Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 2 - Evidence - Meeting of October 17, 2011
OTTAWA, Monday, October 17, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4:04 p.m. to examine and report on Canada's national security and defence policies, practices, circumstances and capabilities (topic: transformation report 2011).
Senator Pamela Wallin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
We have a very busy and full agenda today. We will look at several issues, including transformation, and separately look at the question of reserves and at a program that was long in existence in Canada and is trying to be revived, the Canadian National Leadership Program. You will remember it as the old officer training program at universities.
We are pleased to have some very senior people with us today to help us work through these complicated issues. We all know that we are in a time of restraint. All government departments are tightening their belts, including the Department of National Defence. Of course, that impacts the Canadian Forces.
We have senior officials on the military side and on the department side today to talk about adapting in a time of restraint and, in particular, about the recent report on transformation by now-retired Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie, to find out whether and what parts of this will be implemented. General Leslie was here two weeks ago at our last session, outlining his ideas on how both DND and CF can save money while maintaining and even improving operational effectiveness. We want to know how that is being received and what the plans are inside.
Our first panel includes Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. We are pleased to have him here. Matthew King is also with us. He is the Associate Deputy Minister of Defence. We have with us Kevin Lindsey, Assistant Deputy Minister of Defence and the Chief Financial Officer of DND, of a $21-billion budget. These are big figures that we are here to talk about today. We will try to keep our other questions on the issue of reserves for our second panel, and the vice-admiral has agreed to stay with us for that.
I will ask my colleagues to ensure that their questions are pointed, short, sharp and direct, and that they go with their most important question first because there may not be time for a second round.
I welcome first Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson. I gather you have some opening comments.
Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, National Defence: Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me begin by thanking you for the opportunity to appear today on the topic of Canadian Forces transformation. It is nice to be back in the company of this committee, and also to thank the committee on behalf of the Canadian Forces for its continued interest in important defence issues and its ongoing support for our men and women in uniform.
In the interest of time and efficiency, I will be providing an opening statement on behalf our defence team this afternoon, after which we will be happy to answer your questions individually as best we can.
[Translation]
Madam Chair, we live in a world that is rapidly changing, where threats and security challenges are becoming increasingly complex and uncertain. As we have learned — particularly over the past year — we cannot predict where the next crisis or natural disaster will occur. In this context, the Government of Canada recognizes the importance of maintaining a modern, capable and responsive military to help protect the safety and interests of Canadians.
[English]
Over the past decade, the government has made a strategic investment in the Canadian Forces through the Canada First Defence Strategy, which has helped to develop a flexible, agile and resilient force that is both highly regarded by our allies and an enduring source of pride for Canadians. Our operations in Afghanistan have been by far the largest, most intense and most visible single commitment during this time. However, at the same time, the Canadian Forces have supported numerous other operations both at home and abroad. In fact, of the six core missions laid out in the Canada First Defence Strategy, the Canadian Forces were carrying out five simultaneously at one point in 2010. We were conducting active combat operations in Afghanistan while also responding to a sudden major humanitarian crisis in Haiti, while also supporting security for the Olympic Games in Vancouver, which out of necessity included being prepared to respond to a terrorist attack, had there been one, and all the while we are continuing with our daily provision of maritime and aerial surveillance as well as search and rescue capabilities.
[Translation]
This year has been extremely busy for us as well. In Afghanistan, we have carried out three major operations simultaneously: completing our combat operations without any loss in focus or intensity, while planning and executing a major logistical effort to draw down our footprint in Kandahar, and also standing up our major new training operation based in Kabul.
[English]
In addition to these three lines of operation, we also, as you know, took on a major role alongside our allies in enforcing the UN Security Council resolutions aimed at protecting the civilian population in Libya and responded to floods and other emergencies here at home.
Taken together, this sustained level of activity has put tremendous and often unpredictable demands on our personnel, equipment, logistics capabilities and support services. The tightly integrated defence team has worked tirelessly throughout this period to ensure the Canadian Forces have the tools and support they need to deliver operational success. Civilians have been working side by side with their military colleagues performing critical roles in every area, procuring much- needed equipment, preparing and maintaining equipment fleets, developing cutting-edge technologies, providing critical care and support services to Canadian Forces members and their families, and fulfilling a host of other responsibilities.
Another key to our success in this challenging period has been the valuable contribution of our reserve force. Reservists volunteer to serve full time both on active operations and by backfilling important support roles so that regular force members could deploy and our force could grow quickly and respond to emerging needs relating to caring for our wounded and their families. Reservists have been instrumental in keeping the Canadian Forces operational and successful in recent years. Not surprisingly then, the number of reservists working full-time has grown significantly over this time frame, as has the number of civilian public servants working in the department, and so too has our personnel budget. Added to this has been an increased reliance on contracted services that delivered value for money in this time of intense activity. Simply put, we needed more people to support the complex procurement initiatives and critical operations that were necessary to deliver on our mandate.
[Translation]
But, Madam Chair, as logical and foreseeable as the short-term requirement for more personnel may have been, so too was the requirement to readjust our personnel levels — and our resource requirements more broadly — when our operational tempo eventually declined again.
Although the CF are still conducting operations in Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere — we recognize that the end of combat operations in Kandahar has resulted in an overall lower level of demand for urgent acquisitions and enhanced mission support functions. Our challenge has changed from one of fulfilling immediate operational demand — a challenge that we met with success — to one of adapting our structures and processes to a new strategic context.
[English]
Obviously, the economic realities facing Canada are a major consideration in this new context, but they are only part of a bigger picture. In dealing with new fiscal pressures, we must also continue delivering a future force through the fulfillment of the Canada First Defence Strategy that will meet the needs of Canadians in the years to come. This requires us to institutionalize and adapt to the operational lessons we have learned in Afghanistan and on other recent operations, as well as to anticipate and pursue the capabilities that will be required to meet future challenges in emerging domains such as space and cyber. These are very challenging priorities to balance, but the civilian and military leaders of the defence team have been anticipating them for some time and we have undertaken several measures to carefully consider the next steps to position ourselves for the future.
This process began with a strategic review of 2009-10 in which we sought to identify and eliminate our lowest priority and lowest performing programs to respond to Budget 2010. We have also been looking at ways to significantly reduce the number of full-time reservists and looking at ways of reinvigorating the part-time reserve force in support of the Canadian Forces' core mission, particularly in the domestic context, and I look forward to continuing that discussion in the next session, Madam Chair.
We put in place a strategy to reduce the size of the civilian workforce to levels that are sustainable over the long term. With this significant amount of work already under way, the deputy minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff created the Canadian Forces transformation team in the spring of 2010 to help maintain our momentum and focus on improving efficiency. This was an internal process that brought together civilian and military members from across the defence portfolio, freed from the day-to-day business of defence administration, and gave them a clear mandate: to bring all of the different threads of transformation together, to ask the hard questions and examine new and innovative approaches to doing business, and to help us identify opportunities to increase our organizational effectiveness and efficiency so as to reinvest in the future force.
In this respect, the work of our transformation team has been hugely successful. It has delivered exactly the kind of provocative and informative recommendations we were looking for, some of which validate the path that we are already on, some of which make good sense and which we are proposing to implement, and others which, as we expected, are quite ambitious and require further study before we can determine whether or not they are in our overall best interests.
[Translation]
Drawing on the contributions of the transformation team, as well as the wide range of other analysis from across the department, we have developed a number of options to best position the Canadian Forces for the next decade and beyond.
As these options are currently being considered by the government, Mr. King and I are limited in what we can say about the way forward at this time.
However, what I can say is that the work of the Canadian Forces transformation team has been immensely valuable as we continue to adjust to the changing strategic climate.
[English]
I will conclude by emphasizing that all of us here today and, indeed, everyone on the defence team, military and civilian alike, take our job of managing and accounting for public resources very seriously. Please let me assure you we fully understand that we have a responsibility to support the government in protecting not just the physical security of our citizens but economic security as well. Together, we are working to ensure that the Canadian Forces continue to deliver the same level of operational excellence in the future as they have over the past decade within an affordable and sustainable force structure.
I have every confidence in the dedication and expertise of both the military and civilian members of the defence team, and I consider it a privilege to lead such an incredible group of consummate professionals.
I thank you for inviting us to meet with you and would be pleased to answer your questions at this time.
The Chair: Thank you. Let me summarize, if I can, because I know this is complicated out there.
The transformation process is under way and there are feeding into that reports like General Leslie's as well as others. You have the strategic review, which was aimed in 2009-10. Are those about to be implemented now?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Yes, we are in the process now of synchronizing the implementation of the divestments identified there, but we are not at liberty yet to speak specifically about them.
The Chair: Right. Then separately you have the DRAP, the deficit reduction action plan, which the entire government is undergoing right now, and then there is an administrative review, as I understand it. These four things are feeding in simultaneously under the heading of "transformation." Is that a fair way to put it?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I would say that none of them can be understood in isolation. When we talk about transformation, what we are really talking about, at least within DND and the Canadian Forces, is continuing the journey of reorienting the Canadian Forces and the department that supports it to the requirements of the future.
This kind of rounded transformation was commenced under General Hillier some time ago and really started with operational effect. We started there because looking ahead, we knew we were getting ourselves into a particularly busy phase of the Canadian Forces and a high-risk period for the Government of Canada, 2009 to 2011. We wanted to ensure we were optimally positioned to support operational effect and the conduct of operations for the Canadian Forces, so we stood up the operational commands.
You have heard General Hillier talk about how and why he did so. It was always intended to have subsequent rounds of transformation so we could do things like look at how force generation and the development of future forces aligned with that new model of employment and how the Department of National Defence would align with that new model of employment. I would hate to say we are taking advantage of that because it sounds awkward, but we are being encouraged to continue that now as we come to grips with some of these tough problems that a change in budget line affords us.
We have to figure out how to afford the force of the future, how to orient the force of the future with what we have learned from operations and the new domains like space and cyber that we are working towards, and how to ensure that every dollar we spend is being spent in the way the government needs us to spend it.
The Chair: We will try to come back to that issue of how to plan for transformation. Currently, you are unsure of what the mission will be and you are going from Afghanistan to Libya.
[Translation]
Senator Dallaire: Welcome, gentlemen. I am going to try and focus as much as possible on the strategic level of force generation in terms of procurement and support, and the strategic nature of your roles in the transformation of the armed forces.
[English]
I have not been able to specifically find the role of Mr. King as the ADM without portfolio and exactly what you do now in this exercise.
Mr. Lindsey — CFO, ADM, whatever we call it — are you into the management of the financial resources, accountability for that as well as management of the program? Or is that still in other places, of which you respond as part of the matrix?
Matthew King, Associate Deputy Minister, National Defence: I am the associate deputy minister, which means I am an order-in-council appointment as well. This is an organizational construct that has become prevalent over the last six or seven years. We do have a deputy minister of national defence, Robert Fonberg, and I basically function as his second in command. Every deputy and every associate has their own method of working together. Mr. Fonberg and I, even though I have only been on the job for a year yesterday, are gravitating towards a two-in-a-box construct where we basically spell each other off. We tend to pay an equal amount of attention to issues. There may be one or two major procurements, for example, that I would put more of my time into than he would, but by and large, we try to operate as a two-in-a-box construct.
In this case, the vice-chief and I, just to give you one concrete example, were asked to lead the process over the past summer on DRAP. The vice-chief and I put together a team and we looked at all kinds of information, including what came out of the transformation report, and we began to put forward a proposal for ministers' consideration about what a 5 per cent or a 10 per cent reduction in our budget would look like. I hope that helps a little bit.
Kevin Lindsey, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, National Defence: I will deal with the second part of the question first.
With respect to program management, it is very much the vice-chief's role in his capacity responsible for the delivery of the defence program. He does that through a number of levers, I would say principally through the program management board, which he chairs. I attend that committee and my staff support that committee, but the responsibility for the defence services program is very much in the vice-chief's swim lane.
With respect to financial management, I have responsibilities for overall financial management in the department; however, when it comes to the allocation of resources to support the defence services program and business planning, the vice-chief and I, through the chief of program, are very much joined up; we do not act in isolation.
Senator Dallaire: The reason my question addresses transformation and some of the objectives that were articulated and some of the recommendations that have significant impact on your roles, and as you just described recent work on transformation where you and the vice-chief are sort of off each other, to me, the vice-chief was always sort of the chief of staff who chaired all components of the integrated Canadian Forces National Defence Department since 1972.
Has your role changed inasmuch as you are not sort of prima facie in that responsibility?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: The Federal Accountability Act has required us to clarify how it is we manage issues for which the deputy minister is accountable. We have taken a few steps to ensure that we have clarified that as we have had to. The Government of Canada accepted the CFO model some time ago, and it is a different way of running the department from how we traditionally did. Therefore, we have taken some measures to clarify lines of accountability but retained the overall program coordination and a chief-of-staff-like function of the vice-chief. I would say it is an area where we are reviewing ourselves as we go through this bound of transformation.
As we align the department around a realigned Canadian Forces, these are the types of questions we need to ask ourselves and clarify.
Senator Dallaire: That is why I would like to stay at the strategic level. General Leslie has raised, with his transformation recommendations, that that area is not overtly evident as perhaps historically because of accountability that has brought in some changes that leaves those in force generation and force employment maybe more confused than in the past.
Transformation is arguing that we can be more effective and efficient and so on, and has a series of recommendations. Using just an example from last year, how, under the old regime without this transformation — and will transformation change this — does the department slip something like $1.5 billion? How close is that figure? I am not counting the 3 per cent carryover. How would that be possible in a business plan, to have that percentage and capability and not transform?
We know there is no more transfer from vote 5 to vote 1, which is completely different from what was done historically. Where has the process of the matrix now shifted the ability to produce the results that those who are generating forces, and using them, need in a more timely fashion, and all the resources that are given to them?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Well, senator, it is a complicated question, but let me try to give a quick answer to it.
First, I would say that you characterize force generation and force employers as being more confused in this environment. I do not believe they are. I think they have clear direction and know what they have to do in terms of delivering effects and generating forces. On that side of things there is no confusion.
I would say I think your comments are motivated by General Leslie's characterization of how the department has been run and money that has lapsed. I say respectfully that I think General Leslie's interpretation and the public record may differ. If we actually look at the history of the department in the period that he is referring to, we may differ on what we mean by lapsing money. I think that the record is good. I will leave it to my colleagues to elaborate, if you are interested.
I would say, however, that we do face a challenge. We face capacity challenges as we move forward. I think it is important to accept that with the huge increase in budget over the last number of years — and we have had an equal increase in the need to deliver on the defence services program — there have been big-ticket items in that. There also has been a huge amount of reinvestment in national procurement and other necessary deliverables that has put a huge pressure on the organization. Transforming, moving forward, we have to look at our capacity and how we are delivering on that capacity in the future. I hope that addresses your question.
Mr. Lindsey: I might just reinforce the vice's assertion that the department actually has a remarkable record in not lapsing money. That assertion is borne out in the financial data in one of the appendices to General Leslie's report.
The public accounts will be tabled next week, and we need to respect that tabling date. I would say, with some confidence, that the figure of $1.5 billion attributed to the last fiscal year is orders of magnitude overstated.
Senator Nolin: Thank you, admiral, for accepting our invitation. I will try to keep my question short.
What are the main challenges that DND and the CF have over the next decade and how will the report just released by General Leslie help? How will those recommendations help to overcome those challenges?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I think the biggest challenge we have, moving forward, is to deliver an affordable, capable future force, particularly with some of the major equipment programs that we still have underway. We need to orient ourselves to delivering the force of the future, and we need to make sure that we are spending the money we have been given in a way that best contributes to realizing that force of the future.
At the same time, as the Chief of the Defence Staff is quick to point out, we have two other priorities. The first is to maintain excellence today. As we demonstrated in Libya, we have to react fairly quickly, and sometimes in areas where we have not performed in for up to a decade. That is not an excuse for not reacting. We have to be ready to react and do what Canadians need the Canadian Forces to do.
We also have to look after our people, particularly our wounded, ill and injured and the families of our fallen. The journey through the combat mission in Afghanistan is not over, and this will continue for potentially decades to come. We need to make sure we are investing in those three key areas.
We characterize General Leslie's report as a report because we asked him for a snapshot in time for the process of transformation that continues and will continue for a number of years. However, he identified a number of areas, as we asked him to, where we could reinvest ourselves in order to be successful at delivering that future force. He offered some perspectives on how we could reorganize so as to bring more coherence to delivering the force of today and operational effects today, and generating the forces that we need to continue that.
I would also say that, as I said in my opening remarks, we asked General Leslie to think outside the box. We asked him to take a sheet of paper and say if you could do anything you wanted, how would you reorient things so as to give us options for delivering on the future? They did a great job. His team has disbursed, but they are back in my organization implementing an awful lot of what is in the report.
They are also taking all the ideas that generated that, those models, and they are applying them as we go along so we do not lose any of the genius that supported the types of organizational constructs that General Leslie put forward in his report.
I think it has been very helpful and has helped us orient our force development team. We continue to look at Canadian Forces command and control structure and transformation moving ahead. We continue to talk about a departmental structure to support that. We continue to talk about the shape a National Defence headquarters should have, moving in the future. We continue to talk about other options for creating investment space for the future force moving forward.
This is all wrapped up in considerations for the deficit reduction action plan. There is only so much today, in terms of detail, which we can go into, because a lot of it has been put forward to cabinet for decision.
Senator Nolin: There is an important component in relation to the reserves in the report, which we will address in the second hour of our meeting.
I presume that you do not agree with General Hillier's comment in September. He is quoted as saying that, if implemented as is, it could destroy the military. Do you agree with that?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: First, I would say I know General Hillier and have worked for him very closely. I have huge respect for General Hillier and huge respect for General Leslie. I know the two of them have disagreed, or appeared to disagree on this issue. I would say they are pretty categorical folk, the two of them, who have found themselves on either side of an issue. I would hazard to say that the transformation report was never intended to be implemented exactly the way it was. That is not what we asked for. We asked for ideas.
General Leslie accepts that there are some ideas in there that have to be studied carefully. They go not just to feasibility but to the culture of the forces, the future makeup of the force and the delivery of a strong army, navy, and air force within a strong Canadian Forces, in terms of the implementation.
I think General Hillier probably saw it in that light, that if we just took the whole thing and implemented it, it would undercut many other aspects that make us the Canadian Forces we are today.
Having said that, I think General Leslie's view was that he had no intention of undercutting the Canadian Forces, but he was looking for transformative ways to move the Canadian Forces into the future, and everything requires an evolution. I see both sides of that coin, and I do not particularly find it helpful to take one side or the other.
I will say that there are some ideas in the transformation report that are oriented the way we asked the team to orient themselves, and that is: How would you do this for less? How would you free up people and resources to invest in ourselves? We told them to take that as their highest priority.
Some may feel that in looking at Parliament, you could reorganize Parliament to be more efficient and cost- effective.
The Chair: When you have done DND, you can come and do the Senate. We are in the middle of that.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: My point is that Parliament is structured in ways that go beyond efficiency and cost- effectiveness, and go into what it is that we are trying to create. It is in reconciling that with General Leslie's team's orientation that we have to be careful to ensure that we understand some of the other effects that some of the transformative measures would have.
At present, we have implemented about a third of the recommendations in the report; we are working on another third of those recommendations or have actively put them on the table; and we are studying the other third. That is where we are with the report.
Senator Lang: I would like to pursue a little further, in a general sense, the force of the future. We have talked about transformation and about a reduction in financing to the military to meet their new role as we see it, because we are removing ourselves from both theatres eventually.
I would like to hear from you in terms of how you see the future force. Do you see it in the same light as it is being operated now or will we see significant differences within the reorganization in terms of how it will be operating in the next three or four years, as we face different threats, different technology, and all the responsibilities that go along with that?
That is where we have to be agile, I think is the right word, in order to be able to meet these new and unintended forces that might come our way. Perhaps that is part of the discussion that should be taking place. It is not transformation but what we will look like when this is all done.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Thank you for the question. First, in talking about a reduction in resources, we are pretty well off. What we have been asked to do is grow at a slower rate than we were expecting. Because we deliver year by year in terms of a defence budget, that has brought about a lot of thought as to how we will deal with the financial pressures that having less in the future pose, even though it is much more than we had before.
Therefore, when we talk about money coming out of defence, I am careful around my predecessors, as vice-chief, because if I complain about money, they hit me with something. It is a question of making the best use of the money we have, ensuring that internally we are spending it on the things that are priorities, and that we keep in mind the delivery of the future force and we do not mortgage the future force by the day-to-day spending decisions within the force. Essentially, we need to get our priorities straight.
In terms of the next three to four years, I would say we will look very much the same. There are no dramatic changes coming to the Canadian Forces in terms of how we operate.
I am proud of the agility we have today. When we were preparing for the Olympics and fighting in Afghanistan, we had set the Canadian Forces up to be able to deal with a period where the majority of our people were engaged in something, all at the same time, which related to operational output, either preparing to go into Afghanistan — and we had a large team deployed to California — in Afghanistan, supporting the mission to Afghanistan, just having rotated back; or amassing for security support to the Olympics on the West Coast of Canada, in numbers of about 4,000; or reorienting our ready forces in case something else happened during that time frame. That was an incredibly challenging period for us to be ready for all that was on our plate.
Haiti happened. Within two days, we had turned around a force that numbered 2,000, with two ships, because that is where the need was. We generated, oriented and launched that, so as to bring support to that nation. That is agility.
We were able to respond to Libya, notwithstanding the continuation of combat operations in Afghanistan, and the preparation for the largest redeployment of the Canadian Forces — Canadian Army, mostly — back to Canada since the end of the Korean War. It happened, and we responded. We were there, not just with aircraft but with ships, command and control, and with everything the government asked us to provide.
In the next three to four years, I do not see that changing. I am very proud of the agility we have today.
Moving forward, life gets expensive 20 or 30 years from now. The cost of maintaining equipment and the cost of procuring, in a defence industry with an inflation rate of about 7 per cent, becomes a challenge about 10 and 15 years from now.
Therefore, we need to ensure that we have selected, oriented and prepared a Canadian force that has the agility that we possess today but that is also of a size that does not over-invest at the expense of delivering the force of tomorrow. That is the type of transformative work we are looking at right now, with all this other stuff that is going on.
Does that answer your question, sir?
Senator Lang: It does to some degree. It is hard to look into the future with a crystal ball and see where we will go, in concert with our allies, to meet our needs 10 years from now, especially in the area of technology, the cost of technology, and whether we will have the financial capability to meet those obligations.
I would like to move on to the transformation report you referred to earlier. You had mentioned that a third of the recommendations were implemented; another third are being considered for implementation; and another third are under consideration.
I had understood that that particular document, or that blueprint, would have to go to cabinet for approval and then be implemented. Obviously, I have the process somewhat confused here. What exactly goes to cabinet versus the actual report, the transformation report?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: The transformation team was an internal team looking internally at ways to create flexibility, reinvest in ourselves and reorient ourselves. A number of the measures in that report require decisions by our minister; a number of them may require us to go to cabinet; a number of them represent savings that we can put on the table as options within the deficit reduction action plan decision space. That obviously must go to cabinet and will be considered.
Some of these are well within departmental authorities. I do not want to wait a year to do things that we should be doing. Some of the work of the transformation team encompassed work under way before the transformation team was stood up, but where it made sense for me to assign to the transformation team that work so we had a coherent approach to all the change we were suggesting moving forward. A couple of areas, we are already implementing.
The Chair: We have to be quick here because we have a long list of speakers.
Senator Lang: Could you indicate to us the timeline in respect to the final decisions being made on that report or on other reports that will be adjunct to that?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Again, in terms of final decisions on the report, it was never intended to be decided upon as a report. There is a series of recommendations and those decisions on the recommendations will vary in terms of time. The ones that relate to options for the deficit reduction action plan will be decided by cabinet and announced in the next budget.
Senator Plett: I have three short questions and I will ask all three before you answer.
General Leslie stated that there has been significant increase in the number of executive staff, ADMs, DGs, EX-3s, EX-4s and EX-5s at the National Defence Headquarters from 2004 to 2010. What would be the rationale or the reasoning behind this growth? For example, what area saw the greatest amount of growth and why? Can you explain generally what has driven civilian growth?
Lastly, in General Leslie's Senate testimony, he testified that:
. . . we believe that the number of headquarters should be reduced fairly dramatically to free up those incredibly valuable personnel — regular force and public servants —
If the department were to act on General Leslie's recommendation, what role do you foresee for these public servants in the future?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: General Leslie has colourful language. May I defer to my colleague, Mr. King?
Mr. King: I will start with civilian growth and then work from there to executive growth.
First, I think Vice-Admiral Donaldson has noted from the period of time 2004 to 2010, the years examined by General Leslie and his team, there was civilian growth in DND and CF of about 30 per cent. I think General Leslie used the number 8,000 people; it is likely a little less, but not far enough off to quibble, so I will use that in the short term.
By way of background, of the 28,000 public servants who work in this institution, 64 per cent do work under military command; 70 per cent of that number work outside of Ottawa on the wings and the bases. These are folks that are involved in either providing direct support to our forces or involved in many of the readiness activities that take place every day across the country. Since 2004 that ratio has held, so of the 8,000 new public servants that joined the department over that nine-year period, I believe it is, 70 per cent would have gone to the regions and 30 per cent would have been here in NHQ.
I could give couple of quick reasons to account for this level of growth. A budget increase over that period of 51 per cent implies to me that there would be some requirement for additional people to manage that. We have had high and sustained operational tempo over that period of time. I think the number we use is that 50,000 regular CF troops were either in Afghanistan, coming home, getting ready to go or getting ready to go back in. With that concentration of effort, public servants were often called upon to backfill jobs that were in a lower tempo environment done by regular CF forces. Full-time reservists were used to backfill, as well as accommodating contractors, who were doing important work for us. Over that time period, the CF restructured in a fundamental way, begun under General Hillier, and created four more commands. That took a fair number of public servants as well.
All of this is to say that, as we built up particularly since 2006, it was always understood that when tempo would reduce, so, too, would be the resources dedicated to tasks in support of deployed efforts. That is clearly the period we are in now. I offer that as a few points on the nature of the growth.
In terms of the EX growth from 2004 to 2010, as General Leslie stated in his report, we went from 101 EXs up to 160 EXs in 2010. EXs, in the civilian context, begin at the director level and progress from there to director generals and assistant deputy minister and upwards from there. I would offer some of the same factors that I went through just now in terms of underpinning the growth in civilians, namely, the budget increase, the backfilling efforts that we made and that sort of thing.
A couple of factors are important when you look at the overall EX complement in DND. We increased by whatever that was, 40 or 51 per cent, from 2004. Even with that increase, our ratio of EXs to non-EX staff in the department was 1 to 195. If you add lieutenant colonels and colonels into the mix, who, depending on your calculation, could be EX-1s or EX minus 1s, that reduces the ratio to 1 to 150. If you look at the broader core public administration — that is, the average across departments — that ratio is 1 to 39. Even though we added quite a few over that 10-year period — again, partially related to the increase in operation tempo, partially related to the significant increase in budget — we are comfortable in that we still place ourselves far down the ratio that is held in the public sector as a whole. I hope that helps a little.
Senator Plett: That answers the question, yes.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: You asked about the hypothetical reduction in headquarters and the use of the people. Depending upon the headquarters reduced, we are not talking about a huge number of people. However, we have a number of future positions that we know we will have to fill in the Canadian Forces that come to us with new equipment and with new organization. My team tries to figure out where those people will come from. They come from stopping stuff that other people are doing. With the reduction in headquarters, the reduction in the number of people dedicated to headquarters, although they are not directly translatable, would come the flexibility to invest people in those areas that we have not yet allocated people for, for example, equipment like UAVs in the future; medium lift helicopters, when they come on line. A number of other new capabilities that we are getting require people; those people come from stuff that we used to do that we do not do anymore because we are moving into the future. This would fall into that category in terms of the reallocation of people. Does that answer your question?
Senator Plett: Yes, it does, thank you.
The Chair: We have three more questioners and about six minutes.
Senator Segal: I think it was Mr. Lindsey who was kind enough to make reference to the terms of reference and the appendices for the actual study done by General Leslie. These are not available to us. It is difficult for us to look at General Leslie's report, which I am sure was done in the best of faith, where he says: "Guided by the intent of the Minister of National Defence (Annex A, Appendix 1) . . ." We do not have access to those appendices. We have no idea what the intent of the minister was. I wish to make the case that the jobs of us all are made easier when we can look at those documents. This may be the longest translation in the history of mankind.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: We take the point. We had hoped to have them released by now, but we have little influence over the timing of a process and we can submit them in no other form than translated.
Senator Segal: On page 4 of the Vice-Admiral's statement to the committee, he said:
Our challenge has changed from one of fulfilling immediate operational demand, a challenge that we met with success —
And I think Canadians would agree with that.
— to one of adapting our structures and processes to a new strategic context.
I think you would agree that whether it is Afghanistan 1 or Afghanistan 2, Libya or Haiti, stuff happens while you are making plans; stuff happens while you are defining new contexts. What is the new context? When does someone share the new context with us, or is it the Canada First Defence Strategy until revised?
It strikes me that on a host of fronts, Canadians would look across the globe and see some jarring new contexts that may affect the Straits of Hormuz and potentially failed states in the Caribbean that have a direct national security implication for us. The committee as a whole, and I as a citizen, would be interested in understanding how that is defined and whether you share that with anyone so that Canadians can understand the context within which you seek to make the difficult decisions you have to make.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: That is a great question. It goes to the heart of what is next. However, I would say that it is a bigger question than the Canadian Forces or the Department of National Defence. It really is a strategic context within which our country is operating, and I would not want to get ahead of government policy in that respect.
The strategic context to which I was referring was the context within which we were delivering defence today. There are four elements to that which I want to highlight.
We must be mindful that, as we plan, real stuff happens, but also that we have given the Canadian Forces agility, the confidence and the capability today to be able to react to that as we move into the future.
First, the financial context has changed. This is not to say that there is no money, but it is to say that the amount of money and when it is being delivered has changed, so we have to replan to that new baseline. It is for reasons I completely understand and support, but we have to replan to that baseline and we have to ensure that we are making best use of the money we are spending to preserve that capability to react, to preserve our capability to look after our people, but also to be able to reinvest in the force of the future.
The other element that has changed is what we have learned. We need to internalize things like all-source intelligence centres that we figured out in Afghanistan through some trial and error. We got it right. There is a very good construct there that does not exist in our force structure. We need it to exist in our force structure.
We turned into an air mobile army in some respects in Afghanistan. We are not structured as an air mobile army and we have to get smart about how we implement that capability into the Canadian Forces moving forward.
There are a number of other examples I can offer that have caused us to reflect on how we wish to adjust to what we have learned.
We have to deliver the Canada First Defence Strategy, the force of the future, in a way that gives us that agility and that capability. I believe that the CFDS construct remains valid in terms of what it lays out for the future of the Canadian Forces; we just have to get on with it and deliver it. We have been focused on mission success in Afghanistan and much of our energy has been directed towards that. We now must have a longer-term view and direct energy towards delivering that force of the future.
Finally, we need to look at how the Canadian Forces fit into new domains like cyber. We had not considered cyber- security and where it is today back in 2008-09 when we did CFDS. We had a glowing success in Afghanistan for our reserve force. We need to reflect that in moving into the future. We have a space domain that has evolved since we first considered this. We need to consider some of these elements as well.
In talking about a strategic context, it was not so much the global strategic context, although I am mindful that that changes as well, it is that context within which we are trying to implement defence priorities as we move forward.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Day: This has been an interesting and helpful discussion for us all.
I am wondering whether we are not causing some confusion in relation to the use of the word "transformation" and how that was sold by General Hillier when he was talking about restructuring for a more effective Armed Forces, not so much driven by trying to save 5 per cent one year and 5 or 10 per cent the next year. I would like to go back to that point.
With your new team that you set up, are you reviewing the various elements of the Armed Forces and saying that we could have a much better Armed Forces to meet the Canada First policies but then saying that you cannot do that because you have to reduce by 5 and 10 per cent? What is driving what is happening now? I ask that about both the military side and the civilian side.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: You have pretty much summarized my life. It is being driven by just about everything that you have said.
We need to look at the size of the ready force that gives us the agility, flexibility and capability that we need but that does not over-invest in certain capabilities at the expense of investing in the force of the future. We have to find the balance between doing our business today and how we will be investing our money in 10 and 15 years in order to be able to deliver that equipment and make it work for us.
That touches on all those domains because there is a change in terms of the finances available to deliver defence. We need to adjust to that. There are some uncertainty related to that, but we have to know how we are going to adjust to that and tell the government how we will adjust to that. For the deficit reduction action plan proposals of 5 and 10 per cent of operating, we have to put on the table what we could do differently and the risks that that would entail in terms of delivering the force of the future, being effective and responsive today and looking after our men and women.
My orientation is not on saving money. My reality is on saving money, but our orientation in the CF and the departmental side remains the effectiveness of the Canadian Forces today and the effectiveness of the Canadian Forces in the future.
It is difficult to say what the driving force is because there are so many driving forces right now in reshaping defence for the future.
That is probably not a very good answer to your question.
Senator Day: A number of recommendations were made by General Leslie, and I am wondering if you can even consider some of them. The purpose of the group that you set up in the spring when you arrived in your current position, the Canadian Forces transformation team, which is made up of both civilians and military personnel, is to bring together all the threads of transformation. Are you talking about the low-hanging fruit? Are you talking about finance, saving dollars now, to meet your 5 and 10 per cent savings, or are you talking about some of these suggestions that were made by General Leslie to recapitalize the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff as the force manager — this is a different role that he is recommending — and designate you and your position as the readiness authority? They are different roles than managing for the purposes of finding 5 per cent or 10 per cent.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: That is, and the transformation team was given a fairly broad mandate with some specific areas of concentration. One of them was to find areas where we could save money to reinvest in ourselves. Another one was to look at how we can operate more efficiently and thereby require fewer people to do it. Another was, forget efficiency and costs; is there a way of doing things more effectively? In the transformation team's report, representing as it does a kind of a snapshot, where they were in this journey, as that team came to an end it all folded back into the headquarters, because, as I say, the work continues and the people go back to their jobs.
Senator Day: That is General Leslie's team.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: That is General Leslie's team. The recommendations encompass all of these different areas, and it is confusing. It is very confusing to an outsider, but it was not really designed to be understood and appreciated in and of itself by the outside world. It has been given a profile that it was not intended to have, which is fine. The only thing, as Oscar Wilde said, worse than being talked about is not being talked about. It does not represent a Lord Levene-like end state where it has been studied, agreed and set up and this is where we are going. It represents a number of different ideas that can then be picked up or further studied or can inform further work on the subject.
The idea of when we will implement the transformation report is a difficult question to answer because it was never intended to be implemented as a report per se. It was intended to give us a series of recommendations that would inform activity now, work so that we could create activity in the near term or stuff that would inform the deliberations that are going on into the future.
Senator Day: Maybe we could hear from the civilian side on that question, because I was left with the impression last day that the recommendations by General Leslie that impacted on the civilian side of Department of National Defence were put aside and they would be dealt with by a different group at a different time. If that is the case, this transformation team that is being created has both civilian and military in it. Are you bringing it back together or was I misinformed previously?
Mr. King: In this instance, General Leslie was referring to work that the military civilian team had undertaken in a fairly preliminary sense, to begin to provide recommendations or ideas even on how to restructure the department in accordance with what the CF once restructured might look like. I know at the time — I was part of the decision- making process — the deputy minister and I believed that the better course of action was to focus on putting innovative ideas on how the CF might be restructured at some point in the future with the view that the department would align to that restructured CF. We thought that by trying to do them in parallel that it would be inefficient and ultimately it would be a bit of a guessing game or mug's game even because, while we publicly many times indicated that we will align the public service side of the department to whatever restructuring occurs on the CF side, we just did not see the value of doing it in tandem. We thought we had to have one to see what it looked like and then we would fall in behind it.
That is the first part of my answer, senator. I did like the first part of your question on the drivers and the efficiency. The vice-admiral has indicated it is confusing and in particular the use of the world "transformation" has become a challenge to keep forward.
The way I try to keep it straight in my head is the following: Strategic review was all about identifying direct program spending. Here, departments were asked to look at 5 per cent of their lowest performing, least important programs. That made sense; that was really good. It was not easy, but one considers that it would be done on a cyclical basis. It is an interesting construct. The DRAP is more about looking at how we do it, and I think this has the potential in the DND and CF case to be really important as we move forward. We have the largest budget by far in government, the largest direct program spending by far in government. It stands to reason that we would have the most elaborate and most time-consuming processes in government. I would point to procurement, and we have all kinds of metrics that would indicate we need to do a better job at accelerating the decision-making process.
From that narrower perspective, DRAP provides a real opportunity for us to put a premium on how we actually do the work. As the vice-admiral said earlier, a lot of these initiatives, including General Leslie's report, were initiated long before we knew there would ever be a DRAP. As we understood that operational tempo would drop down, we have begun to put in place the foundations of efforts that would let us become more efficient. The value part is straightforward. It is to ensure that a dollar reduction in input does not necessarily result in a dollar reduction in output or strategic effect, and that is what will guide us.
Senator Munson: I am not making light of anything. Remember the old cartoon, Transformers; there is more than meets the eye. General Leslie still has a genuine concern about the amount of military in the bureaucracy here in Ottawa. He said it over and over again. I would like to know how you view the bureaucracy. Is it too big in Ottawa? Can that money be used in a better place, in a battlefield, rather than in the battlefield of Ottawa?
You have been looking at ways to reduce the number of full-time reservists. What kinds of ways?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: We will have to study that one, senator — I am kidding.
In some areas there is a lot of bureaucracy in Ottawa. The challenge is that I am not sure it is as easy to identify what does not need to be done, as was suggested in the transformation report, so the process reforms that we are looking at and the process work that we are looking at that is associated with the deficit reduction action plan, and in fact that will follow on from that, because, as I say, we cannot afford not to continue to find ways to reinvest in ourselves, I think will tell us where we are doing stuff that we really do not have to do. Much of what we do is driven by Government of Canada requirements. Much of what we do is driven by a need for precision in cost, in options analysis, in phasing, so it is difficult to say how much is enough.
We have committed to reduce the size of our headquarters and we have work going on now to try to give that more specificity, some of it related to the 5 and 10 per cent options of government, other related to the continuing look at the size of the National Defence headquarters, the Canadian Forces size and how the civilian side may respond to that.
That would be my reaction to the size of the bureaucracy in Ottawa. I agree we need to reduce it. It is just very difficult sometimes to know what it is that can be reduced.
In terms of number of reservists, we have had the Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study under way for the last year to inform me and us as to the areas within which full-time reserves support our institution best and areas where we should transition from full-time reserves being in certain types of employment to someone else doing that employment or not doing that employment in favour of supporting healthy reserves. We have some time to discuss that in the next session.
Senator Munson: I realize that. I just made mention of it because it was in your speech.
The Chair: As a final point, when you answered Senator Segal's question about figuring out the role and what the future will be — we do not have a crystal ball — are we actually in any active discussion with our allies, either through NATO or other means, to say, "We are thinking about doing this; what are you going to do?" Is this happening in that context at all?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Yes. We speak of our allies all the time. In fact, General Leslie spent a lot of time doing comparisons with allies for us. I think he briefed you on it, and I think that is very important.
It is also important to recognize that some of the contexts are different. We in the Canadian Forces underwent a lot of transformation about 15 years ago; that is to say, significant budget reductions that our allies are going through now. We have adjusted to those.
We have evolved differently than they have. Our transformation is as much about celebrating success today but not at the expense of success tomorrow. We are making sure we are positioned to be able to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to recapitalize the Canadian Forces and make best use of it going forward.
The Chair: Thank you all very much for this. It has been very helpful. It is how I envision this committee working, and I hope to invite you in the future again so we can keep tabs on how this is progressing and how the transformation is taking shape.
Thank you very much to Mr. King and Mr. Lindsey, and we are asking Vice-Admiral Donaldson to stay for the next panel, where we will focus on transformation in the reserves.
We will carry on now, with our focus generally on transformation but also on the overall question of reserves in the future. As a committee, we are specifically studying that issue. We will probably complete a report we hope sooner as opposed to later on that matter. That is why we wanted to separate this one off and ask Vice-Admiral Donaldson to stay with us. He is Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. He is joined by the new Chief of Reserves and Cadets, Rear-Admiral Jennifer Bennett; and Scott Stevenson, Assistant Deputy Minister (Infrastructure and Environment). That is DND-wide, but you can focus in on questions.
As we said in our earlier panel, we are in a time of restraint, and much of the change that people are thinking about is driven by those needs. However, there is also a recalibration as we change our operations in Afghanistan to operations in Libya or maybe closer to home.
I want to hear from you all on this. As General Leslie very generally talked about this issue, in the future as we go down this road of transformation, we should be thinking about the regular force as external operations such as missions in Libya, Haiti and Afghanistan; and when we talk about the reserves, we should be thinking about more domestic operations, although they will always cross over. Is that a reasonable starting place? I would like to hear from you all on that.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I know that we are pressed for time. It may not be acceptable, but perhaps you would agree to take my opening statement as read into the record.
The Chair: We absolutely will do that. Thank you for that.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: That would free up more time for questions.
At one point in the not-too-distant past, we had 15,000 of our 27,000 primary reservists on full-time service. When I say "full-time service," it encompasses the full range of activity, both in support of operations and in support of our institution.
I would also say that I joined the Canadian Forces as a naval reservist, and I am fiercely proud of that association. I take personally the requirement to have a healthy, capable reserve force for Canada moving into the future. We talked about moving into the future in the last session. I cannot imagine the Canadian Forces moving into the future without a strong reserve force, just as I cannot imagine a Canadian Forces without a strong army, navy and air force, moving into the future.
These are complicated issues. As with General Leslie's transformation context, there are some confusing aspects to it. My colleagues and I stand ready, along with General O'Brien and General Reid from the land reserves and air reserves, Commodore Craig from the naval reserve, and Colonel Stevens from the health services reserve, should we have questions of detail that they can help with. We stand ready to answer your questions, Madam Chair.
The Chair: There are others in the audience that we can refer to, if need be.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I hate to put them on the spot, but I brought the A team with me.
Senator Dallaire: The reserves have been mobilized over the last five years. When you use the figures you have articulated, there are some who want to go to a mobilization context and others to a more responsive-need context of reinforcing the forces. Some are talking about individual augmentations, others subunit, platoon capabilities. On top of that, all three services have a different scenario. The air force is integrated with a lot of ex-military in it and technical. The navy has gone with the MCDVs and Scud and expanding it. The army is a whole different exercise, however, in how it sees itself.
Do you have a conceptual framework to what level of operational capability you want to keep the reservists, particularly the veterans now with that high level, in order to establish how much you want to use them into the future for operations? Is there a guiding framework that will give you the ability to say, if we keep them at this level it will cost us this much and so on?
Part of that is, are the numbers right? Is it 27,000, 30,000 or 33,000? What sort of number reference can you articulate for us, from a programming side, that should meet whatever that requirement is?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Great questions, senator; let me take a stab at it and then I will turn it over to Rear- Admiral Bennett. The term "mobilize" is a confusing one in and of itself. I would say the Canadian Forces have been mobilized over the last number of years. I say that because it is not just the reserve force that has been feeding into the road to war to support operations in Afghanistan, feeding into the operational support mission and stepping up in other ways like Haiti and internally with flood response, et cetera.
Within the Canadian Forces force structure we have been taking people out of headquarters and instructors out of schools and preparing them to deploy. In that context, the reserves have been helping not just to deploy on operations but helping to train new recruits and to conduct needed staff work and analysis in the headquarters, back-filling positions that existed but did not have people for them.
They also represent new capability for the Canadian Forces. Our joint personnel support units, for example, are populated mostly by reservists right now because we needed to get them up and running now. What does that mean? The people that were available were reservists who could step up and fill that need.
In a sense, the whole idea of mobilized is a confusing one, and the concept of mobilization that existed back in the Cold War and before has been overtaken by events. We need a different concept.
My conceptual framework, moving forward, is that there is a level of readiness that we expect every reservists in Canada to maintain in terms of their ability to step up, when called upon, at short notice, to respond to the needs of Canada. There is also a group that needs to be at a higher level of readiness that can feed into a force package that is available for deployment. I think the army is looking at a model along those lines.
We also need to allow reservists to plan to support operations that are ongoing as a first and second rotation when it is clear what we are doing and how they can feed into it. The training mission in Afghanistan is a great example of that.
There are a number of different ways in which we need the reserves to be positioned to support the Canadian Forces in the future. We have conducted a Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study to try, first and foremost, to look at, in terms of full-time reservists, how many we need to support our institution, support the reserve institution and to make sure reserve force generation is re-energized. It is also to say how much we have to invest in readiness for part- time reserves so they are ready to do the things I have just said.
The army, navy and air force have different views of how to structure the reserves in order to create that, but there is a Canadian Forces framework within which that has to take place. Those are the things we have looked at in the course of the study. Also, what are the other impediments to successfully employing reserves as we move forward? What type of professional development do we expect reserve officers to have, for example. I think you would agree that some programmed terms of full-time service for senior officers in things like headquarters are important so they have the skill set we expect them to have. We are looking at these types of things as well.
As we reduce the number of full-time reservists from the functions we ask them to step up and perform, in a time when we needed them to do that, we are actually reinvesting in the type of ready reserve that will serve our interests moving into the future: available for operations; available to support the institution in times of need; flexible and responsive in their communities, so if something goes wrong they are healthy, fit, well trained, well oriented and ready to respond. That is the type of reserve we need across the country.
Rear-Admiral Jennifer Bennett, Chief of Reserves and Cadets, Department of National Defence: If I could add a couple of other words that we need to look at. Canada is not the only nation; a number of allies are looking at the difference between a strategic and operational reserve and the balance between them. The United States, in particular, having moved to a predominately operational reserve, found that the sustainability of that was their greatest challenge.
One could argue that, for us, more a question of readiness is the question of sustainability and being able to sustain reservists who are traditionally drawn from the part-time community, to be able to sustain a higher level of readiness. At the same time as examining the level of readiness that is appropriate for the reserve force, we also need to look at reserve-specific tasks, roles and missions, our ability to sustain and generate those to a level of readiness, the advantage of assigning reserve specific missions versus integrated effects or augmentation. Again, aligned with the study that the vice-chief was mentioning, each of the environments in turn is reviewing their reserve force because we have evolved quite dramatically, not only over the last decade, as we have been at war, but over the past 20 years. It is looking at reserve readiness applicable to each of the environments, the sustainability of an operational or strategic reserve and what the balance of that should be in each of the environments.
Senator Dallaire: We are moving beyond total force of the old 1970s philosophy. It is a far more sophisticated instrument now, be it specific tasks and capabilities that we are looking at. All of that has a dollar sign associated with it, particularly in the reserves where you pay them by the day and their pay is out of the O&M fund and not out of a permanent fund that we can sort of establish a certain level of guarantee of employment, as we do with the regular force. Furthermore, the infrastructure to meet this new generation of reservists, who are veterans and prepared to serve and have served and have a high level of capability that we may want to sustain, or we may want to drop and lose them all — the infrastructure of the reserves, particularly in the army, is désuet. Pedagogically, a lot of those armies are ineffective. They have a big cost on the patrimonial side, and so on.
Is there a more structured philosophy coming forward in the whole resource basing and stability of resource basing for the reserves? I will use one example to throw it out there. Is there a reserve force infrastructure plan, as there is for PSP and for others, or are they just thrown in with the rest of them and end up at the bottom of the list?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Perhaps I will start, then see if Rear-Admiral Bennett has anything to add, and then turn it over to Mr. Stevenson on the infrastructure side.
Senator, you have made a couple of points. First, you asked about numbers, and whether 27,000 was the right number. I would say that 27,000 reserves is what we have, moving to 30,000. I would say that 68,000 regular, moving to 70,000, is what we have. We need to structure ourselves with that now, and then we will see if it works better with some other numbers. However, that is the framework that is given to us, and we are working from that. It does not mean that as we move forward we cannot consider other mixes. However, for now, I think that gives us a robust force that has stood us in fairly good stead.
In terms of capturing pay and that type of thing, I am making everyone's lives miserable. As we reinvest in the ready reserve and reduce the number of full-time Class B reservists, it is not to reduce the number of people in operations but to reduce the number of full-time in our establishment.
At the same time, I want to identify, for the rest of our 27,000 primary reservists, the number of days per year that they need to be ready, the qualifications we need them to have, what that takes in terms of an investment of time on their part, and what that means in terms of the availability of money for that.
We will capture that and plan for it. It will not be discretionary space moving forward. The army is already moving in this direction, but I want to be able to capture all of that. Also, I want to establish measurable readiness benchmarks and I want to start seeing that we are achieving the readiness we want from the reserves, and measuring and adjusting, so that we do the best we can with the money we are capturing.
We are trying to be more programmed in our use of the ready reserve, rather like we are for everything else that is important to us in the delivery of the defence services program.
In terms of veterans' skill sets, the best place for that is on the armoury floor. You have identified some of the challenges with some of the armouries across the country, but we need a challenging, part-time readiness program that inspires our veterans to take their skill sets back into their units, to make their units better at what they do and ready for what is next; and what is next is not just in case there is a flood in the next community but in case there is another Libya, Afghanistan, or Haiti.
In my opinion, folks have to have the view that they are not being set aside for domestic tasks when in fact the skill set they have brought back is as good as any regular force skill set in the business.
We have also offered those veteran reservists from Afghanistan who would like to go into full-time service to be priority candidates for transfer into the regular force. We have a challenge.
Senator Dallaire: Making it easier?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: It is as easy as pie, except that there are only so many that we need these days, because it turns out that folks do not want to leave. Managing that on a priority basis is important to us as well going forward.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: If I could add to the last point. We also need the veterans to help force generate the next generation. We need them to return as instructors. Anyone with full-time experience, in particular combat experience, will be a huge asset back on the armoury floor and back in the units, and we would like to see more of that.
In terms of the stability of reserve funding, budgeting and pay, part of the follow-on implementation after the Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study is to look further at that issue to establish, as the vice-chief has mentioned, the funding lines within the budget to better capture those costs and to better fence that money.
Scott Stevenson, Assistant Deputy Minister (Infrastructure and Environment), National Defence: The question on the state of reserve infrastructure, and principally for the army — I would set aside the Naval Reserve and the Air Reserve because the condition of their facilities is generally different — the Army Reserve's infrastructure is what we would categorize as being in a fair condition, which means that it is not at the top. It means the major systems of each of those facilities work, or there is a low likelihood of failure. It basically means that there has been a minimal level of investment. The Canada First Defence Strategy recognizes that for many years, our level of investment was insufficient to maintain them at a desired state or condition. It has declined over the last 10 years or more.
The department does not set aside reserve infrastructure as separate from regular force infrastructure, but we aim to increase our investment in maintenance and repair in a progressive way to the investment target that is budgeted for in the Canada First Defence Strategy. That investment is then prioritized, based on the condition of the asset. Those that are the worst should get the funding for their maintenance and repair first, and the reserve infrastructure would not necessarily be pushed to the lower part of that priority setting for access to money.
Senator Nolin: Most of my questions have already been answered through the questions of Senator Dallaire.
I want to hear from both of you on the implication of the reserves in the communities. It is a key element of our history and our military history, and it is not known. Can we use our reserve to be part of that reconnection with our different communities?
This could be challenging. For Montreal, it would be a great challenge, but there is definitely a role for the reserve to be used there. I want to hear whether you have any thoughts on that.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Reserves in communities serve three purposes, from my perspective. The first is operational. That is, they are trained and ready to respond in a case where disaster strikes within the community. They are not first responders, but quite often our force of last resort is called upon minutes after a first response is needed.
We have organized ourselves operationally in Canada, through Canada Command and the Regional Joint Task Forces, to be able to mobilize reserves quickly in their communities and to have the relationships in place before a crisis, in order to enable the reserves to react effectively in a crisis.
The next role, I would say, is in representing the Canadian Forces and representing their own regiment within the communities. The individual commanding officers and the services do a good job of local outreach and having a presence. Obviously, this varies from community to community.
We also have relationships with some of our units that are not located in the named community. Some of our maritime coastal defence vessels, for example, are named after Canadian communities and they have a relationship with those communities.
We try to take seriously the relationship with the community and the important historical ties, but also the current representation that we expect the Canadian Forces to have in communities across the country. I think they do a pretty good job of this in most cases. As you say, in some communities this is more challenging than in others. In some communities we have to suggest that perhaps a little less community liaison might be good.
The last thing I would say is that I think the reserves provide a great example for youth, but also of citizenship, leadership, and commitment to country. They bring something to their communities that few other organizations do. We are proud to have reserves located throughout communities in this country to serve as that positive example.
Senator Nolin: Bringing back home the Afghanistan experience will be more interesting for many Canadians to hear about.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Senator, I agree with you. It is a double-edged sword. Our reservists will be bringing home experiences from Afghanistan that will inform their communities, but there are communities that will have to reach out and help. There are some who have had difficult experiences in Afghanistan. We need to be mindful of that. I think communities are hugely supportive of that. We work as closely as we can with communities to provide the type of care, monitoring and options for our folks who come back from Afghanistan or from other difficult operations, where they are not necessarily in garrison with all the folks they deployed with. We need to keep an extra close eye on them.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: I see our role in connecting in communities as twofold — not only the people as representatives of that community and the citizens but also the platforms that are available, for example, inviting the community into the buildings for events such as citizenship ceremonies. The reserve can play an important role in welcoming new Canadians and in serving as examples of Canadian service by inviting people into the units. We can consider the asset of the people who belong to the reserve units. Also, the units themselves could be used or factored into other plans and developments to welcome the community in.
I think, as well, it is important that reservists play that role as citizens and as members of our community. We do a lot of community outreach not necessarily connected with our Canadian Forces training, but it allows us a presence in our communities to give a face and a greater understanding of the Canadian Forces. Engagement with our communities is twofold, both through the people and through the units themselves.
Senator Nolin: Thank you very much.
Senator Segal: I have two questions. I will ask them both and then allow our guests to address them.
I noticed a reference in Vice-Admiral Donaldson's statement that is now part of the record, namely that this change in tempo allows the reserve forces to regenerate, to sustain it and to focus on the needs of the unit and of the individuals that give it strength.
The question is a touch rhetorical. If you reduce training days and budgets for them so that local commanding officers do not have the capacity they did, that may sound like regeneration, but it is not really regeneration at the local level. I would be interested in your perspective within the financial context of how you manage that. I would make reference to Mr. Stevenson, who was good enough to say — and I think I have the quote correctly — that "reserve infrastructure would not necessarily be pushed to the bottom." That is not, if I may say so, a driving statement to inspire reservists about their infrastructure. You may have meant to say it another way. I am not trying to be unfair, except that we remember the days when reservists did not get paid on time; when friends and family had to sustain people between paycheques. We know the shift that has transpired in terms of so many of our reservists having served as part of the regular force and having come back, et cetera, has changed the dynamics. People are working diligently on that, but I would be interested in your perspective.
I want to make a reference to three Chiefs of the Defence Staff who I thought were all of singular importance because they redefined the relationship between you folks in uniform and the politicians who are part of the duly elected government. General Baril deserves credit for having said, with respect to an Ethiopian-Eritrea initiative where Canada was called to be a border observer team, "We can do this for so many months only, our capacity." I think it was six months. "We have to be out on that date." It was clear and defined in public for the first time — not the traditional military, "Can do, yes, sir, whatever you say, off we go," but, "Yes, but there are limits based on our present resource base."
I think it is fair to say that General Henault did the same thing with respect to one or two other operations, where he said we can do this but we have a limit and the limit is this time frame for this kind of deployment, and got, I think, some political buy-in to manage affairs to respect his operational realities based on his resources.
I think it is fair to say of General Hillier that what he said was that if you want us to do that, we need this — "this" being the equipment, the aircraft, whatever it happened to be.
We now face the end of the formal combat operations in Afghanistan. We have, therefore, a realignment of priority, a change in tempo. When does the senior leadership, either of the reserves or of the force overall, get to say — or do they get to say in any frank fashion, not to us but in private to the political duly elected people — "Actually, the amount of people we have in the regular force and the reserve force is insufficient for the missions. Probably, if we were realistic about the new robust foreign policy being talked about, a full-time resource of 100,000 regular and 50,000 reserves is where we should be moving over time." I am not suggesting that is the right answer; it is not for me to say.
When does that discussion take place? It might take place in the debate in the House of Commons, or in front of this committee, or in the media, but I think Canadians would want to know that uniformed members of the senior military leadership, who respect the role of the duly elected government and civil authority — that is not the issue — do actually get to tell the frank and real truth about the match between a foreign, defence, strategic and security policy, which changes daily, and your actual resource base. I think that relates directly to the reserves and the kind of approach you take.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: If we had a weekend to discuss that second question, I think we would still be discussing it.
Let me address the two questions quickly, if I may, not to diminish the importance of them.
You referred to the challenge in funding, of having to squeeze numbers of training days and so forth. That is the last thing I will squeeze. My intention is to enhance the number of training days for reserves as we move out. We need to create flexibility. We do not have the money to pay a whole bunch of additional full-time people. We do have the money to pay to create a ready reserve. That is what we are identifying and ensuring that we have examined appropriately the number of days because I think it was insufficient. We are looking at the number of days that we require to pay a class A, on a per person basis, to create the readiness that we want at the different echelons of rank moving forward.
I completely understand your concern with that and I can tell you that that is crystal clear in my mind. The worst we can do is to try to achieve efficiencies at the expense of readiness in terms of our reserve force.
Having said that, we have to decide on the readiness we need and we have to fund it. We are happily producing more readiness than we need in key areas. That is at the expense of some of the other things we have to do. It is the last thing that will go, but we need to have a mind of what is the readiness that we have to create, make sure we protect that and fund it but that we are making the most out of anything additional to that in terms of what we are spending money on if it comes at the expense of being able to recapitalize the force for the future.
When we look at what we are doing in terms of investment planning, force modelling and that type of thing, this is some of the work we are doing.
I would respectfully submit that General Baril and General Henault were in different circumstances. When forces were committed, I think they felt compelled to be clear about the limitations of the Canadian Forces in undertaking some of those dangerous missions. I would say that General Hillier had a special way of articulating his needs and the needs of the Canadian Forces. In terms of our dialogue with government, I would characterize it as being more mature. It is still a question of discussing how much is enough and these are difficult questions, but I am confident that our voices are heard moving forward as to what is required through personal experience.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Munson: Is the pay scale good enough for the reservists? What are they getting paid? I ask that in light of the current economic situation of this country.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I can give you a strategic answer, and then I will turn to my colleagues.
Senator Munson: What is their pay scale? Is the current pay scale adequate?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I will give you my perspective. The current pay scale is adequate. If it were not, people would vote with their feet. Is it fair? I think it has been fair over time, but we need to revisit whether it is as fair as we wish it to be.
We need to clarify many aspects of reserve pay, many aspects of reserve benefits, many aspects of regular force benefits, and we need to bring it into a far more coherent package. That is what I will say at a strategic level.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: Our pay system is cumbersome, but I think that most reservists would argue that the pay is very good, in particular for a part-time job, when you consider the benefits that are available for what is considered a casual job.
Pay is, of course, tied to rank, and that is based on promotions. There are some folks who may stagnate at a certain level, and there is no other way to increase their pay. However, for the most part in terms of the part-time organization the pay is very fair.
Where we run into challenges, as the vice-chief just mentioned, is in the comparability between full-time jobs or between like work. We have done a number of reviews in the past of reserve pay to bring it up to its current scale. Reservists are paid at 85 per cent of regular force pay for that rank. There are a number of incentives at each rank, with the exception of Class C, which is on operations. Those reservists are paid 100 per cent of regular force pay and have a more comprehensive range of benefits.
As part of our employment capacity study we will look at pay and compensation as it relates to the current terms and conditions of service.
I hope that answers your question.
Senator Munson: Vice-Admiral Donaldson, you talked earlier in your testimony about ways to significantly reduce the number of full-time reservists. I think everyone in this country is proud of our reservists and what they have done. If there will be cutbacks, how will you continue to attract people to the reserves?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I think that many reservists are being employed on things that they did not join to do. They are prepared to step up and do them. They have skills that they can bring to our institution, but we did not intend that much of this work be done by reservists. We are now in a position to decide where we do want to invest, and we want to invest in a ready, part-time reserve with a component of full-time service that is within the institution and the option for full-time service in support of operations. That is what we have it for and that is what we need to orient for in the future.
We need to figure out what is the right number of full-time reservists to support the reserve institution on the armoury floor where you need full-time folks to support our Canadian Forces institution and to support operations not deployed but at home. Additionally, what type of full-time service is appropriate for professional development for reserves beyond the type of Class B training that occurs in the summer?
Some of these are comparable, but there is a number, and we are arriving pretty much at where we think that number is. I could see it evolving over time, as we get more experience, rather the same way as confirming 70,000. Thirty thousand may potentially be something we want to confirm moving forward. It is, however, a number that we have and are working with and that we will tool our institution to and ensure that it can deliver the way we want it to.
As to the characterization of cutbacks, yes, we are going to spend less money on full-time reserves, but we did not have that money in the first place. That money is being channelled from other areas. We need to put that money back where it needs to be spent and we need to ensure that our investments in reserves are focused on creating the ready, capable, professional force for the future that exists on the armoury floors and in units across the country.
Senator Plett: Most of my questions have been answered. I will, however, ask about something that Senator Munson was asking about, but I will ask it a little differently. I hope to get a straight yes or no answer.
General Leslie's recommendation to cut back on the number of reserves and civilian staff seems to contradict the testimony that we had from David Pratt who claimed that there should be a bigger role for reserves with a stronger presence on the university and community college campuses.
Yes, no, or maybe: Would the cuts proposed by General Leslie hinder the ability of the reserves to reflect the changing face of Canada?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: No, I do not believe so. Reserves on university campuses and in communities can be done on a part-time basis. It can be done as part of creating that ready reserve that I am talking about in communities across Canada. It is not necessarily a full-time service that creates that reflection of the face of Canada. In fact, it can detract from it. It can take reservists who would otherwise be keen to be doing a whole series of things and put them in a job in National Defence Headquarters doing the type of thing that we had groomed someone in the regular force to do but because we did not have anybody conveniently at hand we hired a reservist to do that work.
That is not what we need reserves to do on an ongoing basis. It sure was what we needed reserves to do over the last five years. We needed a lot of stuff done quickly. We up-armoured vehicles. We studied how to win the fight against improvised explosive devices, IEDs. We brought in about 10,000 folks and had to train them, but all the trainers were in Afghanistan, so we needed folks to train new recruits. We needed to plus-up in areas like professional development for the force. We needed to figure out a whole series of initiatives that came at us at the same time during a period of operational imperative. Many of the joint task forces across the country, for example, are staffed by reservists. That could well be entirely appropriate, but we stood them up with reservists before we knew that that was the right thing to do.
We have called on reserves to step up and do a whole bunch of things. I am saying that we need to be clear about what we want reserves to be doing. Making an adjustment to what reserves do on a full-time basis and what they do on a part-time basis, and the flexibility that is available for them to pursue these things on a part-time basis, will actually create a better, more capable reserve. We will be able to invest some of this money in other areas where we need it and were not putting it before, and some of this money in enhancing the ready reserve that we create for the future. I do not agree with the view that it will somehow detract from the mission of the reserves. I think it will enhance it.
Senator Plett: Thank you very much for that great answer, and keep up the good work. We appreciate it.
Senator Lang: We are all encouraged by your commitment to the reserves and what you just said about looking ahead to the future and how you can shape the reserves to meet what we need for Canada and for the Armed Forces. There was a concern here that it could well be decimated as the various bureaucracies within the department fought over how they would realign finances within the Armed Forces.
You referred several times to, I believe, a capacity study for reserves. I believe that is the way you put it.
The Chair: He said Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study.
Senator Lang: Is that available, or when will it be completed?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Senator, it is being completed for me and I have not seen it yet. What I would say about the study is that it has forced the resolution of some extremely challenging questions. It has forced a consideration of where our priorities really are and how we would adjust our institution.
Like any other challenging study, there are dissenting voices. My view is that this represents a way ahead into the future, so we had better make sure everyone is pulling on the same end of rope.
I expect in the next couple of weeks — Rear-Admiral Bennett probably knows the answer to the question — I will get a chance to look at this report. It is not something I would want to make public, at least until we had briefed the chief, worked it through the department and briefed the minister. Some of the recommendations probably touch on DRAP options, so we would be unlikely just to release the report as is, but it is the type of thing I would be proud to speak to you about when it is actually done. It will raise probably as many questions as it answers, but it represents the first step, a strategic step in moving forward into the future with the reserves.
The Chair: Could I have Rear-Admiral Bennett describe how she sees this? Is this your transformation project? How would you describe PRECS, the Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study?
Rear-Admiral Bennett: It is not my project. It was a project that was set up by the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. I was one of the co-project leaders on it, but it has involved Chief of Force Development, Chief of Programme, Chief of Military Personnel and myself as well as all of the force generators of reservists. We are in the process now of the final report and recommendations to be forwarded to the vice-chief.
To add another point, it is not about cutting the reserve; it is about rebalancing the reserve. The strength of the reserve force is not being cut, but rebalanced to focus greater on the part-time aspect of the reserve force. This study has allowed us to look at what is the reasonable number of full-time positions aligned with priorities against the reserve force, our current tasks, roles and missions, and what might be appropriate into the future.
Senator Dallaire: May I have a supplemental?
The Chair: Senator Lang is in the middle of a question.
Senator Dallaire: He has not started it yet.
The Chair: I actually have asked a question. Is this specifically on this question?
Senator Dallaire: Yes.
The Chair: Go ahead, briefly.
Senator Dallaire: The Chief of Military Personnel came before us not too many months ago and told us he is doing a significant review of the whole personnel, administration side of the house. We had him here for the reserve problem. He said he needed three years to bring this about. Is he linked into this and will he produce that sooner? Much of what we talked about is very much into it.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: As I say, the report will actually raise as many questions as it answers — we need to fix this; this does not make sense; we need to update these regulations, and this type of thing. That is very much aligned with what the Chief of Military Personnel is doing.
Senator Lang: I want to follow up on one of the recommendations of Lieutenant-General Leslie. It had to do with the full-time reservists, that they should either be a reservist part-time or a member of the force. Perhaps you could comment on that recommendation.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: I am not sure he got there. I think he said we should reduce to around 4,500 full-time reservists, not counting those on operations. I hate to use the acronym; frankly, it was not a great choice of acronyms, from my perspective, but the Primary Reserve Employment Capacity Study was folded under the work of the transformation team for the year that they were under way to make sure that it was aligned with the work of that team.
There were a number of other initiatives, as I said in the last session, that we folded under General Leslie during that time period, although they would have continued independent to make sure that what came out of the work of the transformation team was actually aligned across the department and across the Canadian Forces.
I agree with General Leslie's perspective on this, although I would go beyond it to say that there are a number of functions for members of the reserve force to perform full-time that are extremely valuable and should be performed by reservists full-time within our institution. The number is significantly lower than it is today, and is significantly lower than it was two years ago.
Does that answer your question, senator?
The Chair: Yes, I think the suggestion was that when people have gone and been involved in operational activity, to Afghanistan or wherever it is, they are excited by that; they were reservists; they want to stay as full-time reservists, but actually the decision has to be made some other way: Either go back to part-time or join the regular force.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Absolutely, Madam Chair. Those skill sets need to come back into their units; those are reserve units. There are opportunities for continuing to serve in the regular force full-time. There are other opportunities to serve on other operations or to serve in the training system full-time, but I would not see that as a career path per se. The reserve is a part-time force and the regular force is a full-time force.
The Chair: Thank you for that clarity.
Senator Day: One of the things that we learned from Afghanistan is the importance of the military-civilian connection and the important complementary role that reservists were playing in provincial reconstruction units. When we visited Afghanistan, I recall one soldier from Moncton who was a university student was quite excited about the role he had to play in helping to build a road — a non-traditional type hard-core military activity but very important in our mission there.
I know that you know, vice-admiral, and I hope all of you know how supportive of the reservists this committee has been and continues to be. We receive contacts from personnel across the country, retired military personnel, sometimes reservists but more often other observers in the communities, and they have pointed out a number of things to us. I will mention them to you and you can tell me that these are under control now.
One of them was that during the Afghanistan mission a lot of the up-to-date equipment was being transferred out to Wainwright to do battle-group training there, so they had no equipment left at the armoury to train on. That reduces the interest of those who were remaining as reservists in the units.
We also heard that although there is an authorized strength for a reserve unit, the major or the colonel in charge of that unit did not get enough money transferred to pay that authorized strength. What happens is that they do not hire up to the authorized strength, they stop recruiting, and there are fewer training days. Some of the university students, and they are very important reservists, rely on their reserve time to help pay their university tuition, and they are finding they are not getting the funds they had anticipated looking historically.
Have you got those items under control now? Are you working on them? The reservists seem to have been treated a little bit less than equally during this last major surge period.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Thank you for those great questions and again, thank you to this committee for the interest you continue to show in the reservists and the Canadian Forces, valuable institutions for Canada.
Any time you travel to the armoury floor you will hear stuff that surprises a guy like a vice-chief, so I encourage you to keep doing that and let me know about areas where we can improve.
In the areas that you have outlined here, I will start with the positive one. I believe you spoke to someone in the PRT who is probably a civil military specialist. That is a specialization that the army has given to the reserve force and that I believe will continue as an area of specialization, not to diminish from war fighting skills. My guess is if you tossed a rifle at that soldier under fire, they would be able to fight with the best of them. However, as an area of focus, it is a role that has proven to be a very good one to assign to reserve units. They have been doing that in Afghanistan for some time now, as well as a number of other roles.
On the other side of the ledger, I think the army was challenged in Afghanistan with making sure that a limited supply of equipment was in the right place to support the road to war, which was really quite a challenge. I think it had an effect on the armoury floor. Coming out of that, the army commander is reloading and reorienting the army, and part of that is ensuring armouries have what they need. It is an area that we will monitor and make sure is being addressed.
In terms of unit strength and pay, when I say I want to determine the requirement to create a ready reserve person by person and then the amount of money we need to invest in that, that is exactly what I am getting at. I know the army commander and the navy and air force commanders are on this already, making sure they understand what money they need to commit so we can create the reserve we need for the future. That will evolve, I expect in a number of days. We may have to constrain it, as a matter of fact. The number of days folks will want to work and the types of skill sets we will want them to have will require a continued investment as we move forward.
The ability of unit commanding officers to anticipate how to make their units ready, what their budget will look like and this type of thing I agree is very important. There is only so much visibility I have into that, but I believe that is a priority now moving forward. I do not know if Rear-Admiral Bennett would have another perspective on that.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: One of the challenges at the unit level is percentage of attendance and that units are not funded for 100 per cent attendance. It will fluctuate during times of the year with university school schedules and interest.
Again, some of the examples you have heard may be specific to one area and certainly were not nationally from the research we conducted. It is a concern. The predictability of pay is a concern for reservists. Again, with a temporary force and attendance fluctuations, there are sometimes more cushions in some units than others to allow them to be able to surge or add to training. It is something that with a new funding model that looks at how reserve funding is tracked, it will help to provide more predictability within a certain parameter. As I say, attendance is always a variable and it is difficult to anticipate from year to year.
Senator Day: Yes, but if you are telling your reservists not to bother to come out because you do not have the money to pay them, that is reflected as an attendance issue.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: Exactly.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: That is the problem we are trying to solve.
Senator Day: Let me pay a compliment, as a supplement to this. We have been told that the navy, once they have fixed the budget for the year, allowed the reserve unit to operate that budget; whereas the other two forces did not leave it exclusively in the hands of the air force or the army and, therefore, during the year if money was needed, some of that money was taken away from the reservists. I hope you will be looking into that to ensure that once it is fixed and once the commander of the unit knows what he or she will have for the year, you will let them manage their own budget.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: As a point of clarification, the Air Reserve is funded differently from the army reserve because they do not have the reserve-specific units per se. The naval reserve does have a national structure through the business planning process that allocates funding to commanding officers who have greater control. We will certainly be looking at two aspects in the future — how the army reserve funding model occurs and how funding is tracked along reserve lines — to be able to give greater visibility.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: We also need to manage money beyond the unit level to ensure we are getting the greatest effect from it. I would hate to see one reserve division — we will call it a naval reserve division because you say they are able to manage their own budgets — be able to make hay while the sun is shining because in a particular year they end up with a bit of a surplus and another one with a deficit, unable to complete training because the budgets were fixed.
In our budgeting process, we have quarterly reviews to determine areas that need more money and areas that can give up money. A strong hand guiding that will ensure the level of readiness is even across all units.
The Chair: I have a couple of points for the record here. In the way that doctors or lawyers, for example, are brought into the reserves, it is a different approach; they might come in for a year and be attached to Special Forces or whatever it is. Is that actually a model that you are considering? You are looking for a broader range of skills, civilian skills in particular, as you think about cyberspace or whatever it may be. Is that a model that might be more appealing to people, to say you can come in and do this on a certain basis, or we will take you for this because we need you to look at this issue and then say "thank you very much" and let them have a different relationship? Is that a possibility?
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: Generally, it is an appealing model to me. However, the vision I have of a future force is a full-time and a part-time force, a relationship with Canadians that encourage them to spend some time in a part-time force with skill sets that we find very difficult to recruit and retain in our full-time force while at the same time committing to periods of full-time service over the course of a 20- to 25-year career. That is challenging to manage. I am not sure we have the tools yet to manage that type of approach.
In certain specific areas and operations like Afghanistan, it is much easier in that context to deal with, but I would like to see us move to a different way of looking at service. I think we are going to have to wait a couple of years. We have a pretty full change agenda at the moment, and we will see if we get an opportunity in the future to look at that. I think Rear-Admiral Bennett can respond to the specifics.
Rear-Admiral Bennett: Those programs are currently aligned with similar programs in regular force attraction for very specific skill sets. The reason it works at present with lawyers or with doctors is that we are able to adapt the initial training and the way they are recruited because they would predominantly be employed based on that civilian skill set; it fits into the Canadian Forces model.
To expand on that, I agree with the vice-admiral in that it is certainly worth looking at, but it is very complicated in that some of those skill sets might need more intensive Canadian Forces or war fighting operational-based training than others. It has certainly been successful in the way we have attracted, trained and are holding those skills on special reserves lists worthy of looking at in the future to expand. The reason it currently works is because it is aligned with some of the larger programs and is very specific to a skill set.
The Chair: As you know, our final panel for the day is on the whole issue of what people will remember as the Canadian Officer Training Corps and who are now the Canadian National Leadership Program.
Is there a mind set on the reserve side here as to whether or not that is a good idea?
Rear-Admiral Bennett: I have been briefed by the group. There is no question about the value of engaging Canadians in a leadership experience expanding their leadership abilities. We currently do that through our two youth programs, the cadets and the Junior Canadian Rangers, albeit to a much younger audience. It was certainly successful in the past.
I would suggest that our greatest challenge remains personnel in order to run or to add more people to our training system. No lack of enthusiasm for the value of a program like that in engaging Canadians and providing them with leadership experience. Again, it is how we fit it into our already stretched personnel and training systems.
Vice-Admiral Donaldson: As the vice-chief, I always have to ask the question: Who will pay for this? With everything else that you have heard today, you would understand that we would be uncomfortable with a system that was not resourced.
The Chair: All right, thank you all very much. This was a very useful session for us as we prepare to put together a study. Mr. Stevenson, we may be back to you for some questions on resources and the actual.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your patience and your willingness to do this. We are now into the third part of our discussion today. We continue our study of the Canadian Forces reserve, but with a particular view. From 1912 until 1968 we had a program on our university campuses called the Canadian Officer Training Corps. Students who joined received basic military and leadership training, which they then took on into their lives, whether in the private or public sectors, by joining reserve units, by entering the army, navy or air force.
Since 1968 our military and these leadership programs have essentially disappeared from Canadian college and university campuses. There are many who now want to change that again, including some vocal leaders in the business community as well.
Joining us today to give testimony on this issue are two proponents of what they would propose to be called the Canadian National Leadership Program. Robert Roy is head of The 7 Year Project, which has been looking at this issue and producing documentaries and information on it. With him is John Richmond, former military, who is the director of community outreach and doing some specific programs which we hope to hear about.
As you might have been able to tell from my introduction, I will declare my personal interest in this matter. I think this is an important thing to do, and I have been part of these discussions. I will try to keep my comments and questions to a minimum, but we will just begin. Do either of you have opening comments?
Robert Roy, Head, The 7 Year Project: I would like to thank the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence for inviting my colleague and me to present to your important hearings on Canadian Forces transformation and the future of Canada's reserve forces. In the back seat we have Paul Chapin, who is also available to answer questions.
We represent the Breakout Educational Network, which is a unique public policy organization and the only one of its kinds in Canada that works in the audio-visual medium, in a way best described as "policy you can see." This gives us a tremendous ability to reach a large audience of citizens with information materials that appeal to both the heart and the mind.
Moreover, since we start with the average citizen as the primary audience for our project and have built, through our production and broadcast partners, Stornoway Productions and the ichannel, a production and distribution model to deliver on our claims, we are actually bringing the public into the discussion in a way that most people are comfortable with, through film and TV. In short we work in culture, and this allows us to bring something unique to the discussion on transformation and reserves currently before your committee.
Through our research and development of numerous films, our work has led us to the conclusion that the biggest problem facing the Canadian Forces was its disconnection with the Canadian public. As students of strategy, we are familiar with Clausewitz's observation that the remarkable trinity of the people, the army and the government are the essential basis of military operations and the nation's centre of gravity.
We have set out to rectify this disconnection, not as the government or the army, but as the people seeking our own answers and our own interests. For, as Dr. Douglas Bland of Queen's University described it to us in an interview, the real responsibility for the defence of Canada lies with the Canadian people.
Hence, we launched The 7 Year Project of the Breakout Educational Network in 2006, seeking to find ways to build or connect Canadians with their military as a national institution. Our inaugural effort was to produce an hour-long documentary entitled Citizen. Soldier., which I recommend to you for its description of the contribution that the men and women of the reserves make to their various services, their communities and their employers, as well as to their own leadership and citizenship qualities.
Most importantly, for the direction of The 7 Year Project, the film Citizen. Soldier. allowed us to identify two initiatives that we felt would make excellent vehicles for building the connection between the citizen the Canadian Forces.
Colonel Brian MacDonald pointed out to us that the generational disconnection between the Canadian Forces could be traced back to 1968 when two things occurred. First, the reserve forces were reduced and amalgamated, shrinking the footprint of the military in Canadian communities. Secondly, although perhaps more importantly, the Canadian Officer Training Corps for university students was cancelled just as universities were expanding exponentially with the arrival of the baby boom. At this crucial moment the Canadian Forces chose to withdraw from the universities, and the result has been an entire generation of upper- and middle-management Canadians who have had no exposure to the military.
What were the COTC — Canadian Officers Training Corps — and its navy and air force equivalents? We set out to find the answer. It turned out it was not shrouded in the mists of time. A large number of prominent Canadians in business, academia, politics, the arts, and even the military, could point to their formative experiences with the COTC in university for their later success in life and their contributions to Canada.
I have produced two documentaries on this issue: No Country for Young Men, which traced the rise and fall of the COTC, a Canadian success story that was thrown away, as the press trailer says; and we produced For Queen and Country, filmed at Cambridge University in the U.K. This followed students in an existing officer training corps, and spoke with graduates, academics, employers, politicians and generals about the continuing success of the program in the United Kingdom.
Both films have been a great success in generating attention to our initiative: to return the COTC, in a contemporary fashion, to Canadian universities. To distinguish it from the COTC, we have renamed it the Canadian National Leadership Program, or CNLP. It is our role to keep the pressure on those who can make this happen.
While the student and university connection is important for the future of civil military relations, for more immediate impact we have developed another successful initiative — which I hope you will ask my colleague, John Richmond, about — the Garrison Community Council, or GCC, which deals in a direct fashion with the grassroots, with those in the community who are looking for ways to express their support and interest in the Canadian Forces today. The growing GCC network provides us with an opportunity to build national citizen-directed support at the community level for programs such as the CNLP.
In launching the GCC and the CNLP, The 7 Year Project is seeking to bring the citizen component into the civil military relationship in Canada. The citizen is the necessary other half of that equation. You cannot have one without the other. As a citizen-based and citizen-initiated project, we bring the credibility and the connection to this essential national issue that a government- or military-sponsored initiative cannot.
We look forward to your questions and comments.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Perhaps, Mr. Richmond, you could give us a thumbnail of the Garrison project, just so people know what you are referring to.
John Richmond, Director, Community Outreach, The 7 Year Project: At the closing of the regular force base in London, Ontario, a group of associates of the base were concerned with the apparent public apathy with the removal of the regular force units from CFB London.
They basically put a study together to show what the community had lost, not in dollars and cents, with salaries and infrastructure, but in the form of services. It turned out that the people who wear our uniforms and make commitments to the country in operations and training are also your Cub, Scout and Girl Guides leaders, your minor sports team leaders, as well as being your police officers and fire department representatives.
I heard the expression "first responder." First responders come in many different forms, whether they are schoolteachers, nurses or doctors.
They put together a group, organized in 2004, called the Garrison Community Council of the Greater London area. Through breakout work with the production of Citizen. Soldier., Mr. Roy became aware of the project, and it is documented in that film. We put together a model of what they have done in London, and we have started to take this model elsewhere and introduce it to Canadian communities across the country.
I live in Niagara, so of course the first choice was to introduce it there. We now have the Garrison Community Council of Niagara, which is fully registered in Ontario and in Canada as a not-for-profit. They told me at one time that it would never work in Montreal or Quebec City.
[Translation]
Quebec is my wife's favourite province and mine too. We also have the Amis des Forces canadiennes in Montreal. We have done some research in Quebec City that led to the production of a documentary called Armée de passion, showing the passion of the people in Quebec City for their military.
[English]
In addition to that, we have done liaison work with Pictou, Nova Scotia, which has an amazing organization called the community advisory board, which involves civilians who work with the military and organize projects organized by the military and paid for by the civilians.
In addition to that, we are speaking with Mayor Brad Woodside in Fredericton, New Brunswick. There are interests being expressed in Medicine Hat. I spent many years out there myself. Victoria, as well as communities in Southern Ontario, has definitely shown some interest.
The important thing to know about the Garrison Community Council is that it is grassroots, it is citizens based, and it depends on the initiative and leadership within the community to reach out to the military.
We believe that it is not necessarily the military's responsibility to reach out to the community. However, as co- signees to every contract of service, the Canadian citizen has an obligation to reach out to their military to see what they need to do. Regina, in fact, is the fourth officially sanctioned organization.
The Chair: That was very interesting, and I know there are other questions for Mr. Roy about university interests.
Senator Dallaire: Madam Chair, I want to congratulate you for being part of the advisory board for this outfit. I have previously been extensively briefed by Senator Rompkey on this and have been very supportive.
There is an angle that I do not think has been covered and that I think you might want to consider. That is why I am asking you the question.
There is a side of this that people do not want our recruiters on university campuses or even in high schools. Do you have, from your GCC, an angle in terms of how to convince some university campuses and student bodies to let us back on and to be part of the normal employer days where people go and sell their wares? There is that sort of residual, which is Vietnam based, that got us off the campus. This is not prevalent, although it is in certain areas. For example, in Quebec, in the high schools and CEGEPs, it is difficult to get in, and maybe you want to consider looking at that.
The second part of that, though, is that there is nothing here that indicates that the future recruiting base for the forces, or for people interested in the forces, will be non-White. That is to say that there is nothing that says that this process would do just like we did in history. I was in a militia regiment that had Jean Lesage, who was the premier of the province. He had done COTC. Minister Garon did COTC in Shilo and ended up a separatist, but that is another story. Also Mr. L'Allier, who was mayor of Quebec City. Many of these people did COTC, an extraordinary introduction.
We have been working on that side, but what about the whole new ethnic makeup of Canada? Why is this thing not putting that right in the middle, front and centre, as an introduction for many of these new immigrants into this link with the forces?
Mr. Roy: Thank you, senator. You have hit on two interesting points that we actually have been addressing in our thoughts about this particular project. Let me answer the first one.
As the filmmaker in the project, I have recently been down in the United States talking about how they are returning the ROTC project to Harvard, Yale and Columbia. Of course, they had a huge discussion over this.
In fact, what I was intending to do was to look at the process, specifically at Columbia, in terms of how their advocates to return the ROTC had been working with the Senate, academic faculties and students to get this program back, with the idea that I could take it back to Canada, having learned something from the American experience.
When we produced these two films, the response from the academic community in Canada was totally unexpected. We had screened it for several members of the military in various places, and somehow or other the University of Alberta got hold of this, called us out to Edmonton and said, "We would like to run this project as a pilot project, starting right now. Give us the keys to the model."
We had to say that, unfortunately, we have not yet had that discussion with the military, but we are working on that. They were bullish on getting this particular project, as a leadership project, into their school as an extracurricular situation.
At the same time, we made presentations to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and received the endorsement from their president, and similarly with the Council of Ontario Universities.
The academic community in Canada does not seem to have a problem with this particular project. I do understand that there will be some student demonstration or opposition to this, but as in the United States, it is not something for every school or every campus or every student.
Yes, I think that we would be able to answer the question about getting a recruiting program back onto the campus about this particular thing, which is quite interesting. The University of Alberta and the president of Dalhousie told me that, as a club, this thing would not have a problem. That was our experience in the U.K., where 1,200 people show up at the University of London's recruiting booth and they take 200. It is oversubscribed in the U.K.
The Chair: Before you answer the second question, to be clear on this: It is not a military recruiting tool. I think Senator Dallaire was referring to the fact that there are those days on campus where you can be recruited by Google or IBM or whatever. That is separate from that, because this is about leadership skills.
Mr. Roy: This is about leadership skills, which is why the universities are interested. They are interested in leveraging Canadian Forces educational experience on leadership into their students. They are facing demands from the business community; what are you actually doing with regard to hands-on, tangible leadership training. They can point to a psychology 101 course on leadership or an MBA course. There is not something tangible. They see this and that is why they are interested in moving into this particular program.
Your second point on multiculturalism is interesting. The reason the COTC was led into its demise was because of the Suttie commission in 1964, the military version of the Glasgow commission on efficiency in government. The commission said that if there are not recruiting numbers shown by the current COTC and in its navy and air force equivalents, the program should be cut. One of the gentlemen on the Suttie commission was Brigadier-General Bruce Legge, who passed away some years ago. He came out much later and said that this would have been a fabulous program for introducing multicultural Canadians on the campus to the Canadian Forces. If we have not put it front and centre, I think we should be highlighting it. It is one of the advantages that I see the COTC and the CNLP program contributing to the forces in their future recruiting efforts. It may not be turning out recruits directly but it would give an exposure of the military to the larger nation.
Senator Dallaire: The aim is not a recruiting tool as much as the education of the Canadian nation, its citizens and leadership. That brings me to the militia units and how they are participating in this.
Have you had area commanders and militia units who have welcomed this initiative in their town or municipality or campuses and have been doing that off line because they are not funded to do that nor is it within their terms of reference that even the vice-admiral was talking about but did not qualify?
Mr. Roy: We started this project in 2006. I have at least introduced the concept to Rear-Admiral Bennett's predecessors, going back three or four before her. Admittedly, our project has grown in sophistication and our knowledge of what we are trying to do have improved. When we recently briefed Rear-Admiral Bennett, I think she was impressed with what we were conceiving and proposing.
We are not trying to design the nuts and bolts of this project. We understand that is up for the military and negotiation with the universities. Our role is keeping the public pressure on this particular agenda so that the public will be asking the government to come up with the funds, as Vice-Admiral Donaldson recommended. Where is the money going to come from? It will come from the public demand that their children have an opportunity to have this program.
Senator Dallaire: So you are an advocacy entity?
Mr. Roy: No.
Senator Dallaire: Say yes. That is the aim of exercise, to sell the product.
Mr. Richmond: Anecdotally, when the recruiters were tried to be kept off one of the Western Ontario University campuses a couple of years ago, the student body rebelled against the student union and forced them to allow the recruiters on campus. Within the youth, there is interest.
As one of the young people in one of Mr. Roy's documentaries stated, we must have them on our campus. How can we address our fears if we do not confront them? That person was definitely anti-military.
I do not believe that is the great issue. As far as addressing new Canadians, if you look at the preponderance of new Canadians first and second generation who are instilling in their children that they must attend university, the only way to reach these people is to go to university to reach out to them because they do not have the historic contact with the Canadian military that would encourage them to reach out to us.
As citizens, we need to encourage anything that will expose new Canadians to all of our aspects of our heritage and our culture, including the infrastructure that has made this country what it is. One of those would be the Canadian military. University campuses are the way to achieve that.
Senator Lang: Welcome. I would like to get down to the costs of what we are dealing with here. I think it would be unanimous around here that this program would be very good for the young people of Canada. I have to say that I admire you for spending your time promoting this. Obviously, you are being successful in the fact that you now have four universities —
Mr. Roy: The University of Alberta committed itself to a cost-sharing program should the government decide that this is a policy to support.
Senator Lang: That is where I wanted to narrow the discussion.
The University of Alberta said they would be prepared to cost share. What kind of dollars are we speaking of for the University of Alberta to do a program like that? I assume the cost sharing is in conjunction with the military. Is that correct?
Mr. Roy: We produced a mock cabinet memo document that outlines some of these costs that we are speculating about. We have only been able to use our knowledge and publicly available information about what a student of this particular nature would be paid. We based it on a basic reservist's pay of about $12,000 a year. We had some discussion here today about whether or not that fluctuates.
Specifically, we have estimated that in the realm of about $1.6 million for a pilot project at the University of Alberta per year is about essentially what we would be targeting.
The Chair: To be cost shared, or that would be their proportion?
Mr. Roy: That would be the total cost of the program and how it gets cost shared in terms of the facilities and things that the university would be able to put in vis-à-vis the other things, for example, costs for the student, get up transportation, administration, pay for the cadre of leaders who would be part of the deal. This all has to be worked into that sort of $1.8 million.
Senator Dallaire: How many students?
Mr. Roy: We are targeting about 50 students for the first year. The University of Alberta is looking at growing this over a four-year period, so it would be 50 the first year, 50 the second. You would grow, but it would fall off at the end.
Mr. Richmond: What is not costed in that because we do not have access to the information is what it would cost the Department of National Defence in training resources to run summer programs. The costs that we have included would be salaries and basic training expenses, which would apply to the cadre and take it through its first year. With a second intake in the second year, your costs would go up.
However, the manpower issue was raised about training. I have had personal experience in this, having had an injury that took me out of my primary trade within the military. I was released in the 1990s still feeling quite capable of contributing something. We have the ability here to take some of our newest, youngest and brightest veterans, who may not be allowed to continue on in their primary choice of trade, and use them to teach leadership to people who will have a visible example in front of them of what service is all about. When you think about it, this is about introducing leadership as a form of service to the greater good, service to the country.
As Mr. Roy pointed out, I looked at the material that they had produced, which showed examples of who had gone through the old program — people like Mr. Broadbent and John Wood, the artistic director at Stratford, who had made no commitment after university to the Canadian Forces. What they had learned, for example, if you look at parliamentarians in 1968, when the program was cancelled, over 34 per cent of our parliamentarians had some form of military experience even if it only included the university training program.
When Mr. Harper took over in 2006 with the Thirty-ninth Parliament, that was down to 3.1 per cent. The total number was 13:5 senators and 8 parliamentarians. That is one of the reasons why a program such as this is beneficial because it will raise the level of knowledge within our parliamentarians, within our business community and within the local community leadership of what the military really does for our country, and I do not mean in the Armed Forces sense. It is beyond that and into the international prestige that we carry.
Mr. Roy: On the costing, Mr. Richmond mentioned that in terms of the training capability right now for a 50-plus group of students who will be going through this program with regard to the University of Alberta. I would think there is marginal surplus capacity within the training scope for the summer periods and things like that for the Canadian Forces to be able to absorb that smaller number. If you are talking 15 years down the road, which is what we are targeting, growing this program nationally, where we might end up with close to 3,000 or 4,000 kids in the program, then you would have a problem immediately instituting 3,000 or 4,000 people through your process, but maybe this can be worked into their transformation project.
What we have come up against is not so much that they do not think that the program does not have some merit, it is just that we have not been able to get in a discussion with them about what the nuts and bolts are, and my great fear is that the universities seem to be very interested in this project but we have not found a door to knock on when it comes to the Canadian Forces.
Senator Day: Mr. Roy, you talked about COTC, but that also incorporates the concept of UNTD — University Naval Training Division — and URTP — University Reserve Training Program — for the different forces and programs that they had, which were very similar, but just for different forces.
Because I am focusing on that, I am assuming that there would be some summer training and it would be military training and then something during the week, something very similar to the reserve units that we have been talking about here.
Mr. Roy: I can certainly address that and answer part of an earlier question, which is have we been in contact with the local command structure. Yes, we have been in touch with Rear-Admiral Bennett and her predecessors, but in the Toronto area I have also been in contact with the brigade commander, and he has done some staffing work on how this particular project might work with the battle school that they had stood up in the brigade. The Toronto school is probably a little more sophisticated than some other areas of the country, but, as he sees it, it could work through his battle school with recruits from all three services. We are talking about people who have not necessarily made a decision about whether they are interested in joining the army, navy or air force, but the advantage is that you would have a pool of these kids, from various schools perhaps, all meeting in one place so that you would be able to apply a scale of resources to their training from a basic level, which would occur during the week and on a couple of weekends a month. They could certainly relate to their local reserve unit, either army, navy or air force, should they wish to do so, but they would go off to the service training for the summer, which would provide the lion's share of their contribution to their schooling and to their summer employment, but they would then be badged as army, navy or air force depending on what they want to pursue.
As I said, this is the nuts and bolts that we have been sort of reticent about getting involved with because we think it is up to the people who will be organizing it to come up with that.
Senator Day: You are touching on whether there would be a requirement for military service afterwards. There are many people, as Senator Dallaire mentioned, who are in this just during attendance at university to help them get through university, but are left with knowledge of the Armed Forces.
Mr. Richmond: The program that we are proposing is not intended as a recruiting tool for the Canadian Armed Forces, reserve or regular. However, the indirect benefit to Canada in the long-term is there. The short-term benefit is that it will provide, especially for the reserve units, which is key, because with the closure of so many of our urban bases, the only contact that Canadians have with the military. It will open up a pool to the reserves of people who might otherwise never find out about them. Those who do develop an interest in part-time service could be offered an opportunity to join the local units.
The nice thing about it is that it gives the local units and the regular force four years to look at prospective leaders before they have to commit to offering contracts post-graduation. It also offers the individual the opportunity to apply or to carry on with their civilian trade.
Senator Day: On the flip side of that, which is why you should be in touch with Admiral Bennett, is that there are many university students now who are commuting to reserve units in which they serve. If it were more conveniently set up at a university campus, many more might be interested in joining.
Mr. Richmond: One of the things we have both discovered in conversation with university professors and presidents is that they have no idea who, if anyone, on campus is associated with the Canadian Forces. They have no concept of anybody that could be ROTP or a reserve officer who is attending their university.
Senator Day: Mr. Roy, you were talking about leadership and then we got off on the military side. Have you thought of other types of public service such as CUSO or other current or past programs that involve leadership, discipline and all of the things you are looking for but not in uniform and working with the army in the summer?
Mr. Roy: I understand. There have been, in the past, bridges that these organizations have built and tried, and I do not think they worked out for both sides.
Our program is not for everyone. We understand that, and we are not trying to put people in uniform. We understand that there are other models of leadership training and this is just another way of getting to that.
What we have proposed, however, is that exposure to the military could be very helpful for the whole-of- government approach because there are various government departments, like CIDA, Foreign Affairs, Transport and others, that would be interested, I would think, in hiring graduates who have had some military experience and exposure.
That is what the project was initially set up for. Senator Wallin mentioned that it was started in 1912 at McGill University. It was then re-stood up following the Second World War with two primary objectives. One was to contribute to the mobilization of a potential third world war, which fortunately never occurred, and the other, which was sort of forgotten, was to provide the military with a pool of advocates down the road who would be in leadership positions and who knew about the military, having had exposure to it. I know these people are good serving Canadians, and we anecdotes that illustrate that.
Senator Day: That is an important aspect.
When this was cancelled in 1968, was it part of the unification reorganization that went on then, or was this an independent decision based on finances?
Mr. Roy: It was the recruiting bean counters saying that it was not returning value for dollars in terms of recruits.
Of course, in Columbia, Yale and Harvard, the ROTC was kicked off because of the Vietnam era, so there might have been some component of that. However, these elite universities in the United States are returning it to the campuses. They understand what the advantages are. It is not a silver bullet for solving a military-civilian divide, but they do understand that it addresses what one of my interview subjects called a corrosive civil scandal that the graduates of the elite universities were not contributing to the military service of the country. While we are not grappling with that, it is a model we are looking at.
The Chair: I do not know whether committee members were given the documentaries.
Mr. Roy: We would be happy to make them available to all the members.
The Chair: That would be good because you do hear from independent business leaders, people who are not involved and do not intend to be involved, about how it informs their leadership skills and how they look for that in others when they are hiring in the business world. It does touch on some of those points.
Is there a website or something?
Mr. Roy: There is a website: www.thesevenyearproject.com. We will make sure that is available to you all.
Senator Dallaire: Suttie brought a massive reduction of the forces in 1964, from the huge military structure we had of 150,000-odd. It was a mixture of reduction but also a sign of the times about the military and on campuses and so on, which was quite prevalent, if you will remember, with the draft dodgers.
You are at a time that is meeting the requirement of, as you said, the whole-of-government concept, the new concepts of use of military, which are not necessarily kinetic. That angle has to be coming out more and more deliberately, because it is the changing nature of conflict and our engagement, which means we need people with not just experiential skills but also intellectual skills from the campuses. Are you considering pushing that a little stronger?
Mr. Roy: We certainly will be. It is quite interesting to note that the recent defence strategic initiative going on in the United Kingdom to basically radically reduce their defence budget left as sacrosanct their officer training, maintaining the connection with the universities and the army's connection with society. It was a very valuable connection that needed to continue to be funded. It was left alone in terms of suffering budget cuts.
Mr. Richmond: On the whole-of-government aspect, if we are looking at this project from the big picture, we are talking about Citizenship and Immigration and Veterans Affairs and talking about the Department of National Defence, of course, but virtually every key element, key department within the government could have a role to play in making this a success — ergo, could have a role to play in funding it. We have already taken the opportunity to brief several members of Parliament and have received incredibly strong support. It is now to take it to the next level.
The Chair: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your clear description of all of this. It fits in very nicely with our look at the reserves. It is the final words on that today. Thank you for your attendance today.
We will adjourn at this point. I will just have a few informal words.
(The committee adjourned.)