NDVA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, April 20, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.)): I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.

We have one witness today. I understand Mr. Bland has to get away in about an hour's time. That should work fine, because at 5.15 there are two or three important items of business that I'd like to have the committee deal with, and then we're expecting bells about 5.30. We'll proceed that way.

Welcome to Monsieur Lebel—bienvenue, monsieur Lebel—who, I believe, was a member of the defence committee in the past and is returning to us now along with, of course, Monsieur Laurin from the Bloc.

Mr. Bland, we welcome you, sir, and we welcome your opening remarks.

Dr. Douglas Bland (Chair, Defence Management Studies Program, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University): Thank you very much.

I would simply say that I don't mean to rush anybody today. The only reason is that I have to leave Parliament for a higher institution: the CBC wants me to speak to them tonight.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Dr. Douglas Bland: I'm always pleased to speak with the committee, and I thank you for the invitation.

I was asked to say a few words about defence procurement. I thought I would try to make a few extemporaneous remarks and try to describe some of the issues that I think are important. Then it might be more helpful if you ask me some questions about this area.

People like to ask about Canadian defence procurement policy, and the cynics will often say—you may have heard them already—that it would be nice if we had such a policy. The problem in Canada has always been to try to match the three baskets of defence spending: personnel spending, spending for operations and maintenance, and spending for capital. It's been a difficulty because we seem not able to come up with a coherent strategy that matches the needs of all three of those areas.

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I'll try to talk to you about what we might call some macro questions dealing with procurement. Procurement for what? What force structure are we talking about? Then there are micro questions, which have to do with particular pieces of equipment. Finally, I'll talk for a few minutes about budgeting implications, some of the long-term problems we've had, and perhaps a bold suggestion about how we might go ahead from that.

Trying to decide what we're procuring for comes back to questions of strategy, that is, the matching of ends and means, and it also comes back to questions of structure, that is, what kind of an armed force do you need to have?

There are two general ways in which we've attempted to answer these questions. The first way is to begin by defining the roles and missions of the Canadian Forces and then to hope that statements of those roles and missions would obviously decide for us what the structure of the armed forces has been.

I would argue that there are three missions of the armed forces. We've had them probably since Confederation, we'll always have them, and they won't change in their essence. The first mission is to defend Canada. The second mission is to defend North America in co-operation with the United States. The third mission is to provide expeditionary forces for missions outside Canada with our allies and our friends.

Having stated those missions, though, that doesn't define the force structure, because you come back to questions about the balance between forces for each of those missions and the kinds of expeditionary forces you're going to have and so on. The approach to procurement by looking at roles and missions isn't often too successful. We always get back to political choices.

There is no escaping the fact that even if we have a very good understanding of the roles and missions of the Canadian Forces, now and in the future, we're still going to need to have political discussions, political decisions, about who gets what from the national treasury, about how much of that goes into the armed forces, about how many and what kinds of structures you're going to have in the armed forces, and about what kind of missions you're going to get involved in, in detail.

The problem for politicians, I think—from my point of view, anyway—is that you're always dealing with a great deal of uncertainty in the details of the missions. If anything characterizes Canadian Forces defence policy or Canadian defence policy over the last 25 or 30 years, it's surprise. The government is always surprised at the state of the armed forces, I think, and the armed forces are always surprised at the missions that the government asks them to carry out. It is hard to find anybody who, six or seven years ago, would have said that the Canadian Forces in 1999 would be mainly deployed in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. It is difficult to draw a strategy around that. Surprise and uncertainty make for a difficult problem.

Procurement is also confounded by institutional pressures. By that I mean, as we all realize, that people in the army, in the navy and in the air force have their own views of what is required, and these are often institutional views. In fact, in some parts of the services, like the army, for instance, you can find people who have different views about what the army should be made up of. It's hard for politicians to get what we would call a military point of view; often you get an institutional point of view.

Finally, there are questions of budget constraints. We can talk about that in a few minutes.

Another way to look at capital procurement is to begin with what you have now in the armed forces as a starting point, or, in other words, to look at your stock of military capabilities—the number of planes, the number of vehicles and the number of ships that the Canadian Forces have—and come to some dollar figure for that capability, that stock of goods.

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Then the strategy would simply be—and I use the term lightly—to develop a strategy to replenish, to recapitalize, the stock of goods. Let me give an example. Let us suppose that the stock of goods in the Canadian Forces at the present moment is worth $50 billion and we decided that we wanted to recycle that stock every 10 years. Obviously you would need to spend $5 billion annually on recapitalization of the force to maintain that system, to pay for it.

As I said a moment ago, another way to look at these things is to look at the micro level. That's what we often do in Canadian defence policy, in Canadian defence planning, and as part of our political system, I suppose. We tend to look at individual items of equipment: a ship program, an airplane program, an armoured vehicle program, and so on. I don't suppose that I need to tell you ladies and gentlemen that there is a difficulty. There are certain pressures on members of Parliament to make sure that whoever gets what, it's the people in their riding. Leaders are always pressed to try to find some worth from defence spending, as if the establishment of the institution weren't worth enough.

Some of you may have responded to a survey I did this winter on the attitudes of members of Parliament towards national defence. In the section of that survey that had to do with defence procurement, members of Parliament and senators, almost to a person, answered numbers of questions—like where we should buy our equipment, who should benefit, whether it should be onshore or offshore, etc.—by saying that defence spending should be done in the first place to benefit the armed forces and that all other things beings equal, things like effectiveness of equipment and so on, you can insist that equipment be bought in Canada.

There was agreement—in the survey, at least—that members of Parliament ought not to be greatly worried about the distribution of defence spending by region. In other words, if the good of the armed forces is what really matters, if all the defence money is spent in Ontario, for instance, that would be a good thing. That's a survey result. Sometimes I think the daily to and fro might give us a different result, but it is a continuing concern and a problem with defence spending in Canada as to who benefits from the spending.

Finally, I would just like to touch on budgeting for a moment. As you well know, our normal budgeting process for the defence department over the last number of years, in the former government and in this government, has been to provide a fixed amount of money for the defence minister and then ask him or her to go out and see what he or she can get for that. That leaves the defence department in a real difficulty. Like a pensioner or an old soldier like me, perhaps, living on a fixed pension, when you have to make choices on a fixed budget, it means that you cut from one pocket to give to the other pocket.

That means, in defence spending, that if we spend on personnel, we don't spend on operations and capital. If we spend on capital, we don't have any money for personnel. The research indicates, over a very long period, that what always suffers in this dynamic is capital procurement. Capital procurement in Canada is not part of a strategy, not part of a policy, but a residue. It's what's left over after you spend on personnel and after you spend on operations. If you can find ways to reduce personnel or reduce spending on operations, you get more capital and so on. It doesn't work very well.

Another suggestion is that we might try to build what I would call a baseline process. The basic premise is that we would build a budget for the need of the defence department, not for what you can get out of the budget. In other words, we would allocate moneys that are needed.

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But how do we know what's needed? How much is enough? That's an essential and enduring question of defence management. To find out how much is enough, we need Parliament to define the size of the armed forces, to direct that the armed forces will be such-and-such a size, at a certain pay rate. That will give you your pay budget, your personnel budget. We then need, perhaps, to build a strategy of recapitalizing on an annual basis the stock of national defence goods. We can figure that out fairly accurately over a period of time.

Then you look at the operation and maintenance budget simply as a ratio of the other two segments of the defence budget and that would give you the need for national defence. That would give us a budget that is predictable and workable and a sufficient baseline for planning. If circumstances were such that Canadians found that they didn't have enough money to meet the baseline spending, Parliament could subtract from that known baseline. If we found that through great fortune we had surpluses of money to spend on national defence, we would know exactly where to spend the money and at what rate.

Otherwise, we are in a situation that I coined a phrase for a long time ago. How do we do defence management in Canada? It's a “random management system”. That doesn't mean that people in the defence department and in the armed forces aren't clever and conscientious about spending. They are certainly that. What it means is that those people who are charged with national defence planning and management are not in control of the factors for planning. They don't know the budget. They don't know what's happening. They don't know what the strategy is. They don't know what they're going to do next day. The end result is that you have a very random management system for the defence and the planning for the defence of Canada.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Dr. Bland.

We should have time for two rounds of questions, colleagues. We'll start the first ten-minute round with Mr. Hanger of the Reform Party.

Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Bland.

I'm curious about a statement you made towards the end of your presentation. It was about the random management system that the Canadian Forces are subjected to, if you want to call it that. You said that the military is not in control of certain factors in planning. Could you enlarge upon that?

Dr. Douglas Bland: In the academic world, we like to believe that policies are rationally managed, not just in the defence department but in government. We like to believe that it's a rational management system, that everything is thought out, and that we can figure out through science and economics what the bottom line is going to be. In actual fact, we know from experience that the system is less rational and more bureaucratic than we would like.

“Random management system” is my term. At the time, I was writing a book on this subject and trying to find some way to differentiate what actually goes on in national defence headquarters from what is declared to go on in national defence headquarters. In the headquarters, as in many departments, there are thick books that will describe to you the process for making a decision, but nobody in the building believes that's how we make decisions, so I had to think up some other way to explain how decisions are actually made.

After some thought, I came up with this notion that it's random. It's random in the sense that at any particular moment in the department, the armed forces can be ordered off to a new mission, to Africa, for instance, and that will destroy the defence planning process to some degree. Or the government can take back money or order a pay raise for the soldiers.

The defence department is not like a corporation, where the board of directors, the president, and the CEO can sit around and define their business plan and control their spending and so on. Most of the managers in headquarters spend most of their time responding to unforeseen circumstances. We have seen that in our own experience in the last few years, whether it's spending money for Manitoba floods, for fighting forest fires, for going to Yugoslavia, or for running aircraft in Kosovo at the moment. All of these expenditures are unexpected surprises, and that's what has caused the randomness in the planning process.

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Mr. Art Hanger: Just after your description of the survey, you made mention of governments coming to the military and saying, okay, we have x number of dollars, so go and buy the equipment, and maybe even putting that allotment forward before there's even a full examination, if you will, to formulate a good, solid statement of requirements out of the military. Or there may be a statement of requirements already formulated out of the military and the government says that it's too much and tells them to cut it down. There's a dumbing down of the specs, if you will, to purchase a piece of equipment.

How can you possibly avoid that kind of interference in the military procurement process? It's seems like it's inherent to this kind of set-up we have here in Canada.

Dr. Douglas Bland: I wouldn't characterize it as interference. The government has every right to direct, question, and allocate funds for defence spending. In my view, the military's responsibility—and the defence officials' responsibility, to a certain extent—is to present to the government a clear statement of what the requirement is as well as a clear statement of the risks involved in or the changes and capabilities that will follow from changing the requirement. Once that statement is well understood by government, it's the government's decision to decide what to do.

But it follows from that, of course, that if the Canadian Forces ends up in a situation where it has no military capabilities to speak of or has only twelve ships or a few helicopters or whatever, it's the government's responsibility to take the risk that follows from that.

I think that there are two processes for major equipment procurement. One is the bureaucratic, military, technical experts' process of arriving at a description of what is required to meet the government's policies. Then there is a political process to decide whether they will accept that advice, which way it will go, and what kind of decision they will make. At that point, the responsibility for the fallout rests entirely with Parliament.

Mr. Art Hanger: We could get into quite a description of some of the more recent procurements in this government—or in any government, maybe even the one prior to this government—where pieces of equipment were purchased but fall far short of the statement of requirements issued by the military. I don't care if it's a tactical helicopter or a piece of ground equipment you're looking for, to put it into an operational situation when in reality it's not capable of fulfilling even the basic minimum requirement after the requirements have been changed, that, in my estimation, is government interference. If they're coming forward and saying, here's all the money you have, but we want x number of machines, so make sure they all fit into that allotment....

Dr. Douglas Bland: Again, in a civil-military relations context, I don't think the government can interfere in decisions in the military. However, the more obvious point for me, I think, is that the technical expert, the individual who is responsible for the Canadian Armed Forces, for the operation, the command, and the administration of the armed forces, is the chief of defence staff. If he can't stomach the government's decision on procurement, he has a clear responsibility to leave office and to make his points known to Parliament or to make them known to Parliament in some manner. But so long as the military accepts the decisions of the government in this regard, they can't really complain about it.

However, if, in a few weeks, we end up in a situation where equipment is clearly not up to what is required, it's obviously a government responsibility. It's the government's responsibility to accept that risk of deploying people with that equipment, and I'm confident that governments know this.

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My conversations with chiefs of defence—past chiefs, I will say here—indicate that they have clearly told governments of the consequences of the government's decisions, and the governments have said, as far as I know, thank you very much for the advice, and we'll leave it at that.

Mr. Art Hanger: I'm just going to turn the questions to something that happened very recently. It's in reference to Canada's declining defence relationship with the United States. I know that our foreign affairs minister has been off to the United States to try to head off measures that would actually strip Canada of its privileged access to the U.S. defence market.

I'm just curious as to what you think about the U.S. actions in this particular situation and whether or not it would be connected to other issues, like Canada's foreign or defence policies, the state of our military, or the issue of nuclear weapons. There is a series of matters that the United States has made mention of, has gone public on. Do you think they're connected to this present course of action?

Dr. Douglas Bland: A number of years ago, we used to write learned articles on the “defence industrial base”, which was the concept that all of North America was one big happy factory. That slipped aside somewhat after the Cold War ended.

I don't know any more about this particular situation now than what I've read in the newspapers. It seems to me rather bizarre that Americans would attempt to destroy a partnership with an ally who's providing them with defence goods—perhaps more defence goods than our defence industry is providing to the Canadian Forces. I don't think the Americans pay a great deal of attention to our defence and foreign policy pronouncements. They like to see what we do, actually, not what we say. Really, my only comment is that when American businessmen and politicians start talking about the flag and money, they're usually interested in money. So I think this has something to do with competition, not so much with foreign defence policy, but I don't know for sure.

The Chairman: Thanks, Mr. Hanger.

[Translation]

Mr. Lebel from the Bloc Québécois, 10 minutes, please.

Mr. Ghislain Lebel (Chambly, BQ): Thank you for your presentation, Dr. Bland. We hear talk about Defence's public market. You say that objectives should be set first and that, based on them, it can be determined what equipment is necessary in order to achieve them.

You spoke about outside pressure. I would like to know the nature of this pressure. I know that senior U.S. Army officers sometimes present briefs before committees such as this one, for those who are not familiar with this. It seems somewhat curious that military leaders from another country should present briefs to a committee of the House of Commons or the Canadian Parliament, and we can wonder to what extent our decisions are our own in the field of defence in view of the fact that we come under outside pressure. In this case, can we have a coherent procurement policy that can be consistent with the policies we have established regarding the use of the army?

[English]

Dr. Douglas Bland: I think so. I don't know of many recent attempts by foreign governments to influence defence procurement policies in Canada, other than the usual competitive type of business of trying to win contracts for their own countries, whether they're for helicopters, ships, airplanes or whatnot.

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The kinds of pressures that are more often exerted on defence officials and senior military officers come from inside Canada. There are pressures to buy equipment that's made in Canada. There are pressures to maintain military bases in certain parts of the country even if they're not necessarily needed, and that has an impact on how much money you have for procurement spending. There are pressures to equalize defence spending in all the regions of the country.

Some of my colleagues have written extensively in this area, and they believe that those types of pressures, regional, domestic, Canadian, political pressures, add significantly to the cost of buying equipment. Whether you have one shipyard or six making destroyers or frigates or whatever may have an impact.

As far as external pressures go, I think that in most cases our NATO allies and others would be happy if we spent money, in almost any area. But again, the British, the French, and the Americans, for instance, would be most happy if we increased our defence spending and increased our defence procurement and spent the money in their countries. I think this is a natural part—whether it's natural or not, maybe it's unnatural—a normal part, of political intercourse between two countries.

[Translation]

Mr. Ghislain Lebel: I have no more questions. Thank you.

Mr. René Laurin (Joliette, BQ): May I take the rest of my colleague's time, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: Yes. There are six minutes left.

Mr. René Laurin: Dr. Bland, I unfortunately missed your presentation because I went to another committee's briefing on Kosovo. I would like to have your opinion on another opinion that we were offered here on the committee at our last sitting by an intelligence specialist who claimed that the Canadian Army had to change in order to adjust to a more realistic modern context. In his mind, war isn't waged as it was 15 or 20 years ago since we now have all types of means of telecommunications and sophisticated remote guidance systems. He claimed that the Canadian Army may not be appropriately equipped to respond to the needs of modern warfare.

I would like you to tell us what you think of this view. Should the Canadian Army reduce its strength? If not, should we consider other types of equipment? Today's wars are regional wars. We're not talking about a world war, in which Canada would not have a place because it has no nuclear weapons and that is how a world war would be waged. The witness was thinking of a multi-purpose force, perhaps of smaller size, but with different resources that would be less costly to purchase in order to provide assistance in other regional wars. I would like to have your opinion on that.

[English]

Dr. Douglas Bland: I suppose I'm allowed to be a bit academic in response. When people tell me that the Canadian Forces aren't equipped to go to war, I have to always ask them what war they're talking about. In some discussions, we talk about a spectrum of conflict, from police with batons at this end to nuclear weapons at that end. War occurs all along that spectrum and, really, governments can decide for themselves which kind of war they want to get involved in. There is no definition of the war, and therefore you can't say that we should equip the armed forces to go to war.

Again, defence planning missions for the armed forces and so on are choices made by governments—I hope—and those choices have consequences for force structuring, types of equipment you buy, and so on.

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If the Canadian government wished to be engaged only in missions at the police end of things, then we are over-equipped. If they want to be engaged, as I think they said in the 1994 white paper, in wars “alongside the best, against the best”—an unfortunate statement, I think—we are not equipped for that. What bothers me is governments not confronting these questions directly, simply buying pieces of equipment here, there, and everywhere. We end up with neither fish nor fowl and we're not sure where we're going to go.

You use the term, at least en anglais, “appropriate force”. Do we have an appropriate force? I would say that we always have an appropriate force because the government has decided what the force is going to be. Right now—from both the 1989 reductions by the Conservative Party and the present defence budget of this government—Canada has the armed forces of its dreams. This is what we want. The state of the armed forces is not some unintended consequence of budget reductions. Governments have been told what would happen if they reduced defence budgets: that you would end up with a very small force, with limited capabilities, not very ready to go anywhere on short notice. That's what we have.

Governments knew this. All the governments knew that. So governments must have planned for this. So we have an appropriate force. The force we have now is the force that results from government policies.

[Translation]

Mr. René Laurin: Dr. Bland, our expert told us, for example, that a single enemy soldier equipped with a teleguided device could easily destroy one of our Leopard tanks. When we compare the various resources or the various costs of a Leopard tank and a guided missile or a missile handled by a single soldier, this raises some questions. Do we still need this kind of platform in order to wage war? Wouldn't it be better to make other choices more consistent with our means?

We know we have a National Defence budget of approximately $10 billion and that we do not expect to be able to increase that budget in any appreciable way over the next few years. This is the kind of question we should be asking ourselves. Should we continue buying equipment such as this or wouldn't it be better to buy equipment that is no longer being used by other countries? That's another suggestion that Mr. Forster made. I would like to hear you on this point.

[English]

Dr. Douglas Bland: As a former tank soldier in the Canadian army, I always have difficulty with these kinds of examples; they're somehow unsettling.

Let me say this to you. I agree that the main battle tanks that we have now are low-class pieces of equipment that perhaps serve some training purposes but are not up to standards for a conventional tank battle in 1999, but, with respect, I don't think that's the important question.

If the government wants to be involved in main battles, in conventional battles with large forces, tank forces and so on, we had better buy ourselves some tanks. If the government doesn't want to be involved in those kinds of battles, well, we're doing fine. But I would hope that they understand the consequences of their activities. If indeed all that's happening is that our tanks are falling apart because we don't have any money to spend on them or we can't afford to buy some new ones and the government doesn't recognize that this means that the Canadian Forces cannot be deployed in the first echelon of the ground troops that will go into Kosovo in the next few weeks, then that's a danger. That's a problem for government.

As I said, though, we have a spectrum of conflict. Governments can pick where they want to be able to operate on that spectrum and can make appropriate decisions for equipment, spending, force size, training, and so on to meet that policy. That's the main point.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Laurin.

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[English]

Now we'll go to the majority side. There is a number of speakers, so you can use ten minutes accordingly. First is Mr. O'Reilly and then we have Mrs. Longfield, Mr. Proud, and Mr. Clouthier, as time allows.

We'll begin with Mr. O'Reilly.

Mr. John O'Reilly (Haliburton—Victoria—Brock, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Dr. Bland, for attending again. If I remember rightly, you presented to us on the 1994-95 study of the reserves and commented on the white paper at that time. You're an ex-major in the armed forces, I believe.

Dr. Douglas Bland: Lieutenant-colonel—

Mr. John O'Reilly: Oh, sorry. Lieutenant-colonel.

Dr. Douglas Bland: —last time I checked.

Mr. John O'Reilly: I don't want you to become too much of a civil servant in your answers, but maybe you can put your military hat back on again. You talked about coherent strategy, and I think we all talked about the reverse pyramid or the reverse funnel, where a large amount of money is filtered down to each department and is used for the static amount. New equipment is sometimes low on the list.

You talk about taking stock first and then making procurements on almost a yearly basis. I'm not sure how that would work. I want to know whether you're talking about upgrades. Are you talking about replacing CF-18s or upgrading them? I believe that's already being done. Tanks, helicopters, that type of thing...I don't know how you would do that without major purchases, not yearly purchases.

Part of the planning process was the force of 60,000 and what you could do with that. I believe we addressed that to the point where we all agreed on a certain amount for a force or for a certain ready force, and I believe your comment at that time was that it would serve only as a peacekeeping force if in fact it got to that level. Could you comment on that?

Dr. Douglas Bland: What I tried to do in a very few minutes was to describe a perhaps complicated model, not a government program, but a model for trying to decide how much you need for your defence budget, for trying to answer the question, how much is enough? Rather than just grabbing a number out of the air and saying that 30% of the budget should be on capital procurement, one way to try to model how much you need for capital spending is to say, “This is my stock of military goods, and if I were to replace this over a period of time, this is how much money I would have to spend.”

The model gets much more complicated because you need a criteria to describe the characteristics of various components of the stock and so on. You could then factor in questions about upgrading equipment or replacing equipment and so on, but all I'm trying to describe here is a basic concept that will allow you to arrive at some rough estimate of what you need in your capital budget to maintain what you have now.

If you're driving a Cadillac today and you're going to drive for 15 years, you know that you're going to have to put away a bit of money, because a Cadillac is going to cost you more 15 years from now—or you might have to buy a Ford, I guess. It's that kind of model that perhaps needs to be worked out.

Again, as you know, these questions come back to the point that it is a political decision about force capabilities and how much money is going to be addressed to them.

As for the capabilities of the force, when we think back to the special joint committee of the House and the Senate, when we were speaking about some of these issues before and working with the defence committee before, I think what I said in the 1993 period was that if there is no more spending for defence or if there's not going to be any increase in defence spending—which was clearly the case in those days—and if the world has changed so that the threats and our vulnerabilities are different and not as major as they were before, then you have to make different choices about what kind of force you're going to have, and you are going to then make choices about where you are going to be engaged.

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Simply put, if you have a very small force with very limited military capabilities, the only reasonable thing you can do is become engaged in very limited types of operations.

Mr. John O'Reilly: Have you read the quality of life report put together by this committee and the government response to it? If so, what is your comment on it?

Dr. Douglas Bland: I think it was a fine report and I congratulate the members for working through a difficult period to produce it.

I had hoped that the government's response would have been closer to what was recommended in terms of funding. I think the net consequences of the process and of the government's financing are that the defence budget is in effect reduced, not increased. I know you've probably been through the figures. The point is, if we're going to meet the requirement for the quality of life program, as I understand it, we're going to have to find some $350 million somewhere else in the defence budget to meet those aims and objectives. There's only one place you're going to find that money: in the capital budget.

Mr. John O'Reilly: Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I know we're short of time today so I'll pass this on to my colleagues.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. There are four minutes remaining.

Mrs. Longfield, Mr. Proud and Mr. Clouthier.

Mrs. Longfield.

Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.): Thank you.

Dr. Bland, you refer to the survey that members of Parliament completed. Could the committee have copies of the results of the survey in some form?

Dr. Douglas Bland: Yes. As soon as I get back to work, I intend to start putting that together in some kind of readable way. We've taken all the data we've received from members of Parliament and senators and pumped it through a computer. We have the results in mathematical formula, and now I'd like to put them in some kind of prose that would be useful to people. I hope to distribute them to at least the people who responded to the questionnaire.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: That would be helpful.

We've talked a great deal about what it is that we should be buying for our military. That's a subject that could go on ad infinitum, but once we've made the decision—once Parliament has decided and once the ministry has decided that they're going to purchase—I'm concerned about the length of time that it takes to actually see the equipment on the ground. Could you give us some helpful suggestions on how we might streamline this process, cut the costs, and just make it a more usable, more user-friendly program in order to get the equipment where it needs to be as soon as we possibly can?

Dr. Douglas Bland: I could be trite and say, “spend more money”, but the general answer...and it is a general answer, because you have to look at all these pieces of equipment and programs individually, as they all have special characteristics. The general answer is to take your money and go out onto the street and find the best piece of equipment that matches our requirement and that already exists or is soon to be produced. That's probably the fastest way to produce a new piece of equipment.

It doesn't always have to be a new piece of equipment. The best way to produce a usable piece of equipment for the armed forces sometimes is to continually upgrade the program, in other words, to modernize the fighter jets as years go on, not one thing at a time, not one program at a time, but as a continuous part of the program.

The other way, which doesn't necessarily shorten the procurement period but gives that same result, is to make a decision, for instance, that we're going to have 14 frigates in the Canadian navy from now until, should I say, doomsday; we're going to have them forever. Therefore, you have a rolling procurement plan to produce a ship every year. Over a period of time, you will have new vessels coming on line at a very reasonable rate, and they can be upgraded as you're producing them. If we have that kind of a procurement system, so that you're not starting production, stopping, and going through all the bureaucratic rigmarole to decide the program again and start it up again, you could even out the flow somehow.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Do I have time for a short question?

The Chairman: Yes. There are thirty seconds left.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Do you see a role for elected officials in the contracting, tendering, procurement process?

• 1705

Dr. Douglas Bland: Yes. There is a role. It's the point of entry, I guess, that is the question. The process works well when officials, industry, and military officers can work very closely together, when there's no restriction on them in designing a statement of requirement. The responsible officials, the chief of defence staff and the deputy minister of DND, should then, I think, present a coherent package to the political leadership. Then, I think, they should enter the program at that point.

However, it would be very helpful to have, within our political system, a lot of members of Parliament and senators and so on who are very well versed in all of these detailed expert matters. We could always run a course at Queen's University for that purpose.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Dr. Douglas Bland: The more expertise that resides in Parliament, the better off the Canadian Forces and Canadians are, because it's often not where the politicians enter the process that's important; it's their knowledge and the relevance of the questions that they ask of the experts that is important.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Longfield.

We'll now have to go to Mr. Earle of the NDP.

Do you have some questions, Mr. Earle?

[Translation]

Mr. Gordon Earle (Halifax West, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

I'm sorry to be late, but as you know, I was at the other meeting as well.

I haven't heard your presentation, but just as I came in, there was one point you made with respect to the internal pressures. You talked about the pressure to buy materials made in Canada and that sort of thing. I wasn't sure from your comments whether you were just stating these items or whether you were in favour or against. It's true, perhaps, that if one has to search within Canada to buy certain things, in some cases the cost may go up. But are there not also benefits that come from insisting on Canadian content—such as jobs and value-added benefits for Canadians? Would there not be some benefits there that would offset the additional costs that might be involved?

Dr. Douglas Bland: That's a reasonable theme. If that were so, it would be a very good idea to purchase everything at home. I'm not an economist, but the research indicates that these types of defence spending projects actually have very little downstream effect on the Canadian economy. Only in a few areas have we managed to build a direct relationship between defence spending and industry, and that's in some telecommunications and aerospace parts of the industry. There are a couple of people in the country who are experts in these areas, but their research tends to indicate that there's not a great spinoff from such programs.

Mr. Gordon Earle: I was thinking particularly of the idea, which you mentioned and which was also mentioned by another witness before this committee, of having an ongoing kind of procurement process, in which, rather than waiting, doing everything in bulk form, and slowing down the process that way, you produce something one year, and next year or a couple of years later, another one comes on stream.

I was thinking of that in particular and how it could be applied to, say, the shipbuilding industry. If we had a viable shipbuilding industry here in Canada and they were providing ships for the Canadian Forces, say, along the lines that you indicate, would that not certainly be of benefit in terms of steady employment and increased knowledge of the industry and so forth, which would then make us viable competitors in that area of work? Would that not be something that Canadians could benefit from?

Dr. Douglas Bland: Possibly. I don't mean to underestimate the problems in a simple concept like “we'll just keep producing ships”, which is what I mentioned as an example. When you do that, the government of the day is in effect committing the government of future years to keep that program running. That's problematic at best.

Whether we can produce enough demand in the Canadian system for vessels produced in Canada is a question. Maybe one a year is a good idea, but you usually only start making money on these things if you can sell this equipment someplace else, as we have with our armoured vehicle general purpose program. GM has managed to make some money selling those vehicles elsewhere.

How much expertise we would develop, I don't know, but I think you could develop an expertise in shipbuilding in that regard.

• 1710

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Earle.

We'll have time for an abbreviated second round. We'll start with Reform.

Mr. Hart, I understand Dr. Bland can give us about another 10 minutes or so. Then we'll have some procedural matters. We'll start a second round and we should be able to go both sides.

Mr. Jim Hart (Okanagan—Coquihalla, Ref.): Thank you very much.

It's good to see you again, Dr. Bland.

In 1987, you wrote a book, The Administration of Defence Policy in Canada 1947-84. At that time, you had some problems with the amalgamation of the civilian and military headquarters. I think you described it as a “non-operational entity”. Do you still have that same view and how do you think it impacts defence policy and, in particular, the procurement policy?

Dr. Douglas Bland: I always hate to have stuff quoted back at me.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Dr. Douglas Bland: As we know, a lot of things have happened since 1987, when that wonderful book was written. Yes, I still have problems with the present structure of the national defence headquarters—the amalgamation of the armed forces headquarters with the departmental headquarters—mainly from the point of view that it interferes with clear statements and perceptions of authority and responsibility in the defence establishment. That's another issue, perhaps for another committee meeting.

A lot of things have changed, mostly as a result of the Somalia inquiry and the recommendations there and the realization that these problems were real and that they had operational consequences, with deputy ministers, for instance, getting involved in operational matters, much to the negative influence on the armed forces.

On the procurement side, there is, as I understand it, a clear set of responsibilities in law and statute, in regulation, for procuring of equipment. The armed forces makes the expert requirement known to government officials, working within the Financial Administration Act and so on, and, through Treasury Board regulations, comes up with contracting processes to buy the equipment, to procure the equipment, and eventually we get a piece of the kit.

What was a problem in the past.... As an example, I'll use perhaps the EH-101 helicopter issue here and the demise of Admiral John Anderson at the time. Some may remember that in 1992 Admiral Anderson was given a very rough ride by the public and by some politicians for the ineptness of the helicopter contract, that is, that it cost too much and so on. Most of you know the story.

But the fact is, the chief of defence staff is not responsible—was not then, and is not now, as I understand it—for the state of contracting in the department. The person who was responsible then—as now—for contracting was the deputy minister. If anybody should have been questioned on the matter at that time—I have no judgment on the outcome of the questioning—it should have been the deputy minister, not the CDS. We make the mistake, which was exaggerated in the amalgamated headquarters, of assuming that the Department of National Defence and the armed forces are one entity when they are two, when they have two leaders in law.

Sometimes to the detriment of CDSs, usually, the military people take the blame for things that are not their fault. I hope they take the glory too, but it's an ongoing problem. I would say now that under Madam Fréchette and some others, many of these problems have been addressed, but academically I'll stick by the 1987 book, I guess.

Mr. Jim Hart: Do I have time for one more?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Jim Hart: Let's talk about helicopters for a minute, then. This committee, during our study on procurement, has heard from the military side that the SOR for the ship-borne helicopter is still undergoing a process, that they're not completed yet. We've also heard from industry on the other side. They felt that this thing has taken so long now, that there should be such a high gloss on that SOR, that there should be no mistaking what the military requirements are.

• 1715

What's the holdup here? Could you offer an opinion on that? Is it something that isn't known about the SOR? Or is it political...I won't call it interference, but now that I've said it.... Where's the holdup, in your academic view?

Dr. Douglas Bland: I haven't studied that project for some time. I watch the news and I talk to my colleagues in and out of the service. I would say that the holdup, as you describe it, is at the military-bureaucratic-political interface.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Hart. That's an interesting answer.

We have time for one last set of questions. I have three colleagues on this side who wish to speak: Mr. Proud, Mr. Clouthier, and Mr. Wood.

Mr. Wood, did you have a question?

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): I just have one quick question.

The Chairman: Okay. We'll take them in order.

Mr. Proud.

Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough, Lib.): I listened with great interest to your presentation, Dr. Bland. You mentioned in reply to Mr. O'Reilly that on the quality of life report you had wished or you had hoped that the government would have put more money in there. I think we all thought along those lines.

During our 1994 review of the defence policy, there were all kinds of formulas thrown around as to how the defence department should be financed. One that was around but never became part of the study was that there should be a certain percentage of GDP going to the department as a set formula each year for the financing of the Department of Defence.

Also, you said in reply to somebody else that right now we have the military we dreamed about, that this is what they wanted and this is what they have. But there are some of us around this table who don't think they have enough money in their budget, and we believe that there should be a better way and that more money should be available to them. I wondered if you, with your knowledge of the operations we have now, have any ideas or any suggestions. Should there be some formula—a percentage of GDP or whatever—to finance the Department of National Defence?

Dr. Douglas Bland: No, I don't think so. Those types of measures are really quite imprecise and difficult to get a handle on, and they can be dangerous too, because the GDP can go down as well as up. I think it comes down to the fundamental point that the government must decide what it needs for an armed force and provide a budget for that—not provide a budget and see what kind of an armed force you can get. I think the government probably in this case has decided what kind of an armed force it wants, and it has it and has provided the budget for it. If we need more, then the government has to reassess what kind of an armed force it wants to have. I don't think that formula funding for the defence department or for any other department is a good idea.

Mr. George Proud: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Proud.

Mr. Clouthier, then Mr. Wood, about three minutes.

Mr. Hec Clouthier (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Lib.): Dr. Bland, as you well know, there's a certain budget that we have to stay within, but specifically talking about procurement practices, I know you've been in the military for 30 years and you're the chair of the defence management studies program. Where would you, in your completely unbiased opinion, prioritize the money in procurement, whether it's in the army, the navy...? Now I shouldn't say that, because you did say that you were in a tank corps—

Dr. Douglas Bland: There's your answer.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Knowing the way that Canada itself is looking at it and whether it's theatre in whatever area, where would you prioritize your spending? I'd just like to know.

Dr. Douglas Bland: I would prioritize and spend on building an expeditionary force for the Canadian Forces. It would be a unified formation of army, navy, and air force, as is appropriate, so that a unified, clearly identifiable Canadian force could travel to dangerous places and operate there, as the British said in their recent defence studies, doing some good around the world.

I don't mean peacekeeping necessarily—peacekeeping if necessary but not necessarily peacekeeping. We may have to be involved in some sort of conflict, and I think building that expeditionary force is most likely to provide us with the capabilities that would be most useful in the world we're facing now.

• 1720

The defence of Canada is not a big issue. The defence of North America with the United States is not necessarily a big issue. Being able to take part in international operations like Zaire, which we tried to do in 1996 and failed.... We should be able to do something like that. I think that's where we ought to have a plan and a strategy to build that kind of force structure.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: So it would be something like a replication, then, of the Marine Corps in the States or of something similar? How many military personnel would be needed for this?

Dr. Douglas Bland: Well, we're Canadian, so it would be better than the Marine Corps.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

Dr. Douglas Bland: I would not go for that kind of system. It doesn't work for us, and the Marine Corps doesn't operate very far inland and so on. It has certain problems. There's no sense in creating another force when we have enough trouble with three. I think the force could be created from within the present command structure.

But in any circumstances, it is hard to believe that Canada can't afford a force of 75,000 or 80,000 people. Some people don't like Canada's 21 proposal, I know, but a lot of people are sorry now that they don't have it, because Canada 21, if you recall, proposed a force of 85,000 people. We would be lucky to have such a thing. I think that's where we need to be.

A Canadian diplomat writing to Lester Pearson in the early 1950s, in the early days of NATO and the UN, said the thing right, I think: Canada has a small armed force not because it doesn't have the resources and the intelligent people in the industry to have a larger force but because we don't have the political will to have a bigger one. Maybe that's fine. Maybe that's what Canadians want. But if you ask me what we should be doing, I think we should be doing something a little more enthusiastically than we're doing now.

The Chairman: Thanks, Mr. Clouthier.

Last quick question to Mr. Wood. Then we're going to excuse Dr. Bland, as we have some procedural matters.

Mr. Bob Wood: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Bland, the committee is going to be travelling to the U.K. in the next three or four weeks. I just want to know quickly what your opinion is of the Smart Procurement Initiative in the U.K.?

Dr. Douglas Bland: I have no opinion of it. I'm not really up to date on that. I'm sorry. I would really rely on what the British have to say on that.

The Chairman: Dr. Bland, thank you very much for sharing your time with us this afternoon. We appreciate your testimony today.

Dr. Douglas Bland: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

The Chairman: Colleagues, there are three or four procedural matters to deal with before the bells ring and we conclude this meeting.

Can I direct your attention to next Thursday's meeting? It would normally be held at 9 in the morning, but our attendance is requested in the House of Commons for an address by the President of the Czech Republic. We are expected to be there a little bit before 10, so it will be in direct conflict with our meeting.

I'm going to ask the clerk to poll you, but I am proposing that perhaps we could have a noon luncheon meeting right after that address rather than trying to squeeze it in on Thursday afternoon. I'm going to ask the clerk to contact everyone about Thursday, April 29, when the Czech president will be here. The clerk will poll you, but I'm thinking that earlier is better than later, knowing how the members feel about it. I'm proposing a luncheon meeting on Thursday, April 29, because we can't have our regular meeting. That's the first order of business.

Secondly, our trip to England, which Mr. Wood just spoke of, is in considerable jeopardy now, even since Mr. Hart and I spoke earlier today.

First of all, there is a problem with the DND flights, not so much with getting us over but with getting us back when we want to come back.

• 1725

However, the other problem is that apparently all of the House leaders—this comes via the clerk and it's a bit third-hand, but I'm sure it's reliable—conferred today, and there's some reluctance to have that number of MPs travelling at that time given the situation that's unfolding tragically in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.

I'll confer further with Mr. Boudria, and maybe the other parties could confer with their House leaders, but I'm informed that there's pretty much a unanimous concern among all House leaders not to have that many members travelling at this particular time. Maybe all of the members could confer with their House leaders and we could talk further.

The third point is that we asked Mr. Bertrand, at the last meeting, to go and speak with the minister about the possibility of some briefings. He undertook to do that and to report to the committee today. I'm going to go to Mr. Bertrand and ask him to inform the committee of the results of his deliberations.

Mr. Bertrand.

[Translation]

Mr. Robert Bertrand (Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

Mr. Proud was asking last week about having more briefings, and I believe it was Mr. Price who said that the technical briefings given at NDHQ were fine except that they couldn't ask any questions. After calling around, I found out that everybody is invited to those technical briefings, as I said before, and that anybody can ask questions. They are open to everyone. There's also a lot of information on the NDHQ web site, if anybody's interested in that.

I believe that the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade will be having briefings on Kosovo twice a week, so I don't think having more briefings for our committee is going to change a lot.

The Chairman: Thank you for that information. I would just note that—and then I'll take questions—the minister will be with us next Wednesday on estimates and that certainly the committee would have an opportunity to ask whatever appropriate questions.

I just want to repeat what Mr. Bertrand said. All members are welcome at these daily briefings. Monsieur Laurin and I have spoken about this as well. If you couldn't ask questions maybe you're just as well to watch it on television, but if a member is in attendance, we're being told, he or she could pose questions to the relevant officials.

Is that correct?

[Translation]

Mr. Robert Bertrand: Precisely. National Defence and External Affairs people are there to answer all the questions for the media and members.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Laurin.

Mr. René Laurin: Mr. Chairman, I don't find this very satisfactory. There are briefings for journalists in the morning. We are parliamentarians and we don't have the same interests as journalists. I would like us to have our own briefings because we may have different questions to ask on different aspects. When we want to talk to journalists, we'll have another session. I don't think we can be treated like journalists and told to attend the journalists' session. Some journalists won't be happy because we'll take away their questions, and we may not have enough time to ask all our questions because the journalists will have taken too much time. I don't think we should be satisfied with this arrangement.

Furthermore, next week, if there is a budget, we shouldn't consider this session as a briefing on Kosovo. We had the experience of the Department of Foreign Affairs which did that at the same time as its budget. All the questions asked were about Kosovo and the budget was dropped. I wouldn't want the same thing to happen for the Department of Defence. These are two different subjects which deserve to be given all the necessary time.

Mr. Chairman, I would like us to come back to the trip to England in a little while. We have no other option. I would like you to come back to it later.

Mr. Chairman, I would like our request concerning briefings to be granted, even if it means doing them jointly with the Foreign Affairs Committee. I see no objection to that. These briefings should last more than half an hour and be held more than once a week.

• 1730

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Laurin.

[English]

I understand, as Mr. Bertrand said, that the foreign affairs and international trade committee is planning these briefings twice a week. If the members of this committee wish, we could seek that they be joint meetings. I'm not sure whether that's necessary. However, I did attend today's meeting, as a number of us did, including Mr. Laurin, and they were pretty clear that they were going to be half-hour briefings...maybe too short.

Your request is quite proper. Mr. Proud has a question and then I'm going to ask Mr. Bertrand to respond. If there is an appropriate motion at some point, well, we would receive an appropriate motion.

Mr. Proud, a question on this subject, and then Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. George Proud: It wasn't a question, really. I was just going to suggest to Mr. Laurin that we are going to have twice-a-week briefings with the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. We're all invited, and then, as they say, the briefings are on every day at NDHQ. I don't particularly want to go over there either, but I believe that the two briefings we get a week at the foreign affairs committee will certainly be adequate...for me, anyway.

The Chairman: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. Robert Bertrand: Mr. Proud pretty well said what I was going to say. We also don't want an information overload, Mr. Chair. With those daily technical briefings at NDHQ, plus the SCOFAIT briefings.... There will probably be people from National Defence there, and I'm sure that they would be able to answer whatever questions there are from us or from other members of Parliament.

The Chairman: Monsieur Laurin, on the meeting next week with the minister, I wasn't proposing that it be considered a briefing, but it is an opportunity when the Honourable Minister is here on estimates; I'm sure he would field any questions that the members would want to put to him, but I wasn't proposing that it be considered a briefing.

That was the matter of briefings, unless a motion comes forward in the proper way. I don't know how else I can deal with it. If members feel strongly and want to submit a motion or something in writing, with our rules, I will look at it, but I think that maybe for a while we should attempt the procedure that Mr. Bertrand has outlined and see if it's satisfactory.

Monsieur Laurin, you mentioned that you wanted to go back to the trip to England. I can just summarize it this way. Obstacles in the timing of this trip are coming up now, first of all, with the military flight situation, and now with the concern of all House leaders about so many members travelling at this time. It's beginning to look at though it might be better to have that trip occur in the fall. I don't know.

Did you wish to raise something about the trip, Monsieur Laurin?

[Translation]

Mr. René Laurin: Yes. I was expecting someone to make a suggestion. We're considering postponing the trip. Is that correct? If that's correct, I don't see any objection.

[English]

The Chairman: It seems to me that given the obstacles that are coming our way, that's probably the wiser course, but I'd like all members to confer with their House leaders. Then let's have an informal discussion about it. All right?

Are there any other matters?

[Translation]

Yes, Mr. Laurin.

Mr. René Laurin: As regards the briefings, can we consider that Mr. Bertrand's answer is the offer that is being made to us, that is to say that we go to the morning briefings? Is this final? If so, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to announce to the committee that I will submit a written motion at our next meeting. I would like it to be on the agenda.

[English]

The Chairman: That's fair enough. It does seem like that is the offer or the process as it has been explained.

Mr. Bertrand.

[Translation]

Mr. Robert Bertrand: Mr. Laurin, allow me to clarify one point. There are the technical briefings, which are given every day at National Defence headquarters, and there is also the Foreign Affairs Committee, which gives a briefing twice a week. They are attended by Defence people. In my opinion, that means there is enough information for those who want it.

• 1735

Mr. René Laurin: That's not our opinion, Mr. Chairman. We will be submitting a motion at the next meeting. Please take note of that.

[English]

The Chairman: That's fair enough. We have verbal notice. We'll wait for the written notice and deal with it as a committee.

Thank you very much.

The committee is adjourned.