Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 25 - Evidence - Afternoon session
OTTAWA, Monday, June 27, 2005
The Standing Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 3:40 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
The Chairman: I would like to thank everyone for coming today. We normally introduce all of the senators, but I believe we know all of you and I have a feeling you know all of us. I think it is best if we just get at it.
As a committee, we have concluded that there are people around town and elsewhere who could be of assistance to us as we move forward in preparing our reports on the defence review. We wanted to conduct this portion of our hearings in two parts. This afternoon, we want to get a general comment on where we should be focusing our attention and what we should be thinking about. Tomorrow morning, we have a much more substantial framework to work through with Jim Cox and Keith McDonald. We were hoping to gain a better insight. We were also hoping to conduct a similar process in September as we move forward.
We are interested, obviously, in people's comments on the paper that is going forward. The committee thought that a number of possible reports could have gone forward and that all would have worked. However, since this one is before us, the committee believes that it can make its best contribution by focusing principally on areas that complement and supplement the report rather than getting into a debate about the report itself.
I am sure there are views around the table that would say ``No, you have not got it right and you folks ought to be focussing on X, Y and Z.'' We welcome that type of comment. We do not have closed minds regarding the reports.
Second, we are talking about issuing three reports in the fall as opposed to one, the reason being that in the past we have found that there has been too much information for the media to digest per report. Taking a shot at it in September, another shot in October and another shot in November has the potential for a greater impact. By the time the summer ends, we expect to have a pretty clear picture of all three reports.
For procedural reasons, I would like to ask for brief comments from four of you now and then I would like to go in camera. I cannot go in camera initially without hearing from four of you. I would like to hear from Ken Summers, Wesley Wark, Fraser Holman and Doug Bland. I am looking for short comments on the key points that you are looking for in the report. Then we will move in camera and you can have the floor again in that environment.
Rear-Admiral (Ret'd) Ken Summers, as an individual: As an opening statement, I would mention that when your process was underway, no defence policy statement had bee issued. To a certain extent you may have precipitated a number of the factors that lead to the policy statement tabled by the government. It might impact how you wish to approach your reports, the areas you might want to emphasize and the areas you may even leave alone. I view the defence policy statement overall as positive, but I do have some serious reservations with respect to it.
On the positive side, there is the reorientation of the Canadian Forces with the creation of the Canada Command, I believe to be announced tomorrow, and the whole approach to a special operations group, a standing contingency task force and the mission specific task force. Those are all things of a joint nature that I have believed in for well over a decade now. I am glad to finally see that the department and the Canadian Forces are moving in that particular direction.
On the other hand, there are some real questions. I know a number of my colleagues here share some of those concerns. The first is a question of resources. The policy suggests a force of 5,000 regulars and 3,000 reserves. That is a good start, but if you look at today — and I stand to be corrected by Mike Jeffery and others — when we have our forces abroad in these operations, about 30 per cent tend to be from the reserve as opposed to the regular force. The mandate of the reserves is one of being more national oriented in this defence policy statement.
I would suggest that 5,000 people will be brought up very quickly in trying to provide those additional people primarily to the army. If you look at effective militaries, I would suggest you are probably talking more in the neighbourhood of 15,000 regular force members as the number that is required and probably about 5,000 reserves, but certainly more than the 5,000 and the 3,000 numbers that is in that defence policy statement.
The second point I would like to make is a question of resources. Having seen the policy statement, the direction the government is going is welcomed in my estimation and a good direction. However, you have to marry up the financial resources with the vision. That is where we have to take a look. I understand that it does take a while to spend money and build things up, but what is really required is long-term baseline funding and a financial commitment that will allow the Canadian Forces the ability to do that long-range planning out 10 or 15 years for real, not just at the mandate of the next government and the next white paper, so they can plan something substantial.
What is called for in that policy statement will be a major shift in thinking and a major shift in the approach toward resources, major equipment for the Canadian Forces. That is why I really believe we must have the firm foundation of a long-term approach to defence funding.
You have heard from retired Admiral Brodeur on the West Coast about approaches to funding and perhaps making defence spending non-discretionary or pegging it as a percentage of GDP. Those approaches should be studied, but the bottom line is that the ebb and flow of funding or the ups and downs are just not good enough when you are trying to make long-term commitments of the size that the Canadian Forces require.
Again, believing in the vision for the Canadian Forces and the reorientation of the military, I am saying, ``Well, that is fine, but it is half a step. What about the other half step? What will happen to the rest of the department?'' Essentially what is happening is that they are taking the Canadian Forces and separating out the strategic level from the operational level. These gentlemen around the table know exactly what I am talking about. With NDHQ and the Department of National Defence, you will have to separate out operational level tasks from the strategic level. That will certainly have an impact on the organization at National Defence Headquarters. That will be a controversial area, but it is something that will have to follow logically from this reorientation of the Canadian Forces.
Mr. Wesley Wark, University of Toronto, as an individual: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure to be here. By way of some framing remarks, clearly, discussions of defence issues in Canada have entered an interesting but perhaps temporally limited phase; that is, greater public and political interest in defence issues than has been the case for a long time. This suggests it is a promising time to try and fix the military and to try to reorient ourselves to the need to invest resources in the military and invent a new strategic framework.
My concern is that this window of opportunity may rapidly slip away from us or disappear. One of the things that we must seize on in this country — and that is something that this Senate committee can try to do — is to provide future risk assessments. What kind of world are we looking at in the next 20 or 50 years on the long-term horizon.? What is the nature of the threats? The question that the public will ask and that politicians will ask is what kind of military do we actually need? That question can only be sensibly answered in the context of strategic risk assessment.
Although there have been vague efforts to come up with such a thing both in the government and from outside sources, I am not sure we have arrived at anything that is satisfactory. Part of that risk assessment clearly will have to deal with issues like nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, failed states problems and especially the ongoing war on terror and whatever Canada's policy might be in that regard. All of these strategic problems for the future and current problems as well seem to require a fairly considerable reorientation of traditional defence policy. Perhaps we have not yet begun to steer our thinking in that direction.
I would urge the committee to consider framing some kind of strategic risk assessment that relates to recommendations for a future Canadian military and to questions of where capabilities need to be invested, in particular, and to an effort to educate the public and to understand public opinion in this regard. The military will not prosper in this country — and this should be a clear lesson to us — if it has to go through these constant cycles of attention and forgetfulness because those cycles are also the cycles of investment and disinvestment of build up and decline, which have been the real bugbears of the military over the years since World War II.
This Senate committee can make a contribution by linking together a future risk assessment with an identification of key capabilities to meet that assessment, a sense of Canada's strategy for an insecure world and an insecure global environment, a sense of what the Canadian public understands and does not understand, and a sense of what issues we really need to focus public attention and public education on.
Let me finish by saying that there are certain issues of military policy, expenditure and capabilities that strike the public as particularly difficult to comprehend. I put myself in that public category for the moment. A clear explanation of the need for these kinds of capabilities must be achieved. For example, the issue of our submarines tends to overshadow much broader areas of defence policy, spending and capabilities. The vast percentage of the Canadian public does not understand why we might need submarines and in particular submarines that seem to have many problems. Until issues such as that can be fixed and until there is a presentation of roles, capabilities and importance, there will be broader problems.
This committee has done great work in drawing attention to some maritime defence issues that were completely off our radar screens after September 11. We do have a real disconnect between the Coast Guard and naval capabilities in this regard, which is an urgent matter. We have a problem in defining what maritime defence is all about and how to construct a set of policies, institutions and capabilities that will deal with that problem.
I will also make a parochial plea — and I am pleased to see that there are people on the staff who can back me up on this — for a future military that will be heavily dependent on intelligence and information operations capabilities. We are entering a technologically transformed world when it comes to the centrality of intelligence and the need for capable intelligence and information operations capabilities. While this is not perhaps an issue that will help to sell the Canadian public on the need for significant investments in military capabilities and attention to policy, nevertheless, the reality is that Canada has a capacity to transform itself into an intelligence-capable military power and to possess a military that is good at information operations across the broad range of capabilities. I have not seen much attention paid to this issue.
The truth of the matter is that there really is a revolution in military affairs that we perhaps have not fully grasped. It is not just about technological and robotic fixes to warfare; it really is about the acquisition of knowledge, intelligence, broadly put, and the use of that knowledge in military operations, defence policy and strategic thinking.
Major-General (Ret'd) Fraser Holman, Canadian Forces College, Toronto, as an individual: Honourable senators, thank you for including me in your discussions. I am privileged to be here.
I have not had the opportunity to speak to you before, although we met in different circumstances. I thought it might be worthwhile to mention some of my own background in case any of it is relevant in thinking about these problems.
I spent three tours in NATO in an air force context, finishing in 1993, when 4 Allied Tactical Air Force was closed in Heidelberg, at which time I was a colleague of Mr. Clive Addy. From there, I went to NORAD for three years until 1996. Clearly, that was a better focused activity and somewhat more satisfying work.
While there are many positive things to be said about this defence policy statement and the fact that there is a public policy statement at this stage, one of the big unresolved tensions has to do with favouring continental security, as articulated, compared to the international polls urging countries to be useful abroad in an effort to blunt threats before they come closer to our shores.
I am not convinced that this tension has been fully dealt with, frankly. There is a lot of wording that speaks of Canada first or North America first and satisfying the needs of our relationship with the U.S. in particular. When we look at the way it is explained and articulated, we run into the three-block war and 3D concepts that include development. Neither of those are really applicable to this continental problem.
To the extent that policy is focused by those concepts, we are speaking about the away game rather than the home game. I am still a little anxious that we have not quite done our full share to reassure our important neighbours to the south.
The other point I wish to make deals with my current background. I serve as one of the senior directing staff in the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. We offer a six-month national security studies course, which we just finished on Friday. We have certainly been thinking about these issues, and I welcome the opportunity to explore them more fully with you in the coming time.
We have been privileged to be involved in some of the development of CDS's vision, a little less so probably on the defence policy statement or the international policy statement. In CDS's articulation, we have had a couple of very good insights. Our students were asked to explore the right capabilities to bring effect to that model. We have had some good opportunities there.
One of the case studies that we deal with in the context of our curriculum is one of the period of integration and unification under Paul Hellyer. In fact, Mr. Hellyer, who lives in Toronto, continues to come and speak with us. Mr. Bland is fully involved in that particular case study. To a large extent, we are finding strong elements of his vision being reinvented at this point. Perhaps it takes that two-generation skip to be able to shift the underlying cultures and attitudes. I think the ideas of integrated effects brought by several service deliverers are much more accepted now. I find it is a fascinating reflection.
I am pleased to be here, and I look forward to continuing dialogue with you.
Professor Doug Bland, Queen's University, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation. I am a great admirer of the work that the committee has been doing for over the past number of years in its reports. I sometimes say to people, only partly in jest, that if we are talking about reforming Parliament, perhaps what we need do is keep the Senate and get rid of the House of Commons. We will leave that for later in the afternoon.
I do not have prepared notes, but I will try to be brief. I would like to point out four things that occurred to me when I read these papers on the weekend.
The first question that needs to be discussed is: What is the policy problem that is to be analyzed, solved, and addressed by the Senate, the House, and political parties?
From my research with some of my colleagues who are here today, the problem is the rapid decline and ultimate crash of the Canadian Forces combat capabilities. Everything else is on the side.
When Mr. Wark asked what kind of Armed Forces we need, the answer has already decided over the next five to 10 years. We know what we will have. If we have not already bought it, we will not have it. The study entitled Canada Without Armed Forces? was fairly detailed in showing that the crisis in collapsing capabilities is a military policy problem. It is not matter of money; rather, it is a matter of time.
That brings us to the second point. This spring, we at Queen's University started working on what I call the new defence agenda. I know there is some controversy here. My assumption is that what the Armed Forces will do and what they will look like has already been decided. How much money all political parties are willing to put toward the Armed Forces has also been decided.
The new agenda ought not to address force structure, where we should go, and the alliances we enter into, but rather how we will get from here to the transformation of the Armed Forces in a rapid enough time to avoid the crash. This is what I have called for as the clock keeps ticking down. The seven-year project is now the five-year project. That is a main question.
The emphasis on the new agenda, though, is not on the failings of National Defence Headquarters, individuals, or processes. John McCallum's study, the so-called minister's efficiency report — there is some irony there, as it was produced in NDHQ — made clear that without a national level transformation of the way we deal with defence administration in this country, there will be no transformation of the Armed Forces. It cannot happen in time to avoid the crash.
As a third point, I wanted to mention the defence statement. I do not think it is much of a policy statement for government. I think it is CDS's policy statement. That is fine. That was necessary for any Chief of Defence Staff to begin to bring together the experiences that the Armed Forces have been through in the last 10 years, to remodel the Armed Forces for what we call in our new work the international stability campaigns, and to start to change force and command structures in Canada. All of these matters are in that statement and are within the vested rights and normal duties of the Chief of Defence Staff. That is a good statement.
However, there is a caution that the paper is missing several important elements if it is to be a national governmental policy statement, elements such as discussions about defence administration, the organization of National Defence Headquarters and budgeting. It is a business plan without a detailed budget. There is no five-year plan to recover the forces other than a vision about what it might look like at the end.
The other caution, as everyone here knows, is that this paper and other papers are built with a set of explicit and implicit assumptions about the future and what will happen. In defence history, uncertainty is for certain, and that is a problem.
The assumptions also raise the problem of conditionality in the report. For instance, one statement in that report is that we will be able to deploy 3,000 people and sustain them overseas indefinitely. Yes, but in what context? It is relatively simple to sustain 3,000 people in a Cyprus-type situation forever. However, if the level of combat operations changes overnight, would we be able to sustain 3,000 people overseas? These kinds of statements, and there are others in the document, need to be explored in much more depth than is apparent in that paper. I know that General Hillier is doing that with his CAT teams, but I am not sure that everyone in government and especially in the administration of other related departments in this city are aware of these kinds of details and the consequences.
Turning to National Defence Headquarters, it is my view that it would not be profitable for your committee to spend a great deal of time trying to determine how many people are in the buildings. No one has ever been able to figure that out. George McDonald would likely think differently, but I am referring to studies done when Paul Hellyer was around. Many studies have been done to determine the conceptual frame of NDHQ. What is it supposed to do? Is it at a strategic or an administrative level? Is it a place, as the minister's efficiency study said, where many things are done that need not be done there or anywhere?
Trying to work on an almost zero-based consideration of the kind of national command and administrative headquarters we need to produce the kind of forces and combat output required for Canada would be profitable. NDHQ has not been rigorously reorganized or considered in depth since 1972. In some ways, it is a Cold War anachronism. The details of how it functions are not well understood and the combat output derived from the amounts of money, time and effort spent might be better spent elsewhere.
From talking to Mr. McCallum and others, I know that when they attempted to do the minister's efficiency study to look for a mere $200 million, he said that he met with obstacles and difficulties throughout. There is a longer story about that, but for this study, from I what have read, it will not be useful to talk about whether National Defence Headquarters is too big or too small or has too many ADMs, et cetera. The problem the box, not the contents of the box. Senators might want to begin looking there, if there is time.
Senator Forrestall: I move that we go in camera with translation and reporting. Committee staff and experts assisting us should remain in the room. Are senators agreed to a one-minute break while that happens?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The committee continued in camera.