, needs a certain degree of supervisory ability and subdivision of groups into manageable numbers.
In the army, on your behalf, I take care of literally hundreds of battalions, regiments, regular and reserve, and schools and units. I cannot do that all on my own, even though some of my subordinates might like being unsupervised, so we have created a command-and-control architecture to take care of them.
In terms of the priority of effort, there is almost universal consensus that the number of headquarters staff we have in the Canadian Forces is in need of review. That does not only apply to the number of new commands or new transformational initiatives. In a certain modest way, it also applies to the army where we have lots of relatively small units that should logically be grouped together to try to reduce the horizontal responsibility chains, grouping like with like or people who do similar functions and activities.
Senator Banks: That would not, in your view, reduce in any way the efficiency of the management of those functions.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: No, senator, it should not. One of the great joys of information technology in which we all exist is the thesis that one could get by with less overhead than existed in the past. In my personal practice, I have yet to see that realized, but I may be alone in that.
Regarding the people in Ottawa, my remit is the army on your behalf. I do not know how many full-time people there are in Ottawa, and I do not track that. There are regulars, reserves, civilians, civil servants, contractors and consultants.
I am led to believe the number is somewhere around 15,000 in Ottawa. Some people in Ottawa could certainly do the types of activities we want them to do in battalions and regiments, but it does not necessarily mean they all can or should.
Senator Banks: Here is the reason behind my question, and I would like you to explain it in terms that I can understand. It is about the guy riding the bus home from work tonight who learns that about 15,000 people are in the army in Ottawa.
Did you say the Canadian Forces?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: It is not only the Canadian Forces, sir. The parlance that we use in that strange building of national defence headquarters is ``full-time equivalents.'' There are regulars, reservists on full- or part-time service, civil servants, contractors and consultants. I believe the number in the National Capital Region, not jammed into National Defence headquarters at 101 Colonel By, is in the 15,000 range.
Having said that, I believe the person who can best answer that question with specifics is the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
Senator Banks: On the order of magnitude, as a general ballpark figure, how many of those folks would have an umbilical connection to the army? Would it be half of them, or one third of them?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: In the National Capital Region, there are 6,090 army personnel, and that comprises those who work at army headquarters, which is around 300, those in the reserve brigade, also co-located in Ottawa, and those filling staff positions across the larger context of National Defence, here in Ottawa.
Senator Banks: The crux of the question for the guy riding home on the bus is as follows: If we have 20,000 people in the army, including those that are fully functioning, and 20,000 people in the reserves and 6,000 or so of those are in and around Ottawa, why are we stretched to keep 3,000 people in Afghanistan? Does it take a 40,000-person army to maintain 2,500 people in Afghanistan?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The current number of army soldiers in Afghanistan is around 2,400. It goes up and down by a certain amount, based on personnel who are sent over for short trips to give a hand with installation of new equipment or training teams. Therefore, for argument's sake, it is pretty close to 2,500. That is from the army, keeping in mind the air force and navy have their own allocations.
We use a rule which we refer to commonly as ``four plus one.'' At any one point, the army has 2,500 soldiers deployed, 2,500 soldiers who have just got home, 2,500 soldiers who are forming, 2,500 soldiers who are doing individual training and 2,500 soldiers who are doing collective training.
In a year, at any one time, we have 15,000 regular and reserve soldiers focused on the mission in Afghanistan. On top of that, you have the base support staff, the mechanics and the people who take care of the ranges. We are looking at 20,000, which is essentially the entire regular army, focused on what is going on in Afghanistan.
We also have a significant number of those who are casualties, suffering from trauma — physical, psychological, morale, emotional, et cetera — and quite properly, they all require care and attention.
We are focused like a laser beam on training troops, but it is not only for Afghanistan. On top of that, the army probably has close to 5,000 who are available at relatively short notice to assist with job 1, which is domestic response.
Senator Banks: Thank you, General. I reiterate our appreciation of your pride in your people. They are superb.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I could not agree more.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: General Leslie, it is a pleasure to have you with us today. I am convinced that Canadians are proud of soldiers like you, who are doing such a spectacular job of representing us, in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, and I would like to thank you.
In your opening remarks, you gave us a description of the various concerns relating to your responsibilities. Among other things, you mentioned equipment. You informed us that approximately 70 per cent of your vehicles are out of service at any given moment, mainly because of the shortage of mechanics and technicians. I am sure that the Canadians who are listening to you today are just as staggered as I am by these figures. It is all very well to purchase equipment, but if we do not have enough mechanics and technicians to maintain the equipment, we have a serious problem.
So my first question has to do with recruitment. After hearing your introductory remarks, am I to understand that Canadians who are interested in joining the army and who have been recruited do not want to become mechanics or technicians? They would rather be soldiers?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The problem relating to maintenance of our vehicles is complex. Among other things, it takes a great deal of time and money to handle the process.
Senator Nolin: In your testimony, you told us that the problem is mainly caused by a lack of mechanics and technicians.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: That is right.
Senator Nolin: When you tell us that 71 per cent of your armoured vehicles are out of service at any particular time, I take that to mean that only 29 per cent of these vehicles are still functional. I remember seeing a private company in New Brunswick that repaired only the wheels on the track system of armoured vehicles; but that is a question of management, we are not talking about human resources. In my opinion, the main cause of the problem — and your testimony points in the same direction — is a lack of mechanics and technicians.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, indeed. I apologize; I did not give you a complete answer. We are short a few hundred mechanics, which is why our team is understaffed. We need young people with the necessary aptitudes who can successfully complete their training period and then do rather demanding work on a variety of highly complex pieces of equipment. They must gain the expertise to rebuild a Leopard, a light armoured tank or vehicle, a heavy armoured vehicle and trucks. You know the rule of one out of five.
Senator Nolin: So recruitment of this type of support staff is not increasing as quickly as recruitment of military personnel?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: That is right. I would argue that this is almost a crisis.
Senator Nolin: You are facing competition from the private sector.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes! In both western and eastern Canada, young people are being trained to overhaul very complicated vehicles that look like bulldozers or something like that.
Senator Nolin: These workers are worth their weight in gold.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes.
Senator Nolin: This leads us to my second question: your efforts to retain personnel. I would suppose that it is much better for you to keep your personnel rather than training new staff. You have been telling us about the competition. Unfortunately, your competition is listening to you today, so you may have some trouble answering my question, but I am going to ask it anyways. What is your strategy to retain these workers who are indeed worth their weight in gold?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I am not an expert in the field, but I am told that it is between five and ten times cheaper to retain personnel than to train new staff.
Senator Nolin: That is for sure!
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: As I said in my introductory remarks, we also have to consider the time factor. We have to allow for a period of five to ten years for these workers to truly become experts in the field.
Senator Nolin: So it is in your best interest to keep them.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes.
Senator Nolin: I suppose that this strategy is a complex one, and let's hope an effective one.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I am not entirely convinced that we have focused our efforts sufficiently in this regard, judging by the immediate results of our retention strategy. Other armies are doing other things. For example, the American armed forces have a financial incentive system to retain personnel.
Senator Nolin: In other words, they are increasing pay — for very justifiable reasons, I might add.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes. But we are not so sure that this solution would work for the Canadian Forces.
Senator Nolin: Why not?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: First of all, we doubt that our budget would allow us to offer financial incentives that would be competitive enough to keep our personnel from moving to civilian employment. Second, it is not just a question of money, it is also about quality of life — hope, morale, the geographical location of their family. It is rather complicated.
Senator Nolin: I am sorry to interrupt, but do you mean that this challenge cannot be overcome because of the financial resources at your disposal?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: That is right.
Senator Nolin: You do not have enough money to retain personnel and keep up their families' morale?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: More specifically, Senator Nolin, we do not have the kind of budget to take that approach. Actually, the person in charge of that is the Chief of Military Personnel, Major General Walter Semianiw. He and his team of experts are in the process of demining the situation.
Senator Nolin: ``Demining the situation.'' I like the allusion.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Effectively and rather quickly so as to improve existing conditions.
Senator Nolin: My last question is about the families. I am sure that most of the people who are listening to our meeting today are family members of the people who work for you. Being a soldier is a tough job. You only have to listen to the news every day to be convinced of that. It is a dangerous job. The families of these soldiers, mainly those deployed in Afghanistan, are always waiting for news from their loved one. What strategies are you and your colleagues using to maintain ties between the soldiers and their families? How are you providing support to the families of your troops?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: When we recruit, we recruit soldiers, but we forewarn the families because if the quality of life is not high enough, and if conditions are unpleasant for the family members, they will tell the young man or young woman in question.
Senator Nolin: They will tell them not to go there.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: That is right. Of course, we are all volunteers. If you belong to the reserves, you have volunteered twice. The first time, when you joined the reserve forces, and the second time, when you volunteered to be deployed in an operational mission anywhere, like the example you gave, Afghanistan.
We must strike a balance, we must establish a system to make sure that the operational tempo is logical and that we are not burning out our officers, sergeants and warrant officers. That is the first goal.
Senator Nolin: In other words, the amount of time spent far away.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, senator Nolin. But we also have to consider the intensity of the work once you are back in Canada. For example, I mentioned that we were short 700 sergeants. There are completely understandable reasons why these sergeants, warrant officers and chief warrant officers have left. But the ones who have remained are working harder because there is not enough staff to do all the work and help them.
[English]
The Chair: Excuse me.
Senator Nolin: Okay, that's fine. I hope someone will get back to that issue, because it is fundamental.
The Chair: I agree.
Senator Nolin: What are they doing to maintain the morale of those who are staying at home and waiting for their sons or daughters who are away? I am sure you will ask that question.
The Chair: That question is on the list. I apologize, I am not even taking supplementary questions at this point. We have 35 minutes and we have six more questioners.
Senator Moore: Thank you, General, for being here today.
With regard to the question that Senator Nolin asked about the equipment and the 70 per cent of the time that it is not in service, that figure astonished me. The main reason, you say, is that you need mechanics and you need more money for that.
You were last before us, I think, in January, 2008. At that time, the situation seemed pretty good, not just in the army but also in the navy and in the air force. The next day or so, in the press, there were all kinds of shortcomings being identified.
We never heard about this equipment maintenance requirement. Did this situation just happen in the past year or did it exist last time you were before us and just did not get identified?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The same four key issues have been extant not for the last year but indeed for the last 20 years. The issues themselves, I would submit, are not necessarily new. The issues that face any army commander or any head of service have to do with people. Of course, that is the important issue.
Senator Moore: I understand that.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The equipment, training, and infrastructure.
Senator Moore: You did not mention the equipment maintenance requirement last time, and I thought that would have been important. I would have remembered a 70 per cent number.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Absolutely, senator. I mentioned equipment, but you are quite right; I did not mention 71 per cent of our main battle tanks in Canada.
Senator Moore: Anything even approaching that figure would have alerted us here.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I am being precise about 71 per cent, because that is one more tank down.
What has happened between two years ago and now is that the army's equipment has been run hard, with more weight than they are using to carrying, because — thank you — with the money you have given us, we are wrapping our soldiers in more and more layers of protection to defeat the enemy, who is trying to hurt us while we are trying to protect the weak and the innocent. By the way, that is not only on the vehicles that are overseas; that is on the vehicles that are home, because you should train like with like.
Senator Moore: As hard as you are fighting. I understand that.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Tanks have the second-highest broken-down rate right now. By the way, these numbers go up and down, so these figures are as of February, from my battle book.
Senator Moore: You said that, yes.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: At times, the rate may go down to 65 per cent or 60 per cent. The main battle tanks I am talking about are the Leopard Is. They were designed close to 45 years ago. We have brilliant mechanics. We have outstanding soldiers who create magic in terms of keeping these machines going. The fact remains that the tanks weigh close to 50 tonnes, they are used hard, and that is in part why the Government of Canada bought us the new Leopard IIs. However, the new Leopard IIs have not entered the army's inventory yet, apart from the 20 that are in Afghanistan, which are getting great service.
Senator Moore: What do you mean by ``They have not entered the inventory''?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Senator, I do not own any equipment. The equipment is owned by the Government of Canada. I, as army commander, do not have my hands on any of those Leopard II tanks for training in Canada, because no contract has been signed to actually get them refurbished.
Senator Moore: You do not have any Leopard II tanks in Canada in which our men and women can train?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: We have 40 Leopard II tanks in Canada, but they do not belong to the army yet.
Senator Moore: When do you expect to have them?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: As soon as possible. I have been waiting two years.
Senator Moore: As soon as possible, and you have been waiting two years?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, senator.
Senator Moore: My goodness. I do not know what to say next. Why?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The Government of Canada purchased 20 state-of-the-art Leopard II A6Ms, which are probably the finest tank in the world. These tanks are fighting in Afghanistan now, and every mission they go out on, they are saving soldiers' lives.
I referred to the ``four plus one'' rule, where you have people who are training at a variety of levels.
Senator Moore: Yes.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The same is true of equipment. Since those Leopard II tanks deployed two years ago, we have had to use Leopard 1s to train, which are 45 years old. The usage rate on the Leopard 1s, just because they are old, is now at a state where we have a 71 per cent breakdown rate.
Senator Moore: You should have, in theory, given your ``four plus one'' rule, 80 of those tanks at your availability?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, sir.
Senator Moore: Twenty in the field, and the others for repair?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Right. They bought 100 Leopard IIs. Forty are still in Europe and 40 are currently in Montreal. They have been in Montreal since, I believe, November of last year. I do not yet have my hands on those Leopard IIs with which to train our soldiers. I do not own the process.
Senator Moore: Who do we ask?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I would recommend that you ask the Vice-Chief of Defence Staff.
Senator Moore: Does he have the answer to that question with regard to the 40 Leopard II Tanks in Montreal and the 40 in Europe?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Probably not, sir; I believe that the Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel would have the answer.
If I may get back to a question you raised about the shortage of mechanics to fix equipment. We have some outstanding equipment. We also have some equipment in the process of being replaced. However, this entails time, money, people and process. I would submit to you that we are running out of time to keep your army functioning in the way that it should function because our vehicle breakage rates are far higher than I have ever seen.
Why is that? The army is doing that which it is designed to do and our soldiers are doing that which they volunteer to do when they go overseas, but we have been run hard. We have some great kit, no doubt about it, but we have been run hard for seven years. The places where we run our equipment are pretty rough. By the way, the enemy has a vote and is attacking our soldiers and equipment. At times, I could care less about the equipment. Rather, it is the people inside — the crews — that are truly important.
Senator Moore: We had an opportunity to visit the ``bone yard'' in Afghanistan. It was not a pretty sight, seeing what some of these explosive devices did to heavy equipment.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Absolutely. Now most of the equipment, when it is hit, allows the crews to walk away. As far as I am concerned, that tank or that Light Armoured Vehicle has done its job. The cumulative figures, because we are fighting a war, are having an impact on the training stocks available in Canada. Obviously, priority one goes to the folk overseas. The process to allow contracts to be let, which is outside of my purview because I do not control that process, is problematic. Quite frankly, it is taking an awfully long time.
Senator Moore: Thank you, Lieutenant-General Leslie, for your forthrightness.
Senator Wallin: Presumably, Lieutenant-General Leslie, you have posed the same question that you ask us to pose to the department as to why the Leopard IIs are in Montreal or elsewhere and not on the training fields. What answer have you received before to that question?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: You will find that most military and civilian people inside the Department of National Defence share the frustration that my soldiers and I feel. For example, today we are talking about one specific piece of equipment. These magnificent main battle tanks need some work before we can actually start using them in training, not out in the field.
Senator Wallin: Are they being adapted or what is happening to them in Montreal?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Right now, senator, nothing is happening to them. The hope is that over the next little while, new power packs and new fire control systems — replicating the kind of equipment that the soldiers are fighting on overseas — will make their way through. These tanks were bought from a friend and ally and have been sitting for a couple of years so all the seals have to be redone.
Senator Wallin: The normal process.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: On the procurement system, I am not an expert, although I am not an amateur. We in the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces only own a relatively small portion of this process. There is a growing sense that it is quite tough to fight a war with a peacetime process in place.
Senator Wallin: You said that nothing is being done right now. Do you mean that it is midstream in terms of upgrading the Leopard IIs?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Madam senator, nothing is happening to the 40 Leopard IIs in Montreal.
Senator Wallin: Why is that?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: It is because a contract has not been let to refurbish them.
Senator Wallin: Is not the money in place for that?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The notional allocation has been done by the Government of Canada, bless them.
Senator Wallin: Are the mechanics available do the job?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: What the actual solution will be, I do not know. I would submit that the work should be done by civilian industry and not by army mechanics, whom I need to do other work.
Senator Wallin: This is a connected question. You talked about the need for civilian or contract mechanics because you do not have enough army mechanics to do that work, but the contracting process is too complicated and protracted. Is that the same issue for you internally as externally there?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, senator, it is.
Senator Wallin: What is the key problem, as you see it in the contracting process?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The key problem is the length of time and the various levels of staff that all have what they perceive to be their point of view and their challenge function.
Senator Wallin: You have the money if you had the mechanics to do the job.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The Government of Canada has the money, it has been budgeted for. It did brilliant work in acquiring these machines. The money is in the notional allocations assigned to each of the services. However, the fact remains that currently, no work is happening on those tanks in Montreal.
Senator Wallin: On a separate point, you cited the problems with recruitment and retention. On recruitment first — aging population, demographics, raiding by the private sector, burnout, et cetera, is the economic situation countering that?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I was expecting a surge in recruiting, in particular by skilled or partially skilled applicants, but I have not seen that. The recruiting numbers are slightly lower than what we had hoped to see. I have not seen skilled mechanics, people with experience in optical systems or a sudden bubble in recruits showing up at our office.
Senator Wallin: Do you anticipate it happening? We have obviously not seen the worst of this yet.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I was expecting it six months ago, but it has not happened yet.
Senator Wallin: I have one final point that I will treat more as giving you notice because it is a larger topic and I know others want to get in on this one. General David Petraeus said that in a counterinsurgency, you are really engaged in armed social work. That means you have need of anthropologists, linguists, historians and others with that kind of training. I know of your personal commitment to the importance of training. Are we doing a good enough job on creating the right kind of soldier on the ground? You may give me a brief answer today but I would appreciate having that discussion in another context.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I believe our training is amongst the best in the world. It is based in part on the innate qualities that the young Canadians joining our ranks bring to their army. By nature we are multicultural and more adept at understanding different points of view. Our training is experiential in the sense that those who train the next generation to replace them, which happens every six months, are those who have just returned home.
We in the Canadian army and the Canadian Armed Forces are world leaders in how we train our relatively modest- sized forces. Could we do things better? There is always room for improvement. Could we do it faster? No. Despite a great deal of pressure on me to reduce the quality of training and the cost, it will not happen. Could we learn from others? We are learning from others. I happen to know General David Petraeus, who is very good man. You will find that some of our recent philosophies closely match his and those of the U.S. Army and our friends and allies.
For example, in Wainwright, Saskatchewan, we have up to 100 Afghan Canadians who come and give us a hand with cultural training and familiarization with other cultures, balanced between Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara and Uzbek. Does that answer your question?
Senator Wallin: It is a good start. We will pursue it in another forum, thank you.
Senator Tkachuk: I would like to follow up what Senator Moore started about your testimony before the committee the last time we met with you. As noted in the committee's interim report of last August entitled Four Generals and an Admiral: The View From the Top, ``the commanders all stated that their concerns were being addressed and that they were confident they would receive all the funding they required to execute their assigned missions.'' Now, unfortunately, the report I just quoted, which was approved by the majority of the members on the committee over the objections of several others, including me of course, went on to question the candidness of your testimony. The report says that it ``would have been a (pleasant) surprise to have any of these officers acknowledge the funding problem,'' and. ``with the tight rein the Prime Minister's office keeps on politicians and civil servants generally, the chances of getting a candid appraisal of funding shortfalls were remote.'' They also said that they disagree with the rosy testimony they heard from these senior officers.
I do not think the testimony last time you came was all that rosy. It included some legitimate, constructive criticisms, and I would like to ask you directly to confirm whether your testimony last time we met was your own honest professional opinion?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, it was my own honest professional opinion. The issue which the committee has focused on in this first instance, or has so far, has to do with equipment availability for training. Now for operations I want to reassure you and other Canadians, we put all our effort on ensuring that our kit overseas stays running. It is a question of priorities. It is once again not only a function of money.
For example, last year I handed in $50 million as your army commander, which I was not happy doing. Just inherently I do not like handing money in because I think the soldiers could benefit from spending that money on things that they need. It is a function of process, and it is not necessarily process at the levels of the leaders of the land. It is a process that permeates all the great folk who comprise the team that gets the job done, both civilian and military consultants and contractors. I would submit that Canadians, as a truism which may not necessarily be true, love process, and we have a lot of it in dealing with our equipment.
Senator Tkachuk: Canadians love process, that is true, general.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: We have a lot of it, and when we talk about the tank issue, this is very serious for me. In fact it is more serious for our soldiers who are actually fighting. The tanks overseas are good. We had one that was hit by an improvised explosive device this morning. The crew is fine. That tank has done its job. The tanks that we have to train on in Canada are breaking at alarming rates and it is perfectly understandable because they are old.
I am driving a minivan that is six or seven years old and I am spending probably too much money on it in maintenance per year. My very bright son has probably suggested to me a dozen times the variety of options to buy a new vehicle, which he assures me will save me money in the long run. Anyway, I digress.
Does that answer your question, senator?
Senator Tkachuk: It does. I wanted to get back to the previous one because your last testimony was not all rosy and you did mention, and so did others, problems of recruitment and mentioned other areas of difficulty that you were dealing with. I want to focus on the one thing that you did bring up today which is causing me a lot of concern, as well as other senators, and that is the question of procurement, which is those tanks sitting in Montreal and I would like to get a little more specific about that.
Now, I would guess that DND, Public Works, the Treasury Board are involved, that there is a process for all of this and it is difficult. We experience it in other areas of government as well as in the military, but do you know where it is being hung up? Is it hung up at the Department of Public Works right now? Is that where they are waiting for a contract to be let? Has the contract actually been let and sitting around hanging and not been decided yet, or is the contract waiting to be let?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I do not know.
Senator Tkachuk: You do not know.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I do not know.
Senator Tkachuk: Okay. Well, I do not have another question if we do not know the answer to that one.
He did say to ask the Vice Chief of Defence Staff and he should know.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: He would have a better answer than I would. By the way, my answer is in no way, shape or form meant to imply that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, who is a hell of a good guy, is out there stopping us from working on the tanks. It is not the case at all.
Senator Tkachuk: We understand that.
The Chair: However, he is waiting outside and he will be in here very shortly.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you for your presentation and also to the forces that represent us around the world. We are very proud of the work that they do.
I have three brief questions. Supplementary to Senator Banks' question about the shortfalls in the supervisory role and non-commissioned officers, you indicated that you needed about 10 years to have them trained. How can you ever close that gap, recognizing that their skills and talents, in your own words, are very attractive to the industry out there? Second, I suspect that many of the troops retire before the 10 years in consideration of the danger that they work in and also, as Senator Nolin noted, because of the strain it places on the families and the danger. How can you ever achieve that level to be able to train them in 10 years so they can assume the roles of supervisory and non- commissioned officers?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: How do we close the gap? A three-pronged approach, if I may. The first would be to take a cold, hard look at the recent experience, for example, that our master corporals or senior corporals have gone through in an active theatre. It is unlike the days gone by, where you would have many dozens of weeks of training and experience to put these people through before you allow them to supervise groups of 10, 30 or 100 soldiers. Today, based on their experience overseas, where many of them have had to step up to the plate and fill in temporarily while other people have been wounded or worse, you take a risk and we push the best and brightest through quickly; far more quickly than we have done in the past.
Now how do you grow a sergeant and a warrant officer and a sergeant major and a chief warrant officer, the backbone of the army? You start with master corporals. Over the last year we in the army have introduced an additional thousand master corporals so that this summer, starting, we can get many more senior NCOs through, and two years from now we will put many more warrant officers through with a view to filling the ranks not in 10 years, to use the example you referred to, but in six or seven.
The bottom line is, it is a great time to join the Canadian army because we are probably going to promote you a lot faster if you are good enough — a lot faster than we have ever done in the past. We are essentially approaching what our forefathers went through in the Second World War and at certain periods in the Korean War of mobilization standards to close this gap.
For the officers, the same sort of logic applies, though we have to take a hard look at those qualifications that we are sending our officers off to get, because I think the road is getting unnecessarily complicated and difficult. Perhaps we are not giving as much credit to operational experience as we should.
Does that answer your question?
Senator Zimmer: It does, thank you.
The second question is in relation to what Senator Moore asked you. We need more equipment but I assume we are cautious of the purchases because we do not want to hold idle inventory after Afghanistan. How do you solve the issue of equipment requirements being met? Do you work with the allies? Is there a way of trading and sharing with them, because at the end of the war we do not want to sit with idle equipment that is not being used?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Currently the fleets of equipment we have, using the same rough rule of ``four plus one,'' is sufficient for Canada if everything is working, to maintain roughly the same size contribution that we have overseas today, tomorrow.
Given that the military mission in Afghanistan ends in 2011, it is natural to assume that there will be a reset period for people and equipment — and I am being Army specific now — and then the government in their wisdom will tell us where we are going next, when we are going next, how long we will stay there and what they want done. As you know, we in the Army do not decide any of that.
There have been great acquisitions over the last couple of years. Now it is a matter of fixing the stuff that we, our soldiers, have used really hard. The breakage rates are going through the roof.
I do not see much being in the category of surplus inventory, apart from fleet replacements taking place. For example, we are getting new trucks; we are retiring the old ones as soon as the new ones roll off the assembly line. When the tanks are eventually sorted out, we will retire the old tanks the second that a new one shows up on the armoury floor.
It all boils down to the vision of what you and other Canadians see your army doing. If there is an assumption that job one is domestic, we do not necessarily need all the fighting power. You better not need the fighting power in Canada. However, you do in Afghanistan.
What will the perceived mission be like and what is the perceived foe? If you think the foe is roughly similar to what we are facing now in terms of asymmetric threats, suicide bombers or hit-and-run rocket attacks — and I think that is a logical assumption to make — then you will want lots of protection for the soldiers. Quite rightly, Canadians become cross and upset when their soldiers do not survive. Therefore, wrap them in steel and armour. However, that does not win a war. Men and women out on the ground, interacting with the locals, closing with and occasionally destroying the foe and, more importantly, providing security to those who need it most, are what wins wars.
Senator Zimmer: I indicated to you when we met a few minutes ago that, in the 1970s, I worked for the Minister of National Defence, James A. Richardson. The Olympics in Montreal happened in 1976 and we provided about 25,000 personnel. Next year, of course, the Olympics are in Vancouver. What will the drain be on your resources and how will you handle it?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: The Winter Olympics, of course, are not as large as the Summer Olympics, as you know. Vice- Admiral Dean McFadden, Commander Canada Command, is the officer who actually runs the Canadian contribution reinforcing the RCMP, which is the lead for security. Having said all that, I still have not answered your question.
He is the expert in terms of the Olympics. The Army contribution will be somewhere in the 4,000 personnel range. The way we are doing that is through a judicious use of the reserves and certain battle groups which have cycled out of Afghanistan or elsewhere. The third portion of the solution is that it is not for very long. That is key.
Can we get it done? Yes. Will it be tough? Yes, it will be but it is not an insurmountable task.
Quite frankly, domestic operations are job one, so we will do it.
Senator Zimmer: You are right: The Summer Olympics are much larger. It is also important to remember that the 1976 Olympics came after those in 1972 in Munich, which caused an escalation. They did put in more reserves than they needed to do.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you very much for being with us. It has been very interesting.
The Prime Minister recently seems to have changed tack by saying that we cannot win in Afghanistan; we can only push the insurgents back. What kind of effect did that have on the morale of the soldiers in Afghanistan?
Also, is it a competing objective — that is to say to push back the insurgents — and is that actually occurring? Do you think you are making progress versus the other stated objective of training the military and the police force adequately so they can sustain a more stable state?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I have to think about that one. Please allow me about 30 seconds to think my way through this.
May I commend to you the new Army counter-insurgency manual, of which we are quite proud? That does not mean it is perfect but it is written by a team of very experienced officers and academics who have cycled through Afghanistan. I take absolutely no credit for this but all the errors and omissions, of course, are mine as the Army commander.
In it are quite a lot of wise words from some young, capable, dynamic men and women who wear uniform. I will elevate the discussion to one of doctrine and of general principles.
Counter-insurgency, a war amongst the people, not with the people, by definition has to be solved by political means. I am a student of military history. I have never read of an example in which a counter-insurgency has been successfully prosecuted based solely on the military as an instrument. Therefore, we are in a supporting role. Who do we support? We support the indigenous government, which is fighting or leading the fight against the insurgents.
How do we actually resolve, if you would, the issue in Afghanistan? The simple answer is that it is up to the Afghan people to resolve and we support them.
A military victory will not happen. By ``military victory,'' I mean having a ticker tape parade, where we have met the Taliban and al Qaeda in a big dust-up battle and we own the battlefield with flags flying.
However, setting in place the mechanisms to build security capacity in Afghanistan or wherever we are going next can happen. It is up to the Afghan people, with our support, to resolve this. The key is security. You cannot do reconstruction, diplomatic effort, social development or power sharing unless you have security. Security takes on three facets, much like Maslow's hierarchy of needs of which you know so well. There is physical security, social security and then there is economic security. However, as with the old adage of the alligators in the swamp, your intent may have been to drain it but if you must worry about the alligator right away, that is your focus.
We are at the stage where, thankfully, we can do more than just physical security but not everywhere in Afghanistan. We are doing diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, social development and we are doing hard-core development.
I have lost the thread on the second portion of your question, sir.
Senator Mitchell: It was really what you make of this idea that we can push the insurgents back, as it were; what that means and how that corresponds to this idea of training their force. However, I think you addressed that to my satisfaction. Thank you; it was a very interesting answer.
When you say ``diplomatic'' approaches, it seems to me that must mean speaking to the other side, which would be the Taliban. Is that structured? Are we making progress in that way?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: In my readings and, more importantly, in the readings of much smarter, young academically- inclined majors, captains, lieutenant-colonels and the pure academics who came up with all the ideas in this book, no insurgency has been successfully concluded without some form of negotiations between the legitimate government and the foe.
Of course, Afghanistan is further complicated by the fact you have Talib, who cover a broad spectrum in terms of their degrees of fanaticism — from ultra hardcore to mild supporters — and then you have al Qaeda, who are at the extreme end of whatever scale you want to subscribe to.
If I may offer advice as an expert on this issue, Canada should not be negotiating with the foe. That is the remit of the Afghan government. If every nation in NATO, part of the coalition, were to try and engage in unilateral discussions with the Talib, there would be chaos. We would also then destroy the credibility of the nascent Afghan government.
We have to support their efforts and, quite frankly, you do not need soldiers for that. You need diplomats, people who are trained.
We are used to negotiations but not of that nature, and we would and should be providing the secure environment for Afghan diplomats who are amazingly skilled. Think of their tribal structures and the tensions between them.
Senator Mitchell: They do a lot of negotiation.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Absolutely. And if you have ever engaged in a debate with Ambassador Samad, he is an incredibly brilliant fellow.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you. I think the general is being quite humble about his academic qualifications. As I understand, he is on the way to finishing a PhD.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Mitchell. Congratulations, General.
Senator Day: I am afraid we keep the general so busy that he just cannot finish his work down there.
General, I have a question of clarification first of all. In your earlier remarks you say:
[Translation]
``We will need additional funding in order to hire civilian mechanics and technicians.''
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I interpreted that to mean that you needed, at least in the short term, additional funds to hire civilian personnel to do some of that technical, mechanical-type work. However, I thought in one of your answers you indicated it was really a matter of contracting as opposed to money.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: It is a bit of both, and I will explain the context, if I may.
Last year, in terms of its planning allocation for a variety of activities, not pay, the army was allocated $1.4 billion. This year — and we do not have firm numbers yet — we are receiving $1.62 billion, so that is a $220-million increase. That will go a long way towards ameliorating some of the issues I speak of.
Let me go back to last year where I could not spend $50 million. It is not because there are any ill-intentioned people in town. It is not lack of need. It is ``let us get it done.'' It was not a $50 million contract. It was dozens and dozens of little ones. When you actually get the money in your baseline and plan to expend it in a coherent and logical fashion, who signs off? There are inevitable tensions that exist in large bureaucracies, and there are many in this town. It is not only DND, so there we go.
Senator Day: I would like to explore that further, but I think we are running out of time. I want to explore the equipment and a lot of this equipment that is down and therefore not available, certainly here in Canada, for training purposes, as you indicated.
We have heard in our previous tours of military bases that particularly the reserve units were, I do not want to say raided, but relieved of a lot of equipment that was sent to Wainwright for use in preparing the battle groups for deployment. We have many reservists not training on equipment that they used to be able to train on. Those same reservists are being asked to supplement the battle group and go overseas without proper training or certainly a lot less training than the regular force or the training they would have received in the past. Do you find that as a result it takes longer for the battle group to be ready for deployment?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Senator, currently the number of army reservists — and bless them for stepping up to the plate because we would not be able to sustain this without the reserves — we are sending of the total force, for example to Afghanistan, is somewhere between 15 to 20 per cent of each rotation.
I am the guy who took a lot of their equipment away and threw it at the battle group and brigade that is getting ready to go. It is not only the battle group. It is also the Observer Mentor Liaison Team, the Provincial Reconstruction Team and the national support element, so really we send a small brigade overseas every six months.
It is true that the reserves would have less baseline training across the entirety of, for argument's sake, the 19,000 reserves we have out there. On the other hand, we are focused on, as we call it, the road to war. If you are not on the road to war, you are either supporting it or you do not have any equipment and you do not have any of the money, the ammo or the range time to do your basic skills. However, we have so many folk who are on the road to war, as I mentioned early, 15,000 out of a 20,000-man army, that most will pick it up within one or two years. If I had unlimited funds and unlimited soldiers, things would be entirely different, but neither is either realistic or indeed in the best interests of the nation considering a whole bunch of other things we are going through.
Yes, I have heard a lot of legitimate grumbling from some of the reserve units because I have taken some of their equipment away. Got it. Tough.
Senator Day: We promised we would pass it on and so we are passing it on.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I got the message loud and clear.
Senator Day: Finally, in the Afghanistan mission we all focus on the number of deaths, but you indicated in your remarks that there are a tremendous number of wounded, blessé. Can you give us an indication as to the total number there are in the army or the Armed Forces who are on light duty because they have been wounded, still in the Armed Forces but not able to re-engage?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Senator, I would have to get back to you with a specific number. I will discuss this with a certain general who as the Chief of the Defence Staff's medical adviser owns the medical process which determines their status, if you would. There has been some great initiatives over the last couple of weeks indeed with the stand up of the eight joint support units where you blend together the medical, the social, the family resource centres who have just done wonders in the last three or four years, with Veterans Affairs, which will help us track.
Senator Day: Pardon me for interrupting, but do they still take an authorized spot that you cannot fill with someone else?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: By moving to the joint support unit then of course they are taken off the army's rolls, and that allows me to go out and recruit another young man or woman keeping in mind we definitely are not getting rid of the others. There is physical, mental and emotional injury. We have a significant amount of young men and women who we, our regimental families, are taking care of. They need a bit of time before they decide what their future is.
Every group that deploys, I gather them in a big semicircle of a couple of thousand and have a chinwag. They all know why they are going, but I run through it again. My last question is: Who does not want to go? I have had very few takers, one so far, out of the 20,000 or so that I have spoken to, because this is what we do. You send us; we are all volunteers. There are some issues we have to solve together, but we are soldiers and this is what we do.
Let me get back to the casualty issue. Our regiments and battalions are taking care of folk who have demonstrated changes in patterns of behaviour, and we work with social workers and psychiatrists through this certain general to see whether or not the issues are so important that we cannot send them back or we will not let them go back.
The first time you go because you are a professional, be you a regular or a reserve. The second time, we have to ask you and it is a mutual decision. The third time, you have to ask us. The fourth time, it happens, but good luck with that because you have to come to me. Now, I have delegated that to some of my army generals. At lower levels, area commanders are each responsible for 10,000 or 12,000 folk. By 2011, we will get to soldiers, NCOs, who will be going back for a fifth tour. The numbers will be small but they exist, and we will have many hundreds on their fourth, third and second tour, keeping in mind it has an impact but this is what we do.
Senator Atkins: General, just following up on that, where you say there are some members of the military on their third, fourth and fifth rotation, is there any policy relating to how they qualify for reassignment?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: There is at the army level. We are very keen to move veterans — we have young veterans as well as not so young ones — into the schools and training institutions. We want to allow the younger, less experienced people to move into the battalions and regiments to be trained and get on the road to war.
In terms of the gateways — first tour, second tour, third tour, fourth tour — if you do not want to go, there are many other jobs for you to do. However, that is not in the nature of the Canadian soldier. This is especially true of the senior NCOs and officers who, if their young men and women are going, will fight to go. Based on their experience of previous tours, they feel that they can take better care of their troops than someone who has not been.
It is my job, and that of my generals and chief warrant officers, to exercise adult supervision over their enthusiasm to go with their troops as comparing to the risk they may pose because they are exhausted and may not know it.
Senator Atkins: Do you take family into consideration?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes, we do. Before a soldier goes overseas on even their first tour, he or she must go through a fairly intensive and rigorous process involving a social worker, a personnel selection officer, a chaplain, the chain of command and the family resource centre. However, we occasionally make mistakes.
Senator Atkins: You mentioned that you go from a 7 per cent to 9 per cent attrition rate on average. Can you describe to us your re-enlistment policy and the effort made to try and get qualified, experienced servicemen to re- enlist, especially when you are in such a dire need of trained individuals?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: We are making up shortfalls now mainly through full time reservists. The army currently has around 4,000 to 5,000 reservists working all the time.
Second, I send out letters, and so do some of the other army generals, to people who have recently retired inviting them back. I think our Chief of the Defence Staff a couple of weeks ago used the words ``come on back, we love you.'' It is not enough, but it is a good start in trying to build awareness among people who have recently left us with incredible experience that, you can come on back, especially if you haven't been on a mission recently. We can guarantee that they will go. That is quite a powerful tool. We are seeing not thousands, but dozens — and hopefully hundreds — electing to do that.
Senator Atkins: They want the excitement?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: No, it is what we do. If it was not complicated and dangerous, why have an army? Whether it is Afghanistan, previously in Croatia or wherever the people will send us next, those are the type of people who always step up to the plate.
Senator Atkins: You mentioned that money is not really a major incentive for re-enlistment.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: It would probably help. I may be wrong — maybe I am naive — but no one goes to Afghanistan for the money. It is too dangerous for that.
Senator Atkins: Maybe not, but they might join the army for the money.
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: However, then we will send them to Afghanistan.
Senator Day: And they know that.
Senator Manning: I want to say congratulations and thank you for your service to our country and people. Being from Newfoundland and Labrador, which has 1.7 per cent of Canada's population, a great percentage of our men and women have joined the forces. I know some of them quite well and some of the families that have suffered the supreme sacrifice because of that. However, it has always been there.
I want to talk about recruitment. From my own school years, I know there were always visits from the Armed Forces. I understand that is still happening. You talk about the army and I will talk about Newfoundland and Labrador, with which I am familiar. The school population in the past decade has decreased from somewhere in the range of 90,000 down to 60,000 students. I had an invitation recently to attend a year end for another cadet group in my province, and cadets are the preliminary training ground for many people that go into the forces. We are seeing a drastic reduction in the numbers.
You discussed private sector competition earlier. I wonder about the impediments to recruitment for you in the army, for us as part of the Parliament of Canada and, generally, for the Canadian public. What could we do to entice more people to join? You commented a few moments ago — and it is the same for anyone I know who joined the forces — no one ever joined for the money, it is a calling. At the same time, our numbers are not where we would like them to be. I would like to know what some of the impediments are that the forces see and what are some of the things we could do to offset the declining numbers?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I may regret these words, but I do not believe it is an issue of money. There is capacity, which means you have to recruit more so you can train more recruits who have joined. It is process. Remember that I referred earlier to the basic training list where thousands of young men and women are awaiting training to get through the initial stages. There are many people in another organization handling the recruiting process who are taking a hard look at the length of our training and what we are doing with recruits.
In numbers, we are not growing as fast as we might have wanted, but, in the army's case, I am about 600 or 700 short overall per year. We could lower standards, but that will not happen. The last thing you want is something less than the best Canada has to offer. In very complicated and dangerous circumstances, if you make one inappropriate split-second decision, unbelievable tragedies ensue. We could shorten the training, but we are sending young men and women into harm's way. Therefore, that will not happen. I do not have a magic bullet here. It is patience, being diligent on this issue and challenging process wherever it exists to make it better, faster and smarter.
I have numbers by specific trades. What is of more concern is retention. As you were referring to in the school system, it would be great if we can keep experienced teachers. Keep in mind that an army needs a constant stream of young men and women willing to carry a rifle and go and do the sorts of thing we are doing now.
The Chair: It is 3:30 p.m. We were supposed to finish at three o'clock and I have a final statement that I will make. We are out of time.
I will go back to Senator Tkachuk's question earlier, so we can perhaps consider this as extension of his time. He inquired of you, Lt.- General Leslie, about your testimony before the committee last year and our report Four Generals and an Admiral.
Are you aware of or have you ever been given any reason to believe that guidance is given to people who testify before us?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Yes.
The Chair: Are you familiar with the Privy Council directive of December 1990 where, quite specifically, people are told essentially that they are only to testify what is government policy and only as though the minister were sitting beside them?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: I understand your intent, senator, but I would not use quite those words.
The Chair: Is that the case when officers come to appear before us? Are they faced with those restrictions?
Lt.-Gen. Leslie: Circumscribed by the normal rules of behaviour of any official of the Government of Canada — keeping in mind I am a professional soldier and not a civil servant — yes, I am.
The Chair: Thank you. Honourable senators, I apologize to all of you, we have gone well past the closing time. I have been chastised by the deputy chair — quite properly — that I should have a better grip on things. I will endeavour to enlist your cooperation with future witnesses.
On behalf of the committee, Lieutenant-General Leslie, your testimony has been riveting. We have learned a great deal, and we are grateful to you for coming and appearing before us.
Our next witness is Lieutenant-General Watt, Chief of the Air Staff. Lieutenant-General Watt enrolled in 1972. He flew the Sea King helicopter with 443 Squadron in Shearwater, Nova Scotia, taught helicopter pilots at CFB Portage La Prairie in Manitoba and later commanded 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron. Staff tours have included NATO headquarters in Brussels and a number of positions in Ottawa, Winnipeg, NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs and elsewhere. He commanded a joint task force in Southeast Asia in 2002 and served as Deputy Commander Air of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2006. He was appointed to his current position at Chief of the Air Staff in 2007.
Lieutenant-General Watt, welcome again to the committee. I understand you have a brief statement.
Lieutenant-General W. Angus Watt, Chief of the Air Staff, National Defence: Thank you for inviting me to speak about Canada's air force.
[Translation]
Many of you have had the chance to meet the talented professionals of both genders who are serving within our air force, both in Canada and overseas. You were able to see for yourselves the calibre of their abilities and the quality of their work. I would like to express my gratitude for the support that you are giving them.
[English]
As commander of Canada's air force, I am responsible for the force generation of aerospace capabilities. This means providing the right combination of equipment and appropriately trained personnel to the operational level commands. Those are primarily Canada Command for operations in North America and Canadian Expeditionary Force Command for international operations.
[Translation]
This past year has been a time of progress and transformation for the air force. This afternoon, I am going to tell you about some of those achievements — not all of them are complete, not all of them were big news, but the bottom line is that we moved the air force forward significantly in 2008.
[English]
As Chief of the Air Staff, I have three main focus areas to ensure that progress continues: our mission, our people and our equipment and infrastructure. The Canada First Defence Strategy calls for the Canadian Forces to deliver excellence at home, to be a strong and reliable partner for the defence of North America and to project leadership abroad by making a meaningful contribution to international security. We are dedicated to fulfilling that mandate.
I was in Afghanistan last week, visiting the new air wing that is providing a level of air support to operations with a capability unprecedented since the Second World War for the Canadian Air Force. While I was there, we marked the initial operating capability of the Griffin helicopters, which provide escort protection for our new Chinook helicopters. This means they are ready to begin providing aviation support to operations.
Meanwhile, our personnel are training in the operational environment in order to achieve full operational capability soon. We also announced the initial operating capability of our new Heron unmanned aerial vehicle in January, and we are on track for declaring the initial operating capability for our Chinook helicopters. In fact, that occurred last week.
[Translation]
In addition, our theatre support element, which is now part of the air wing, continues to provide stellar? support to the mission by ensuring the timely and effective movement of personnel and materiel in and out of theatre.
At home, we are committed to our partnership with the United States in North American Aerospace Command — or NORAD — to defend North America and to protect our air space and approaches.
We also remain dedicated to our search and rescue role, working closely with our civilian partners to aid Canadians in distress, and to supporting the navy and army in their roles and missions. And we are, of course, heavily engaged in preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will require a significant air force presence.
[English]
People are my greatest strength and my greatest vulnerability for the future. Our personnel levels, both regular and reserve forces, are lower than we would like them to be. Our traditional recruiting cohort is shrinking and we face internal demographic challenges caused by the downsizing of the forces in the early 1990s.
At the moment, for instance, I have lots of air technicians with 1 to 11 years of service and with 17 to 26 years of service. However, there is a gap in the 12 to 16 years of service cadre. This will eventually result in a shortage of senior personnel and a decline in our ratio of experienced to inexperienced personnel.
Retention is therefore critical and we are working to encourage air force members to stay in uniform longer. I am developing a personnel strategy to identify and implement measures to improve retention and thus mitigate some of the demographic realities. We are pursuing initiatives to enhance air force officer professional development and technical training, improve succession planning and alleviate some of the pressures of military life, especially the pressures on families.
We are also examining our occupational structure to ensure we have the right people doing the right jobs. For instance, we have recently revamped our air navigator occupation to more accurately reflect its members' current and future operational roles. We have renamed them as air combat systems officers. They will continue to carry out some air navigation duties but they will also lead unmanned aerial vehicle operations, crew strategic air-to-air refuelling aircraft and perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance duties in a multiple aircraft.
As well, our aircraft technician occupations are being restructured to meet the technical requirements of our new airframes and the needs of an expeditionary air force.
[Translation]
We are also modernizing our training, an indispensable factor in the people equation. In the area of pilot training, we are closing the gap between the number of pilots we need and the number we have. To increase our annual pilot production, we are making more use of simulators and bypassing training that is not required for the specific airplanes that pilots will fly, as well as increasing the number of instructors and the capacity of our operational training units.
And we have completely transformed our system of training technicians in Borden, Ontario. We have 50 per cent more students, and the length of courses has decreased by 40 per cent. Part of that transformation includes embracing the virtual reality world of the 21st century. We are launching a learning environment whereby student technicians will carry out much of their initial training in a 3-D, web-based, virtual world.
And, reflecting our new operational realities, we are providing training more traditionally deemed ``army'' to enhance air force personnel's survivability in combat situations.
My third focus area is equipment. We have had many successes in this area recently, but I will touch on just a few of the key advances.
[English]
I am challenged by an aircraft fleet that is aging. In the mid-1980s, the average age of our aircraft fleet was 16 years. Now the average age is about 25 years. This does not mean that our aircraft are unsafe. Let me be very clear, we do not fly unsafe aircraft. However, acquiring replacement parts is more difficult and our aircraft face reduced availability because of increased maintenance time. My goal is to bring that average downward.
To this end, we are in the midst of an unprecedented recapitalization of our fleets. Last summer we took delivery of the last of our four C-17 Globemaster strategic airlifters. Next year, we will begin to take delivery of our new J-model Hercules tactical airlifters.
To address our longer term helicopter lift needs, we are in the process of acquiring F-model Chinooks that will fulfill our requirements for the next 20 years or more, and expect them to begin arriving soon.
[Translation]
We have leased the Heron UAV as an interim UAV solution, and we are seeking a long-term solution that includes both domestic and deployable capabilities.
We have re-acquired a strategic air-to-air refueling capability by the modification of two Polaris aircraft. One of these tankers will be able to ferry four CF-18s nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
Our Aurora aircraft, originally designed for antisubmarine warfare, is being modernized to become a multi-mission aircraft that will carry out over-land surveillance and reconnaissance in addition to its traditional coastal function. This modernization will ensure that the Aurora remains operationally viable until 2020. Looking further into the future, however, we will acquire a 21st century multi-mission aircraft to replace this versatile workhorse.
[English]
We are also progressing with the acquisition of a new fixed wing search and rescue aircraft to replace our current fleet of Hercules and Buffalo, and planning for the next generation fighter to replace the CF-18 Hornet, which reaches its estimated life expectancy toward the end of next decade.
These are items in the Canada First Defence Strategy, and it shows that defence strategy in action. The CFDS gives us a framework and some predictability to achieve success over the long term rather than dealing with constant incremental adjustments. This is good news for the air force.
The air force is not just about people and equipment though; it is also about ideas. The Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre, which we set up in 2005, is hitting its stride and generating doctrine, lessons learned, concept development, and experimentation and strategy. It truly is a think tank of the first order and a vital aspect of air force transformation that we have been missing for many years.
[Translation]
I have two key areas of concern as we deal with an air force with decreasing levels of experienced personnel. We cannot afford to compromise flight safety — and we must increase our efforts to prevent rather than react. And secondly, airworthiness is critical.
I am the CF authority for airworthiness; the aircraft we fly are complex and the environments in which we fly are challenging.
[English]
We have a great airworthiness system, but it can be better, and we have been working diligently to improve the system, especially in the area of how we track and manage risks.
[Translation]
We are taking time to celebrate this year. Two thousand and nine marks the 100th anniversary of powered, heavier than air flight in Canada. This celebration by both military and civilian aviators kicked off in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, last month, and will continue throughout the year with special events and air shows.
This year also marks the 85th anniversary of our own proud air force history of contributing to Canada's security in both peace and war. We are bringing that heritage, our pride and our professionalism to bear on building the air force of the future.
[English]
In closing, I am tremendously proud of the work that the highly skilled men and women of the air force carry out day in, day out, both here and abroad. I am confident that we are on target to fulfill our air force vision of an agile and combat-capable aerospace force with the reach-in power essential to integrated Canadian forces operations at home and abroad.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Lieutenant-General Watt, for that very informative presentation.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: General Watt, it is a pleasure, particularly for a francophone Quebecer, to see a graduate of the Saint-Jean Royal Military College. I presume that that is where you learned to master Molière's mother tongue with such skill and finesse. I would like to ask you a few questions in French. I have several questions deserving of details and I would invite you to give us more detailed written answers with regard to equipment, since my questions will concern mainly equipment. I am not asking you to reveal operational details, I would not want to endanger the lives of our troops, but I would like some detail on the different aircraft in your air fleet as well as their dimensions, both in terms of what is deployed and what is here in Canada. As I mentioned, you may also provide written responses later.
Also, as you mentioned, you and the Government of Canada are in the midst of an unprecedented recapitalization program. In your opinion, are we able to deal with this unprecedented recapitalization program?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: In what way?
Senator Nolin: Financially, among other things. Will we meet our publicly stated intentions in light of our financial possibilities?
I understand that our procurement process has been greatly facilitated by monodirectional purchases in the first few years of the recapitalization program, nonetheless, our procurement program is complex, cumbersome and often disproportionate. Canadians continue to be surprised — to say the very least — when they learn, in some cases, that it can take up to 15 years from start to finish. Are our ambitions too great for our capacity?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: First, regarding your question on our air craft fleet equipment...
Senator Nolin: Ultimately, I am asking you for an inventory.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes. As you indicated, it would be more appropriate to provide you an answer in writing.
Senator Nolin: A fairly detailed document would be appreciated.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes. You will receive one in the next few weeks.
As to your second question, our procurement program is quite ambitious, in fact, and involves two main challenges, the first of which is financial. I can say that every program has its own challenges, and there needs to be a balance between operational and financial capacity.
Now, with regard to the Canada First Defence Strategy, we negotiated the main elements with the air force for the next decade. I am pleased. Obviously, I did not get everything I wanted, I am extremely ambitious, but I believe that we have a strategy that will ensure a sustainable future for the air force in order to ensure the safety and security of Canadians.
The second challenge concerns the staff level needed to manage the procurement programs. This task involves quite specific qualifications, which are rare in the Canadian Forces. To date we have been successful, but I take nothing for granted. We had enormous success with the C-17 — enormous in both senses — with the CC-130J, the Heron drones and the acquisition of the Chinook helicopters that are now in Afghanistan. There are other ambitious programs on the horizon, but for now, this remains a challenge not a disaster.
Senator Nolin: You have anticipated my next question. Whatever the case may be, if your written response is even more specific, do not hesitate because often, the details are what help us.
With regard to your recapitalization program, we would like to know more about how this project is progressing. Even if you are only just doing the internal assessment now, we would like to have information on the kind of equipment, such as marine helicopters and the different types of equipment that you mentioned in general terms in your presentation.
I would like more detail on the following subjects: maritime helicopters, tactical airlift, medium-lift helicopters, provisional and long-term procurement, fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft.
You also referred to multi-mission aircraft and fighter aircraft. With regard to unmanned aircraft, you are seeking a permanent solution. I would also like more details about your special projects.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Senator Nolin, you are extremely well informed. I see that you have quite an exhaustive list.
Senator Nolin: As you know, it all depends on how good the researchers are.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We could provide you with a detailed response in writing that will provide you with all the required information.
Senator Nolin: If I may, I have one final, more sensitive question. It is great to have all these projects, but we are not always able to bring them to fruition, and not being able to do so can present a risk.
What is your assessment of the air force? In the medium and long term, what is your risk assessment regarding the quality of military services in Canada?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am comfortable with the current status of the air force, but what concerns me, however, is what things will be like in a decade.
Senator Nolin: That is why I mentioned the medium and long term, and I would like to hear you speak about this risk assessment.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Near the end of the next decade, the air force needs will be extensive. The life span of our current aircraft fleet will expire. Aircraft like the Aurora, the Chasseur and certain rescue planes will have to be renewed before the end of the next decade.
The air staff is focusing all its energies on future procurement programs, and the risk will be greatest in about a decade. That is why the Canada First Defence Strategy represents a step towards the future for me. Instead of beginning to discuss the need for such operational capacity, we are instead at the point where we can discuss aircraft needs. I think that we will address these challenges related to the risk that will increase over the next decade. For now, the situation is not perfect and there will always be problems to resolve.
[English]
Senator Wallin: As a Canadian who supports our mission in Afghanistan and as a former member of the Manley panel, the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan, I am pleased to hear what you are saying today about the speed, not just the quantity, of the delivery of some of the equipment you need.
I want to make a couple of comments on two issues that are intimately linked: maintenance and procurement. We heard from your land forces counterpart a few moments ago that about 71 per cent of his main battlefield equipment is in maintenance or out of commission at any given time. If we could set aside the peculiar problem of the Sea Kings for a moment, can you give us some rough idea of where you stand?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I have 18 fleets of aircraft. If I had any of them at 70 per cent unavailability, they would be out of business. You cannot run an air force like that because of the very demanding proficiency and competency requirements that have very short life spans. In other words, if you do not fly for a month, you lose your currency. The availability of the aircraft varies but the highest ones would be the Airbus and the C-17, which are in the 90 per cent serviceability range. The lowest ones would be around 50 per cent to 60 per cent, which would be the Buffalo, Hercules and Sea King. It goes up and down on a day-to-day basis. We are constantly trying to improve it. As I mentioned earlier, we are struggling with old aircraft that are still safe. If they are not safe, then we keep them on the ground. For the older equipment, parts can be difficult to find and maintenance is very intensive.
I am not in the same position the army is in, and I am not losing vehicles to combat like the army does. Losing vehicles to the foe is one of the army's biggest problems. To date, I am not experiencing that. Rather, I lose vehicles to everyday problems.
Senator Wallin: Your concern about maintenance is separate. Is it directly related to the ability to attract and maintain personnel inside and/or your ability to contract in a timely manner outside?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes, all of that.
When you are trying to keep an aircraft serviceable, an entire series of steps must be accomplished. You need to have quality, trained personnel who know how to fix the aircraft. They need to be supplied with the proper procedures and tools to maintain the aircraft. They need to be supplied in a timely manner with the parts to maintain that aircraft. The aircraft must be designed to facilitate that maintenance. If you have all of those requirements in place, then you achieve high serviceability, like the C-17.
Senator Wallin: Are you able to recruit the right people? How does the gap, which you talked about, affect that part of your team?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: My technicians are part of the 500 series. It is the largest group of people in the air force with more than 3,000 technicians. Generally, I am doing okay with recruitment. The air force remains an attractive occupation for Canada's youth, and I am looking to encourage and enhance that reputation. As I mentioned in my remarks, we have revamped the way we are training our technicians, so I have more of them coming in.
The problem is that valley in the middle. The average age of my technicians is 42 years. I have that big hump of baby boomers who are about to retire, a big hump of new kids coming in and, right in the middle, there will be challenges because those are the next leadership candidates for that occupation. Two things in life are inevitable: death and taxes. I would add demographics to that list. There is only one way to have an experienced technician with 15 years in uniform: start and grow over 15 years.
Senator Wallin: Is it fair to say that our Canada First Defence Strategy gives you comfort that there will be a more rational approach to acquisition?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It gives some predictability. I have been in this business a long time. I am coming up to 37 years in uniform. One of the tough struggles is having a long-term plan for the financial resources that will be provided to us and a long-term plan for using them to effectively balance army, navy and air force with our various programs. The Canada First Defence Strategy gives us about a decade's worth of a reasonable long-term look, which is useful.
Senator Meighen: Welcome back before the committee, Lieutenant-General Watt. It is nice to see you, as always. I apologize for not being here when you began your presentation.
I have a number of short questions. People are at the base of almost everything, whether it is with you or Lieutenant-General Leslie in the army or Vice-Admiral Robertson. Have you noticed any change in terms of interest of trained pilots from the civilian world, given the economic situation over the past few years in the airline industry?
Second, if my memory serves me well, in past years we heard testimony to the effect that it was not always easy — and I am not saying this is a trend that should be encouraged necessarily — to come and go from the air force. In other words, when economic times were good, people left the air force; but when economic times worsened or if for other reasons an individual wanted to come back to the air force, they had difficulty doing so whether or not they were in the reserves. Has the process been simplified at all?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Thank you for those questions. The pilots are the occupation that is the canary in the mine shaft in the air force. They signal the change earlier than any other occupation. We are doing okay with pilots. A few years ago we were having trouble recruiting them. We are not having trouble recruiting them now. We have more than enough recruits for pilots. It is hard to trace that to any single cause, but the economic circumstances definitely do help.
We have also changed things such as vision standards for pilots. Where we previously did not allow LASIK surgery, we now allow it. All of you who were dreaming of being pilots and your eyes were keeping you back, here is your chance. We changed anthropometric standards, which is the way we measure various limbs on your body to see if you fit in the cockpit. We have redesigned that program.
Senator Meighen: You redesigned the pilots or the cockpit?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We redesigned the standards, to make sure they reflect modern cockpits, because the previous standards dated from the 1940s.
We are doing okay recruiting pilots. Once again, I do not take it for granted. We have a re-enrolment office in my staff. Their job is to phone up people who look like they have lost their job in the airlines and who used to be in the military and ask them if they are interested in coming back. As soon as we hear about an airline going under, we look at the list of pilots and see who used to be in the military and give them a call. We have achieved some notable success because every pilot we re-enrol is one we do not have to train. That is very advantageous. However, many bureaucratic impediments remain. It is still far too difficult and bureaucratic to come back in. I do not own all of that process. These are processes far beyond the army, navy and air force. These are Canadian Forces. We are all well aware at the senior level of those challenges and are working hard to reduce them because we need them for our success.
In the end, the current economic circumstances have helped but the key effect will be in retention. When the airlines are booming, I tend to lose many experienced pilots. When the airlines are in crisis, I am happy.
Senator Meighen: Do you indulge in back-end loading at all in terms of bonuses? That is, if you stay in for a certain length of time you get something at the end rather than a signing bonus?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We tried that in the 1990s. We were in a desperate situation in the late 1990s when the economy was booming and the airlines were booming, and we did pay a retention bonus to pilots, with mixed success. In fact, air forces around the world have tried retention bonuses as a retention tool. I do not discount it as a potential option, but it is not a panacea. It has many drawbacks as well as some advantages.
Senator Meighen: What about reservists? Do you have many reservists?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is much smaller than in the army, of course. I have 2,200 reservists, concentrated in a variety of roles. We run reservists in a different way from the army, and the navy does it differently, too. In the air force, we tend to integrate them into all of our units. Virtually every single air force unit has a presence, of some nature and dimension, of reservists. They tend to be the core of experienced people. They are the ones that are helping me cope with that surge of young kids coming in and the lack of experienced people. Reservists are experienced and they help me cope with those challenges. They are an essential component of virtually every unit. I have several reserve-heavy units — a squadron in Borden and one in Winnipeg — but they are few and far between.
Senator Meighen: Would that include pilots?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That would include pilots.
Senator Meighen: I could be a pilot for the ABC helicopter company and then fly Chinooks, if you asked me to go to Afghanistan to do so, and if I agreed to go.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: When can we sign you up, senator?
Senator Meighen: That will be as soon as I get my eyes fixed.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: To answer your question, yes, we do have reserve pilots.
Senator Meighen: Speaking of Chinooks, can you tell us anything more than what I know? Chinooks, according to today's news, have already started proving their worth in Afghanistan. That leads to the conclusion that we should get our own Chinooks other than the ones we have purchased or leased from the Dutch in Afghanistan. Which is it?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: They are our own Chinooks in Afghanistan.
Senator Meighen: I know that. I thought I would skip that part of it.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We own them. They are ours.
Senator Meighen: We used to own them once before as well.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We did, but these are a different model. We had A model Chinooks that we sold to the Dutch in the early 1990s. These are D model that we purchased last year from the American army. I was in Afghanistan last week and just came back last Thursday. I flew in a Canadian Chinook for the first time in 20 years. That was a great experience, let me tell you.
Senator Meighen: They are more coming, are there not?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We have six D model Chinooks that we purchased on a very fast program. Those in the media who feel we cannot buy anything quickly need to look at a few examples.
Senator Meighen: C17s as well?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes. We went from zero Chinooks to a fully deployed combat detachment in less than a year, with those six airplanes. They are doing magnificent work. As you pointed out, I declared while I was there last week, that they had attained their initial operating capability and both the Chinooks and our Griffin helicopters were already carrying troops around the battlefield. In the longer term, we have a separate but parallel program to acquire a bigger fleet of medium-lift helicopters. We are still in negotiations with the Boeing company to acquire that and have not finalized those negotiations.
Senator Meighen: Was that not the contract that was terminated by the government because the bids came in at too high a level, or am I thinking of another program?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: No. You are thinking of the joint support ship. We are still in negotiations for the Chinooks and there has been no termination.
Senator Meighen: When you last appeared before us, you were having to curtail missions because of the cost of fuel and reduce the number of hours of training. Has that changed with the price of fuel?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That has not quite changed. When I last appeared before you, I said that the cost of fuel was going up a lot — and it was at the time — but my operations were not being curtailed because I was able to go to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, who controls the money, and say that I need ``X'' millions of dollars more to pay for it.
Since then, with the worldwide economic crisis, the price of oil has crashed. We are obviously doing okay now with oil, but I do not take it for granted. Inevitably, the price of oil will go back up and I will have to go back to the Vice Chief, but I am okay right now.
Senator Meighen: I trust your memory more than my own, but at no point was the air force obliged to reduce the number of training hours because of the cost of fuel?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: No, senator. We did not reduce operations because of the cost of fuel, because every year I put in a supplementary request to the Vice Chief with regard to what we call AVPOL — aviation petroleum, oil and lubricants — indicating that it has cost me this much more than was allocated. I asked him to make up the difference and every year he did. This has been a wild, wild year.
The Chair: The testimony we took was in Cold Lake with a different witness. The witness in Cold Lake did testify that hours were being cut.
Senator Meighen: I got the witness wrong but the substance right.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: As the commander of the air force, I was probably the boss of that guy in Cold Lake.
Senator Meighen: He is no longer there, then. You were not the boss at the time.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: The F18 and all our other fleets are not being constrained because of fuel costs.
Senator Meighen: The final question is on the Cormorant. Do we still have cracked rotor tails? Are we still flying a reduced number of hours and reduced speed and altitude because of the ongoing problem that has gone on ever since we acquired these helicopters? Can you give us any ray of hope that the problem will be fixed within our lifetime?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That is a very pessimistic question.
You have great young Canadians out flying that airplane.
Senator Meighen: I realize that.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: The Cormorant is the best search-and-rescue rotary wing airplane in the world. There is no question about that. The problem is its serviceability, its availability and how often it is working.
You are right: We had problems and we continue to have challenges with the tail rotor. However, as we learn more about those problems, we have been able to relax some of the restrictions on that airplane that were constraining the ability of the crews to train. We are now at a point where the crews are more comfortable in terms of the amount of proficiency flying that they are achieving. We have also revamped our use of the simulator, so we are getting better training there as well.
We are working hard as with the company, AugustaWestland, which owns the parts supply, and IMP, which does the maintenance, to rationalize the maintenance required on that, to reduce the amount of inspection and to improve the availability. I will not make any promises, though. All I can say is we are working hard to improve it and the situation is better than a few years ago because we have learned more about that tail rotor problem.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Meighen. Your pessimism was justified.
Senator Banks: Lieutenant-General, thank you for your opening remarks and for being here. We are delighted to see you again.
I have been here so long that my antennae are up for euphemisms. I want to check a few things in that department. I will give you a couple of examples from your opening remarks. You said the Air Force had ``revamped our air navigator occupation to more accurately reflect its members' current and future operational roles'' and that ``aircraft technician occupations are being restructured to meet the technical requirements of the new air frames and the needs of the expeditionary Air Force.''
That sounds good. However, sometimes language means different things, most cogently, ``bypassing training that is not required for the specific airframes that pilots will fly.'' You talked about increasing the use of simulators, for example, but you cannot send a simulator out to rescue some guys off a ship.
When you are making the training process more efficient, reducing the time and having less people involved, does this have no bad effect upon the training of the technicians? I am thinking of the pilots to whom you were referring a few minutes ago. I am not sure how thrilled I would be at knowing that the training of technicians has been reduced.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: There is a whole series of questions embedded in there. I do appreciate your sense that I am using acronyms and vague wording to describe what should be specific. However, it was more a function of time than anything else.
First, when I am referring to bypassing training for pilots, I meant it with this condition: ``If you come to us with significant experience already.'' That is, if you already have a multi-engine licence, there is no need to send you through the very basic level of our pilot training system. We give you credit for it.
Senator Banks: Therefore, they can bypass Moose Jaw?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: No, it is Portage la Prairie. You do not go past it.
Senator Banks: Will they still start in Moose Jaw?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Exactly. It does not refer to pilots who already have wings; it refers to those coming into the system with significant experience. Why should we give them more training?
In terms of technicians, we had a project called the Air Technician Training Renewal program for the last three years. We have taken the course and shortened it.
Senator Banks: Have you shortened it by 40 per cent?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes, and we increased the capacity by 50 per cent and improved the quality.
Senator Banks: That is remarkable.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: You wonder how we can do this and how can I be believed when I say this.
Senator Banks: How can you do this?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is not free or cheap. We invested a lot of money into doing a number of things. First, we have taken a training system that was heavily apprentice-based and on-the-job training based and injected a new amount of 21st century technology. When you go to these air technician schools, you will see these smart boards with a 3-D schematic of the airplane. A kid can take a piece virtually and move it around; he can twist wrenches and make valves work in virtual reality so that, by the time he has to go on the airplane to do it, he has a good understanding of what needs to be done. That saves time and increases quality.
These are not just nice words — these are results. We are starting to see those results, for instance, on the CF-18. We have seen a significant increase in serviceability over the last year as those technicians have started to show up on the units and be employed. They are smart kids. They are well trained. From the moment they arrive, they are already qualified to sign for any basic inspections instead of having to do two years of on-the-job training first. The quality is increasing.
``Air combat systems officer'' is not just a change in name. When I first joined the Air Force, part of the navigation course was standing on the top of a Hercules aircraft, looking out the bubble window and doing sextant shots as a back up. They had to learn how to do sextant navigation.
Navigators do not do that anymore. In fact, navigators do not do much navigating at all. They do very important work in the back of airplanes: managing complex dynamic missions and a multitude of sensors in very difficult operational environment. However, they are not navigators. So it is a matter of restructuring the name to accurately reflect the job. Also, the training has adapted. They do not do sextant training; they do training on computers and sensors of the 21st century. Additionally, as part of the revamp of their occupation, I also made the decision that they will be the lead officer occupation for unmanned aerial vehicles.
You had a complicated question, so it was a complicated answer.
Senator Banks: That is reassuring.
You talked about the difficulty with respect to obtaining replacement parts as being one of the maintenance difficulties you face. I presume that could not be with C-17s or newer aircraft but rather it must be with things like the Auroras. Is that the case?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Every airplane has its challenges. The part that breaks is usually the one you do not have. That is almost a truism now.
Senator Banks: We hear that almost every time we visit an air base.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We try our best to predict that but more and more you find you have optimized service delivery directly from the manufacturer where you have an electronic system to order the parts and very fast delivery. That is really the model that we are more and more trending to rather than trying to have huge warehouses of parts that might or might not be needed.
Senator Banks: Since the capacity to get something very quickly obviously works, what is the difficulty with acquiring replacement parts which you say here is more difficult — ``facing reduced availability,'' et cetera?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That is for older airplanes. Older airplanes tend not to use that model. Additionally, the manufacturers no longer make the model of aircraft that we are flying.
When we bought those aircraft, they were not using that optimized management system of providing us the parts. We bought a big inventory of parts and managed it ourselves. That applies to older aircraft such as the E-model Hercules, the Sea Kings and so on.
With the newer-model aircraft, we not only buy the aircraft but also 20 years of support.
Senator Banks: Overall, what is the current manned strength of the Air Force — regular, reserve and civilian?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: All up; everybody?
Senator Banks: Yes, in the Air Force.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is about 13,500 regulars and 2,200 reservists.
Senator Banks: Is that up from last year?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That is not trained effective strength; that is total strength. As I said, it is about 13,500 regulars and 2,200 reservists.
Senator Banks: Of the 13,500 regulars, how many are operationally fit right now?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Trained effective strength is about 11,200.
Senator Banks: There is another 2,500 in the pipe. Is that up or down from last year?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is slightly up from last year.
Senator Banks: You are satisfied with the recruitment levels for your service?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am a greedy Air Force chief. I will always take more. I am happy but I am not satisfied.
Senator Banks: I think I understand that.
Senator Wallin: We all do.
Senator Banks: My recollection of the answer to the question at Cold Lake was the same as Senator Meighen's but, as you pointed out, the Lieutenant-General was not then that guy's boss.
Senator Day: Lt.-General, first let me wish you well in your announced retirement coming up this fall. After 37 years of service, we thank and congratulate you for a wonderful career and wish you well in your next career.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Thank you.
Senator Day: Could you clarify for me a point with respect to the new F-model Chinook? I heard you say that the contract had not been entered into yet with respect to the new model we are hoping to acquire. However, in your written comments, you indicated that we are acquiring the F model Chinook which will fulfill our requirements for the next 20 years or more, and they are expected to begin arriving in 2012. That is a hopeful thing. There is no contract yet, so we do not know when they might be arriving.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is an expectation and hope, not a guarantee.
Senator Day: You indicated that our personnel levels, both regular and reserve, are lower than they should be. You have given us the figures and how they have grown. What should they be?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I guarantee I will never be satisfied. We have challenges in virtually all our units, just like the army and navy. Some are manned at full strength, particularly those going on operational tours overseas. Our search and rescue squadrons are fully manned; everything to do with the search and rescue system tends to be at high manning levels.
The rest of the system, though, struggles. The difference is the trained effective strength. Having the trained effective strength also masks, to some degree, the essence of the problem. You can have a person on a unit, but the air force is very much an organization of experience and qualification. If you do not have the right qualifications as an aircraft captain or mission commander, if you are a co-pilot, you are a valuable part of the organization, but you need a certain number of varying levels of qualification. I was a squadron commander once, and the concern always is managing that constant flux of experienced and inexperienced people and qualifications. By having more people, you are able to manage it better.
I will never say I have enough people. I could always use more.
Senator Day: You indicated you were satisfied with the increase year over year. What do you hope to have next year?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I indicated I was happy but not satisfied. I hope to have more.
Senator Day: Is it same number?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is more.
Senator Day: I can see that is one you will not be pinned down on.
Can you tell us what the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre is, and would it be something this committee would find interesting to visit?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I would highly recommend a visit by this committee to the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre. It is about five years old. It is in Trenton, Ontario. It mirrors the similar agencies of the army and navy. The navy has a maritime warfare centre in Halifax and the army has a land force centre in Kingston. It is the air force's think tank. It has about 70 people focused on doctrine, lessons learned, experimentation and modeling. I put the folks with 50-pound brains in the air warfare centre. They have done marvellous work in all those areas. Last year, for the first time, they put out an air power journal, the Canadian Air Force Journal, which also spreads debate and thought about key doctrinal areas because we are also about ideas. It was something that was very painful to start up because we had to merge units to get the 50-pound brains to put into that unit. We had to make tough decisions about five years ago, but it is now paying dividends.
Senator Day: As a commander of the air force and, therefore, the force generator, was it a force generation problem that kept our Griffon helicopter from going to Afghanistan sooner? I appreciate that we finally had to acquire some Chinooks from the U.S. in order to allow that medium lift capability, but we had the Griffons before. Many people wanted to see them over there, and now we are hearing great things about the work they are doing in support of the Chinook and transporting personnel around, which will avoid an awful lot of the injuries from the land vehicles that are getting hit by roadside bombs. They are also involved in night surveillance. That is an interesting new capability, that they can fly at night to see whether there is activity and roadside IEDs being planted. They are able to do that, and they are doing it well. Why did we wait so long?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: You are asking the wrong guy. My job is to generate the Griffons. They were ready last year and the year before. I was waiting for the call, the call came and they deployed. I thank you for your kind words. I was there last week watching them, and I flew in the Griffon and Chinook myself. The crews are excited; soldiers love it.
I heard an interesting statistic last week. The Griffons, although we have just declared their initial operating capability, or IOC, have already carried 1,000 people during their workups and training.
Senator Day: Are they given the same kind of workload or, in part, at least, that the American Black Hawk helicopter is doing?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: They are different airplanes and different armies. We employ them in a way that is appropriate to the platform and our needs.
Senator Day: Can they transport five, six or ten people?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It depends on how much they weigh and what the temperature is.
Senator Day: How many personnel can you get into the Chinook?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Once again, it depends on how heavily equipped they are. You can get up to two into the Chinook as long as there is not too much equipment.
Senator Day: For my colleagues?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: About 30 people.
Senator Zimmer: Thank you for your presentation and it is good to see you again.
Senator Nolin and Senator Wallin made comments about equipment. We always talk about ``used.'' When you buy a new car, there is a warranty on it for five years. After five years of warranty, that is when it breaks down.
We always consider buying used. Would we consider buying new? In the end, when you buy used parts or equipment, sand gets into bearings, there are frozen bearings, and things occur whereby they break down.
Would it not be wise for certain equipment to buy it new, not used, and in the end we would not pay as much? What do other countries do? Do they all buy used, except maybe the United States?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am not quite sure what you are getting at. The only major purchase of used equipment we have undertaken recently was the D-model Chinooks. Everything else we buy is new. The reason we bought the D-models as used is that we were less than a year from flash to bang. That allowed us to take delivery of aircraft that were already in theatre and already operating.
Senator Zimmer: They were fairly recent?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Yes. These are not old, clapped out airplanes. They are used airplanes, but they have been well maintained by the U.S. army, and they will be even better maintained by us.
Senator Zimmer: With respect to personnel, I have heard many stories and you just mentioned it today. If other industries train pilots, pay for it and you are able to capture them, it is good for you.
However, going out the other end of the culvert, I have seen many stories whereby they come to the armed forces, and they are trained and paid for by us. About their mid-40s, they have all that training, they go into private industry where they receive a good substantial package, and we lose them. Is there any way of slowing or stopping that emergence of them going out the wrong end of the culvert?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: First, I will say that pilots have a period of obligatory service of seven years after they receive their wings. They are restricted from getting out of the Armed Forces for the first seven years. I know that was not the essence of your question. You are talking about people far beyond that period and have 15 to 20 years of service.
Senator Zimmer: Yes.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is a complicated equation. We talked earlier about retention bonuses, which are not necessarily the panacea that some people think they are.
Our sense is, and it is particular to the air force, that at that point in one's life, the families make the difference. The individuals that fly our airplanes like what they do. We have pretty exciting roles, demanding missions and a great operational environment. They really like it. However, at a certain point, the family says it is enough. They are tired of the moves. The spouse has a good career. The kids have some educational needs, maybe some medical needs, and the family votes for the member to leave.
Senator Zimmer: Is it just that, or is there the additional factor of the dangerous work they do?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That is part of it as well. There is no way I can mitigate that. That is part of who we are in the military. I understand some families making the decision that they have had enough. We find that a multitude of pressures add up to a point in people's lives where the family says, ``we have had enough, time for you to find another job.''
I was watching General Leslie's testimony. We are all working — army, navy and air force — in the Canadian Forces trying to find a way to mitigate those pressures. There is no silver bullet. If there was, we would have fired it long ago. We are reducing posting transfers for people in their mid-career to reduce family disruptions; maybe providing greater assistance to spouses so they can gain new employment if they are moved; perhaps working with provinces to find a way to allow more seamless transfers between provinces for children in schools; and finding a way to encourage medical clinics so the families of our military members can obtain appropriate medical care for their families. We feel that all of this will help to mitigate those pressures on families.
There is a saying I use often, ``I recruit great airmen and airwomen, but I retain families.''
Senator Zimmer: We knew the Russian bomber that came over recently was coming. What was that about?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We have been part of a great organization called NORAD for many years. I was director of operations at NORAD at one point and know the mission well. We have been intercepting aircraft that come into our air space for the entire history of NORAD. They come with varying frequencies and we respond.
Senator Manning: I want to say congratulations and thank you for your years of service to the Canadian people in many parts of the world where you have travelled. I wish you the best in your retirement.
This is my first meeting as part of this committee and I am proud to be here; it is been an interesting day. For a novice like me, can you explain to us the difference in Afghanistan made by the Chinook helicopters that began transferring soldiers on Saturday? Give us an idea what it was like before and now that the Chinooks are on site.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We have deployed a capability that was already there, but did not belong to us. Our soldiers have been in Afghanistan for quite a while and helicopters are an important part of that mission. If you ever get a chance to visit Afghanistan, you will see it is a very rugged country, difficult to get around, and with limited infrastructure to get around. Helicopters provide a key element of mobility and safety, because if you are flying by helicopters, the risk of improvised explosive devices is less. We have benefited for the past several years in Afghanistan from the support of our allies who have provided us with helicopter support. They have done a magnificent job, but there are many more demands than there is supply. Sometimes we could not get helicopters when we needed them for our mission and soldiers had to travel by road.
The difference now is that we have a group of Canadian airmen and airwomen providing a Canadian component to that helicopter capability. We must recognize that in the same way we have drawn from that bank over the last few years, we are now contributing to it. Now, we will also provide helicopter support to our allies in the same fight.
Senator Manning: Regarding available human resources, we touched on recruitment and retention in the army prior to your arrival and now with you in regard to the air force. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, are your human resources where you want them to be at the present time? Are you happy with the available personnel on the ground now and what is feeding that?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Are you speaking about the mission in Afghanistan?
Senator Manning: Yes.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Over the past year, the air force has increased its presence considerably. We had approximately 250 people contributing to the mission, mostly focused on running the main support base outside Afghanistan, but in the area. That was our main mission. We also had a Hercules aircraft there, the drones in Afghanistan and a number of logistics people. Since that time, the air force presence has grown to between 600 and 650 people on every rotation, of which 250 are associated with the Chinook and Griffon capability. In addition, we have a command and control element providing air wing advice to the commander that allows the best use of those assets.
I am proud of the fact that over the past year we have more than doubled the air force presence in the mission.
Senator Manning: I read in the paperwork before us that you plan to retire this fall. We can hear the dedication in your voice as we have heard from many people's voices in the Canadian Armed Forces. As you wind down your career, are there any issues keeping you awake at night that you would like to see dealt with as soon as possible? Is there an issue or two that we as a committee should be narrowing in on to address?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I keep saying that I am happy, but I am not satisfied. You will judge my success as the Chief of the Air Staff in 2019. I am working hard to enable the success of the cast a decade from now. I am fine; the air force is fine right now; my successor will be fine. Ten years from now, if we do not take the right decisions now about key programs — not only equipment, but also infrastructure and people — there will be significant challenges.
I take the long view. I push my staff to take the long view to prepare ourselves for success a decade from now. Now, we are doing okay. It is a decade from now where the key challenges are.
If I had to name the number one challenge — I think you will be surprised — it is not equipment; it is people. Looking at the demographics of our society, we will be entering a competition for Canada's talent in about 2011-12 that will be vicious because the demographics of our society are such that that cohort of people is very small. Notwithstanding any economic difficulties we have, and hopefully we will be out of them by then, the competition for that talent will be intense.
I intend to position the air force for success to compete for that talent because I think we have a great product to offer Canada's youth.
Senator Mitchell: Lieutenant-General Watt, I want to congratulate you on your retirement, but I also want to ask you whether we will be able to pick up the phone and get you back like those pilots that you suggested you call?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: If you offered me a cockpit, you probably could.
Senator Mitchell: My first question is quite specific. The Griffons are an attack, or at least an armed, helicopter. Does that mean we will not have to depend on U.S. attack helicopters or Black Hawks to provide protection for our Chinooks?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It means that Griffons have been sent there to escort our Chinooks. However, it is a large complicated operation in Kandahar. There are many nations there with a significant capability. They tend to group all those capabilities together and task the best ones on a particular day to do the mission. On a particular day, you might find our Chinooks being escorted by American Apaches and our Griffons doing something else. They are not inevitably glued together; they are part of a larger picture. We are stepping up to the plate and pulling our own weight.
Senator Mitchell: With respect to the UAVs, MacDonald Detweiller will be engaged in a contract. I understand that that contract was to have commenced no later than February 2009. Has it commenced and what stage it is at?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I was in Afghanistan last week; flew in a Chinook; flew in a Griffon; and watched a live Heron mission, which is the UAV you are talking about. They are maintained and launched in recovery by MacDonald Detweiller people and operated during the mission by our own folks. It is in action now and I declared last week the initial operating capability.
Senator Mitchell: Is there threat from ground attack on our helicopters by shoulder-mounted rockets? It seems odd that I have seen no reports of that kind of attack and yet the Taliban had those in use against the Russians. Why is it that those do not seem to exist now?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We call them ``manned PADs,'' manned portable air defence devices, and the famous one was the stringer during the mujahedeen battle against the Soviet occupation. There are manned PADs in Afghanistan. They have not been used frequently. Let us hope they are not used frequently. There are a number of reasons perhaps, but it is only speculative and I do not want to encourage anyone.
The biggest threat right now to helicopters is small arms fire, which is much more difficult in some ways to counteract. There is a lot of small arms fire against helicopters.
Senator Mitchell: Do you have plans to add ordnance to the UAVs?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Currently, the UAV, the Heron, is not armed. The main reason was we had to field it quickly. The spare ware was running out of steam and we needed to get this new capability in theatre quickly and adding a weapon to it would have delayed quite considerably the fielding of that. There are no plans at the current time to arm the Heron.
We are looking, over the long term, at that replacement program called JUSTAS, to buy ourselves a full fleet of UAVs. I do not make procurement decisions; I make procurement recommendations. My staff is working on putting together a series of recommendations as to what capability that new fleet of UAVs should have, and a weapon will probably be seriously considered as part of those recommendations.
Senator Mitchell: You mentioned there are bureaucratic impediments to getting pilots back in. What can be done about that generally and what specifically should be done by the minister of that department?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Actually it is not the minister, it is us. The chief of military personnel is a very active general named Walter Semianiw is working hard. It is a lot of regulations that we have imposed upon ourselves over the years. Each regulation made sense at the time, but when you add them all up they amount to an almost insurmountable obstacle. Therefore our challenge is to work with various agencies that control some of these, because some of them have financial consequences, and reduce those regulations.
I know the chief, the CDS, is very committed to doing that, the chief of military personnel is very committed and there is full encouragement from the environmental commanders.
Senator Mitchell: The joint attack aircraft project, are we still part of that and will we get aircraft that would replace the F-18s before they expire?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: That is a very complicated question. It is called the Joint Strike Fighter. We are part of a memorandum of understanding for production and follow-on development. We have not yet purchased any particular aircraft. That memorandum gives us access to the program, particularly for industrial-regional benefits, from which Canadian companies are already starting to benefit. The Joint Strike Fighter is one of a series of candidates that will be examined to replace our F-18s. Our F-18s are one of the challenges at the end of the next decade because that is when they run out of structural life. We are working once again to position ourselves for success, to get a program moving to replace the F-18 towards the end of the next decade and the Joint Strike Fighter is one of the key candidates.
Senator Moore: I want to follow up on a couple points with regard to the Cormorant that Senator Meighen raised. Back when you were here in June of 2008, you mentioned that AgustaWestland is committed to the redesign. Are they doing that? At the time you said it was taking far longer than expected and you expressed your dissatisfaction. What is the status of the redesign?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: It is still taking far too long and I am still dissatisfied.
Senator Moore: That is it?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We are working with the company. In the end, you cannot just walk away; you have to work with the company. We are working very hard with the company and the company is showing progress in a number of areas. The tail rotor is only one of a series of challenges. We pretty well have got the tail rotor problem under control. It is not completely resolved yet but it is much better than it was.
Senator Moore: Is that with their help and your own experience in how to handle aircraft?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: In part with their help, but we have some great engineers on our staff. One of the problems we had was we did not understand why this cracking was occurring. We have a much better understanding of it now and we are able to mitigate it much more easily, but it is not completely resolved. There is more than just a tail rotor.
Senator Moore: On a scale of 1 to 10 in the resolution, are you over the halfway mark?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I like to under promise and over deliver. I am not going to put any specific number on it. We are achieving better flying rates with the machine but not as good as I would like.
Senator Moore: You mentioned that when you contracted for that helicopter you contracted to achieve a 70 per cent serviceability rate and it was then at 50 per cent. You said that the company promised a 10 per cent improvement by November 2008, another 10 per cent by November 2009, and you would measure them against that standard. How have they done?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Not very well.
Senator Moore: Are you still at 50 per cent?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Still at 50 per cent.
Senator Moore: How do you motivate them? Someone said money does not seem to matter.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We are not alone.
Senator Moore: Are there other nations or other purchasers of their equipment?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We are not the only operator of that airplane. We have a unique model simply because models change. The British, for instance, operate a fairly large fleet of EH-101s, which is the same kind of helicopter, and their availability is in the order of 40 per cent. The Danes also have a fleet of these aircraft. They are not achieving the serviceability they need either. All of the nations who operate these aircraft have banded together in a user group to try and work together and share ideas and solutions and put pressure on the company.
I hesitate to make any promises about things I do not control, but recent evidence seems to demonstrate an enhanced attention to the problem on the part of the company. I am hopeful that things will start to improve here.
Senator Moore: Will you be around this November to do an assessment?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am not retiring until October 1 so I have some time yet to watch them.
Senator Moore: Keep your eye on them.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I will keep my eye on them.
Senator Atkins: Lieutenant-General Watt, how many 130s are there?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: We originally bought 32. They are a mix of what we call E-models and H-models. As they reach what we call 50,000 equivalent baseline hours, which is a measure of their fatigue life, we have to retire them. We are down to about 26 or 27 right now because of this fatigue life. As we go through the next year, we will see more aircraft start to be retired, which is why it is so important that those new J-models start to arrive. The good news is that we have negotiated an early delivery of our first aircraft in May/June of next year and hopefully we will have at least five aircraft before Christmas of next year.
They have replaced the E-models. The H-models are newer and the H-models will be dedicated fully to the search and rescue mission.
Senator Atkins: When we were in Trenton we got the impression that it was hard to get a 130 in the air, that the percentage of 130s that could fly was pretty limited. Is that still the case?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: The E-models are a challenge. As I said in my opening remarks, older aircraft have problems with parts supply and obsolescence. We have great technicians maintaining them and we are actually achieving some incredible results.
When I went into Afghanistan last week I flew in our Hercules. I talked to the maintenance crews. They are achieving 80 per cent to 90 per cent serviceability over there but it is because they are working around the clock to make it happen. Back here, our availability is more limited. We are still meeting the mission but we could do better with a newer aircraft, which is why that J-model will be welcome when it arrives.
Senator Atkins: The other impression we got was that the mechanics working on the 130s were at that stage where they were moving on and retiring. Have you been able to keep a level of qualified mechanics in that area?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: Death, taxes and demographics: demographics are starting to hit us with the technicians and they are starting to retire. It is a challenge but that is why we did that air technician training renewal project to increase the number of technicians we are pumping into the system. The key challenge we will have is low experience levels.
That is why having things like reservists injected — and we have reservists that are also air technicians — provide key levels of experience. I am trying to keep nodes of experience in a sea of inexperience. In three, four, five years from now, all those young kids will start to become experienced, too.
Senator Atkins: What makes the J-model so much better than the E-model?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: You have never had a chance to fly in a J-model, senator?
Senator Atkins: Yes I have, actually.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I flew in a J-model a couple of times when I was in Afghanistan. It looks like a Hercules. It has the same rough appearance, but in almost every mission parameter — range, speed, pay load, capacity, manoeuvrability and power to wait — it is from 20 per cent to 40 per cent better than the current airplane. It has all the newest technologies of navigation and maintenance. It is a very capable airplane, with heads-up displays in the cockpit for the pilots, like a fighter airplane, and a GPS-enabled moving map display. It is an impressive airplane and we are looking forward to having it.
The Chair: General, on that visit, there were 19 unserviceable Hercules aircraft on the runway when we were there. The technicians we talked to were not at a typical off ramp; they were young technicians and they were frustrated because they did not have the parts to fix the equipment. That is why they wanted to leave. It was not a question of demographics. It was because they signed up to fix planes and they were not fixing planes because they did not have the parts.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: When were you there?
The Chair: It was about three years ago.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I have been there more recently. There will always be problems with old airplanes and parts, but I think morale is pretty good.
The Chair: The Canada First Defence Strategy came up. Are you familiar with any metrics in the Canada First Defence Strategy that describe when different pieces of equipment would come on or what one could expect?
I read the Canada First Defence Strategy a number of times and I am hard pressed to find any benchmarks or metrics anywhere.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am not aware of benchmarks and metrics. We have an investment plan that is aligned with the Canada First Defence Strategy, which lays out, in the case of the air force, the key elements of investment over the next decade.
Those are largely predicated on what we call the expected life expectancy, ELE, for each of these aircraft. I take that ELE and walk back and say when do I need airplanes to start to get delivered? When do I need the final airplane to be delivered? When do I need to be under contract to achieve that and when do we start the process? To go back to my earlier point, the Chief of the Air Staff in 2019 will be in trouble unless I start some of those processes now and that is why we have started it.
The Chair: With regard to your concern about that Chief of the Air Staff, if he is faced with a 2 per cent budget increase over the next 20 years, what gives you confidence that inflation will be less than 2 per cent for the next 20 years?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I have no crystal ball with respect to inflation.
The Chair: Yet that is the level of inflation pegged for the CF.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: All we can do is try and optimize the resources we are given.
The Chair: Given we have a minority government, why are you comfortable with the policy projected out to the future, when the experience with minority governments is that they do not last more than a couple of years?
Lt.-Gen. Watt: I am just a simple air force officer. I do not comment on minority governments or their longevity. I can only go on the basis of current existing government policy, and that happens to be the case.
The Chair: I understand that, but your statement said you were satisfied with the policy and it gave you confidence. I am trying to find out where your confidence comes from.
Lt.-Gen. Watt: My confidence is having a policy that looks out for the long term, provides a level of funding we can plan against and allows us to fit those major chunks of investment into that available funding. If you and your colleagues in Parliament decide to give us more funding, we will find a way to make that investment even better.
The Chair: You know I would if it was up to me.
On behalf of the committee, we appreciate having you come before us. Your testimony has been instructive and we are grateful to you for taking the time. We apologize for both starting and finishing late, but let the record show we are improving marginally in terms of timing. Thank you for appearing before us.
Our next witness is Vice-Admiral Drew Robertson, Chief of the Maritime Staff, and he is accompanied by Commodore L.M. Hickey.
Vice-Admiral Robertson joined the Canadian Forces in 1973. His initial postings included tours as warfare director on HMCS Nipigon and HMCS Kootenay, as director of the Canadian Forces Officer Candidate School, as combat officer on HMCS Skeena. From 1988 to 1992, he served in both Maritime Command and National Defence HeadquartersIn 1993 he served as the executive officer of the replenishment ship HMCS Provider before assuming command of the destroyer HMCS Annapolis in January, 1995.
He was promoted to captain (navy) in 1997 and became director of NATO policy. In 1999, he assumed command of the destroyer HMCS Athabascan. In 2001 he took command of the Canadian Atlantic fleet and sailed as the first commander of the Canadian task group deployed to Southwest Asia, for six months. That deployment included command of a multinational task group of ships from seven nations. Vice-Admiral Robertson assumed his current duties in 2006.
I neglected to mention earlier that Commodore Hickey is Director General, Maritime Personnel and Readiness.
Vice-Admiral Drew Robertson, Chief of the Maritime Staff, National Defence: Thank you for providing me the opportunity to come back, once again, to speak with the committee. I asked Commodore Larry Hickey to be here so he could back me up on some of the personnel issues where he has a better understanding of the finer detail. He is both a submariner and a surface-ship driver with decades of experience, so I have someone good at my back.
Senators, it is a great pleasure to be here. I want to quickly review the state of Canada's navy, your navy.
[Translation]
A lot of water has passed under the bridges of the navy's ships since the last time I spoke before this committee. So allow me to go over some of your navy's accomplishments.
Today, MARCOM has 138 members deployed in support of CF operations and some 2,200 others at sea for a total of nearly 2,400 personnel on deployment. That is 35 per cent of its active trained strength.
[English]
That translates into 11 warships underway today, including a task group of a destroyer and some frigates, a supply ship and a submarine conducting force-generation activities off the East Coast.
That is out of a total force of 33 combatants, including those in refit and docking periods. The numbers are pretty typical of what we are able to achieve. The high was last spring with a total of about 2,500 at sea, which is 37 per cent of our strength. You will understand that figure varies over the course of the year.
Our first order of business is to defend Canada. Sometimes, this occurs relatively close to home. For example, last September, one of our frigates, HMCS Fredericton and a number of Aurora aircraft flying out of 14 Wing Greenwood, Nova Scotia, helped the RCMP to intercept 750 kilograms of hash oil just off the coast of Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
More often, however, this type of work happens further abroad. In February, for example, HMCS Montreal returned to Halifax after an extended surveillance patrol in the Caribbean.
[English]
She was there to support the Joint Interagency Task Force South, a unique American-led international effort that prevents tons of drugs manufactured in South America from getting to neighbourhoods across Canada, the United States and Europe. Not just tons of drugs but literally hundreds of tons annually, including drugs intercepted by a French ship with the assistance of the HMCS Montreal when she was down south.
[Translation]
The contribution of our ships, our submarines and our aircraft is not limited to stopping drugs from getting onto our streets. They also help Caribbean nations prevent drug trafficking from corroding the security and stability of the region.
[English]
Looking north, last summer as part of our ongoing presence in the Arctic, we had HMCS Toronto and HMCS Shawinigan deployed to Arctic waters as we continued to refine the business of operating in Canada's Far North with our federal and military partners, under the leadership of Vice-Admiral P.D. McFadden in Canada Command. In this regard, we have made good progress in advancing a whole-of-government approach to maritime security off all our coasts, setting what a number of our international partners concede is the gold standard with our maritime security operations centres. We continue to develop these centres with our partners.
In February, six warships and a number of port security assets operated in Vancouver harbour and the approaches to Vancouver. They successfully completed the second of three exercises to prepare for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Again, this was accomplished under Canada Command's leadership.
[Translation]
The Chief of the Defence Staff likes to use the example of home games and away games as an analogy between the world of sports and ours. We, members of the navy, prefer to see the world as one big skating rink.
[English]
That is simply because it better describes the world's oceans that connect us all, given the constant flow of maritime traffic and trade around the world. Beyond defending our end of the rink, let me turn to how we have been doing in our work at the other end of the rink.
The government's deployment of a Canadian Commodore and a three-ship task group to the Indian Ocean last year — HMCS Iroquois, HMCS Calgary and HMCS Protecteur — was our most significant commitment to the ongoing campaign against global terrorism since Operation Apollo ended about five years ago. The Canadian commodore assumed leadership of a multinational maritime force on operations around the Arabian Peninsula for several months. We did this because the government has called on us to lead and because our allies welcome Canadian leadership.
Keeping the puck at the other end of the rink almost always means lending a hand to those who are less fortunate than we are. We did that twice in the past year. Many of you are that HMCS Ville de Québec was redirected from NATO duties in the Mediterranean last summer to provide armed escorts to ships chartered by the World Food Program to run aid to Mogadishu, Somalia.
The ship's captain at that time, Commander Chris Dickinson, called it the most satisfying mission of his career. He and his ship's company knew they were making a real difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people desperate for relief assistance — a cold, hard reality brought home every time they approached Mogadishu and saw the fighting ashore, in particular at night.
At times the ship's censors detected shore-based radars sweeping HMCS Ville de-Quebec, but Commander Dickinson knew that he and his team had the skills and equipment to fight their way back safely to sea if it ever came to that. The littoral environment along the coast of Somalia, off Mogadishu, is far from benign.
HMCS St. Johns led the Canadian Forces' aid effort in Haiti in the wake hurricane Ike. Over a two-week period, they improvised magnificently and delivered tons of relief supplies to villages along the south shore of Haiti that had been cut off. In addition to our Maritime forces at sea, we have about 138 men and women deployed in land-based operations, including more than 100 in Afghanistan and a similar number preparing for the next rotation.
In the final analysis, navies exist to preserve the peace and to prevent war where possible, as much as to prevail in combat when necessary. We are that part of the Canadian Forces deployed forward, before ``Rotation 0'', and that should be our normal operating posture. That is why HMCS St. Johns and HMCS Ville de Québec were able to respond to the World Food Program in the first place. They were already close to where they were needed to forward deploy. It would not have been much use had they both been alongside in Halifax harbour. They were forward deployed ready to provide credible, responsive and relevant options to the government and leadership for Canada when the government chose to act. That is why HMCS Ottawa and HMCS Regina were in the western Pacific when I testified before the committee last spring: to exercise with the United States Navy and regional navies underwriting Canadian interests with visits to some regional navies, including Japan, Korea and China.
[Translation]
It is also why HMCS Winnipeg left Victoria three weeks ago to meet up with NATO's high operational readiness Reaction Force in the Arabian Sea in early April for the historic, first-ever NATO maritime deployment in the Far East.
[English]
As we speak, HMCS Winnipeg is en route to the Arabian Sea, exercising in the Southern Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, with an international force of South Korean and American ships in the annual exercise aimed at practicing the defence of South Korea. It is an example of how we work multiple defence objectives into every deployment that a frigate or task group undertakes.
Ladies and gentlemen, our long-standing motto is: Ready, aye ready! It has been in place for 99 years and not only describes the unique contribution of Canada's navy to the nation's defence and security but also defines us. Our force generation over the last year has delivered numerous effects globally. Last year the Chief of Defence Staff and the deputy minister responded to a request for additional funds for operations, maintenance and national procurement. As a result, our maritime forces have been able to contribute to a full range of missions at home and abroad, demonstrating the relevance that comes from being forward deployed.
Over the next two to three years, the navy will be well placed to continue generating and sustaining operations as well as maintaining seamanship, leadership and tactical skills that are the core of our competence as a war-fighting organization. That is good news.
The critical challenges during this period relate to people. First, we will need to find ways to reduce the challenge of volatility that we impose on our sailors as a result of being under strength during a period of rising demand for people across the Canadian Forces.
Second, we have to organize ourselves to deliver the future fleet. This means we need to continue finding the people with the right skill sets to help our assistant deputy minister for materiel to administer the maritime program in a way that does not put success in operations at risk.
Looking beyond the short term, our next order of business will be to figure out how we will meet our operational and institutional requirements with fewer ships at sea, starting when we begin cycling the Halifax class frigates through their modernization refits. Those necessary refits will begin in 2010 and will take us into a period of decreased capacity.
Clearly, reduced fleet capacity will have important implications for the generation of fleet personnel and our outputs in years to come. The good news is that the government has committed to renewing virtually every element of the maritime force in its Canada First Defence Strategy. As I noted when I was before the committee last June, we are standing on the threshold of an intensive fleet modernization and replacement program, perhaps the most intensive one we have undertaken in our history — the program to deliver the fleet that Canada will be operating for the next half century. That is hardly an exaggeration given that governments in the 1960s ordered the supply ships and the command and control destroyers that we operate today.
Make no mistake: Delivery of that fleet will be a challenge, as we have seen with the Joint Support Ship project. However, I can assure you that we are looking closely at what JSS has to teach us. We are not simply talking about delivering individual projects. Rather, we are building the capacities needed to deliver a program within government. Industry is doing the same.
Building the new fleet is not just about getting the right tools into the hands of the men and women at sea for the work we ask of them, although the Canada First Defence Strategy will do just that. Building the new fleet is also about investing in our future. In this regard, we have taken the first crucial step since I was here last June. We have entered into contract for the Halifax class modernization - the frigate life extension project.
It is vital simply because the Halifax class is our bridge to the future fleet.
I will leave you with one last point. The government, through its vision in the Canada First Defence Strategy, has given us the opportunity to bequeath to our successors a better navy than the one we inherited, and that is precisely what we would all wish to see.
The Chair: Thank you, Admiral. That was very instructive.
Senator Moore: Thank you for being here. I could probably use all our time just asking about the ships and their replacements. You mentioned that delivering on the fleet would not be easy, as we have seen with the Joint Support Ship project. You said that you are looking closely at what that has to teach us.
Can you expand on that? What is the status of this project?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: In dealing with requirements, the navy has looked at the Joint Support Ship requirements. We have had discussions with allies who are in the process of building ships of certain capabilities, certainly with the Dutch, to ensure that we understand, on an apples-to-apples basis, the things they have taken into consideration in deciding to move forward with such a ship.
At the same time, and quite separately, the Assistant Deputy Minister Materiel Group has examined the JSS procurement to understand fully all the factors that led to the noncompliant situation we were in last summer and to determine how to move forward. As we say in the navy, that is his part ship. He did so working in coordination with Public Works and others. My job is to provide the best maritime engineers to the ADM team as they determine how to move forward.
Senator Moore: You said you are dealing with the Assistant Deputy Minister with regard to the noncompliant situation you found yourself in last summer. What was that?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That was a procurement process that ended last summer when the two capable industry teams had not delivered compliant bids. That is the procurement effort that has been reviewed now by the navy for requirements purposes.
Senator Moore: Were those bids satisfactory to the navy for compliance purposes? I do not understand what was wrong.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: They did not meet the mandatory requirements set by the government in the procurement process.
Senator Moore: Where is it now?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: On the navy side, we have finished that examination of what our allies have done and have considered how best to move forward. That work will unfold over the next four months or so. We will see where that takes us by the start of the summer.
Senator Moore: You said you have been talking with the Dutch. Are we looking at using a Dutch design, or is it a Canadian design or a composite?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: It is an interesting provenance of ideas, in that we had a concept that the Dutch looked at five to seven years ago. They decided it had some merit in their navy, and they decided to adapt it slightly to their needs. They developed the concept a little further, and decided to move ahead and build it.
Senator Moore: They have built it?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: They have not yet, but they are looking to be in contract shortly, so they are in about the same position as we are at this point. Their navy is quite different from ours, but they have a niche that they think their version of this ship would fill well.
On the Canadian view, the minister has been clear recently in stating that we will be moving ahead with the Joint Support Ship. We will see exactly how that will unfold in a few months.
Senator Moore: What do you think will happen? This has been around now for a number of years. Will this be decided before you retire?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: It is not clear to me what the time line will be.
Senator Moore: What is your retirement date?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That is partly why it is not clear. That has not been set either.
Senator Moore: Maybe we will give you a retention bonus to get you to stay around to look after this.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Moving ahead with the Joint Support Ship, or any of the other projects that are coming at us, including the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship, is about naval requirements and about the government — the materiel group, Public Works and others — finding a way to make that procurement successful. That is their responsibility, and I am cheering them on.
Senator Moore: Do you think the Joint Support Ship project will be decided this calendar year?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That is what has been stated, yes.
Senator Moore: I want to ask you about our role with NATO at Norfolk, Virginia. I understand that the flag officer who is there now retires this summer and that the plan is not to replace him. I do not know if that decision has been made. How will that impact on the historic position of deliberation, consultation and influence that we have had at that huge U.S. base, considering the fact that other smaller maritime countries have that type of senior flag officer presence?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The whole issue of where flag and general officers are placed in the NATO command structure is the purview of the Chief of the Defence Staff working in consultation with the minister. While there will potentially be some reshuffling of billets, I would leave that to the Chief of the Defence Staff.
I think it is his aim to increase our presence in the command structure and choose the positions that are most relevant for Canada, precisely for reasons of influence that you have just stated. I will leave it to him to talk about where. Anything I could say would not be well informed.
Senator Moore: You have served there, have you not?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I have not served with the naval headquarters in Norfolk, no.
Senator Moore: You were in charge of the NATO fleet?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: NATO ships at sea, yes.
Senator Moore: You do not recommend to him on this matter?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The Norfolk headquarters, which is Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, is one of two principal headquarters that NATO runs, the other being SHAPE headquarters in Mons, Belgium.
Senator Moore: Yes, Senator Nolin is very involved in that.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Neither of them is maritime headquarters. They are completely integrated joint headquarters. The headquarters in Mons has subordinate headquarters in Naples and in Brunssum that are also joint operational level headquarters. Under those headquarters are some maritime component headquarters in Naples and Northwood in the United Kingdom.
Senator Moore: Do you think a lesser-ranked officer will be involved to the same extent we have had in the past?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I do not think it is a question of lesser rank. I think we would see our presence increase. I will leave that to the Chief of Defence Staff.
Senator Wallin: I am both heartened and a little concerned by a couple things you said. I think your comments on the Canada First Defence Strategy echo what a lot of us feel in that all of us are held hostage to short-term thinking and this allows some long-term planning. We are relieved about that.
First, however, you also highlighted a couple of things that you think might be problems: when you have to start doing modernizations and refits, you think that will take equipment out of use and fewer ships at sea could be a problem in any number of circumstances.
Second, as your colleagues have said, recruitment, retention and all of these things are big issues. We heard two different points of view from Land Force and Air Force. From Land Force, the current economic situation has not had a positive impact in terms of recruitment, whereas your colleague from Air Force said he really felt it had. When airlines reduce their numbers, his recruitment becomes easier.
Where are you on all that? I think you have made specific reference to the technical trades you need. How is that coming up?
I will try to get the questions through faster and you can answer them. Also, in a lot of the research we have done here, you also have many of your folks being taken out of the Navy to work in non-naval units and operations. I do not understand how or why that would happen. Could you please explain that?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: A couple of questions to tackle there. Let me take the one on people first.
On the people side, the different answers from the Air Force and the Army do not surprise me in that I think the greatest proclivity of folks showing up at the recruiting centre is to join the Air Force. It is only when they are full that the other two services truly benefit from the extras who might be arriving.
I think an economic downturn might offer a few more applicants coming to the door. However, we cannot put too much stock in that since, the moment economic circumstances change, we still have to be an employer that is able to attract the talent we need.
Therefore, we have not done as well as we would have liked in recent recruiting. When I say ``we'' now, it is the Navy, recognizing there is but one Canadian Forces recruiting system that we do support. We have put a great deal of effort into helping the recruiting system try to attract more who have a fundamental interest in going to sea. There are all kinds of things we have done in the past couple of years that I might ask Commodore Hickey to touch upon.
In addition to not doing as well as we would have liked in a couple of occupations, we, too, face an attrition rate that is rising slightly because of the demographic curve we are left with following the 1990s. I am speaking mostly of the technical occupations and not the entire breadth of the Navy. Yes, we have higher demand for our skill sets from across the Armed Forces.
These are all trends that have been in place for a while now; they are demographics since the 1990s. They have affected recruiting for the last five or six years and retention relatively recently, that it is dropping or attrition is rising. That is because of the particular shape of the curve. The demand in Afghanistan is of a couple of years standing.
These are things that will take us several years to get ourselves out of. There is certainly a special effort being placed on recruiting. There is a public affairs team from the Department of National Defence. It is a contractor team of about 30. They are down in HMCS Ville de Quebec and in Halifax Harbour today filming the next recruiting ad, which will be Maritime in flavour and will be focused on technicians. We need the technicians to see the television ads and see themselves a couple years from now and figure out that we will make them successful.
I think I will turn to Commodore Hickey on a couple of words about the things we have done.
Commodore L.M. Hickey, Director General, Maritime Personnel and Readiness, Department of National Defence: To expand on what the admiral was saying, the Navy is disadvantaged right off the bat when it comes to recruiting, largely because the Navy is far from the centre of population in Canada; in other words, far from the coast. People find it difficult to understand what it is the Navy does.
As Vice-Admiral Robertson mentioned, the Navy has the lowest propensity of people that walk through the door. About 8 per cent of people want to sign up to the Navy right off the bat.
The media coverage is dominated by Afghanistan. That tends to resonate with the public.
The Chair: Excuse me, could we have order, please, so we can hear the witness?
Commodore Hickey: The other thing is that we are in major competition for talent. This problem is not just in Canada. I have spoken to my colleagues in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and they are experiencing the same problem. They are trying to get the young people and the people we want in what we call the ``stress trades,'' the technical trades, to come in through the door.
This is a very broad problem that most Western nations are experiencing. Drivers are: the end of the supply of the young folks, the baby boomers are retiring, we are seeing a declining birthrate and immigration rates are down. Therefore, we are not getting the same sort of people we would have expected.
The other thing is that the sort of person that we would be looking at recruiting is not joining the Navy for the same reasons that the admiral and I might have joined when we were 17 or 18. The young person joining does not necessarily want a 30-year career with a stable job. In many cases, what they are after is to come in, get some meaningful work at a decent salary, but they really want to pick up job skills that are transferable to another career. They want to go somewhere else and have multiple interests throughout their career.
What are the sorts of things the Navy has been doing? To start off, in trying to deal with the issue of no one understanding what the Navy is doing, we try to get out there. We work in conjunction with the recruiting centres to understand where their job fairs might be. We try to get out to the schools and have a program to ensure that we fairly regularly visit schools. We have what we call recruiting buses. They are buses with audio-visual material so people can walk through and see what the folks in the Army and Navy do. We have two buses that have had great success in getting away from the urban areas and into the more rural areas. We have put more orders for three more buses, so eventually we will have five of those buses.
We have increased the recruiting team. I have to go back to Vice-Admiral Robertson's comment that: the Navy does not actually recruit; the Navy attracts. We ensure we do our best to make sure that, when someone walks through the door, they want to put on a white shirt as opposed to a green or light blue shirt. That is the key thing.
We have doubled the amount of staff we have set up to do the coordination, to work out where those job fairs are and where the school events are.
We have quadrupled our budget for recruiting activities and made various give-aways like pens, key-chains and stickers. We have quadrupled the budget there. We have introduced what we call an influencer tour on both the coasts. Influencers are people such as guidance counsellors or mentors in the community, who are interested to go to sea and see what we do in the navy. They, in turn, will be able to speak positively about the potential for a career in the navy.
We have also ensured that we get people in naval uniforms in all the recruiting centres. We have set up contracts for naval reservists in those areas in which we did not have regular forces people to go in, so that when an individual walks into the recruiting centre there is someone there to talk knowledgeably about what the navy does. I can go on with a shopping list, but that gives you a broad spectrum.
Senator Wallin: The kids do not need adventure in the same way. They have other ways of accessing it.
Commodore Hickey: There are still those red-blooded people who like that sort of thing.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: There is more we will be doing as required to specifically go after the technicians who are simply critical in running ships. Those of you who have been on board have seen that there is not a space on board the ship that does not have a demand for technicians. We have to be successful there. There is work to be done.
You asked a question about gaps in capability or reduced capacity. My comment had been about the Halifax class needing to be modernized as they are now at their mid-life. It is very necessary to upgrade equipment that was installed back in the 1980s. That work begins with Halifax in 2010 and will work through until the last ship comes out in about 2017. The problem that is faced is that an inability to get those ships into a refit five or seven years ago and in a slower, more deliberate manner means we are now doing the refits in a more compressed manner than we might like. There is not much of a choice. It is time to get the ships modernized so they will serve the country well in the second half of their lives as they did in their first half.
That compressed modernization means the number of ships available for operations will decrease. That is why having submarines, destroyers and supply ships operating to keep the numbers up during the Halifax class modernization is important. That is why we are working towards that.
Having said that, I am concerned about where we are with moving ahead on replacement for the supply ships and for the destroyers. I am concerned only in the sense that today we have perhaps the most capable and best balanced Maritime force in the country's history. It came into being in the mid-1990s with a number of initiatives including the Halifax class and the modernization of the destroyers. We are benefiting from that. The operations we are generating worldwide benefit from the decisions made in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Senator Wallin: How many ships are you down at a time? Do you take them out one at a time?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Yes, we take them out one at a time on each coast. There is a period during which the ships will be in a naval yard getting ready to go to a commercial yard beforehand and afterwards. That adds up to, at times, four or five-plus frigates that will be out of operations simultaneously; hence, the need to keep the fleet numbers up with the other classes.
Senator Wallin: I have a short comment on the question I raised about personnel being reassigned and how many people that might involve and why. I am asking this question blind in the sense that research is put in front of us that officers are being taken out of the navy for non-naval unit assignments.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I would put it this way: Over the last five or so years, or maybe a little more, we have taken some Maritime talent and some from the other two services as well, and put it to a number of areas of overhead for the department. I would not count recruiting as overhead, but we are certainly putting more into recruiting, which is a direct benefit to us, but there are a variety of other areas.
The transformation that was put in place about three years ago has demanded more officers to man the various headquarters that we run. The overall effect is one of trying to achieve with a fixed number of officers the best balance between employing the force today, developing tomorrow's force and training our successors. All of these things need to be achieved simultaneously. We need a better balance of success on force employment. There is no doubt we are more successful today than we were five years ago, prior to transformation, when we had a different structure that was not as effective. There has to be a balance struck among all of the things that we have to do as an institution. We will have to adjust that balance at the next round of transformation.
Senator Meighen: Welcome, Vice-Admiral Robertson and Commodore Hickey. I want to return to the subject of trained personnel, particularly people in the technical trades. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but it is still very distinct in terms of curtailment of some operations due to the lack of personnel. This goes back a few years. You commented that people is your number one challenge in the next two or three years.
Is the situation getting better or worse in terms of having the people to do the jobs you are called upon to do? Could you comment on the navy transition plan for personnel? I have heard about it but do not know what it is.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: With respect to the current state of naval personnel, the fact that we are not doing well enough in recruiting in some occupations is of ongoing concern. We need to do better, especially in the technical trades. The result of not having done as well there and the fact that attrition is rising slightly means we have fewer people today than we did a year ago, but in double digits, in relatively low numbers. We need to turn that situation around, not in terms of gaining just handfuls of double digits over the coming year, but to turn it around and get back to a healthier state. It is my and Commodore Hickey's job to help the Canadian Forces recruiting system bring more folks through the door.
There is not a question at this point of reduced operational capability due to the state of personnel. It is something we manage carefully on the two coasts. The operations of the ships are carefully balanced, by which I simply mean, we cannot run the ships harder than the sailors will tolerate. There is a certain lower level at which sailors want to go to sea, and if you go below that, they leave the navy because they are bored. There is a certain higher level above which they are being worked too hard at sea with too much time away from family, and there again they will leave.
Therefore, we balance the operations tempo carefully. We are generating the sort of effect I described in my opening remarks.
Senator Meighen: That was the transition plan. My information is that there has been a recent development of a navy transition plan for personnel. I did not know what it was.
Commodore Hickey: I do not think that is the title of it.
Senator Meighen: It might help if I gave you the initials of the program.
Commodore Hickey: Last summer, I was able to gather the human resources practitioners from the coasts and from Quebec City into a conference, and sat down and tried to hash through all of the issues confronting us. They are many. I then tried to develop from that conference a plan essentially mirrored on that of the Chief of Military Personnel. His campaign plan was for the retention, recruiting, recognition and a line of operation to improve the lives of soldiers, sailors and airmen and women in the service. What you are referring to is the navy's campaign plan to try to rectify the human resources issue.
It started in earnest in about August and we are still moving towards a resolution of the problem.
Senator Meighen: Vice-Admiral, it seems that there are a number of capital projects coming down the pipe quickly. Are you satisfied that the navy has the resources to manage these projects or do you need to recruit or train people to handle the volume?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Supplying personnel to the projects run by the assistant deputy minister, materiel, is my number one priority. Those people are amongst the most talented that we have. Maritime engineers as well as people like the two of us — ship drivers — are required in the materiel group to be able to advance the projects. I have to supply those people simply because of where we are today. We have a supply ship at sea that is 40 years in commission and a destroyer along with her that is 36 years in commission. As Lieutenant-General Watt mentioned, the two supply ships and the three destroyers adds up to a relatively older fleet even with the frigates. They have to be replaced.
There is risk and I do not mean safety risk. I will parrot the Chief of the Air Staff, we do not sail unsafe ships. These are effective and capable ships. The task group that deployed last summer and provided command in the Persian Gulf region was one of our destroyers, a supply ship and a frigate. They went around the world. It is not a question of them being safe or effective. They are. It is simply a question of the fact that they are getting on.
We face the prospect in the years to come of the potential for gaps in our operational capability. I mentioned that last year when I was in front of the committee. Nothing has changed in that regard. It means that we must be successful at the procurement activities to replace the supply ships along with the joint support ship and to move on the Canadian surface combatant. I am concerned that if we are not as effective as we can be on those acquisitions, we face the potential for reduced output by about 2015.
I listened to L.-General Watt. As Chief of the Air Staff, he spoke of his performance being judged by 2017. As Chief of the Maritime Staff, I watch what the navy will have in 2015 or 2017 because we need operational output. We need the joint support ship to be able to maintain our freedom of action internationally. We need replacements for the destroyers to maintain our capabilities in air defence command and control. That is my motivation for driving people into the projects to help them to be as successful as possible.
Senator Meighen: Given that you have not had many large capital projects in the last few years, do you have the people to drive these projects coming down the pipe? Do you have the marine engineers and project supervisors or have they withered away?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We have fewer than we had in the last renewal of the navy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We are a smaller service than we were in the 1980s because of the cuts in the 1990s. Do we have enough to be able to be successful in driving these procurements forward? Yes, we do, but it means that those positions must be the number one priority. We must be successful at those.
Senator Meighen: At recruiting and retaining?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We must be successful at the procurement projects in front of us and at delivering Canada First, in other words. At the same time, we must generate operational effect of the kind that we do every day.
Those are two areas where we must put the talent that we have. There are other areas where we may have to take some risk inside maritime command and inside the Canadian Forces. However, the number one priority is to make the project successful.
Senator Meighen: Strangely enough, we have not heard a great deal about the submarines recently. What is their status and when will they all be fully operational?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We have HMCS Corner Brook under way today off the East Coast, which participated in a major exercise with American and Canadian ships last week. It was one of the reasons I believe the American ships were interested in coming. They are very interested in doing exercises against diesel-electric submarines since their navy has only nuclear powered submarines. The submarines of interest around the world in the areas where our two navies will operate internationally are, for the most part, diesel powered.
In the past couple years, we have had HMCS Corner Brook and HMCS Windsor that have done everything from NATO exercises in northern Europe, to NORPLOY — the deployment in the high Arctic done every summer — to Canadian drug operations in the Caribbean. For example, we had HMCS Corner Brook operating last spring with that joint interagency task force in the waters north of the South American littoral. The boats have demonstrated at every opportunity that they have all the capabilities required. The officers and crew have the skill required to be able to operate them and achieve great effect.
Against NATO allies, our submarines have demonstrated repeatedly that they are a match for any NATO surface group. In exercises against the American Los Angeles class submarines, they tend to come out at a draw. The Los Angeles class submarines have one advantage — they can go very fast. One on one, the submarine exercises tend to be equally matched.
HMCS Chicoutimi is headed into the first contractor-led maintenance activity. It will be taken through the first refit by this civilian contractor. That is an 18-month undertaking that boats go through every five or six years. If is fundamental to certify that they are safe to dive. HMCS Chicoutimi will be the first through that process. That begins in 2010. By the end of 2010, we will have three boats at sea: HMCS Windsor, HMCS Corner Brook and HMCS Victoria. Relatively speaking, from where we were three years ago, we are on track for the summer or fall 18 months from now.
The Chair: Admiral, could you tell us if any of the boats have fired a torpedo?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The boats have fired test shapes, but they have not fired torpedoes yet. The reason is simple: The certification to fire torpedoes is a time-consuming set of trials to demonstrate the boat's capability. At this point, we are focused on generating submariners.
The impact of HMCS Chicoutimi and the maintenance activities of two or three years ago is that we are focusing on the training of submariners so we are ready for the summer and fall of 2010. We will then proceed through the torpedo firing certification and move on from there for operations.
The Chair: When do you anticipate that at least three of the boats will be certified to fire torpedoes?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Only one boat goes through the certification, if I understand correctly, with the torpedoes that we operate. That will happen in 2010.
The Chair: In 2010, you will have three boats that can fire torpedoes?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That is correct.
Senator Manning: I want to return to the joint support ships for a moment. Realizing that the bids were not compliant last year, you went back to the drawing board. Has everyone that needs to be involved agreed with the design and engineering of those ships? My understanding was that there was an allotment of funding put in place, and when the bids came back, they were a major amount above. The allotment of funding was the main reason at the time. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is what I heard.
From your conversation today, I am learning that this process may be back on track in a number of months down the road.
Is everyone agreed on what the design and the engineering of those ships will be?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Let me address the issue of the international shipbuilding environment. Where we were last summer when that aspect of the procurement was terminated, speaks to volatility in the international and domestic industry. The international shipbuilding environment is characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability to a degree that I had not experienced for much of my career.
Certainly, in the last three or four years, prior to the economic downturn, we were looking at extreme movements in prices. Steel prices that are doubled, for example, and a number of other fundamental qualities that go into making marine engines, pumps and so on, that similarly had gone up at a rate far above the rate of inflation. It was not possible for folks to have predicted where it all was going to head.
The cost of materiel and labour and the other risks inherent in the domestic industry meant that that uncertainty was translated into a procurement process that was terminated last summer.
That is not to say that procurement itself and the building of ships are beyond us. Do not get me wrong. If you look at our frigates, they are world class. The modernized destroyers are the best example of a modernized warship that I know of in the world. It is not beyond us to do good jobs in building and modernizing ships. The joint support ship is not beyond us, either.
Senator Moore: Is that in Canada?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Absolutely; it is not beyond us. We simply need to be able to deal with that kind of volatility in the shipbuilding market domestically and internationally — because there are international forces at play domestically — to have successful procurement efforts.
Senator Manning: I wish to get back to the capacity of the Canadian shipyards. We are all aware there are not many Canadian shipyards. When you are looking at something of the nature of the JSS, I guess that eliminates some of those shipyards from being able to participate in the construction.
I understand from talking to people that we have a boom and a bust cycle in shipbuilding. We go at it for so many years, and then it dies away. We are then back trying to create it again, but the problem is that the shipyards, personnel and resources are not there to do the work.
If we have a situation where the contract is awarded, is it possible to have work like the JSS contract spread amongst several shipyards? Could it be spread across different parts of Canada? The minister has said that they plan on building it within Canada. If that is the case, is it possible that several shipyards could benefit from a contract of this nature?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I am not the best person to answer that question. The Assistant Deputy Minister, Materiel, and engineers in his group could answer that.
However, I can give a rough appreciation. When one is looking at a relatively small class, ships can be built in a number of different ways. By far, the most common way is that one shipyard takes on the work.
When it comes to the composition, that is, where the work is done, which shipyard has the work is but a small fraction of the story of economic value for Canada in terms of building ships. It is not about shipbuilding as much as it is a marine industry. The marine industry has considerable overlap with a number of other industries across the country, for example, engines, pumps, electrical motors and so on. Those pieces of equipment are manufactured by folks across the country. Many of the firms that will contribute to the eventual joint support ship will be providing equipment out of Ontario or Quebec to whichever shipyard winds up engaged in the undertaking. The joint support ship moving forward, is not only about shipbuilding; it is also about the marine and other industries across Canada.
Even if one looks at the Canadian surface combatant, once one moves into the higher end warship of a combatant, one is looking at true high-tech, R&D sector investments being made from a number of sectors into the ship that you would not associate with the marine industry or with ship building. Yet, fundamentally, moving ahead on the higher value ships is as much an investment in Canada as it is anything to do with one particular yard.
Senator Manning: There has been a lot of discussion over the past couple of years concerning the Arctic, sovereignty in the Arctic, protecting the Arctic and so on.
Will the ships that protect us in those waters vary from the ships that will protect us in the southern part of our hemisphere? There was discussion a while ago about an Arctic offshore patrol ship. Can you let us know about the status of that?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We have learned a great deal about the Arctic in the past couple of years, since the current government arrived with much greater interest in the Arctic. We have seen changes in the past couple of summers alone that indicate where we think things will be headed in the longer term.
To talk about the Arctic offshore patrol ship for a moment, we have spent some time in definition phase, finalizing the statement of requirement. This has been an iterative process as we learn more about the environment and what the best ship would be for that environment. We have learned from working closely with industry and from our Norwegian and Danish colleagues, both of whom operate capable ships in the waters off Greenland — and in the case of the Norwegians, off Svalbarg.
We are working with an engineering consultant to help refine the concept design. We aim to release a request for proposal later this year — that is line with the previously announced timelines. We are headed toward the first ship in the 2013-14 time frame.
We have also done work with the Coast Guard and other government departments associated with the facility in Nanisivik. We have done a variety of studies ashore in Nanisivik to see the state of the current infrastructure and to get us started on the planning, so that by 2011, subject to government approval, we should be working on upgrading the facility in Nanisivik.
The overall effect of the past couple of years, aside from advancing the Arctic offshore patrol ship concept and doing work and getting ready to have a very modest refuelling capability in Nanisivik, has been to draw our attention even further north. At this point, we are seeing the convergence of a number of factors, from countries' rising demand for energy, the need for energy security and climate change. All of which we see continuing to change the environment in the Arctic.
There is much less ice there now than there was years ago. One of my colleagues, the head of the American Coast Guard, has the view that he does not care why there is more water; the U.S. Coast Guard does open water so they will have a greater presence in the Arctic. We are taking the same approach, which is, there will be more open water. The riches in the Arctic will draw the attention of a number of countries.
For us, the issue is not so much about Nanisivik or the waters south of Alert. The issue is how we will maintain surveillance, presence and control in the waters north of Alert. Perhaps not in the next five years or so, but certainly in the next five, ten, fifteen years, there will be open water north of Alert along what will be a third coastline for our country — a coastline that is longer than the distance from George's Bank, the Bay of Fundy, up around Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador into the Strait of Belle Isle. It is longer than that. It will be open coastline — again, not while the two of us are serving, but in 10, 15 or 20 years.
The Arctic offshore patrol ship will certainly make a contribution to surveillance, presence and control in those waters. The message, though, would be that this will be an undertaking for the next two decades to secure our Arctic resources and sovereignty. I think the Arctic offshore patrol ship is a good step and the modest port facility in Nanisivik is useful. There will be more to come as climate change continues to bring us more open water in the Arctic.
Senator Manning: Thank you once again. I thank you for your service to our country and wish you all the best.
The Chair: Vice Admiral, as a follow-up to Senator Manning's question about boom and bust in shipbuilding, was there not a program considered by the government in the last few months about a continuous shipbuilding program that has been rejected?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Let me start by saying the Canada First Defence Strategy, by setting out a long-term vision and some element of predictability, is of value to industry. They can move with more confidence in doing their long- range planning, acknowledging the points that you made earlier with the Chief of the Air Staff about minority governments. Nevertheless, there is an element of predictability that industry values.
The question then is how to translate that predictability, and literally billions of dollars of work recapitalizing Coast Guard and navy assets over the next 20 years, into the best circumstance for the country overall. That work is ongoing by industry and by government.
As with procurement, I am supportive of the efforts that are under way to see how best to deliver these projects going forward — best for the country over the next 20 years. I am not sure I answered your question.
The Chair: No, you did not.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That was not my intention.
The Chair: Was there a program going forward for continuous shipbuilding that has been rejected? It was put forward in the context of stimulating the economy and providing the vessels needed by the Coast Guard, yourselves and the ferry services. Clearly, it would require more yards than we have existing in Canada.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: There is work ongoing to determine how best to deliver. I do not think anything has been rejected. It is not my part ship; I will leave it to others when and if the time is right to discuss it.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: Admiral Robertson, I want to congratulate you on your French. I am convinced that the marines serving under you are proud of having a leader who can speak their language.
In the latest National Defence report entitled Departmental Performance Report, the department made the following observation:
Plans and procedures for the maritime warning system function under NORAD continue to be developed. Relations between NORAD, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and COM Canada (Canada Command) are developing at the same rhythm as NORAD.
Could you give the committee an overview of NORAD's new maritime surveillance responsibilities?
[English]
Vice-Admiral Robertson: NORAD was given responsibility for maritime warning. This does not imply command and control of maritime forces on operations. Rather, it speaks to the coordination of the information available to the two countries to ensure that, to the degree possible, we avoid having seams so that information understood about the maritime environment in Canada and in the United States benefits both countries.
This is not something that I am advancing; this is done under Canada Command at this point. It is about the sharing of maritime information between the two countries. It has a domestic corollary in our maritime security operations centres — ``parallel'' perhaps is a better word. We have six departments working together in the security operations centres on the two coasts, where the aim is to achieve the best sharing of information possible.
We have taken that a considerable distance. The greatest challenge for the security operation centres at this point would be the legal authorities for sharing of information between government departments; the quite appropriate legal safeguards that are put in place and how we ensure that when there is an imperative to share that actually we are able to do so. That is work that is being undertaken in part by Canada Command, but in part by the six departments that are associated.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: Unlike what we see under NORAD, there is no joint operation or joint command. It just involves the exchange of information.
[English]
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Exactly so.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: You spoke about our relationship with our neighbours to the south; how do you see our interoperability with our other partners in NATO? Since you were the alliance's naval commander, you are aware of the problems related to interoperability.
[English]
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Actually the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice Admiral Rouleau, commanded the NATO task group three or four years ago. I benefited when I commanded in the gulf region, which was under a coalition construct. I benefited from the interoperability that NATO builds. If NATO did not build the interoperability, I do not know how navies would come together.
Senator Nolin: The coalition.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Exactly so.
Now, I would say that we are completely interoperable with any other NATO navies and, indeed, with a couple of others, such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea, for example, where HMCS Winnipeg is exercising today. That is because all of those countries too follow NATO standards. They are either NATO standards as NATO, or they are perhaps United States standards, bilateral standards, which completely parallel the NATO standards of interoperability.
Interoperability is about far more than just technical specifications. It is also about confidence, trust and reliability. Certainly when looking at the navies of Canada and the United States, I do not think there are two navies that are closer together in terms of the way we think tactically and operationally. We have some different skills from them. Needless to say, vice versa, they have a number of skills of which we could not dream. However, the degree of trust between our two navies is best exemplified by the fact that we wind up with our ships integrating with their battle groups.
By the same token, I had American ships under my command when I was in the gulf, so did now admiral, then Commodore Davidson when he was in the gulf a year ago, American ships under his command. That speaks to an interoperability of minds as much as it does technical standards.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: Would you like to comment on the incident between the British and French submarines?
[English]
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I would only comment by saying as completely unlikely as that incident would seem to everyone, there is no information that is more closely safeguarded by any country than the location of the ballistic missile submarines that form a key part of their nuclear deterrent. It goes without saying, that is held at a higher level of secrecy than any other information.
Senator Nolin: You raised the question of confidence. That is why I could not resist asking you that question.
The Chair: Vice-Admiral Robertson, is it not the case that you get access to that sort of intelligence when you keep a submarine permanently on the West Coast?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We share water space management information on both coasts.
The Chair: Yes, but there was a period of time when we did not have a boat on the West Coast and the information was not shared with us. Is that correct?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I believe that to be correct.
Commodore Hickey: There is no need to share the information.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We benefit from that information.
The Chair: We have to get those boats going.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We do benefit from that even today.
Senator Day: NORAD is a wonderful success on the air space, aerospace side of things and there has been talk about expanding that formally to naval operations on both coasts. Now I guess we are talking about the North, so three coasts. Is there anything happening in relation to that which would provide for a joint operation between Canada and the U.S. along our coasts?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The difference here is between bilateral and binational. NORAD is a binational command, so American and Canadian commanders report up both political chains. It is very important to have, given the nature of the aerospace environment where it is not just the sharing of information, but the moving of aircraft through each other's domestic air space, that requires the closest cooperation.
That is not, of course, the case in the maritime world where, beyond 12 miles, one is on the high seas and any nation's ships can travel freely. That does not mean we neglect the ability to interoperate in the defence of the continent. I mentioned that we have a task group off the East Coast now and it was exercising last week with two American destroyers in the waters well to seaward of the American East Coast.
We are working on, under Canada Command, better bilateral command and better bilateral planning. I will let Vice Admiral McFadden speak to that as the force employer. Certainly, we have a lot of experience going back decades of being able to work together under a bilateral command arrangement quickly and effectively. In fact, the same interoperability that holds in the Persian Gulf works to our advantage off the coasts of North America.
Senator Day: There was always an understanding here that there was a good bilateral relationship. There was discussion a couple of years ago about expanding the NORAD model, which you call that binational. Is there anything likely to happen in the next little while or are we likely to just continue the bilateral activity?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I am not aware of binational impetus at this point. The bilateral approach is working well.
Senator Day: You were asked about NATO and our role there. You made comment about during your opening remarks about a ship being taken away from the NATO task force to go to provide some support at Mogadishu because of the pirate activity that has become very serious. Under whose auspices is that activity if it is not NATO? You left NATO to go do that.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The World Food Program activity was done under National Command. The government decided to answer the appeal from the World Food Program and the International Maritime Organization, and detached HMCS Ville de Quebec from NATO Command. She proceeded purely under National Command to provide the escort work required along the coast of East Africa. That escort work, still very necessary work as you can appreciate, is now being done by a European Union naval task group, which will stay on station until the end of this year. They have set themselves a one-year mandate that will end, I believe, in December. After December, the state of security in the region will determine what is the requirement for further escort work after that.
Currently, HMCS Winnipeg is enroute to join up with the NATO group in the Gulf of Aden. I suspect they will be doing basic surveillance and protection of merchant shipping while they are there before they head further to the east for a deployment that will take them as far as Singapore, the South China Sea and down toward Australia.
Senator Day: After they finish their NATO exercise, they will go off and do that.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: They will proceed to Singapore, the South China Sea and Australia as a NATO task group. The NATO heads of state and governments at the last summit directed the NATO military organization to make further outreaches to partner nations such as Australia and Japan, and this is one of those initiatives.
Senator Day: That is interesting. Do we have an obligation to provide assets to a NATO operation or is it on a volunteer basis when we have a ship available?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We have been providing a ship about 6 months out of every 12 months for the past few years. We provided HMCS Ville de Québec last fall, and the ship was then re-tasked. It is voluntary in the sense that nations choose a ship to contribute. Nations at a political level have agreed that there will be certain military instruments and, consequently, which countries will contribute to those military groups. It is similar to the standing NATO maritime group
Senator Day: My final area of questioning is with respect to capacity. A couple of years ago, the committee was in the West Coast near Victoria at Esquimalt, British Columbia. We were told that one of the destroyers was tied up because they did not have enough sailors to take her to sea and basically, it was being used to supply parts. Have things improved since then? Could you tell us what your numbers are? You said that you had slightly fewer personnel in the navy this year than you had last year because of attrition. Can you provide us with the overall numbers? Do we have ships tied up that would be at sea if we had sufficient personnel?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We do not have any ships tied up. You are thinking of HMCS Huron, which was decommissioned earlier this decade. Indeed, it was used for target practice back in the spring of 2008.
Senator Day: Was she sunk out there?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Yes. We have no other ships tied up in a permanent state of being unmanned and decommissioned. We will have cycle ships through refit from time to time, and their manning levels drop when that occurs. We have one on the West Coast that is entering into such an overhaul period now. Otherwise, we do not have any ships alongside.
Senator Day: It is not because of insufficient personnel.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That is correct. I was speaking of submarines, frigates, destroyers and supply ships.
You will be well aware that the naval reserve mans our coastal defence and has been doing so for the better part of a decade. We are beginning to see problems with the construct that we had adopted back in the 1990s. That is to say, the construct whereby those ships would be manned by reservists who would serve and fill a position on one of the two coasts for a couple of years and then return to their respective home reserve units. At a later time, they will go back to the coast for another couple of years, perhaps in the next position of the hierarchy of the ship.
We have noticed that it is not a model followed in practice. The naval reserves that go to the coast stay on the coast and continue to serve at sea.
Senator Day: They are in the reserves so they do not have to move around.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: They then are able to focus exclusively on the domestic operation that the naval reserve conducts. However, the naval reservists who go to the two coasts have spent most of their time at sea and do not get the break of a short posting because the construct was never developed. We need to revisit this concept and figure out how we can continue to man the coastal defence vessels with reservists who get some shore time. After an eight-year period of constant posting to sea-going ships, people need a break. We did not build that into the concept. We need to figure out how to change the concept, and we are engaged in that now.
Senator Day: We had that discussion in Esquimalt as well. The saving grace was that these reservists were not out very long.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: True enough. As well, they love what they do but, at a certain point, their families tell them how much they love their job.
Senator Zimmer: Vice-Admiral Robertson and Commodore Hickey, thank you for your presentations today. I had the unique opportunity last year with Senator Nancy Ruth to go on a frigate, HMCS Ville de Québec. It was an outstanding experience with a remarkable crew and great leadership. I ate with the crew and we bunked in. I had the unique experience on the helipad of firing off some rounds of artillery. It was such a rush. If I were not older than dirt, I would be recruited right there. It truly was an unbelievable experience. I encourage all senators on this committee to partake in that. It gives one a completely different perspective.
The Chair: Would that be as targets?
Senator Zimmer: If you have the opportunity, please pass on to then Commodore Davidson, now Vice Admiral Davidson, my appreciation of my unique experience of the friendship and goodwill that these people do around the world. Please pass on our prayers that they return safely.
My question is on HMCS Ville de Québec. You indicated that they have these shore-based radar systems. How many frigates do we have?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: We have twelve frigates.
Senator Zimmer: I believe that one of the crew told me the name of the radar device, but I cannot recall it. He told me that only half of the ships have it and if a ship without one needs to be equipped with it prior to deployment, they have to take the device off one ship and install it on the other ship.
A ship might be called to emergency action. Would you not consider it a priority to have all ships equipped with that radar device so they are able to deploy quickly in such an event?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: That was an interesting opportunity you had to see HMCS Ville de Québec in Quebec City, where she was bound for the celebration of the 400th anniversary. It was unusual that she was bound to undertake a celebratory event while at high readiness and three weeks away from deploying for six months. Such was the nature of the 400th anniversary. Certainly, no one was going to miss that. The ship was at high readiness, with all equipment and personnel required.
What you are referring to is not the detection equipment, but rather the jamming equipment. All ships have the detection equipment because we use that as another sensor — eyes, ears — the electronic and the acoustic sensors.
The jammer, on the other hand — I will not go into detail for obvious reasons — is a system that is not required around North America. There is no threat that we would need to use that particular piece of equipment on. That is only needed for foreign operations. Ships that deploy on foreign operations have what is required. I will not go into the number that we have, only assure you that it is available for foreign operations.
The same would apply, potentially, to other pieces of equipment that we have where we have fewer than 12 or 13. There we focus on the ships that are bound for international operations. I do not have any problem with that. Some of them are relatively sophisticated and expensive.
One of the things that Halifax-class modernization is addressing is the state of things like our simple radars, the surface and air search radars, which will be replaced during modernization. These are radars that we have moved from ship to ship in the past. One ship in the harbour was left without a radar because the repair and overhaul pipeline had the other radars. Certainly Halifax-class modernization will take care of that as we upgrade our ships. As soon as the first two ships go in, we will take from them some of their older systems as the newer ones are being installed, and that creates spares for ships that will not be modernized for a couple of years yet. Beginning in 2010, we will not have the same issues.
Senator Zimmer: What a tremendous piece of equipment. It can stop in the length of the ship and be up to speed in the length of the ship. It is unbelievable.
Last June you explained to the committee the challenge involving the engineering of Arctic off-shore patrol ships, specifically the need to find a balance between developing enhanced capability in Arctic waters, while also ensuring utility on the West and East Coast. The aim you had was to find that sweet spot. That engineering challenge is currently being worked on by an engineering firm, but the sweet spot allows good sea keeping in speed and open waters and enough ice capability to be present in the Arctic up to the edges of the navigation season.
Can you give us a brief update on the issue, and what is the current status of the acquisition of Arctic off-shore patrol ships?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: The fundamental change for me in the past year has been the understanding that we will have open water in the high Arctic in the years to come. Remember, any ship that we receive in 2014 will still be serving 30 years later. The Arctic off-shore patrol ships will start their lives in the environment we are seeing in the Arctic today, but who knows what it will be like by 2020 or 2025. We will have open water, and they will need to have that balance of capabilities for the Arctic, let alone off our East and West Coasts.
I think we are well advanced in finding that appropriate level of ice capability and off-shore patrol capability. The hull form will be adequate for the high Arctic and be able to deal with the unique ice conditions of the Canadian Arctic, the multi-year ice that is such a challenge and so unique to the Canadian and American Arctic. We will be able to have a presence — not just during the navigable season but a little bit potentially beyond — and have the speed and endurance in open water that we would wish. You cannot produce an ice-breaking destroyer, nor would you want to. This ship will be a good balance between patrol ship in the open ocean and in the ice.
Senator Banks: Thank you for appearing. I want to get my head around the magnitude of the job because I am a landlubber. I understand there are no hulls in place now. No keel has been laid now. That is not happening.
How many new hulls do we need in the foreseeable future, including the joint support ships, the Arctic off-shore patrol vessels and whatever will replace the destroyers and the single-class combat ships? Also, to your knowledge, for the kind of rejuvenation that needs to happen with the Coast Guard, how many new ships do we need to build?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: I probably should have that figure close at hand.
Senator Banks: Is it 50 or 100?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Let us go on the lower side.
Senator Banks: Let us say 50. How long does it take to build a ship, on average? A couple years, I would guess.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Now I am moving out of my league. I think you are referring to is from cutting the first plate of steel through to knocking the champagne bottle on the bow.
Senator Banks: It is not finished, even then.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: You are quite right. I will put it this way: if one looks at literally dozens of ships to be delivered over the years to come, and works it over the shipyards that can do the work, the question is whether we even have the capacity to deliver. I do not believe that is a challenge provided the government sets well-defined requirements, introduces the kind of predictability that Canada First does by laying out a fleet program and maintains reasonable relations and awareness with industry. Industry has capacity today and is able to produce more capacity — this is what I am told — to be able to deliver that kind of a fleet.
Senator Banks: Just to be clear, there are two or three yards that can now build fighting ships and specialized ships, I think. How many a year, ballpark, can they build? Can they build two ships a year each?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: It depends on a variety of factors. For a warship, I have heard that 18 months is not unreasonable. All I can do is tell you that in the yard in Saint John, nine frigates were produced over the course of five years or less. Going back to when the Iroquois class was built, at Davie Shipyards in Lévis, they were rolling out within six months of each other, and those were relatively sophisticated.
The advice of my engineers and others who are experienced in this realm is that industry producing the capacity is not a concern.
Senator Banks: On an ongoing basis so we do not keep doing this over and over again?
Vice-Admiral Robertson: Correct. Of course, that is not to say it will not be hard work when I say it is not a concern. All I am saying is it is not a limiting factor.
Senator Banks: The last time this committee pronounced on this question — and we have not officially changed our minds — we looked at this situation and said, given the need and the urgency of the need, we have to go off-shore and buy the ships elsewhere because we cannot do it.
I think we are in the process of changing our mind and we may be verging on going the other direction because it would be nice to have an ongoing ship-building capacity in this country spread over time.
I appreciate the information.
The Chair: It is fair to say that most members of this committee think there is a strategic imperative to build in this country. When the balloon goes up, we cannot afford to rely on another country to be shipping us ships.
Senator Banks: Since we have said the opposite, we ought to say something.
The Chair: We must have a report out to do that and we must have a discussion on the committee to do that.
Senator Banks: That is right.
Senator Day: We do not all think the same.
The Chair: Okay.
Senator Tkachuk: Senator Manning covered the topic of Arctic sovereignty quite well, which is what I was thinking to ask.
I would like to file as an exhibit to the committee a document to which the chair referred to. It was issued by the Privy Council Office in December, 1990: Notes on the Responsibilities of Public Servants in Relation to Parliamentary Committees. It said that:
Public servants have a fundamental duty to convey information truthfully to their Ministers and, on the Ministers behalf, to convey truthfully information which they may properly convey to Parliament. This is the case irrespective of whether they are sworn.
Since you raised it, Mr. Chair, I would like to file this and have it distributed to members of the committee.
The Chair: No problem. If you read our report, Senator Tkachuk, you would know it was in the appendix of one of our last three reports. That said, there is no problem with tabling it again.
Senator Tkachuk: I do want to table it again.
The Chair: Terrific. Colleagues, it has been a long day. We have had a really good last witness. Vice Admiral, I am grateful to you. Commodore, your contribution was helpful. I hope to see you again before you move on; your testimony today was of great use to the committee.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you both very much.
Vice-Admiral Robertson: It was my pleasure.
Commodore Hickey: Thank you.
The Chair: To those who are watching on television, we can be contacted at 1-800-267-7362 should you like further information or assistance in contacting members of the committee. The website is www.sen-sec.ca.
(The committee continued in camera.)