Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 9 - Evidence, February 1, 2007 - Afternoon meeting
CALGARY, Thursday, February 1, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:20 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I call the meeting to order. My name is Colin Kenny. This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, and I am the Chair of that committee.
Before we begin, I would like to introduce the members of the committee to you. On my immediate right is Senator Michael Meighen, Deputy Chair of the committee. He is a lawyer and a member of both the Ontario and Quebec bars. He is the Chancellor of the University of King's College and a Past Chair of the Stratford Festival. Currently, he is Chair of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, and of the Senate Fisheries Committee.
Beside him is Senator Gerry St. Germain from British Columbia. He has served in Parliament since 1983, first as a member of the House of Commons and then as a senator. He is Chair of the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples and also sits on the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
Beside Senator St. Germain is Senator Wilfred Moore from Halifax. He is a lawyer with an extensive record of community involvement. He has served for 10 years on the board of Saint Mary's University. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and on the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
On my left is Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta. He was called to the Senate following a 50-year career in the entertainment industry. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
At the end of the table is Senator Norman Atkins from Ontario. He came to the Senate with 27 years of experience in the field of communications. He served as a senior advisor to former federal conservative leader Robert Stanford, to Premier William Davis of Ontario and to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
We have with us today Colonel Art Wriedt, Commander of the 41st Canadian Brigade Group; Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Gilkes, Commanding Officer of the King's Own Calgary Regiment; Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Manley, Commanding Officer of the Calgary Highlanders; Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Doherty, Commanding Officer of the 14th Service Battalion; and Captain Karl Kalincak, Adjutant with the 33rd Field Engineer Squadron.
We will start with Colonel Wriedt. If you would like to take the floor, we would be happy to hear from you.
Colonel Art Wriedt, Commanding Officer, 41 Canadian Brigade Group, National Defence: Good afternoon, senators. I will start off by making the comment that, as has been articulated by the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Hillier, and the Chief of the Land Staff, General Leslie, the army is at war, though not in the conventional sense of the word such as we saw in the Second World War. However, I understand that the members of this committee had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan, so you know from your own experience that if you talk to the soldiers there, the men and women, and the soldiers who have returned, they will tell you quite bluntly that when you are in the middle of a mud hut compound and people are shooting rockets at you, that is war.
That situation has placed some very significant considerations, concerns and hardships on the army in particular, which includes both the reserve and the regular force. The operational tempo that we are facing right now is placing stresses on the organization that very few of us — or, quite frankly, perhaps not any of us — have seen in our careers. I joined the reserves in 1971 in Trail, B.C. as a sapper, and this situation is like nothing that any of us have ever seen. We are in uncharted water and we are learning as we go. Fortunately, we have a lot of very smart people.
My specific focus is obviously the primary reserve here in Calgary, together with my five units in Edmonton and the one in Lethbridge. Obviously, as a brigade commander, my focus is more global in that, being a formation commander, I have the opportunity to interface between the commanding officers who actually manage the soldiers on behalf of the Canadian Government and the public. Since I deal with higher headquarters in Edmonton, I have a slightly different set of guidelines to work by than do the others who are with me today. However, having said that, because they are my primary first contact they form my command team within 41 Canadian Brigade. They articulate to me what are their concerns and issues that they deal with every day of the week. Bearing in mind that each and every one of these individuals have full-time careers outside of the military, they do this work under the generally abbreviated time constraints that are unique to the reserves.
Right now, we are in a state of relative quiet in LFWA, or Land Forces Western Area. I say ``relative quiet'' because even though we are not currently the area that has a task force in Afghanistan — or, for that matter, even the next task force going out — we will be up for duty in the first half of 2008. Therefore we are deep into the planning and preparation of our soldiers for pre-deployment training. With that in mind, the issues that are brought to me by my colleagues here and that I see on my travels throughout the brigade, and that keep me awake at night are, first of all, that effectively manning that duty at the beginning of 2008, and into 2009, will be problematic. We have a lot of work to do to prepare soldiers to fulfill the reserve demands for Task Force 3-09. In 3-09, 41 Brigade is the lead reserve formation to squire all the troops, if you will, off to pre-deployment training and marry up with their regular force counterparts.
Commensurate with that consideration of 1-08, though it has not yet gone out of the door, and of 3-09, we are relatively effective right now in managing the reintegration of reserve troops back into their reserve units after they returned from Afghanistan on 1-06.
We have a unique circumstance here in Alberta in that we are a compact brigade, and therefore have able to provide support systems if soldiers need some assistance. In this respect I would refer you to the commanding officers who, as I said, are the people who actually have the face time with the troops. So far, however, we are managing the reintegration of troops quite well.
We also have a different circumstance than is seen with regard to a regular force soldier. A regular force soldier's career is the army, and they will go this year and they will go again in two years' time, and they will go when they are told. Most reserve troops volunteer, and they go. When they come off that Class C contract and they redeploy back to their unit, it is then their choice as to whether or not they want to go. Thus we have a slightly different set of dynamics than does the regular force soldier but, as I said, so far for us, reintegration has been proceeding quite well.
With a possible 150 to 220 soldiers going on the Task Force 1-08, our big worry is force-generating for 3-09, primarily the business of recruitment. In a global sense, with respect to the two components of attraction and processing, at the global level and at the strategic level there is no reserve attraction plan. We all do it as a function of our units and of the brigade but there is no set mechanism in place, and so we must work very hard on our own to generate our own soldiers at the unit level.
Another concern I have is with what they refer to as the reserve funding model. Planning at the unit level is based on the number of soldiers that you have in your unit, times so many days per year, to come up with a rough figure of how big your budgets should be. That funding model was a function of staff work done by the army several years ago. Right now — and I am also hearing it from my COs — I question the validity of that funding model, based first of all on the higher operational tempo, and second on the fact that as our soldiers go out, a certain percentage — primarily the leadership — will chose to go to the regular force. I then have a greater responsibility to try to recruit further — force-generate, if you will. That, then, is of serious concern to me.
Following on from that, we have equipment problems and shortages. The equipment resides in the system for the use of the reserves but is pooled in a vehicle called Whole Fleet Management. That is great if you are a full-time soldier, where you can go out to Wainwright and train for three days and then come home to your family. Unfortunately, we always do our training on evenings and on weekends. When we work hard to recruit a soldier, getting him into, for example, Colonel Gilkes' armoured regiment, and then he suddenly discovers that actually there are only one, two, three or four vehicles, as opposed to the number that we should have according to our training doctrine, it becomes a retention problem for us because many of our people have not made career decisions. They are trying to find out what the army is all about, unlike the guy who goes into the regular force who wants to be a soldier. That, too, has constraints.
Having said that, but being a good soldier, I will always tell you I have concerns and I have issues that we have to struggle with, but right now, overall, the future of the army is looking very bright. We have incredible leadership. CDS army commander and my area commander, these are first-class soldiers and we are all proud to follow them.
The public cares about the army. The public is in tune with what the army is doing. They may question the policy. However, I do not question the policy, I do not make policy, I am an instrument of policy. Having said that, the public supports the soldiers and that makes us feel good.
Last, we have soldiers that are motivated. It is just incredible. When we go out and we talk to your soldiers, especially in the case of myself, focussing on the reserve soldiers, these people are dedicated, and they are doing this training in their spare time, on evenings. When the civilian is going home on a snowy Friday night to watch the Calgary Flames beat the Edmonton Oilers on SportsNet, my soldiers are getting their gear on to go outside and train as soldiers in minus 30 weather.
It is very good for us right now.
Thank you, senators. Perhaps I can answer any questions that you may have.
The Chairman: Perhaps it would be best for us to go through the sequence of presentations, and then we could come back to questions at the end.
Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Gilkes, Commanding Officer, The Kings Own Calgary Regiment, National Defence: Thank you, senators, for inviting me here. I have the distinct pleasure of being here for a second time, having testified a couple of years ago this March. I thought I would touch on, and perhaps elucidate, a few points that Colonel Wriedt has pointed out.
First of all, for tasks and operations, we are re-rolled, I guess, from a couple of years ago. We used to be a Cougar regiment, which uses six-wheeled armoured vehicles, and we are now re-rolled into a reconnaissance regiment, which uses Mercedes G-Wagons, with the turret on top. We also now have an operational role, which is to provide a defence and security platoon on operations, and this is done in rotations through all the land force areas. It is done with one or two units standing us up at a time in each area and others filling critical positions. That ends up being an area-wide effort to produce 100 per cent reservist staff to defence and security platoon, which then deploys in operations and does what we are trained to do in warfare, which to convoy escort and VIP escort, ensuring that the equipment gets to where it is supposed to be and ensuring that the VIPs get where they are supposed to be, as safely and securely as possible. It is one of the more dangerous missions currently in Afghanistan. However, we are quite comfortable that this fits well with our role and our training, and it is something that our soldiers are very proud and glad to be a part of.
I feel confident that armoured reservists can continue staffing these platoons comfortably, using the current staffing methodology, from now into the future. There is enough of us to be able to continue doing this job.
With regard to soldiers returning from Afghanistan this year, from Task Force 1-06 that deployed in the first half of 2006, they filled a variety of positions in Kandahar. As I said, I had 14 soldiers returning. Several of them consistently deployed, as they say, outside the wire, outside of Kandahar camp. One of them was subjected to numerous suicide bombings but was not injured. Another was moderately injured in an accident, was evacuated to Germany and subsequently fully recovered. We are very fortunate in that.
We did find that the training for Task Force 1-06 had various degrees of inconsistency, ranging from zero training for a person who was urgently required to just fill a role within the camp, to the full gamut of training for people who were deployed outside of the camp and on mission critical tasks. Since then, that situation has been largely rectified with a soup-to-nuts training program that takes the soldier through the complete training process.
The solution, however, is not without cost, because we now find that the training has been extended to about a year prior to the soldier deploying overseas, so that is the training that is required. In turn, that means that the soldier is unavailable for employment or whatever for just short of two years approximately while they undergo training, deploy, come back and do all of their tasks, whatever. This is difficult for reservists on two facets: The first is job retention. It is difficult to get employers to give a soldier two years off. The second is that it is difficult on families because unless you are from, for instance, the Edmonton area, you must deploy to the Edmonton area for the bulk of your training, and it means that you will be away from your family for up to two years, with some breaks, obviously.
We also have about 10 soldiers who are volunteering to go overseas on this next task force in the latter half of 2007, as Leopard tank crews. It is one of the carryovers. We did re-roll to reconnaissance, but we retained skills and vehicles and whatever, and that enables us to be deployed in a pinch, such as there is now, to have people fill the holes in the Leopard tank squadron.
Then we have about a dozen soldiers from this unit who are deploying on Task Force 1-08. There are only about 110 soldiers overall in the unit, so if you count it up you start to see that almost everyone will have a medal on their chest before too long.
We do have a concern because the forecast participation for reservists is increasing, yet our unit's historical contribution to operations is a large initial spike followed by a steady decline as everybody gets through their touring and no longer wants to go over. There is nothing that currently forces them to go over, except for leadership and whatever charisma can be generated. We are doing what we can at the unit level to solve this situation and to try and meet the army's requirements. It is difficult.
We have also had some difficulty tracking soldiers coming back from operations. Because we do not deal with soldiers on a daily basis, but only on a part-time basis, it is very difficult to tell the difference between a soldier who is suffering, say, mental problems and withdrawing versus another soldier who is fine, but is not parading regularly because they have just found a new job and are getting into that new job. The only thing that we have right now to deal with that situation is diligent leadership at the immediate leadership level, such as the platoon or troop warrant officer level.
Moving on to resources, I think it would be a great day, indeed, if we did not ever have to explain about finances, but I do believe that the current year-to-year reserve pay funding model is not working for a couple of reasons. As Colonel Wriedt alluded to, it does not account for persons who are deployed on operations. They effectively do a counting of all the people who have signed in and are parading on the armoury floor, averaged over a number of months. However, if your people are overseas, they are not parading on the armoury floor and therefore, we get no funding for them. However, they will return and next year we will have to live within our current funding envelope; yet we will still have extra people who are deployed overseas. That system also does not allow for growth, and it penalizes units that grow because we now must sustain them, or take the same can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and add more water to feed more people. In other words, you have less funding, and you have to spread it around to fund these extra people.
Finally, we receive many unfunded tasks throughout the year. Recruiting is one of them. Community relations, connecting with Canadians are others. We are not funded for any of these tasks. However, we do believe that they are critical tasks and we always do them. These are undertaken, then, at the expense of training, which we have the bare- bones money to accomplish in any event, and pay soldiers to come in to train.
As always, ammunition is a problem. Right now, our main weapon is the C6 machine gun, for which we receive about 10,000 bullets with which to train per year, and just training the barest minimum of people, to the barest minute standard, requires about 40,000 rounds. Thus we are able to do about a quarter of what we should conscionably be doing for training.
There is a big shortage of radios and communication equipment, and we frequently have to rent satellite phones, use our own cell phones or use commercial walkie-talkies to provide safety and tactical communications while on exercises. This is obviously less than ideal, and there is a particular shortage of vehicle-mounted radios.
However, most of the other soldier equipment, like the uniforms and equipment that we wear on our bodies, is excellent. It has never been better. I have done my first winter exercise this year where I have never been cold, so something is going right.
We are equipped with new Mercedes G-Wagon vehicles, which are very good vehicles, especially to train with. We are allocated 16 of them. Because of operational requirements, we currently have eight and the rest are in operational stocks.
By far the most pressing issue is time. We are allocated approximately 37 1/2 days per person to do everything that we must do in training our reservists. What this really means is that we train from September to May about one weekend and one Saturday per month with select NCOs, or non-commissioned officers, and officers coming in on Wednesday nights to prepare training. What this means is that we cannot achieve a high enough state of training within our allotted time and current training methodologies in order to reduce that one-year workup time that is required for operations. We cannot do it with our current methodologies. We also cannot increase the amount of time for reservists. It is not a money problem whereby, if you threw some extra money at us and we could add some days, it would be solved because that extra trime comes at the expense of reservists' jobs and time with their families, which is already pretty much at a maximum. Given these truths, the only way to improve it is to improve training efficiency and use time and resources better.
The final point that I have to comment on is leadership. I echo Colonel Wriedt's thoughts that I do not remember a time within my 23-year career when I felt that the leadership above my level has been so in tune with and supportive of the training and operational needs of our soldiers.
Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Manley, Commanding Officer, Calgary Highlanders, National Defence: Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for the opportunity to present today.
The Calgary Highlanders, as you know, is a reserve infantry regiment here in Calgary. We have approximately 230 reservists on our strength. We parade typically, in any given month, about 165 on average. We also have a volunteer band, pipes and drums, of about 30. All of them are volunteers, save two.
Today my main focus will be to talk about the operations in Afghanistan and how they affect my troops and my regiment as a whole. On Task Force 1-06, which is the task force that has just returned from Afghanistan, I deployed 27 soldiers. One was wounded in action, and one will receive the Chief of the Defence Staff commendation for his action in combat. My soldiers were involved in all aspects of the operation in Afghanistan, from camp security to combat operations, to vehicle convoys. Everything. By all accounts, they comported themselves extremely well.
All of my soldiers have returned home and all are still actively engaged in the regiment and still actively parading with us. We have not lost any to attrition at all. The difficulty we have with some of our soldiers is tracking them. We work part time, only a few hours, and yet it is my responsibility to ensure that they are well cared for. It is very difficult to do that on a part-time basis, not because I do not work enough but because they do not come to the armoury often enough. I do not know what they do when they are not there. That creates a difficulty.
I want to say that there were a number of administrative glitches in not only getting them to Kandahar but also in getting them home. However, for the most part those glitches were of a minor nature, and the army chain of command is addressing them. There will always be problems but I think we are moving in the right direction.
I will tell you a very quick success story of one of my corporals who could not apply for school while he was in theatre because he could not have access to a computer. He came back and applied to SAIT, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and could not get in because the numbers were too high. I made a call to SAIT and within a day he was accepted. That is the kind of support we are getting from the community, and that is a tremendous success story.
I will now turn my comments to today. Today — in fact yesterday, when I was at the office, I checked, and we had 90 soldiers volunteering for the next tour in Afghanistan. As far as I know, that is by far the largest number volunteering from any reserve infantry regiment in Canada since probably World War II. We are very proud of that. It is probably about 300 per cent of what a typical infantry regiment would be able to generate.
The initiative to raise troops for Afghanistan has increased our recruiting substantially and reduced our attrition as well. In fact, many people who had recently left the regiment came back so that they could go to Afghanistan.
There is a problem with all of that, though, and that is that, with so many people leaving, I have few people remaining behind. I will have almost no sergeants or warrant officers remaining behind and very few master corporals. Thus it will be very difficult indeed to train my regiment to keep generating reserve forces for the next operation, which for us will be Task Force 3-09. Quite frankly, we do not know what the answer to that problem is, and I am working with my commander diligently to try to find some solutions.
We are breaking new ground. No one has ever done this before. No one has ever sent essentially the entire regiment into operations, so we are expecting problems. Getting them ready will be a problem. We do not have enough staff to do the administrative work to get them ready. We do not have enough staff to care for the families while that number of soldiers are away. We do not have enough staff to care for the soldiers when they are away. Of course, reintegrating that number of people back into the regiment and into the community will also be extremely difficult because, again, I have only one regular force captain to administer all these people.
To add to that problem, as my esteemed colleague mentioned, because my numbers in Calgary will actually decrease substantially, my budget will decrease substantially, and that will compound the problem of trying to take care of all of these people. However, as I said, we are working the problem. This is a problem that still has not gone up through the chain of command yet, quite frankly. We are still addressing it at our level. I have not yet produced viable courses of action for review by my chain of command, so I want to say off the bat that it would be unfair to attack the chain of command on this issue because I have not yet even told them that we have a problem.
Why am I telling you this? I think it is important to understand that we are facing a new paradigm in the reserves and regular force. We have the opportunity, when we set the conditions for success, where reservists are volunteering for operations at numbers that we have never seen before; and with a human resources problem looming on the horizon, we need to set the conditions for success across the country that will allow our reservists to deploy in numbers that we have not seen before.
I am excited. I know the chain of command is embracing reservists on operations like never before, and it represents a fantastic opportunity for all of us.
Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Doherty, Commanding Officer, 14 Service Battalion, National Defence: Good afternoon, senators. Our battalion, 14 Service Battalion, is a combat service support organization. For those who may not be aware, we provide vehicle techs, gunsmiths, supply techs, cooks, the whole range of all the services that are required to keep the logistical training, the army functional, and combat arms functional in the field.
We have a couple of concerns. This past rotation, which came back in August, and for some of my soldiers actually ended in October, some of them were on the nine-month program as opposed to the six-month program, particularly the supply techs. Over the past few years we would look at about 10 per cent of our battalion being deployed on part of these roles. We are a small unit. We typically parade somewhere around 65 to 80 soldiers, and our training cycles are very lengthy. That means that a surge capacity to meet some of these requirements that are upcoming over the next couple of years is difficult for us to undertake, given the time constraints. Even on the regular force side it takes a number of years for a vehicle tech to reach full journeyman status. That applies to gunsmiths and, to a lesser extent, to the cooks and the supply techs and suchlike. However, when you take these sort of training requirements and roll them into the reserve world where, as you have heard, we are only looking at 39 days per year and perhaps two or three weeks during the summer for career courses, it takes a while for me to generate a soldier qualified to be deployed and be employable on a task force. I guess our concern in that respect is that the schools need to act on developing a program which meets the needs of the reservists on the CSS side.
There has been some movement in that respect, and we have seen some improvements in the past 18 months to two years. However, for us to be able to meet the type of deployment numbers that the regulars are looking for from the reservists, we need to have some movement on that front.
In terms of kit shortages, Colonel Gilkes referred to combined training. He talked about convoy escorts. Let me say that we are the people whom he is typically escorting, and for us to go out, we also need to be issued with equipment such as radios and so forth so that we can marry up with his unit and conduct joint operations. That is essentially mirroring the day-to-day operations that we would see if our soldiers deploy to Afghanistan.
Colonel Wriedt talked about recruiting. The recruiting paradigm we currently have is one which evolved during the fifties and sixties. Essentially the battalion regiment, or whatever, would designate a junior officer as Captain, and perhaps give him a couple of clerks. Between them they would scheme up some attractions, some events, to try and bring people on to the armoury floor. In these days of mass communication and modern marketing techniques, that is an archaic approach. Utilizing that paradigm will not give us the access, it will not give us the draw, basically, to bring these potential soldiers on to the armoury floor and expose them to the opportunities that they can gain through the reserves. Working out of the Class A budgets as we currently do, I count about $2,000 a month of Class A funds that are devolved towards training. That is a very thin thread for us to depend upon considering the types and numbers that the army and the Canadian Forces are looking to us to deliver results on.
I will defer that point. Much of my compatriots have already covered off a number of my points.
Captain Karl Kalincak, Adjutant, 33 Field Engineer Squadron, National Defence: Good afternoon, senators. My commanding officer, Major Darren McCrank, could not be here this afternoon because of his commitment to his civilian work.
I have been a member of 33 Field Engineer Squadron for the past eight years. During this time my unit has sent 20 members on overseas deployments. Three members were deployed twice, and five members have since transferred to the regular force after their deployment.
I have a couple of quick facts to give you. First, Task Force 1-07, which is deploying now, is undermanned by 200 soldiers. Second fact, 41 Canadian Brigade Group has been tasked to force generate 75 personnel to augment Task Force 1-08. In fact, those numbers are continuing to grow, as you have heard today.
A reservist joining the Canadian Forces must meet the same eligibility criteria as a regular force recruit. They must pass a basic military qualification course, a soldier qualification course, and then complete trades training. Thus the reservist who volunteers for overseas deployment is already fully trained.
My commanding officer's concern is with the reservist's integration into the total force, with a focus on simplifying the system for a reserve soldier to join a task force. I will give the example of one soldier, Corporal Steven Booth. In fact, I have talked to him extensively about this subject. Corporal Booth has three years' service with the reserves. He is in excellent physical condition and has proven himself a competent soldier. In fact, he was the top student on parts one and two of his QL3. That speaks very well for him. When a call to arms was announced, he immediately volunteered. Since then, he has spent considerable time and effort completing a multi-phase screening form in preparation for Task Force 1-08. Some of this effort has been on his own time, without full compensation, and some costs will not be reimbursed. This training process is called DAG, which stands for Departure Assistance Group. Items such as dental, medical, passport, fitness testing and social worker interviews require time away from school or time away from their work. There is some compensation for this time, but not the same coverage that a regular force soldier receives. The regular force soldier is getting paid full time while they DAG, and all associated costs are covered by the Canadian Forces.
I want to touch on the dental aspect. Corporal Booth must get his dental work completed prior to joining Task Force 1-08. He must have a dental examination, a bite wing, and panoramic x-rays. Because he has all of his wisdom teeth, these must also be removed. The reserve dental plan covers 90 per cent of the cost, so initially he pays the full cost of $2,101.28, and then waits four to six weeks for that 90 per cent reimbursement. The maximum benefit that he can claim per year is only $1,250, so if he requires any more dental work, he will be paying the full price.
Corporal Booth's brother, Sapper Cory Booth, also volunteered. He has already spent $400 in dental work and is expecting to pay the same dental costs as his brother.
I will touch briefly on medical. Cooperate Booth has a current medical profile, but must schedule a medical to confirm his present status and get his immunization book updated. This is done during the work day because doctors work bankers' hours.
As far as passport photos are concerned, Corporal Booth will be reimbursed for the cost of the six passport photos, but not the time entailed to get them.
Briefly on fitness testing, Corporal Booth has to prepare for the battle fitness test. This is a 13 kilometre rucksack march, followed by a 100 metre fireman's carry, and then moving the equivalent of a six-foot trench-worth of pea gravel from one location to another location, using a shovel. While training for the BFT, he is covered by his civilian medical plan, but he will not be paid for the training portion; only for that time when he actually does the battle fitness test.
In summary, these are a few of the obstacles that a reservist must overcome before joining a regular force unit for deployment. In a total force concept, all soldiers must DAG green before deployment. When the Canadian Forces requires reserve augmentation, the reservist who volunteers for an overseas deployment should be treated as an equal to the regular force counterpart.
Senator Banks: We are hearing some different things today than we heard before, in other places, but one way or another, many of these things have to do with force generation and fairness with respect to reservists.
This committee is, in some respects, delighted with the moves that the government has made to increase the number of reserves and the number of forces. We have been urging that for years. However, we are a little disappointed at how long they think it might take.
With respect to force generation, we have paid a lot of attention in our previous reports, of which you may be aware, to the recruitment of the reserves and the treatment of the reserves, specifically with respect to two things: one of them is relatively new, and that is reintegration, which you have referred to already; the other is the question of job protection. You referred specifically to the idea that it is hard to ask an employer in the present circumstances to give somebody two years off to go and fight for his country. There has been an ongoing debate in this country for years about whether the kind of job protection that exists elsewhere in other countries, the United States in particular, could be appropriately applied in Canada, and which of the double-edged sword would prevail and work to the benefit of the reserves. Colonel Wriedt, I will ask you what your view is because you probably know what your colleagues' view is.
We have said that there is a third edge to the sword: that it is right that people who are asked to go and fight for their country should have their jobs protected. However, we put another wrinkle in it, which this committee has mentioned in the past and with which you might not be so familiar, and that is that if you are going to spend public money and train a soldier to be exactly as competent and as prepared to go into battle as our regular force member, and undertake the cost of doing that and provide job protection by law, that the other part of the quid pro quo should be that when a reservist, having received that training, is called on, he or she will go to serve.
Given that context and what else do you have to say about the question of job protection, about that wrinkle and the concept of how those things will affect recruitment to the reserves and force generation in general?
Col. Wriedt: Senator, prior to coming to 41 Brigade, I did a two-year exchange with the United States Army, teaching at their command and staff college. I have seen the other side of the coin or the other edge of the blade, if you will, where in a circumstance of very high-intensity deployment, a lot of U.S. soldiers will go out for their one deployment and most of their employers will support it. The problems begin when you start to get hit with the second deployment, and those reserves are deploying out for two years at a time.
Mind you, as Colonel Gilkes alluded to, we are starting to move beyond the one-year deployment, which was always sort of the rough figure with which Canadian reservists were indoctrinated to understand that that was the way it would be. Now we are moving out for longer deployment times because we are in a very high-intensity situation in Afghanistan, and if your soldiers are going outside the wire, and quite rightly so, the chain of command wants to know that those soldiers have all the capabilities of their regular force counterparts, and that is understood. That is a policy decision, and I think a lot of work would have to be done by the army staff, the CF and the government to fully explore what the implications are of our current situation. Is it working as effectively as it should, or should we go to a job protection situation?
I really do not have an answer for that because we have a different dynamic in Canada than what you see across the border, where service in the military has a much broader exposure in the U.S. public than it does in the Canadian context, even though Canadians, quite rightly, should be proud of their past history, that when the call came to go to Europe on several occasions, millions of soldiers stepped up to the plate.
I do not know if there is a silver bullet, but I think the staff were weighing the two options of job protection. It has not been done, and certainly at the moment I do not have the staff capacity to do studies of that nature.
As far as the quid pro quo concept, if we are going down that path, from my perspective as a brigade commander we are getting into a fundamental change in the terms of employment for a reservist.
Once again, I really do not know what the implications are of going down that path. I really do not know. I also do not know whether I have answered your question, but I do not know what would end up happening.
Senator Banks: Pretend I am a guy on the street and I asked you a rude question: Why should we spend the thousands of dollars that it costs to pay and to train a tank driver or a radio operator or an infanteer and give them that trade capacity if, when called upon, they will not be doing that job? I said it was a rude question, and we have never put it that way, but how would you answer that question?
Col. Wriedt: Actually, that is a fair question because it is a question that is frequently asked in Canada by members of the public. I get that question asked of me in my civilian workplace.
First of all, before I say what I am about to say, a lot of the Canadian public is on a very steep learning curve with regard to the military and the world we see around us, and how it has changed significantly in the last decade, but I sort of compare it to a life insurance policy. Whether it is term life or whole life or a combination thereof, we can debate the nuances for a long period of time. Having said that, everybody has a life insurance policy because when the bad stuff really happens, you have to have that ability to address the worst case scenario. We in the military are your worst case scenario insurance policy.
Senator Banks: Which is why this committee has long argued for increases in compensation, recruitment and all of those things, because we recognize — and we have learned, although not on our own; we have come to learn how important that is.
Col. Wriedt: Can I ask any of my colleagues if they would like to contribute to that debate?
The Chairman: Just before you finish, if I may, sir. There is no question that the Canadian military is an insurance policy for Canada. That is very much part of the deal, but there is still part of the question that you have not answered when you were talking to your colleagues. You said you were asked the same question by your colleagues: Why should people be paid to learn a trade or a skill if they do not go? It is not a very good insurance policy if they do not go. If you have an insurance problem, you expect your adjuster to come the next day and to produce. What is the answer to that?
Col. Wriedt: Agreed. I can somewhat cop out by saying that my answer is that when I wear the uniform, I reflect the government of Canada and the National Defence Act, and right now we have two terms of service. You have what is called ``Limited Liability'' and then you have ``Unlimited Liability.'' If you join the regular forces, you are an unlimited liability, and when they say you are going, you are going. We in the reserves, our terms of employment are limited liability, and unless you sign on to a long-term contract while in Class A, you do not have to be deployed.
The Chairman: You are describing what we know, but Senator Banks gave you a different set of terms and conditions, and what he was asking for was what was your best guess as to whether that was a good idea or not?
Col. Wriedt: In my opinion, it has its problems.
The Chairman: That is why we are here, to learn.
Col. Wriedt: But having said that, I can also tell Joe Q Public that 99 per cent of the reservists, when they get the call at three o'clock in the morning that the river banks are overflowing, they will get their gear on and they will be standing there in the mud and the rain, doing their job.
LCol. Gilkes: I have one other edge to add to your sword. I am a small business owner and I have about ten employees, and about a third of them are reservists. In that case, if I were forced to deploy and there was no compensation, my business would go under. It is a high-tech business, so I have to handpick and carefully select who will come in and do these jobs in my absence. They are not shovelling gravel, so to speak. That is sort of the other sides of things, too. No matter which way the hammer swings, somebody will get hit in the eye.
Senator Banks: Needless to say, such a plan would have to have some very careful study, and as in the United States, the size of the work force would be a determining factor.
I just wanted you gentlemen to be aware that we have been thinking along that line: We will guarantee your job, but the other side is that you will go wherever. It would change the rules. It would change the nature of the contract. It would change, I expect — and this is the opinion that I was seeking — it would change the number of people who would walk up and be willing to volunteer to join the reserves.
The Chairman: We are trying to create a dialogue here so that we can learn and have a better understanding of the pros and cons, and it is not very good when we sit in a committee room somewhere and scheme up brilliant ideas and just pop them out. That is why we are talking to people and we are asking these questions. This is a learning process for us. If you think of it in that context, to help us understand the issues better, we would be grateful.
LCol. Manley: Sometimes I wish someone would tell my wife I had to go because that would save a whole lot of problems at home.
From my perspective, I wonder if it is really required to force people to go. The only reason I ask that question is, based on the experience of my command over the last two years, we have generated a tremendous number of people, 90 for the next tour, almost half of my parade strength; in fact, more than half of my parade strength. I think part of our success was that we set the conditions that would allow soldiers to be successful in deploying. If, in fact, half of all reservists made themselves available for deployment, we probably would not have a human resources problem.
The Chairman: With respect, you do not have a typical regiment.
LCol. Manley: I would like to think that that is true, sir, but in fact might I say that we started out as a typical regiment.
LCol. Doherty: I think it is sort of counterintuitive, but as the degree of reality and the seriousness of the venture becomes clear, there is a really a roll-up there for both the regulars and the reserves. Paradoxically, our enquiries for recruiting have increased. We have the mechanisms necessary to bring them in and train them. Certainly, the amount of interest that has been shown has increased. This, then, is one of those counterintuitive arguments where, as the terms of reference change, you will see a different group of people coming in, but I do not think you will see a drop in the actual numbers of people who are interested. In fact, in some cases I think you would probably target the people who would consider that venture a much more significant challenge in their lives.
Senator Banks: Other senators may have questions about that. I have one further question, gentlemen, just before I go. A couple of you have mentioned radios. We have heard from some soldiers who were there, reserve soldiers who went there to work in various contexts who were communications people, and who have said that the equipment they found themselves operating in Kandahar had no relationship with the equipment on which they had trained.
So let me start, Colonel Gilkes, by asking you a question. I did not know that your regiment had been turned over to recon, but you are training on G-Wagons. Your folks are not likely, I hope, to be driving G-Wagons if they are going on convoy assistance in Kandahar. Are they not more likely to be driving an RG3?
LCol. Gilkes: Yes, sir, that is correct.
Senator Banks: Are you training on that equipment?
LCol. Gilkes: We are, during the workup and preparation training for going overseas.
Senator Banks: In Wainwright?
LCol. Gilkes: In Wainwright or Edmonton, or wherever it happens. The point is that with most of our equipment, even if it is different, as long as it is close enough, we can get the training value out of it. There are some certain differences with things like communication equipment where it is important to get something as close as possible to what we will be using in the field because it is very difficult to operate, there is a steep learning curve, and the more time it takes to learn the less time you will have to be able to do that job and other things during your workup training. Also with weapons systems, obviously marksmanship is an important thing, so we try to keep the weapons systems as close as possible.
Senator Banks: The gun system on the Nyala is quite different from the gun system on the G-Wagon.
LCol. Gilkes: Yes, it is. That is one aspect where you have a fairly steep learning curve and a lot of time during the training has to be spent on getting people up to speed with that vehicle.
Having said that, one of our soldiers became a Nyala driver overseas in Kandahar, so one day the Nyala showed up, and he stopped driving G-wagons and took the short course and became a Nyala driver.
Senator Banks: I hope he was one of the excellent soldiers who drove us around.
The Chairman: We understand during the changeover, when they arrived, that it was about a five-day workup.
LCol. Gilkes: That is what you are getting out of having reservists training back here in Canada: you are reducing the amount of workup training time that has to be done and the amount of in-theatre training time that has to be done.
The Chairman: Our understanding is that they will be getting some Nyalas back here, so that once the needs in Afghanistan are satisfied that equipment will be here so that soldiers can train on them rather than do it on their first week in theatre.
LCol. Gilkes: The armoured corps has been doing this for 60 years. There has been an elite group over in Europe, or wherever, that has had one type of tank, while the training in England has used a different type of tank, and then there is a third type of tank. There is nothing unusual about this, and we have been making do for a lot of years, doing the same thing.
Senator Meighen: Frankly, I am generally very encouraged from what I hear. I have been on this committee long enough to remember being told in Vancouver that they did not have enough money to pay those of us who paraded.
I was in Bosnia in 1994. We were both together, the chair and I, in the year when those coming in had to trade helmets with those going out.
The Chairman: And some of them did not fit.
Senator Meighen: We do not all have the same sized swelled heads. Things are in many respects better, although there is still room for improvement but I am heartened by what I hear you say in terms of interest in the reserves, support for the reserves, clothes and other equipment that you have obtained.
That being said, can we turn to training? There were two points — and forgive me if I cannot pinpoint he who made the remark that I am going paraphrase, but one of you said that it was important to improve training efficiency. Another person referred to a set national recruiting mechanism. Could I have some details and flesh on those bones, please?
Col. Wriedt: Senator, with respect to recruiting, I always define recruiting as comprising two components. There is the attraction: the people who go out and make contact with the public and get people interested in what we do. The second component is the processing: grinding through the paperwork to get somebody sworn in to be a soldier in the Canadian Forces. In the early nineties, we moved to a unified recruiting system. In other words, it devolved to the Canadian Forces recruiting system, where they did the processing. The problem was that there was no plan for who was supposed to be responsible for going out and doing the attraction.
With the CF recruiting system, they are busy people because they are trying to recruit for the army, the air force and the navy, along with the militia, the reserve, the army reserve, the coms reserve, the naval reserve, the air reserve, the healthcare reserve — all these different components, and everybody has competing requirements.
Right now, here in Calgary with 41 Brigade, we are the biggest kid on the block, but there are times of the year when the focus of the CFRC is very specific on generating recruits or officer cadets to go to RMC. At certain other times of the year, they are looking at pilots, and so on. What we end up doing is de facto, because no-one else is doing it specifically for the reserve. These COs actually go out and use their Class A funds and recruit on behalf of their units.
Senator Meighen: The perform the attraction part.
Col. Wriedt: They actually go out and do the attraction. If they have people trained to do so, we also do some of the processing. I employ a certain percentage of people who assist with the processing. The thing that has to be understood is that the kid who goes into the regular force has generally done some homework and is looking at a career possibility. We in the reserves are looking, at times, at people who are just out there to try something different. In other words, they are still finding themselves. It is to be hoped that we may provide them with an opportunity to learn some leadership, some discipline, and make some money out of the deal.
Senator Meighen: Colonel, you are the one, I think, who talked about training efficiency. What are the efficiencies you would like to see? For example, we have heard, lo these many years, that the processing of the applications takes an interminable period of time and often acts as a discouragement and a turnoff to people who do not hear back quickly enough.
Col. Wriedt: I will say this: With respect to the Canadian Forces, it is amazing what having people going into combat does to the organization from a systems standpoint. Suddenly, things that were barriers two or three years ago, we find that they are no longer barriers. Having said that, my commander is very upfront. He says that of all the criteria to get a soldier in the door, be it regular forces or reserves, there are only so many he controls. Some things are controlled by Veterans Affairs; some things are controlled by Treasury Board, so it is a question of trying to amalgamate and get it all synchronized and going down the same path. That issue is being worked on, I am sure, by the chain of command.
When I talked about training efficiencies, what I meant was that we train at the unit level as effectively as we can, given the constraints of time, money and equipment. These gentlemen may allude to that a little bit further. We do have some concerns with the training system as far as our actual career courses are concerned. There are career courses for reservists now that are almost, I wouldn't say impossible, but very difficult to get people into. For example, your master corporal course for an infantry soldier is — perhaps I can refer to Lieutenant-Colonel Manley on this one. How long does it take the BLQ soldier to be qualified to lead soldiers in combat?
Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Manley, Commanding Officer, Calgary Highlanders: I would suggest that if you did it as a reservist on a part-time basis, it would take two years to complete the course. To get on to the course might take another two years because the vacancies are not there.
Senator Meighen: Because of what?
LCol. Manley: There are limited course vacancies.
Senator Meighen: Because there are limited course instructors, probably.
LCol. Manley: In all likelihood, yes, that is probably the root cause.
Senator Meighen: Colonel Gilkes was the one who talked about the national mechanism.
LCol. Gilkes: I did not have anything on national mechanism. Mine was training efficiency.
Senator Meighen: I thought it was Colonel Gilkes who referred to the national training mechanism.
LCol. Gilkes: On the training efficiency, there is a degree of overlap in systems right now, so there is a school system that pumps out soldiers and they are trained to the basic level qualification. Then within a unit, they are trained on a yearly basis. They take other, smaller courses and whatnot and then they do collective training together. They work together as teams. Then during the workup training, there is also collective and individual training that goes on during that period. The point is that there is still some degree of overlap and perhaps efficiency can be attained there.
Also, we do things on an annual basis, and I am not sure that every single thing needs to be done on an annual basis, maybe every two years or three years or who know what but it is not my job to necessarily make this sort of change happen. I try and reduce the overlap at my unit by making sure that I am focusing my training on stuff that other people are not doing. I think that, right now for me, that is the best way that I can achieve success in training efficiency.
Senator Meighen: Who mentioned the established national recruiting mechanism?
Col. Wriedt: That was me, sir. Right now, we recruit at the unit level and the brigade level in the attraction context because we have to do it to survive, but there is no big marketing plan that I am aware of at this point in time on how you actually attract specifically reservists. I mean, there are great advertisements out there but I guess my fear is that Canadians are not exposed to the military in the same way as you see across the border, where there is the National Guard, the Army Reserve, and there is also the active component. When they see the advertisements, the message gets all mixed in with the army.
Senator Meighen: Is the military life the generic thing that they are trying to sell, and once somebody says, ``Gee, I might like that,'' then they can get into the specifics, presumably. Does it act as a deterrent to attracting people to the reserves, in your view?
Col. Wriedt: I would say that until somebody did a detailed study of the marketing effects of proposing it to people as a full-time career as opposed to saying, ``There is this part-time vocation out there,'' I cannot say.
Senator Meighen: Does anyone else want to make any further comments? Captain Kalincak, you were the one who raised Corporal Booth and all the trouble he has to go through.
Capt. Kalincak: Those troubles are his on getting on Task Force 1-08, not on recruiting. He made it through the recruiting process successfully, as did his brother.
Senator Meighen: Your plea is that, once he is signed on, that he be treated in the workup in the same way as a regular?
Capt. Kalincak: Exactly, sir. He has volunteered to go, as have all the other members from across the brigade. They volunteer. They put up their hand; they stepped forward and said, ``Yes, I want to go on Task Force 1-08.'' They must take the time off work, or off school. In some cases they need to drop their schooling completely because, as it stands right now, the call update is going to be 1 April or 2 April, in fact, which means that they cannot attend the spring semester at their school. In other words, the reservist has effectively dropped out of school in preparation for going on Task Force 1-08.
Senator Meighen: There is just one other little caveat that Senator Banks raised, and that is that, at the last minute, he can say, ``You know, I am afraid I just cannot go.'' So how do we meet that problem? Do we pay him after the fact? Say, ``If you go, we'll reimburse you in the same way as a regular is reimbursed''?
Capt. Kalincak: I think, sir, that the process involved in it is, first off, you know the members of your unit. We are a small unit. We know the members of our unit intimately. The first process is, when the person puts their hand up, or volunteers, they are interviewed by their troop commander who knows them, who knows their schooling and all of the background with them. They sit down and they talk to the individual. First off, are there any immediate problems that might stop that member from volunteering? Then the second step in the process for us is that the member goes upstairs to the commanding officer, and he sits down and talks to the soldier. After those two interviews then we start working on that individual to get his paperwork and everything in order for him to go on Task Force 1-08.
Senator Meighen: Backing out at the last minute is highly unlikely, then?
Capt. Kalincak: It happens very seldom. The only time that they would be forced to back out is if they were to DAG red for some unforeseen reason.
Senator Meighen: Family crisis, a health matter?
Capt. Kalincak: Any number of things. There is a list — the checklist for everyone in preparation for going on Task Force 1-08 is extensive.
LCol. Gilkes: I would like to proffer, I guess, an alternate viewpoint on the reservist being able to be tasked to go on service. One of reasons we are reservists is that we do not do this full time. Effectively, once you add on all of the training, all of the liability and requirements to deploy, what you have, in effect, is a regular force soldier whom you are just not paying all of the time. Unfortunately, the pay and benefits that we get right now are not something that somebody who is in his mid-twenties or in a job would consider to be marketable, or something that they would want to do given the liabilities that are associated with it.
However, we seem to get a lot more bang for our buck because one of the largest elements of the defence budget is the overhead associated with pay and benefits. We do get a lot of bang for our bucks out of reservists and, sure, we spend a lot of the money training twice as many as volunteer, let us say, but it still costs a fraction of what a full-time person costs to train up and deploy.
These are not quantifiable numbers, but what you are counting on are people who are working part-time, doing something else and being paid by someone else, who will volunteer and occasionally go over and do what the Canadian public needs them to do. It would be a difficult thing, indeed, to be presented with all of the liability and everything and the rate of pay and the benefits for them to say, ``Yes, that is something that I want to add on to my life, because it is a huge thing.''
Colonel Wriedt talked about the stigma of the National Guard soldier in the U.S. Trying to get your initial job or to let your employer know that you are a reservist is a very dangerous thing because employers do not want reservists because of the liability associated with the job protection and the hassles in filling that job. That is just an alternative viewpoint.
My own opinion, I am kind of in the middle. I want to help out and I will go to Afghanistan in probably three years from now, but right now is not the right time for me in my life, my family business, all the sort of stuff that is working out for me to be able to do that, but I do want to contribute, and I do want to do this in a couple of years from now.
Senator Meighen: That is very helpful. I think it was you, Colonel Manley, who talked about a reintegration. Perhaps a number of you did. I was heartened to hear that the process seems to be going pretty well. I did not hear anyone mention having a number of your soldiers with real problems in reintegrating, but I did hear that it was difficult to keep track of them. I would have thought that if they want to continue on in the reserves and parade, you know their addresses because, no address, no paycheque. Why do you lose track of them? Do they abandon the reserves when they come back?
LCol. Manley: My experience, senator, has been that they do not abandon the reserves. We have not had any attrition amongst our veterans, and that is pretty good. I think part of the reasons is that when they come back as reservists, they can parade at their own pace. They can move back into being a soldier in a way that is comfortable for them.
When I talk about having difficulty tracking them, it is very difficult for us to determine if they are suffering from any kind of post-traumatic stress or any of those kinds of issues because we only see them for a couple of hours a week. They show up. They do well. They do not exhibit any obvious signs of problems. We do not know what they are like for the other six-and-a-half days of the week, and that is my concern, more so than tracking them physically where they are, just sort of keeping a finger on the pulse of how they are doing.
Senator Meighen: Do you have any program to liaise with their family or their spouse in particular, because if their spouse felt, ``Gosh, I do not know what to do, I am going to call Colonel Manley.''
LCol. Manley: We do not have a formal system in place for that, no. We have had instances, and not with our current veterans but with other cases of trauma in the regiment recently, that they do call through their chain of command. They know who their sergeant is, and that has worked.
In a case recently where one of our soldiers committed suicide at this time last year, the regiment essentially mobilized by itself and looked for and found that young soldier's body, and they took care of that themselves. We are experiencing some kickback from that. We have had two soldiers who sort of experienced some difficulty. They were on the team that discovered his body and we have had some problems with that. It is very hard for us to be able to put our finger on something and say ``This guy is exhibiting signs of trouble,'' because we do not see them often enough. Sorry, to answer your question, no, we do not have a formal system in place, in terms of one that is written and known, but the soldiers do know who their chain of command is, and they have exercised their ability to call their sergeant, their immediate supervisor.
Senator Meighen: Maybe the regular army should continue to keep in touch with them. I mean, with respect to the regular army, when they come back, it is goodbye, and they are gone.
LCol. Manley: That is a real problem. It bothered me that, when everyone came back from Afghanistan, the army had a welcome home parade in Edmonton, and none of my soldiers were invited. Of course, we then held our own welcome back parade. It is a paradox. It is not an easy problem. We want to celebrate their return because they are part of our family, and so our regiment wants to celebrate that, but when they have the big publicized one in Edmonton, I was invited and I attended, but it would have been nice for someone to say, ``This was not just a PPCLI thing.'' I am a former PPCLI myself, so it would have been nice to say, ``This is a total force effort, and thanks to all the regiments that contributed.'' I am sorry, but I didn't feel that way this time.
Senator Banks: Is there a family resource center in Calgary?
Col. Wriedt: Yes, there is. It is located in my brigade headquarters up at Currie.
The Chairman: This question came up when we were in Edmonton. In fact, there was concern expressed about exactly what you described. The sense was that we are working hard to keep track of our people and how they are working out with their families and, oh, yes, we really have not done much on the reserve end. I think it is a problem that needs to move to the top of somebody's list.
LCol. Manley: As I expressed in my earlier comments, it is of grave concern to me because if in fact I have 90 people deploying, it is hard for me to keep my finger on the pulse of the 27 of mine who just came back. Add 90 on to that, and with only one full-time captain to administer the regiment, it is difficult.
The Chairman: Just before we go to Senator Atkins, who is next on the list, since you mentioned the 90 deploying. You went through the litany of problems and complications with which that left you. What is the reason why you do not have 45 going on the next roll, and 45 going on the roll after that, rather than 90 going out all at once?
LCol. Manley: Probably poor planning on the part of the CO, I think.
The Chairman: I was not looking for that. As I was hearing this talk, it just seemed that many of the issues would be alleviated if — I mean, once somebody wants to go, they want to go.
LCol. Manley: Actually, I can explain that. It is an issue that is very important to me, and it is one that you raised earlier, and that is that we have 90 people going. However, the Calgary Highlanders is an extraordinary regiment, so we have 90 people going. That is not why we have 90 people going. For two years we have focussed on nothing but getting ready to go. Our training plan focussed exclusively on what individual and collective skills we needed to effectively operate in Afghanistan. At every parade, every function, even if it were a mess dinner, we reminded people that the reason we have mess dinners is to build a corps so that when we are in combat, we will be successful. The focus of the regiment was purely on preparing every one of our soldiers for war. The result has been that more people want to go.
We also worked on a concept that we would actually deploy a combat-effective infantry company, and it would operate as a company. There are many reasons why we cannot do that, and I am not passing judgment, but that was a huge motivator for the soldiers, that they could perform and soldier together under the same camp badge. However, that cannot happen this particular time around, and there are some valid reasons for that. I am not going to argue with that, but it was a huge motivator for us.
Now, however, we have this critical mass that is causing people to want to be a part of that venture. This is historic for our regiment. This is essentially the regiment deploying, and that is the way we sold it and that is why we have so many people going this time. I think that critical mass is important in motivating soldiers to want to go, and that is why 90 are going on this tour, at the expense of our training, but I think it was well spent.
Senator Atkins: Newfoundland and Hamilton learned a lesson with people going over from one area. I assume that there is some form of integration, once they are deployed, so that if there were ever a situation in combat, you would not wipe out a whole community.
I want to follow along on the 90 men and women whom you are deploying from your regiment — and your regiment is obviously unique, from everything we hear from across the country. Among that 90, do you ever decide that perhaps there are some members in that 90 who should not be deployed?
LCol. Manley: At this point in time, there are 90 volunteers. We have not gone through a detailed screening process to decide if there is someone who perhaps ought not to go. It is an issue that I talked about with the commander. He might be able to address that as well. What we are concerned about is that it is hollowing out the regiment for one tour, and our capacity to generate troops for the next tour will be diminished as a result. The danger now is that since we have so many people who are so motivated, what happens if we tell people that they should not go? What message does that send? I am part of the problem in that respect in that, of course, we generated this situation; we created this problem. Of course, we did not expect it to be perhaps as big as it is.
Senator Atkins: As I understand it, the military is looking for, perhaps, out of the 2,000, 500 reservists. You are talking about 15 to 20 per cent from your own regiment. That is really something. You should be congratulated on the fact that you can do that here.
Just on another subject, and these are ones we need on all these occasions, and that is the question of processing. How much time elapses from the time that you get an enquiry and an application for service in the reserve to the time when they can be confirmed? Has it improved? I guess that is my question, because it has been a problem in recent years.
LCol. Doherty: There are essentially two tracks out there: the former service members, people who have been in a unit or in the military in one way or another in the past. Because of the amount of tracking that has to be done, they typically pull together their former qualifications, although that also can be quite lengthy. In many cases, some of these people had moved out because they had, say, a medical problem that may still be in play.
On the other hand, if we have, say, a young man or a young woman coming in off the street who has just graduated high school, time frames can be as little as six weeks, as long as they are clean. We have had some people move in, in that case.
As a matter of fact, my Class A recruiter, who operates a couple of times a week, tries to focus on those different individuals at different times of the year because it matches up with the training schedules. He will move these young people into the training program during the summers. Later on in the year, he may look at the reactivating individuals and in pushing forward former service member applications.
In other words, there are two populations here that we are dealing with. There have been improvements on the street side, most definitely. We still have some issues on reintegrating the former service members, that we really should make an effort to get them back in. I am sure the chain of command is aware of that. In fact, our senior office has identified that problem to me. They have nodded and said that they realize that that is an issue, but it does not necessarily fall within the purview of the army alone, in that respect.
Senator Atkins: Well, that was about to be my next question. The transfer of a regular soldier into the reserve: what kind of paperwork is involved in that, and vice versa?
LCol. Doherty: It all depends on when we catch him or her. For example, just last week, as a matter of fact, I had a regular force MWO from Colonel Wriedt's headquarters retire from the regular force. He transferred immediately over to the reservists, in a seamless manner.
Senator Atkins: Could he do that?
LCol. Doherty: Yes, that can be done. As part of the release process, they have to be made aware of the fact that that option exists and they can just transfer directly over. It is very seamless. If for some reason they do not do that, and that is more typically the case, then we are back at ground zero. Now we are talking several months, approaching a year, 18 months in some cases, to get through the process. We have made these comments to the recruiting people. In fact, at our last commanders' conference we had a representative from the local regular force recruiting cell here in Calgary, and they indicated that they were trying to address that problem by going to the exit cells, the R&D cells coming out of Edmonton, making sure that the people who were leaving the regular force were aware of that option, and to get the paperwork done at the right time so that they did not have to jump back to ground zero again.
In terms of transfers from the reserves into the regulars is concerned, as a matter of fact one of my soldier who returned from Afghanistan immediately transferred to the regulars. I typically have two, perhaps three, a year. They have spent perhaps two, three or four years with the reserves, achieved the rank of corporal, got their QL3 or QL5 under their belt, which typically means they are pretty dedicated paraders and made every effort to catch every course that comes along to get to that point. They are usually my best, and I lose a few of them every year to the regulars, which is fine.
I think in addition to that, I might just mention that it is only now, from a recruiting point of view, that the regulars are starting to realize, particularly in the CSS world, just how many of the partially-trained or partially-orientated tradesmen that they now have in the regular ranks came out of the reserves. These reserves made that move because they grew into a life-style and realized that they liked it. When you are an apprentice at SAIT or whatever, your life is pretty well fully consumed with trying to get your ticket, and so forth. If you join the reserves, you get a little taste of the life-style. We are bringing trained people to the regulars, so in terms of transfers, those are usually fairly easily done.
There are some questions at times with respect to quotas because of the fact that courses may not necessarily be running for the next 18 months, so they have to wait until they can move into the training program, and they typically tend to hold their transfers until that is possible. For example, Corporal Barnes did have to wait for something like a year. Part of that was during employment, waiting for a slot to open up on the training through the regular side.
Senator Atkins: Colonel Wriedt, it says that you are not facing an attrition problem. That is unique, too, because we are not hearing that wherever we go.
Col. Wriedt: Actually, we are facing an attrition problem. We traditionally lose about 17 per cent of our strength on a yearly basis.
I just initiated a program within this brigade, to focus our attraction effort on synchronization amongst all the units in the brigage because, up until now, all the units were operating discretely, without it all being meshed together. I am going to pull it all together as the brigade commander, to support the recruitment people.
Right now, with our recruiting attraction and processing, we are essentially flatlined. We are meeting our attrition rate, which is at about 140 to 170 soldiers a year. Many of these are people who have gone off to work in the oil sands. We compete very hard with the current business realities here in Alberta. Second, which is another one of those things that keeps me up at night worrying, are all the component transfers that we could see when soldiers opt to go to the regular force. They take that component transfer with them. For instance, with respect to Colonel Manley, many of his senior NCOs and officers will come back to the regiment because they have careers from which they have taken sabbaticals, but it is the young soldier, the young rifleman, the corporals, troopers, sappers who will say, ``Hey, I like this. I am going to 1CER or 1PP.'' These are the ones we are losing. We do not have a feel for where that is going because there is no tradition built up on statistics, or what it will look like. To answer your question: Yes, we do have attrition. We are trying to meet that.
Senator Atkins: You sound like you are doing pretty well. That leads me to another question, and you may have partially answered it. That is the effect on instructors and NCOs within the system. Are you able to hold on to them, or are you having the same experience that the regular army is having, that a lot of these people are getting to the stage where they want to retire?
Col. Wriedt: There is not a pattern to follow on what happens with different people. What you traditionally find with the pure reservist is that when he becomes qualified as a corporal, a master corporal, or in the case of a sergeant or an officer, a lieutenant, a captain, at the same time there are things starting to happen to his career. In other words, he is starting to move into more responsibility in his civilian career. Additionally, a certain percentage of them get married. They now have young families. What you will see, as a very loose pattern, is that a certain percentage of reservists step away for a period of time to carry on with civilian careers and families. In many cases a lieutenant or a captain or a master corporal or a sergeant, they will come back to the reserves eventually because they like doing it.
LCol. Doherty: If I could just add to that answer, that describes my career exactly. I took a four-year leave of absence potentially from the reserves. I had three small children. I guess, after the third or fourth month of straight weekends in training, or doing a recruit course, as course officers or as a young lieutenant, the wife said that I had to back off for a couple of years, but you can see I got back in.
Senator Atkins: I would ask Colonel Manley that question. With the amount of turnover or movement in your regiment, do you have any problem with keeping your NCOs and instructors? They want to be part of the rotation.
LCol. Manley: Our immediate concern is that we will have two warrant officers, one sergeant and four master corporals staying behind. That is a problem. However, the up side is that when that group comes back, I will have a hugely competent regiment. These guys will all have had a tour. The issue will be in keeping them. My belief is that the better we do at administering them and their families in their absence, the more likely we are to keep them.
Senator Atkins: When these soldiers come back, they are experienced, they have had the run in Afghanistan, how do they integrate with the other soldiers? Are they helpful? How are they treated on their return, as veterans?
LCol. Manley: Of course, every soldier who did not go feels badly that they are not going, and they look up to the veterans because they have had an experience that every soldier wants to have.
Senator Atkins: I am thinking of the other way around, though.
LCol. Manley: As far as how the veterans feel they are treated?
Senator Atkins: Or how they treat —
LCol. Manley: — how they treat the others? I think most of them have been at some point in their lives where they have realized that this is a tour that they cannot be on, and the next one is one that they can be on. I think they appreciate that not everyone can go on every tour. There has not been a whole lot of animosity in that way.
In fact, one of the things we do, recognizing that that could be a problem, is that we use the veterans to speak to the soldiers who will be going over — in fact, to all of our soldiers, and say, ``Look while I was there, this is what happened, this piece of equipment was good, this was not so good. Buy this one, do not buy this one.'' The little things that soldiers worry about. It helps everyone feel like they are part of the family again.
Senator Atkins: So it is mentoring?
LCol. Manley: Yes, that is a very good word for it.
Col. Wriedt: From a leadership perspective, and this is the conundrum that I and all of the commanding officers have to deal with, there will be a certain percentage of soldiers who can deploy. There is also a certain percentage of soldiers at any given time who cannot deploy because of family, because of career, that sort of thing, but it is to drive down to the armouries floor that we all come together as a team to make this work. If you do not have the folks on the armouries floor that can make the organization work, then we collectively all fail. Like a hockey team, a baseball team, you need everybody; all hands on deck, if you will.
Senator Moore: Coming out of a question that Senator Atkins asked, how are the reservists received and treated by the regulars in theatre? Are they looked upon as equals? Are they looked upon as being inferior? Are they integrating well in the field in the combat situations?
LCol. Manley: I think there are a couple of different phases that the soldiers go through when they initially arrive. They are often considered second-class citizens, but my experience has been, and what I am hearing from my soldiers is that it takes very little time before everyone realizes that they are capable and they want to be there. In fact, Colonel Hope, who commanded the last battle group, told me that he wished he had a whole company of Calgary Highlanders because the troops are motivated. They want to be there. These are not guys who have to go. They actually leave home, quit their jobs to go, so they are really motivated to be there and they try hard. They want to win the respect of the regular force counterparts. While in theatre, especially the soldiers who were integrated into the combat companies that were in the field, there was no difference. My soldiers faced the same dangers, earned the same respect and are being decorated for their efforts, so no, I do not think there is a problem.
Senator Moore: I did not want to imply it is a problem. I just want to know, when the guys came back, the women came back, the debriefing, how were they received?
LCol. Manley: We did debrief them, and they were received very well. Just like any big regular force units, every time you go there, you have to earn your respect. Once that is done, they were very well received.
Senator Moore: Does anybody else want to try that one?
Col. Wriedt: Actually, with the current circumstances in the regular force, and this is probably where the reserves reaps the benefits of the regular force experience, in the days of when we were in the former Yugoslavia, complete battalions were going. Now you look at a task force and it is a composite organization that is drawn from assets all across the country, both regular force and reserves. The task force commander, the company commander, the squadron commanders, they then know that they have a limited time to pull this team together and have everybody working together. Differences generally fall away pretty rapidly because they will all be depending on each other when the bullets start flying.
Senator Moore: Exactly.
LCol. Doherty: Just add to that in terms of my experience with the soldiers on the last rotation. One soldier did run into a problem with a particular NCO, an isolated case, but on the whole they were all respected; they all worked. It was really funny how quickly the imperatives of the job overwhelmed every other concern, because these regular force people had to depend on the guy who was a regular or a reserve but held a slot, and he is the one that is handing you the particular piece of kit that you need. It did not matter where he came from. He was there and he was working for you.
Senator Moore: Colonel Wriedt, you mentioned something about processing. We have had witnesses before us telling us that the Canadian Forces intend to do better recruiting, more recruiting, both on regular and in the reserves. Then you are saying it can take from six weeks to 18 months. What is involved here? Here is some young man or young woman who wants to join up. Why would it take so long? Are we looking to more recruiters? What is the process?
Col. Wriedt: Right now the recruiting system is going through a severe change in the way they do business because, for years, the recruiting system was built on the premise of maintaining a steady strength. Now we are in a growth situation so they are having to change business practices.
In the case of the reservist, if you get a clean candidate who comes in, he is physically fit, he has no problems with the law or anything, then it is a fast process.
Senator Moore: Fast is what? That is the six weeks?
Col. Wriedt: As Colonel Doherty says, six weeks is not unreasonable.
LCol. Doherty: They have been quicker, by several weeks.
Col. Wriedt: If there is a problem like the use of banned substances, for example, then the sky is the limit. It can get very complicated and time-consuming. The same thing if the recruit has a physical problem. Many of the kids today have, for example, dental problems. There are issues there. The medical issues can have an impact but, by and large, if you get a clean candidate, you can get him in very rapidly. When people say, ``Well, it does take a long time in the case of a candidate who is not necessarily clean and can go through rapidly,'' my response to them is, ``Remember something. We will be giving these people loaded weapons, and their compatriots' lives may depend on what they do or do not do in a combat situation, so the stakes are very high in this day and age.''
Senator Moore: I never thought about wisdom teeth causing a problem. I never thought that dental work would cause a delay in having an athletic person or a man or woman join the reservist or the regular force.
Col. Wriedt: If you are on a long deployment in Panjwayi Province and you suddenly end up with an abscessed tooth and there is no helivac to get you out, suddenly one soldier goes down and another soldier has to take care of him in preparation for the extraction system, to start getting him out, because now his face is swollen and he has an infection, so forth and so on.
Senator Moore: But there is a hospital there. I visited. I just find those time periods pretty lengthy. I am sorry, Colonel Doherty, you wanted to say something?
LCol. Doherty: I have just one further comment on the recruiting process. On the regular force side, these guys are typically fairly motivated to make sure that all their paperwork, birth certificates, the transcripts and so on and so forth are in order. They show up with them. Because we are dealing with the reservist, where the concern reverses to where he is exploring his options, he may not necessarily be quite as diligent as someone who is looking at a full career choice in terms of, okay, I will get my transcript next week.
Senator Moore: Transcript from high school, university?
LCol. Doherty: Marks, and so on and so forth. Speaking with my Class A recruiters, they find that they may consume two to three weeks, perhaps a month's worth of that time trying to assemble the package of material, just to get the file officially opened, so we are not necessarily totally blameless in that respect. In fact, my recruiters in my unit, that is mostly their job, the attraction, and making sure that the guy shows up at the recruiting centre with all his paperwork in order. We hold their hand on that. They do not necessarily come all prepared. For many of them, they are thinking something out. It is not a career choice, per se, so there is a slightly different focus.
The Chairman: Gentlemen, this has been a very valuable afternoon for us. I do not want you to go without hearing me express the admiration and respect that everybody has for the work that you and your people are doing. We see you as the backbone of our security system in Canada. We recognize how important the citizen soldiers are to Canadian's security, and we value very much how you do it. In fact, sometimes we are bewildered at how you actually do manage to do it, and I suspect very strongly that the 37.5 hours does not apply to anybody sitting in front of me.
I would be very grateful if you would take back to your regiments our best wishes, our respect, the thanks of the Parliament of Canada, and convey to them that we came here because we wanted to hear your views on their behalf; we wanted to hear about their problems, their concerns, what is going well and what is not going well. It is very important to us that we have these exchanges. We would like to find ways to do it on a little more frequent basis but we need to have these sorts of dialogues. It is an important learning process for us to have as we go forward, endeavouring to recommend policies to the government.
Thank you for your patriotism. Thank you for what you do for Canada. We appreciate it very much.
The committee adjourned.