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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, March 20, 2003

0915

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.))

Mr. Steven Staples (Director of the Project on the Corporate-Security State, Polaris Institute)

0920

The Chair

0925

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC)

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Steven Staples

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Steven Staples

0930

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.)

Mr. Steven Staples

0935

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. David Price

The Chair

Mr. David Price

The Chair

0940

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Claude Bachand

Mr. Steven Staples

0945

Mr. Claude Bachand

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Claude Bachand

The Chair

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Ivan Grose

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

0950

Mr. Ivan Grose

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Ivan Grose

The Chair

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP)

0955

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Bill Blaikie

Mr. Steven Staples

1000

The Chair

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.)

Mr. Steven Staples

1005

Mr. Joe McGuire

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Joe McGuire

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

1010

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

1015

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

1020

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance)

1025

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Leon Benoit

Mr. Steven Staples

Mr. Leon Benoit

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

1030

Mr. Leon Benoit

The Chair

Mr. Leon Benoit

The Chair

Mr. David Price

Mr. Steven Staples

1035

Mr. David Price

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Mr. Steven Staples

1040

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

1045

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

1050

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

1055

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

1100

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

Mr. Steven Staples

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

NUMBER 015

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, March 20, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0915)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.)): Perhaps we could call the meeting to order at this point.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to welcome Steven Staples. For those of you who don't know his background, he is director of the Polaris Institute's Project on the Corporate-Security State. The Polaris Institute is a public interest research group based in Ottawa. Mr. Staples' project examines the relationship between globalization and security. He has been a writer, researcher, and commentator on military and globalization issues since 1992. Most recently, he authored a report that was released in December, entitled Breaking Rank: A citizens' review of Canada's military spending. The report found that there is no need to increase Canada's military spending. That's a recommendation that I'm sure members of this committee would agree runs somewhat counter to recommendations this committee has made, so I certainly expect a lively discussion here today.

With that, Mr. Staples, perhaps we could get underway with your statement.

Mr. Steven Staples (Director of the Project on the Corporate-Security State, Polaris Institute): Mr. Chair, members of the committee, ladies and gentleman, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I'm sure we all share a feeling of unhappiness this morning about the human tragedy about to unfold in Iraq. It is, however, a small measure of relief to know the Canadian Forces have not been ordered to play a combat role in the invasion, and I'd like to take a moment to recognize the many members around the table who have worked to achieve that important decision.

I've been asked to speak today on Canada–U.S. defence cooperation. In military terms, as you no doubt know, this is often referred to as interoperability. In the minds of many Canadians, though, I think it's more an issue of military integration. This discussion could not occur at a more important time. The issue of Canada–U.S. military integration will be centre stage for the coming years. We just have to look at today's newspapers.

The Canadian government has said it is Canada's position to not join the war, but many people are pointing out that the facts on the ground, on the sea, and in the air in the Persian Gulf undermine that position. The war on terrorism has integrated our forces in the region. We have patrol frigates escorting U.S. warships all the way to Kuwait. Aurora surveillance planes are feeding reconnaissance information to the U.S. Fifth Fleet. And a handful of Canadian soldiers are aboard U.S. warships and perhaps deployed in combat units in Kuwait. It makes it hard to tell what the difference is between supporting the war and not supporting the war.

The Polaris Institute has been concerned about broad issues of Canada–U.S. integration—especially in the aftermath of September 11—and the pressures to harmonize Canadian and U.S. policies in several areas. Military integration is central among those concerns, and we touched on the issue in our report of last December, which is called Breaking Rank: A citizens' review of Canada's military spending. I'd just like to let the members know that we unfortunately only have English copies, although we do have French and English versions of the executive summary. Because of rules of protocol, we have those summaries available here, so people can feel free to take a copy at their leisure.

In our assessment, military integration raises a number of problems. I'd like to address four key areas: military spending; the defence industry; defence and foreign policies; and finally, international commitments.

First, the drive to achieve greater interoperability with the U.S. military is very expensive. Whether it's trying to maintain compatible communication technologies or to make a significant military contribution to coalition forces, it involves spending a lot of money on U.S.-built equipment and weapons. More often than not, the spending draws resources away from other purposes more relevant to Canada's defensive needs.

Let's just take one illustrative example. The air force is spending $1.2 billion upgrading the CF-18 fighter-bombers to, in part, make better use of advanced weaponry such as laser-guided bombs. Most Canadians, if they knew this, would ask why the military wants these weapons. Will they help the defence of Canada? No. Are they needed for UN peacekeeping missions? No. Are they needed for Canada's CF-18's to join U.S.-led bombing campaigns? Absolutely. In fact, they're needed for the exact type of campaign about to be unleashed against Baghdad. The U.S. Air Force makes possessing these weapons the first priority for countries joining with them in U.S.-led attacks.

When Canada bought a thousand laser-guided bombs from the U.S. last year for more than $20 million, York University's Martin Shadwick—who I'm sure is well known to all members here—remarked that the air force was keeping the ground attack capability credible in buying these bombs, but that it might start getting invitations to coalition operations that the government would rather avoid.

It has also been argued that increasing our defence spending is necessary to better shoulder the burden of defending North America and other missions we share with the United States. But this is a real money pit. According to David King, of the U.S. National Defense University, Canada would have to spend five times what it spends today for ten to fifteen years to make even a marginal, noticeable military contribution to U.S. firepower.That's $60 billion a year for an entire generation.

Let me now turn to another area of concern, the defence industry. As you know, Canada's defence trading relationship with the United States is a unique example of state-managed free trade. There are few restrictions, yet the government plays an active role in managing and encouraging the arms trade. As a result, Canada's arms industry is growing in both the number of suppliers and the value of the industry itself. According to a study conducted by the defence industry, in 2000, more than 1,500 corporations were involved in what is a $7 billion defence industry here in Canada. This is an increase of more than 35% in only two years.

The growth of the industry is alarming, because our high-tech industry will become more dependent upon Canadian and U.S. military spending and support. Arms industry leaders are already complaining about the government's decision not to join the invasion of Iraq. CAE is one of Canada's largest exporters of military goods—building flight simulators specifically, more than half of them for military customers—and its CEO complained yesterday that sales to the U.S. government may be jeopardized because of Canada's position on the war.

If Canada's high-tech industry continues to feed from the trough of U.S. military spending, then it will become more vulnerable to the sometimes erratic and highly politicized decisions on defence program spending. Canada's aerospace industry, for example, is a success because of its focus on regional passenger planes, not fighter jets. In a study in 1996, Industry Canada noted that we lost many fewer jobs at the end of the Cold War than countries such as the U.S. and France, which had large defence industries.

But one of the most important impacts of military integration is on the ability of Canada to set independent defence and foreign policies. Most of the time when Canada's and the United States' policies are in sync, integration goes relatively unnoticed. For example, during North American Aerospace Defence Command's decades of joint air defence of North America, there has rarely been a disagreement between Canada and the United States. However, when there is a policy disagreement, the problem of having integrated militaries becomes evident immediately. What do we do about missile defence, for example? It will be integral for U.S. Northern Command, which Canada has so far decided not to join.

This week, we have seen how the government's decision to take an independent position from that of the United States and not participate in an invasion of Iraq has been undermined by the presence of Canadian ships and other forces in the Persian Gulf—ships that have been put under the authority of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. As we know, the ships have been permitted to escort U.S. warships all the way to Kuwait to join the war. However, Canada's three Hercules transport aircraft have been ordered not to transport war matériels. Meanwhile, exchange soldiers could already be in Kuwait with U.S. combat units, and the Auroras are relaying reconnaissance information to forces poised to attack. Policy incoherence would be an understatement.

While the government's decision to not join the war is very significant politically—and I want to underscore that: very significant politically—it seems to make very little difference militarily. Had the government decided to support the war, Canada would have practically the same number of ships and planes conducting virtually the same missions as they are today. The problem is that U.S. forces and our forces are so integrated that the government is reluctant to withdraw or reassign our forces.

This brings us to my fourth and last area of concern, Canada's international commitments, and especially disarmament and similar agreements that govern the use and conduct of armed conflict.

Many proponents of military interoperability point to Canada's weakness in technology and equipment, but the greatest difference between Canada and the United States is that Canada is committed to multilateralism and the international rule of law. The list of agreements forged by the international community but rejected by the U.S. seems to be growing all the time. Canada supports the International Criminal Court, the Geneva Conventions, the Anti-Personnel Land Mines Treaty, and nuclear disarmament. The same cannot be said for the United States.

For example, Michael Byers, of Duke University, has pointed out that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms may have been violated when Taliban prisoners were handed over to U.S. forces by members of Canada's Joint Task Force Two in Afghanistan. Even more, the U.S. was not observing article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, which calls for a tribunal to rule on the illegal status of prisoners—prisoners that the U.S. deemed to be “illegal combatants”.

You need to ask yourselves whether our commitments will once again be undermined with Canadian military personnel in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region. What will happen when a Canadian soldier serving with a U.S. combat unit is ordered to lay land mines? Should he refuse? If he doesn't refuse, would this be a violation of our commitments under the Anti-Personnel Land Mines Treaty, a treaty that was championed by Canada?

¿ (0920)

These issues will persist as long as Canada leaves those soldiers in place and does not reassign our ships and aircraft to other missions in which there is a clear distinction between the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq. As we continue to pursue greater interoperability and integration with U.S. forces, the distinctions between the Canadian military and the U.S. military could become as difficult to see as desert camouflage.

This week the Canadian government has gone a long way to set an independent course for Canada, under what was likely tremendous pressure to join the war. By continuing on this path, the military will benefit from greater savings of defence dollars that can be used for purposes that make sense for Canada's legitimate defence needs; for a stronger economy that is not dependent on government spending or arms exports; and for continued international stature as a nation that pursues its power projection not through the military, but through diplomats and peacekeepers.

Thank you. I welcome your questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Staples.

At this point, we do have a quorum to deal with the motion in connection with the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs' study of long-term care for veterans.

You will all have received a copy of this motion. Is there a mover for the motion?

¿ (0925)

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): I so move.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Canadian Alliance): I'll second it.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: Thank you very much, members of the committee.

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Staples. We'll now go to our first round of questions.

Mrs. Gallant, for seven minutes.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: First of all, I'd like to comment on the assumptions that were made in your opening remarks. For some of us, and for many Canadians, it is a great relief to know action is finally being taken to disarm the Iraqi leadership of its weapons of mass destruction. There are those of us who are actually ashamed this government has abandoned its responsibility for ensuring the national defence of this country.

My first question relates to the Polaris Institute itself. Where does it derive its funding from?

Mr. Steven Staples: Mr. Chair, should I answer the questions, or do we want to have a whole statement? Is it an exchange?

The Chair: It's not, actually. It's through the chair. However, Mrs. Gallant can ask questions and she can make statements, as long as she doesn't go beyond her seven minutes. So go ahead, Mr. Staples.

Mr. Steven Staples: And that last little bit doesn't count?

The Chair: We'll make allowances for that.

Mr. Steven Staples: I should say the Polaris Institute is an independent organization. We're a public interest group. We receive no funding from the government, and we receive no funding from business either. We're funded largely in two ways. First, we have some sustaining foundation support from foundations from both Canada and the United States. We also receive funding that is kind of crassly called “fee for service”. That is, sometimes organizations, public interest groups, and citizen organizations will ask us to conduct research in a particular area and will help to defray those costs.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: So are the Polaris Institute or the foundations that support the Polaris Institute allowed to give out registered tax receipts?

Mr. Steven Staples: Yes, they are.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: So there is government money or public funding there.

I was reading through your briefing notes, and you had mentioned that JTF-2 and the CF-18s will be deployed in the Iraqi conflict. What evidence do you have that the JTF-2 members and the CF-18s will be deployed in the Iraqi conflict?

Mr. Steven Staples: At this point, it's very unlikely that they will be deployed at this time. We did a report a few weeks ago that stated that we had been receiving indications, both from the federal budget and from other statements from the defence minister himself, that led us to be concerned that the Canadian government had been holding open the option of a combat role in the impending war. From evidence we had seen in the 2003 budget, which allocated a pot of $125 million for this fiscal year, we became concerned about this.

We consulted with a number of defence experts across the country and some people involved in the armed forces, about what this funding would be for. We began to progressively eliminate different uses for it, such as additional equipment or current missions that were being done right now, and we still came up with no assignment for that fund. It's still my feeling that the money was put aside as a contingency fund to pay for a military commitment had the government decided to pursue that option.

We then looked at the forces we have now and the commitments we already have to other missions, and we also consulted with other people to try to determine what that funding perhaps would be for, and what kind of combat commitment Canada could have made in this conflict. I think we would all agree ground troops were pretty much ruled out because of the upcoming commitment in Afghanistan and current commitments in Bosnia. However, from our consultations, there was certainly a strong likelihood of JTF-2 being deployed, and also CF-18s. In fact, some of the testimony made at this committee indicated that CF-18s could have been deployed in the Gulf region quite quickly.

We announced that in order to initiate a public discussion around it, because we were concerned the decision would perhaps be made in a snap and that there would be no public discussion about it. Of course, as I said to the media at the time, I hope the Polaris Institute is wrong, but we thought it was so important that we had to raise this. As it turns out, pressure from the public on the government was enough to keep us out of a combat role.

¿ (0930)

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: So there is no evidence, and you had none. When that statement was made on JTF-2 or the CF-18s, it was purely on supposition because you could not figure out where the dollars in the defence budget were going to be allocated.

You spoke at length about the defence industry and the exchange of money. Does your institute profess a “buy Canadian only” policy when it comes to defence? Were you getting at the fact that there's more of a corporate interest in money flowing from Canada to the U.S. to fill their pockets? I don't understand where you're coming from on that.

Mr. Steven Staples: No, I think I was concerned about the fact that we don't want to have a large defence industry in Canada. I think there are some very good reasons why we don't want to have that here, for some of the reasons I outlined. One would be that once a defence industry begins to develop and take root in an economy, it begins to draw on a lot of resources from the federal government and it requires constant intervention and support from Canadian tax dollars. We don't want that.

Secondly, we don't want it to be too integrated in the United States, where the really dramatic increases in defence spending are occurring and would have us supplying and constantly feeding from that trough.

You see, most of the companies involved in the defence trade are not solely devoted to producing military goods. They produce both civilian and military goods. There are a few examples of where they are mostly...take CAE, for example. It's a flight simulator company that is headquartered in Toronto and does most of its work in Montreal. It builds flight simulators for Boeing aircraft—747s and things like that—but it also builds flight simulators for Apache attack helicopters and other military planes, and it sells to both kinds of customers.

If those companies start moving in the direction of defence contracts and begin to place their financial fortunes on defence spending, we think that makes them more vulnerable. Industry Canada does as well. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development issued a warning, after September 11, to a number of its member countries, its twenty industrialized countries, to beware that long-term increases in defence spending can damage the economy by crowding out investment in other areas.

I think that's a concern of Canadians, and I think our industry has shown.... Take the aerospace industry, for example. We have the fifth- or sixth-largest in the world. Bombardier is the third-largest, and its success has been built upon the fact that it has chosen niche markets of regional aircraft and commercial aircraft. That has been far more successful for Canada than building military aircraft or trying to sell fighter planes in the world market.

The Chair: You're over your time, Mrs. Gallant.

Mr. Price, for seven minutes.

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.): Thank you for being here, Mr. Staples. I think it's important that we have both sides of the picture. Some of the things that you've put out and that I have read are a little disturbing to me, though. One of them that bothers me a lot is your lack of...you don't seem to see the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and particularly Canada's involvement in it. Do you think we should be completely out of NATO and be a neutral country?

Mr. Steven Staples: That's a very good question. Our role in NATO has been something that I think deserves a lot more discussion. Certainly it was a hot topic of debate during the Cold War, but it seems to have waned. I think people have forgotten about it, but we are a member of NATO.

The position we worked on when we developed Breaking Rank, in looking at a variety of factors, was that Canada should really focus on a few key areas. It was our position that Canada should focus on ensuring the defence of Canada itself territorially; on our surveillance to ensure our sovereignty around our coastline in the north; on knowing what's happening in our airspace; and on assuming those responsibilities. We should focus on those. In addition, I think there's strong public support and good reason for why we should focus on UN non-combat peacekeeping missions. Beyond that, I think we have to ask some very serious questions about whether we want to continue with that.

When it comes to NATO, I think it would fall outside of those priorities. I know a lot of people say we gain tremendous influence by being a member of NATO and working in coalition with other countries, and I'm not disputing that. On the other hand, membership in NATO has many negative influences on us, not to mention defence spending in particular, and constant lobbying by the Secretary General. In his first visit to Canada, he felt it was important to start harping about our level of commitment to NATO through military spending. They are putting forward various programs to get all the countries to start buying more equipment, which basically ends up being U.S. equipment. So on balance, it's—

¿ (0935)

Mr. David Price: I don't agree with you on that at all, because it's actually putting us into the market more—and I wish I had a lot more time to talk about the industrial side.

But getting to the bottom line, I guess you're basically against NATO. You're saying no to NATO. Are you saying no to transatlantic cooperation, which is what NATO really is? I think that's an absolutely important part of it. Being out of NATO takes us out of the transatlantic loop.

Mr. Steven Staples: No, I think we do need to increase ways of doing that. Perhaps we have to look at other existing organizations that are there. We're members of a number of transatlantic organizations. For example, I think the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, is a good organization.

Mr. David Price: But if you look at Europe, Europe is tending to become more isolationist. NATO is one of our strong areas, in that we are still able to be involved in order to keep that transatlantic link alive. In effect, by opting out of NATO, we'd be really killing an absolutely strong involvement in that cooperation between Europe and North America.

Mr. Steven Staples: I'm not an isolationist, and I'm not sure I would necessarily agree Europe is moving toward a more isolationist position. I think Europe is trying to stake out a more independent position by, for example, trying to build their own standing force. I think many European countries feel a little bit burned by their membership in NATO.

Mr. David Price: But that standing force will just be a double-hatted NATO.

Mr. Steven Staples: Perhaps, but I think many commentators have generally commented that they're staking out an independent position because they are increasingly frustrated with the United States' dominance of NATO.

On the contrary, I think we should strengthen our European ties. On this issue of Canada–U.S. military integration, I think that would be a logical extension. If we're not moving toward greater integration with the United States, we should be looking at more multilateral vehicles in which to engage. Right now, the Europeans are looking pretty good as far as many of their countries' positions on this war in Iraq is concerned, and I think many Canadians support the same position that they're taking. Perhaps we therefore want to seek out greater links with Europe.

Mr. David Price: Therefore, NATO is a nice vehicle to use to do that.

Mr. Steven Staples: I don't think it is. Look at what's happening right now. We're about to embark on a war over the issue of weapons of mass destruction. That includes chemical, biological, and nuclear, the triad of weapons of mass destruction. I'm concerned about weapons of mass destruction myself. I believe the only way we're going to solve this problem is not by going to war with countries that try to obtain them, but to achieve abolition. We have to get rid of all weapons of mass destruction.

Canada has gone a long way by talking to NATO and urging them to review their constant reliance on nuclear weapons. Those efforts were made in a very strong spirit and in an open way in trying to influence those other members, but, as you know, we were rebuffed and rejected and they continue to rely on nuclear weapons. I think that puts Canada in a very difficult position and it implicates us in relying on a strategy that relies on weapons of mass destruction. That point alone should draw our membership in NATO into question.

Mr. David Price: But at NATO, we are still sitting at the table and we're able to discuss it. Take us out of NATO and we're no longer in the loop in terms of even being in on the discussions.

Mr. Steven Staples: I agree, but how long would you suggest we stay there making the point? At some time—

Mr. David Price: We can never stop.

Mr. Steven Staples: At some time, I think we have to fish or cut bait.

Mr. David Price: Excuse me, Mr. Chair. I guess the questions are going back and forth.

The Chair: There is some of that, Mr. Price.

Mr. David Price: I'd like to get onto another point that you made. You mentioned NORAD.

The Chair: This will have to be a very quick response to a quick question.

¿ (0940)

Mr. David Price: The fact is that our involvement in NORAD is absolutely key to the defence of North America. That is a very key operation, but are you advocating that we opt out of NORAD?

Mr. Steven Staples: I think that has to be evaluated. As I mentioned, a priority for us is ensuring the sovereignty of Canada. We need to have patrol aircraft, we need to have eyes and ears open to what's happening along our coastlines. Many people don't feel as critical of NORAD as they would be of NATO, for example, but I think that has to be looked at. If it is something we see as essential to providing for our sovereignty and the surveillance of Canada, then maybe we should keep it. But I think there may be serious problems if NORAD becomes integrated into the U.S. National Missile Defense system, which I think many Canadians would have great difficulty with.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Staples.

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand.

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Mr. Staples. Like you, the Bloc Québécois is also curious about the amounts provided for in the budget. Obviously, when John Manley read his budget, we were not yet aware of the extent of Canada's involvement, if any, in a possible war in Iraq.

My question will deal mostly with JTF-2 because I do not believe that any more aircraft will be deployed, and I also think that the amounts allocated to the armed forces had already been accounted for in other budgets. But there is still money available in case we do take part in the war in Iraq. I remember that during the war in Kosovo, the government had initially denied that JTF-2 was involved, and then reversed its position.

Do you think that JTF-2 is with the American troops in Iraq?

[English]

Mr. Steven Staples: Whether or not JTF-2 is there is a very important question. It seems we have more information about other countries' special forces than we even have about our own. I think perhaps even the cabinet in some ways seems to be not informed about JTF-2's activities, as there was quite a surprise during Afghanistan when it was revealed from a photograph in the newspaper that JTF-2 was involved in taking prisoners and handing them over to the U.S. military.

I don't have any special information. I think that's kept very secret, and we have to push the government again and again to get clarification on where JTF-2 is and what its missions are right now. As you pointed out, given the history, a lot of Canadians perhaps wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly popped up on the front of the newspapers again in a war in Iraq. The government needs to clarify where those commandos are.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you very much.

I have another question relating to our national defence policy. The committee chairman stated earlier that our discussion with you could be quite interesting since the committee had taken the route of adding amounts to the Defence budget; as you know, the Bloc felt that a national defence policy was required in order to proceed in that way. I would like to hear your opinion on that.

Do you not think that the Canadian government is proceeding on a case-by-case basis in making its decisions and that our 1994 national defence policy is out-of-date?

Many people ask us if we still need an air force, if we still need such a large navy. What precisely is the mission of our Canadian armed forces? Do we want our army to take part in aggressive combat operations? Is it not time to review our international commitments?

Finally, I truly believe that we must have a policy. And I would go even further by saying that since the taxpayers are footing the bill they should have a say in the matter. So what type of army do you think the taxpayer would like to see? I would like you to tell us whether you feel that the first thing to do would be to establish a new defence policy before committing large amounts of money to international obligations and missions that may or may not go ahead. For example, we still don't know whether the Canadian armed forces should be participating in aggressive combat missions, on a regular basis. I would like to know what you think about that.

[English]

Mr. Steven Staples: That's an excellent point, and I want to point out that we agreed with the Bloc Québécois' minority report from last May. It made a tremendous amount of sense, in that it said that before we start pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the defence budget, we need to have a clear and updated defence policy. The current one is coming up to being a decade old. I think this would be the one point all of us at the table would agree on, because Canada's defence policy is woefully out of date.

We argued at that point that until those decisions are made, until that vision is done, and until a public review is conducted so that we hear from Canadians about what role we want our men and women in the Canadian Forces to play, increased spending could be used improperly. In the last budget, we saw a number of supplementary increases, one time only, but also $800 million a year for each of the next two years, and probably ongoing.

What have the proposals been since that increase has come out? We've seen all manner of proposals. We've seen a big system for high-tech communications put forward by the defence minister. I think it has the appearance of more toys for the boys, with more spending coming up. Another proposal appeared in the Ottawa Citizen over the weekend, to move DND headquarters out of downtown, taking 5,000 workers out to a riding outside of Ottawa.

¿ (0945)

Mr. Claude Bachand: Which riding was that?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

An hon. member: We'll talk about that one when—

An hon. member: Saint John, New Brunswick.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Good. I'll buy that. Going to New Brunswick's okay by me.

Mr. Steven Staples: I have to say that when I read about that, I went back to look at the report that came from this committee in May. There were a number of recommendations in it. Ships were identified, as were increased housing and transport aircraft, and there were others. I may not agree with them, but I think a lot of people at this table did. But I did not see moving National Defence Headquarters out of downtown Ottawa listed as a priority in that report.

So I think you're absolutely right. We urgently need to update this 1994 defence policy so that we can get spending in some kind of rational way.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: I often speak with retired General Lewis MacKenzie. He always says that the government should show some leadership and set the department's policies, whereas I feel that the taxpayers should be consulted. If you had to choose between my position and that of General MacKenzie, which one would you pick?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

[English]

The Chair: We're going to move on to Mr. Grose.

Mr. Grose, you have the floor.

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't think I can do better than that one.

The Chair: That shouldn't stop you from trying.

Mr. Ivan Grose: When I disagree with something, I try to find a kernel of truth or some common sense in it somewhere, but you really do test me. Do you mean to tell me you believe 30 million people can defend properly the second largest country in the world, sharing a land mass as we do with the United States? If we were attacked, it would probably be because whoever was attacking us was trying to get to the United States. We're stuck on the North American continent with the United States and Mexico.

You mentioned the possibility of more patrol aircraft. Well, that's fine. I would agree with you on that one, so there's the kernel of truth. But where would we buy them? We don't manufacture them, so we'd have to buy them probably from the United States. But who would we communicate with? We'd have to buy equipment that we have no need for at the moment because the United States has it. One instance is their heavy-lift aircraft. They're terribly expensive. We don't need them.

The Americans offend us sometimes. They did in this Iraqi thing and we didn't go. But to think that we could go it alone to defend our half of North America is patently ridiculous.

The Chair: I think Mr. Grose is asking for a comment.

Mr. Steven Staples: Fair enough.

I think there's a difference between military integration—the subject today—and cooperation. There is room to provide cooperation, information sharing, and some sort of coordination for the surveillance of Canada and North America. Our focus should be on those kinds of agreements, on information sharing, but carefully, so that it doesn't prevent Canada from taking independent policy decisions when it feels those are necessary. I would say that needs to be a test that's always put to each agreement that we enter into with the United States.

You're right, we share North America. We can't just ignore that. We have to work and integrate within that. We need to share our responsibility in knowing what's happening in our territory and along the coastlines. That's why we support additional funding if needed...well, not additional funding, because I think we can find funding within the existing budget to reallocate for those priorities.

But let me say that we are blessed by geography. Who is going to invade Canada to get to the United States? What threats are out there? It would seem to me that our rationalized defence policy must look at what existing threats are out there and what the capabilities of countries out there are. Right now, no one out there can invade Canada and then get to the United States. This kind of World War II scenario, in which we have great armies massing and moving over borders and coming in, just doesn't exist anymore, and I think that's a good thing. The Cold War is over, so let's move on, update our defence policy, and focus on core capabilities that we need to adapt to address existing threats, very small that they are.

¿ (0950)

Mr. Ivan Grose: Quite frankly, we pretty well agree. You pretty well described NATO and NORAD in your opening comments on cooperation. Mind you, you may stop somewhere short of where I would stop on cooperation and coordination. The weapons systems are far cheaper if we coordinate with the United States than they would be if we developed our own.

I don't think you're that far away from where I am, because you do agree that we cannot isolate ourselves. That just isn't in the cards. Plus, being a rich country, there's the fact that we have responsibilities in the rest of the world. I don't think our responsibilities extend to Iraq, and neither did our Prime Minister, fortunately. We've played a different role from that of the United States. Yes, a lot of people are annoyed with it, but we went our own way.

So I don't see where you're going. What you want to do is change something we already have, but then you describe it as pretty much the same as what we have now.

Mr. Steven Staples: Membership in NATO and perhaps other organizations, but particularly NATO, is adding on additional capabilities, for example, that we don't need in Canada. We maintain all kinds of capabilities that are not necessary anymore. Anti-submarine warfare has long been a task assigned to Canada. We spend all kinds of money on equipment to find submarines that, quite frankly, don't exist anymore. There are no Russian subs out there. Why did we buy four leaky, used submarines from the U.K. to perform anti-submarine warfare?

What is driving up the cost of the Sea King replacements? Do we still want to put a bunch of defence electronics into those airframes to help look for submarines that don't exist anymore? We already have existing capacities for anti-submarine warfare on the Auroras and the patrol frigates. We don't need to keep looking and spending more money to find subs that just don't exist anymore, but those kinds of capabilities are things we have signed onto. So I think we have to look at what kinds of agreements we're involved in and what's driving us to maintain these obsolete capabilities and spend this money.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you very much. I have one last statement.

I'm much older than you are. You described pretty much what I heard in 1938.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Mr. Blaikie, for seven minutes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): I thought you guys were getting closer to agreement, and then you just put an end to it.

It seems to me that the subject matter before the committee is Canada–U.S. defence cooperation. I guess the real question before us is to what extent cooperation means interoperability, and therefore the kind of integration you're talking about and everything that comes with that kind of integration. I'm presuming there has been a certain level of interoperability in NATO for a long time already, bit it's obviously not complete or we wouldn't be talking about it.

Could you outline for the committee just an expansion on what you were saying to Mr. Grose? Given that we can't just be all by ourselves on the North American continent, gathering information just to share with ourselves—presumably we share it with the people who are also on the same continent—can you give us an idea of what you would see as the appropriate form of cooperation? Just expand on that a little bit. What wouldn't endanger Canada's ability to have an independent foreign policy?

¿ (0955)

Mr. Steven Staples: There are a number of programs. We have dozens, if not hundreds of agreements on information sharing, joint training, and things like that, with the United States. We would have to look at those to ask which of those agreements are most beneficial and are really directed for information sharing and cooperation.

I'm not an expert on those agreements, but I think we need to have some benchmarks, as I outlined, because interoperability runs the risk of overriding our ability to set independent policy. If we had joined with U.S. Northern Command, which was established last year, that would have failed the test. We could have seen incidents in which we were perhaps put in compromised positions or ones in which our sovereignty perhaps was not guaranteed as clearly as we want. So I think that was an important decision.

But on ideas about exchanging information on what's happening, surveillance, or notifying each other, maybe NORAD is useful in those. I think those things would have to be examined.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Could you say a bit more about how you feel the interoperability that now exists between Operation Apollo and Operation Enduring Freedom has the prospect of undermining the Canadian government? And I'm not talking about your position or my position, I'm talking about the Canadian government position. As you know, I've been raising this in the House in the last few days, because it seems to me that the political impact of the Prime Minister's decision or the government's decision, which you referenced, can be diminished if it turns out that, while we've said one thing politically, we're doing another thing militarily. Perhaps you could just expand on that.

Mr. Steven Staples: As you know, we joined Operation Apollo as part of the war on terrorism, which involved the war against Afghanistan and the Taliban. I think it was something quite distinct from what the situation is now. I think a lot of people would have felt a response to September 11 by going to Afghanistan made sense in some way, that this was the source of the problem. I think a lot of information needs to be gleaned from that, but there seemed to be some internal logic to it.

Now, let's go back. When Iraq was put forward as part of the axis of evil, the Prime Minister asked to be shown the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Where is the evidence of that? We have yet to see it. We've seen briefs put forward in the British Parliament that had evidence that was stolen off the Internet, from some graduate student's piece, thus dramatically undermining the credibility of that evidence.

I don't think people have seen the evidence to say there's a connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism, yet we have a number of warships there and we have tactical aircraft there in the Hercules, which ironically have been ordered not to transport matériels that could be used for the war. Meanwhile, our ships are being used to escort all kinds of warships all the way to Kuwait.

Remember, our warships were previously tasked with only patrolling the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, and not to travel that far north. Those regulations were changed about a week ago, with very little fanfare, and suddenly we're transporting warships all the way up and oil tankers all the way out. Of course, the Auroras have also been supplying reconnaissance information to the U.S. Fifth Fleet since the end of December. The Fifth Fleet is responsible for the U.S.'s role not just in the war on Afghanistan, in the war on terrorism, but in the war on Iraq. They don't make any distinction. So we're reporting into a structure that doesn't make any distinction between the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq, yet somehow we do make such a distinction.

So we have integrated ourselves to such a degree that it's clear that policy decisions by the government, while being...and I don't want to undermine the political significance. It is very politically significant that we have not joined this war, yet we have ships and planes there.

Interestingly, it was reported in the Globe and Mail today that Spain recognizes and supports this war, but they don't have any troops there and don't have any ships there. They're not contributing anything militarily, while Denmark has provided a submarine. On balance, we have more forces involved in the region, yet we don't support the war. I think that's an inconsistency that desperately needs to be clarified. If we're not in this war, we should remove those ships, we should retask those planes, and we should withdraw those exchange soldiers.

À (1000)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. McGuire.

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't want to belabour the point that Mr. Grose has made too much more, but on the sheet in his little booklet here, the main findings of the Polaris Institute, it states, “Canadians are resisting Canada’s participation in the War on Terrorism and moremilitary spending”. I think that's probably a gross exaggeration of the truth—no pun intended, Ivan. I think Canadians are supporting the war on terrorism, and they do support more military spending.

You go on to say:

Polls aretelling the government that Canadians desire Canada to take an independent rolefrom the United States, to seek non-military means to effect positive change in theworld, and to protect Canadian sovereignty and social programs.

What studies did you carry out on the cost of protecting Canada's sovereignty? You would think that if we were going to opt out of our military bilaterals with the United States, we would need our own satellites; we would need a larger coast guard; we would need more subs instead of less, especially in the Arctic; instead of sharing information that's gathered—you answered that earlier, to a point—we would need more helicopters; we would need more ships; we would need more fighter aircraft; and so on. If we're going to do a proper job of protecting our sovereignty, you would think we would need...we're getting off pretty easy right now with our cooperative agreements with the U.S. We don't have to spend nearly as much as we would if we were completely sovereign and independent.

So I'm wondering what studies you have undertaken to show how much more money we would have to spend here to protect our sovereignty, vis-à-vis the present situation, and how much money would be left over to spend on social programs.

Mr. Steven Staples: You raise a number of very important points in your comments. First, on the polling, polls can be read by anybody. I think they're especially read by the Liberal government, and I think their response has largely been measured—driven, perhaps—by the polling. That is, Canadians are not supportive when asked to choose. When asked to choose about their tax dollars and where the priorities should be, seven out of ten times they'll say health care or education, and sometimes poverty alleviation. For increases in defence spending, it's about one in ten. This has been consistent for years.

If you go—

À (1005)

Mr. Joe McGuire: Excuse me, but what about the question that would have to be asked, “Do Canadians support the war on terrorism and the expenses that would be incurred to conduct that war?” Has that question been asked?

Mr. Steven Staples: Yes, it has been, and Canadians have—

Mr. Joe McGuire: What were the results?

Mr. Steven Staples: Well, here's one example:

Four out of every five Canadians thinkthat the U.S. bears some (69 per cent) or all (15per cent) responsibility for terrorist attacks onthem because of its policies and actions in the Middle East or other parts of theworld.

That was a poll by Ipsos-Reid. Léger Marketing

found that mostCanadians (54 per cent) thought that U.S. President Bush’s arguments failed toprovide enough justification for a war against Iraq, and that an even greater majorityof people (57 per cent) were afraid that Canada’s military participation in the warcould result in reprisals

against Canadians.

I think what's happening is that Canadians are looking at previous foreign policy failings of the United States, and then at the attacks, as being linked to the attacks on September 11. When the Prime Minister came out and said that in his year-end interview last year, it was very controversial but he was tapping into a sentiment that I think was widely held amongst the Canadian public. And with the Canadian public being opposed to a military response to the war on terrorism, I think what Canadians are saying is that they're viewing this as a cycle of violence and that the war on Iraq is part of that cycle of violence that just keeps perpetuating itself. We just keep making the same mistake over and over again, and Canadians just want to get off that carousel. I think that's partially why the Canadian government made the decision to keep Canada out of this war.

I want to quote a fascinating poll that came out recently. I hadn't seen polling done on what Canadians thought a proper response to terrorism would be, but a company called SES Canada Research did a poll just at the end of February that provided people with choices about what the response should be. Perhaps not surprisingly, a little more than 40% of Canadians said increased surveillance—RCMP, CSIS, and those kinds of spying mechanisms—and information gathering were the number one choice. As the number two choice, 31%—and I couldn't believe this—said that the best way to fight terrorism is to increase multiculturalism and immigration and create a tolerant society. If that's not completely counter-intuitive, I don't know what is, yet those were the results.

Now, they were also asked if they thought increasing military spending was the way to fight terrorism, and 12% leaned that way. That's consistent with the polling results that have been coming up for years around military spending. So when they're asked to choose about dollars, I think the Canadian public are way ahead of where we are here on the Hill, and we should be taking greater heed of what Canadians are saying to us, at least through those polls.

You also talked about additional satellites, the coast guard, and things like that. In response, I would agree with that. In fact, Canada is a leading manufacturer of land surveillance satellites. RADARSAT-1 is now going beyond its lifespan. We're working on RADARSAT-2 right now, and it's a very high-tech land imaging system. Unfortunately, the U.S. military has bought up a lot of time from the time available on Canada's satellites in order to provide military information. It's administered by companies out on the west coast. Perhaps we should spend more time tasking those satellites and monitoring our coastline.

And I'll just wrap this up with additional money for the coast guard. Absolutely. There have been terrible tragedies on the west coast. The coast guard has been gutted. I agreed wholeheartedly with the Senate report that said more money needs to go to the coast guard. I think some of those things make sense.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Staples, Mr. McGuire.

Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I want to welcome you here, Steven, but I can't say I agree with you. I want to say this. I feel very strongly about and have always spoken out for more money in our budget for our military. The military should be number one. There's no question about that. We talk about the $800 million that was put in the budget this time. If we had put three times that in, it still wouldn't have been enough, in my opinion.

Her Majesty is the head of our state. We are part of the Commonwealth. That doesn't mean I believe in everything Tony Blair and George W. Bush are doing at the present time. I think they should have given Hans Blix much more time to see about weapons of mass destruction. But I have to say you don't make decisions according to polls. When you go out and poll 1,000 or 2,000 people but you have millions of people across this country, do you make decisions on polls? No.

I am a member of our delegation to NATO. We went to Bulgaria a few months ago. When I was there, Lord Robertson came up on a video to address us. He told all of the representatives from Canada to make sure, when we came back, to talk to our government about putting more money into our military, for we're at the lowest end of the scale right now, and that is not good. It's not good for us and it's not good for our military. He was excellent, he truly was. We were a little bit embarrassed, but our friends from the United States sat behind us, Mr. Chairman, and they leaned over and said, “Elsie, we'll support you fellows all the way. No matter what happens, we'll support you.”

I don't want to have to rely on the U.S.A. to support us. I want us to look after ourselves. But furthermore, I'm very concerned. When it comes to the military and when it comes to Canadians, you take the politics out of it and you just do what is right.

In 1999, Art Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence at the time, stated that we needed to have 18,000 more people in the reserves. We had a program whereby we were out there and were promoting the reserves by saying we'd give people a small grant or whatever you want to call it, in order for them to join. Right now, they've come back and said that instead of 18,000, they only need 500. That's because of the money not being there.

I'm really very concerned, and we are going to have problems. There's no question about that. I have relatives who live in the U.S.A., and believe you me that they're in touch with me constantly, particularly one of them, and that's my brother, who is a businessman there. I have to say that as far as I am concerned, we should have more men and women in uniform. We need to give them the equipment they need to do the job not just to protect us, but to play a role to keep peace around this world. That is the image we always had, and that is the image we should still have.

As Lord Robertson said, we were at the top at one time with the money that we put into our military. We were with the top members, but now we're at the lowest end of the scale. So I have to tell you that I have major concerns about where we are today, and I'm hoping and praying that in each one of the budgets, we will all get together and we will convince our government to make the military the number one priority for the safety of our children, my grandchildren, and everyone else—and not just those here in Canada, but those of our neighbours across into the U.S.A. as well.

So that's where I am, that's how I feel about it, Steven, and I don't intend to change my mind. That's it.

À (1010)

The Chair: Do you have a comment, Mr. Staples?

Mr. Steven Staples: I want to say that I share with you a concern about our men and women in uniform. Like you, I'm a New Brunswicker, and I know lots of people involved in the forces there. I know lots of people in Saint John. I'm from Fredericton myself, but I went to school with a lot of people who were down at the base and were in officer training. So we share a lot in that regard.

I just want to make a comment about Lord Robertson's comments to you about NATO spending. I have a hard time understanding where he's coming from. NATO's member countries account for 60% of global military spending already, so why does he feel we need to spend more?

When he said to you that we spend near the bottom, he should have been challenged on that, because it's not true. Lots of people like to say Canada spends as much as Luxembourg on military spending. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that. For those people who look into it a little bit further—I'm sure you have, too—they know that's not an accurate measurement.

That is a measurement of percentage of GDP, measuring military spending against the size of our whole economy. Well, if you use that measurement, if Lord Robertson says Canada spends as much as Luxembourg, then he also has to say Turkey spends twice as much as the United States. Now, that's crazy, and we all know it's crazy, but Turkey spends 6% of its GDP and the United States spends about 3%.

That kind of percentage of GDP is very misleading. In fact, I think you could have been proud to say, “No, sir, in actual dollars, we're the sixth-highest spender in NATO amongst its nineteen members, and globally we're sixteenth-highest in the world.” You could have said that with some pride. I say it with some concern, but the fact remains that those are real figures. So on that point about Canada's military spending, I think we have to completely remind people of that.

And about new equipment and things, I know you've been a very strong advocate of new equipment and new ships and things like that.

À (1015)

The Chair: I'd ask you to wind up fairly quickly in connection with this particular question, Mr. Staples, because Mrs. Wayne is out of time and we want to get on to some other questioners.

Mr. Steven Staples: I just want to point out that it's not our position that there should be no new equipment bought. We're saying the existing budget has lots of money in it. If decisions were made better, if there was less waste, if there was less mismanagement, hundreds of millions of dollars would be available for programs.

We did just a very quick study around the budget. It was called “Three ways to improve the Canadian Forces without increasing military spending”. I'd be happy to leave you a copy of it. We identified a number of projects that we don't think provide for additional defence of Canada, including the Joint Strike Fighter program, the Upholder submarines, the NATO flight training contract—

The Chair: This is not an effort to censor you in any respect, but you're well over the time allotted. Mr. LeBlanc is champing at the bit to get some questions in.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you for joining us this morning, Mr. Staples.

Mr. Chair, I'm champing at the bit to stand up for your great effort to decentralize the defence department to your riding. Mr. Staples says he's from Fredericton. Well, as maritimers, Mr. McGuire, Mrs. Wayne, and I are just disappointed that we couldn't decentralize defence to Summerside or Shediac or Saint John. But if it goes to the west end of Ottawa, then we can all celebrate for the chairman.

The Chair: [Inaudible—Editor]

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: You should be proud of that, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I'll take your word for that, Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Well, I'm not making an announcement, but I hope that one day we can.

I have some specific questions. A number of people—colleagues of ours in Parliament, and you this morning—have alluded a bit to the idea of our exchange forces, to the officers and people serving as part of a training program with other military forces. I don't have perhaps the most accurate information, but my understanding is that typically the British, the Americans, and Australia and other countries have a long history of these exchanges, including their forces serving with the Canadian Forces and so on. That's why it's an exchange. Some people are trying to say that because we have forces serving in American units or British units at this time, we are somehow involved in a combatant-type function.

You referred—and I think it's somewhat exaggerated—to the description of Canadians mining in Iraq. The exchange forces are in support positions, headquarters positions, and engineering positions. They're in non-combatant roles. Other than what was made public, I wonder if you have any information that people are actually digging holes and shoving things into the ground in Iraq. I'm also wondering if you know whether Canadian exchange forces or exchange officers served with, for example, American units that may have been in Vietnam or with British units that may have been involved in the Falklands conflict. Surely nobody would suggest that Canada was a combatant in Vietnam or in the Falkland Islands, but I'm wondering if members of the Canadian Forces may have been there as part of the regular exchange programs with those countries.

Again, on JTF-2 in Iraq, I find it a bit inflammatory to say we may somehow have JTF-2 forces in Iraq. The government has been pretty clear that we are not in a combatant role in Iraq. I'm wondering if you have any evidence that this is true. Or would it be the same kind of analysis that you did with John Manley's budget, to conclude that we were going to participate in Iraq because there was a contingency reserve? That turned out not to be the case.

And you talked about inconsistencies in our policy with respect to leaving our ships in the region and involved in Operation Apollo or the American Operation Enduring Freedom. Do you know if France is still part of the multinational coalition involved in the Arabian Gulf? Surely, if it's inconsistent for Canada to leave our ships there, then I'd be very interested to hear your condemnation of France for staying as part of the multinational coalition in the UN-sanctioned operation against Afghanistan.

À (1020)

Mr. Steven Staples: Thank you. I'll try to address the questions. Some of the answers will be clarifications on the issue of exchange programs.

It's my understanding that these have been going on for quite some time. I'm not sure I would exactly equate exchange programs with the kinds of issues we're talking about around integration and interoperability.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Excuse me, Mr. Staples, but you said the exchange of personnel may lead to Canadians laying land mines in Iraq.

Mr. Steven Staples: Yes, I raised that as an example. We don't know where all of them are. We do know personnel are serving from all of the branches of the Canadian Forces. We do know some of those 31 soldiers, sailors, and airmen and -women are involved with all three, with Australian, British, and American forces. We only know what a handful of those soldiers are doing. We know some of them are aboard USS Constellation because that was in media reports. We also heard testimony to this committee recently that Canadian pilots participating in an exchange program are flying C-17s, so we know that, and those aircraft are being used extensively to move war matériels.

In my presentation, I used the example of laying mines as a hypothetical situation, to discuss the potential ramifications that exist from having our military forces serving with other forces in times when we disagree on policy, or when we have made commitments that other forces have not and we therefore have different rules by them.

But it's a hypothetical question. I don't know that we have someone in Kuwait laying land mines right now, but I can't rule it out. I don't think anybody can rule it out. We don't know.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: The minister ruled it out.

Mr. Steven Staples: It's a hypothetical situation that they could be doing that, and if it's not the case now, then it could be down the road. If we continue down this path of integration, it could happen down the road.

So I used that as a discussion around interoperability. It is a potential example, a hypothetical discussion around that.

I want to talk—

The Chair: Mr. Staples, I'm going to have to cut you off there, because Mr. LeBlanc is well over his time.

I'll recognize Mr. Benoit at this point, and hopefully we'll have time for some more questions from those who want to ask.

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Good morning, Mr. Staples.

I've managed to find two things on which I agree with you. I've done a little better job than Mr. Price has on that, I guess. One is that Canada must define what our military should do and what it should be. We need a major foreign affairs policy update, and we need a defence policy update as well. I agree with that. I want it to go in a much different direction from yours, but I agree that it has to be done.

Secondly, I agree that the government is very much inconsistent in its position on Iraq. Politically, they say they're against it militarily, but Canadians are involved, in fact. I believe there's no doubt about that. Trying to say somebody in a command centre is not involved would be like trying to say the top commanders in wars are not involved. Of course they're involved. If they're on these exchange programs, they're militarily involved in the war in Iraq. I'm not opposed to that like you are, but that inconsistency is there and is something the government will have to answer to in the time ahead.

In terms of your positions, I've heard them before and I've read some material on them. I'd say I don't lend them a lot of credence, because there are many weaknesses and so many contradictions in what you say. For example, in terms of a weakness, you say the budget is already high. Compared to what? If you compare it to those of similar types of countries, we're the lowest in the G-8 in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP. We're the second-lowest in NATO in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP. If we were spending the NATO average, we'd be spending roughly $20 billion a year instead of $12 billion. If we spent the same as the United States just on a per capita basis, we'd be spending roughly $55 billion a year instead of the $12 billion we are now. So I see it as fairly hard to argue that our defence budget is high unless you do want to compare us to countries that have very few similarities to Canada.

If Canada is to take a responsible role in the world and is to have some real impacts in areas where things are happening that Canadian citizens don't believe are acceptable—and we've seen many cases of that over the last ten years; there have been an increasing number, and I expect that trend will continue—if we're going to play a meaningful role at all, then we have to spend the money. We have to have the military to back up our words or we simply become totally ineffective and out of the loop.

We've seen a lot of damage done to the UN over the past while because the words are there but UN countries, as a group, aren't willing to back those words up. They've given Saddam Hussein eleven or twelve years, with new resolutions all the time to give him more wiggle room. As a result, he still has weapons of mass destruction and, through terrorist groups, the way to deliver them. And he has other ways as well, no doubt. So I see the argument that the defence budget is already high as being extremely weak.

I'll give you an opportunity to respond to that, although you already have a little bit. You're saying we shouldn't do it, shouldn't talk about it as a percentage of GDP. I have a little bit of difficulty understanding why not.

À (1025)

Mr. Steven Staples: If I could begin with that specific point, I think some measurements based on GDP are useful, such as foreign aid and things like that. In those instances, you're coming from a spot where you want to spend as much as you can afford. But when people want to use a percentage of GDP as military spending, I think it's because they want to push it as much as possible.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But you want to do that with foreign aid. You want to use it for your argument. That's what you're saying. I guess that's what I'm doing, but I think that's a reasonable measure.

Mr. Steven Staples: I think there's a logic to it, though, because I think the priority in defence spending should be to spend the minimum amount necessary to provide for the legitimate defensive needs of your country. If you start spending beyond that, you start looking like an aggressor in many countries. I think everybody agrees that a country should probably spend a minimum, fixed-dollar amount that they need for defence. If you start going beyond that just because your economy grows and you can afford to spend more so that you start building up military forces, that would look aggressive to me.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But I would argue—

The Chair: Let's allow the witness to respond. I think you'll have time for a supplementary question, Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Staples, did you have anything further on that point?

Mr. Steven Staples: Just a little bit, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief.

Defence spending should be based on that necessary minimum. Our defensive needs don't change when our economy grows or shrinks. If we had 50 million people in Canada instead of 30 million, would our defensive needs change? No, but if you measured spending on a per capita basis, your spending would be going all over the place.

I think you need to look at the geography and the geopolitical climate. That calls for a fixed amount and spending the minimum amount necessary. We made that guarantee in the UN Charter. That's what it says. One of the articles in the founding UN Charter says that.

Now, on standing forces and our global role, our global role has never come from being a military power. People don't equate Canada's position in the world with being this great military power. We have done it through peacekeeping, through finding exactly the opposite, in fact, in finding non-military solutions to very complex problems. It's often a lot more difficult to do that than it is to just send in the marines, like other countries do. That's why we have that kind of stature.

We've agreed that we would contribute money and troops to a NATO standing force. Well, I think that's the wrong way. There was a proposal a number of years ago for a UN standing force. The UN has a legitimacy for this that NATO will never have, so maybe we should be talking about a UN standing force. That would be something Canada could do, but not NATO.

À (1030)

Mr. Leon Benoit: I have to say I think you're twisting history badly when you say Canada didn't manage to build some type of stature, some type of an ability to influence, by increasing military spending. I believe it was in 1950 that Louis St. Laurent quadrupled our defence budget, and that was when Canada started having a voice around the world. I think our military contribution during the two world wars was clearly what gave Canada a little bit of a voice around the world, and we've lost most of that because we've lost our military spending.

In terms of the contradictions that I see in your arguments, you say we should cancel the subs but patrol—

The Chair: Do you have a very quick question, Mr. Benoit?

Mr. Leon Benoit: Actually, I don't have a question. I just wanted to point out the contradictions so that he could respond to—

The Chair: Maybe we'll have time to come back to you on those points, then.

Mr. Price.

Mr. David Price: I don't know where to start, Mr. Chair.

I'll go back to your comments on the defence industry, Mr. Staples. The first thing I'd say is that the best defence is probably a good offensive capability. I think that's the way we really have to look at it. There's a lot more to defence than...I should actually go the other way on this.

You talked about our defence industries and said we shouldn't really be involved in building offensive military equipment. In actual fact, if we look at the industries we have here, and particularly our high-tech industries, many of them started out building defensive military equipment, and offshot from that into building all kinds of good, solid, totally non-military equipment, the products you like to see out there.

You mentioned CAE. Well, they're a really good example as far as their simulators are concerned. They started with military simulators, and since then they have gone into simulators for just about everything and are tops in the world. But they had to start somewhere.

In order to get a lot of the research funding that is out there, it usually ends up having to be military. If we look at many of the communications systems we have out there today, they started as military. If we look at the Internet today, it would never have happened without military input. So a large part of our economy started out as military, but things go into all kinds of other fields after that. Just think of the impact if we decided tomorrow that we were pulling the plug on anything to do with defence spending.

Maybe you could comment on that.

Mr. Steven Staples: That's an excellent point. I'm glad you raised it, because I did want to get into this area a little bit more.

One of the things we looked at in our study was drivers of defence spending. We found that a lot of concerns and interests that were pushing defence spending up had very little to do with the defensive needs of Canada. So I think you're raising an important point.

Military spending should never be used as an industrial strategy. As Mrs. Wayne points out, we have soldiers and sailors who need better equipment. Well, that money should go to those purposes. We shouldn't have military money being spun off to help start-up corporations or to help the aerospace industry when they're in trouble, by giving them more military contracts to help keep the investors happy.

An industrial strategy has to be done through civilian means. It's a much better way of doing it. Maybe the 4,000 workers who built the frigates in the Maritimes would still have jobs if they built double-hulled tankers or something along those lines instead of frigates, because as soon as the program was done, they were just let go and were back on the rolls again. That's not where people want to be. As I mentioned, I'm from the Maritimes, and I know people don't want to be on the rolls. We need a civilian-based industrial program.

Let's look at the Joint Strike Fighter program. Canada assigned $150 million U.S. to this, with $100 million U.S. coming from the defence budget and another $50 million coming from Technology Partnerships Canada. Why in God's name do we need to put money into another stealth fighter? There is no competition out there. Nothing can touch even the existing CF-18's. Why is the Canadian government using scarce defence dollars to help the U.S. build a new fighter plane? I'll answer that. It's a subsidy. It's a way to leverage contracts for Canadian high-tech aerospace industries to get them more money and get them feeding from the trough of U.S. defence spending. And as I pointed out, this is damaging to our economy. We should be focusing on civilian spending.

Canada doesn't even have any plans to buy these planes, yet we're contributing all this funding to the Joint Strike Fighter program. That money should be used for soldiers' housing. It should be used for sailors' benefits. It should not be given to the Pentagon to help build a fighter nobody needs.

À (1035)

Mr. David Price: I don't like to interrupt, but I don't agree with you at all. As I've just described, that's a starting point for our economy for the long term. Many of the products coming out of that will end up going into the peace side of operations in the defence side. That's what we're doing. We're building defence, we're not building offence.

I know you see anything to do with the Joint Strike Fighter as offensive, but in actual fact, these are all defensive. That's why it's called a defence industry. These are long-term investments. The industries that you mentioned yourself have been developed out of that type of initiative, and that is what's going to happen in the long term here. And we can go further. We can start talking about missile defence.

I have to bring up, too, the fact that you mentioned NATO. You said it basically was a set-up for American industries to sell products. Well, in actual fact, most of the equipment being bought by all the different countries in NATO right now is manufactured by the Dutch, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians.

The Chair: Mr. Price, I'm going to have to cut you off. We have Mrs. Wayne on the list, and she's looking for her five minutes.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: When Dominic asked his questions, there wasn't enough time for his answers, so I'm going to give my time to Dominic and the presenter to see if he can answer the questions Dominic put forward. Is that all right with you, Mr. Chair?

The Chair: Mr. LeBlanc, did you want to refresh the committee's memory in regard to your questions.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

I was interested in Mr. Staples reaction to the contradiction of France staying in the Arabian Gulf area with its ships.

Also, he used the word “hypothetical”. I guess it's another hypothetical scenario that JTF-2 forces are there. I also wondered if he knew of any other exchange situations in which we may have had people in Vietnam or in the Falkland Islands. If so, what were the hypothetical combatant roles that they may have played in those conflicts?

Mr. Steven Staples: Thank you very much. I'm glad we're able to return to this question.

As I said quite clearly, JTF-2 is a secret commando unit. Nobody knows where it is. We can only take the best word of the government to say where it is or to at least say where it isn't. Right now, the government may be saying it's not in there. I haven't read that myself, but I'll go by the other member's words. So, in fact, we don't know where it is. I hope JTF-2 is not there, but I don't have evidence to say that. I didn't ever say I knew it wasn't in that region.

As far as countries like France and other countries with ships there are concerned, that's clearly for them to decide. We can only talk about what Canada is doing, we can't talk about other countries.

I do want to clarify a point—and it was made a couple of times earlier—about our report on the big question around the $125-million contingency fund. We worded that very carefully. We were very clear on it there, and I want to be clear about it here. What we said was the government was holding open the option of playing a combat role. We didn't say they secretly had plans or that things were going on. We only said what we knew, and we said it was possible that there were CF-18s.

One of the points that has been disputed in the defence community is whether or not the CF-18s need the secure communications upgrades in order to participate with coalition forces. We probed that. We talked to Rob Huebert, at the University of Calgary. We talked to Martin Shadwick. You even had Lieutenant-General Lloyd Campbell here, and it was reported in the Globe and Mail that even he said that was a red herring—I'm using my words—and that they can participate in coalition forces. So we said they were holding open the option and that they could possibly be there. The point is that the government needs to come clean on it, just like they need to do on JTF-2 and where these soldiers are right now.

On the last point on soldiers in Vietnam and the Falkland Islands, I'd have to go to other people more knowledgeable in those things than I am. I don't want to venture a guess for you.

À (1040)

The Chair: Do you have anything further, Mr. LeBlanc?

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: No, thank you.

The Chair: Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I just want to make a statement.

Steven, a few years ago, Bill Graham asked me to go to St. Petersburg, Russia, with our delegation. I think 54 countries were represented. A motion was put on the floor that all countries disarm of nuclear weapons. There would be a nuclear disarmament. Five countries voted against it at that time, and I have to tell you that those are the five countries the U.S.A. is dealing with right now. I really had a concern at that time—all of us from Canada did—because we knew they were planning something down the road.

I think we do have to play a major role in keeping peace around the world. Canada is looked upon—and always was in the past—as one of those countries that needs to do that, and I still feel very strongly that we need to play a role.

The Chair: Do you have any comments, Mr. Staples?

Mr. Steven Staples: I don't think we disagree. In fact, one of the things I want to say...I agree with you that we can't just go by the polls, but they are instructive. They do give us an indication, especially when you see the same polling results over and over again. So you have to begin to come to some conclusions.

One of the things I want to say, though, is something about our international role. Pollsters have been saying there has been a distinct change in Canadian opinions over the last twenty years. We're far more internationalist than we ever have been in the past. Discussions twenty years ago were much more focused on Canadian sovereignty and things like that. But Canadians are now much more confident and want to play a role in the world, and we want to continue with that.

When I think of my friends in the United States, I feel those people engaged in this war now look at the outside world as a place to be afraid of, with fear. This war is going to create greater dangers for them, not lessen dangers. Through the war, they will become less secure rather than more secure.

Fundamentally, our different approaches to world problems and our outlook on them inform how we look at the world. I'm very pleased that we have that international outlook.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I have to say that when I was running for mayor, some polls came out a week before the election, saying the incumbent was going to defeat me 2:1, but I defeated him 2:1. So that's what I think about polls, sir, okay?

The Chair: Mr. Staples, I'd like to get a few questions on the record if I could.

In the course of your presentation and in the course of some of the answers you gave, I noticed that you used words like “trough”, for instance, in terms of dealing with defence industries, “toys for the boys”, “leaky, used submarines”, and “possibility of laying land mines in Iraq”.

Not that I want to necessarily play the same game, but in the big scheme of things here, would you say George Bush presents a bigger threat to international peace and security than Saddam Hussein at this point in world history? That's really a “big picture” question, but where would you stand on that?

Mr. Steven Staples: I know where the Canadian public stands. At least, when they were asked, a majority of Canadians said they thought he was a greater threat to global security. I think the statement that he made and the national security policy that he put forward a few months ago—I guess it was about a year ago now—that changed fundamentally the U.S. viewpoint of the world, in terms of undertaking pre-emption, is very dangerous. I would agree with the Prime Minister on this. It's a radical change. I appear conservative compared to that. It's a very radical position, it is very dangerous, and I think it breeds instability around the world.

We've talked about contradictions. Let's talk about contradictions involving the United States. We share a concern about weapons of mass destruction, but when it comes to nuclear weapons, they have the largest stockpile of any country. They continue to retain these, they've left open the option of renewed nuclear testing, and they're developing new types of nuclear weapons called bunker-busting weapons. To the rest of the world, that has to seem threatening.

À (1045)

The Chair: So it sounds to me like you would agree with the statement that George Bush is a bigger threat to international peace and security than Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Steven Staples: Saddam Hussein is a dangerous person as well. He's a tyrant. People live in fear Iraq. There's no doubt about that. But I think people have a difference of opinion on how we deal with that problem.

The Chair: I'm not sure you've answered my question. Is that a statement you would agree with?

Mr. Steven Staples: Could you restate it?

The Chair: For the third time, is George Bush a greater threat to international peace and security than Saddam Hussein?

Mr. Steven Staples: I don't know how you measure greater threats.

An hon. member: When are you running for office?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Mr. Staples, you're sounding very political at this point.

Mr. Steven Staples: Well, I don't think you can answer that question with a yes or a no. There are just too many differences.

The Chair: Okay, but you sound like you're leaning in one direction.

Mr. Steven Staples: I think the policies of the United States do breed a lot of problems.

The Chair: Okay, let's wind up on that one.

On the issue of GDP, some people have described defence budgets as insurance policies. Would you agree with that statement?

Mr. Steven Staples: Insurance policies? I'm not sure what they're referring to with that.

The Chair: It's meant in the sense that, just like you may have a catastrophic loss from time to time, or if you want to recover from a catastrophic loss, you'll go to your insurance company and they'll help you, they'll reimburse you for the loss. The idea means that, in some respects, defence budgets and defence programs are intended to prevent catastrophic loss. Would you agree with that whole concept of defence as insurance?

Mr. Steven Staples: I'm not sure I would. I think you have to make an assessment of what the threats out there are, and plan appropriately for those, so I'm not sure if there's an exact correlation there between those two.

The Chair: The reason I ask that question, of course, is that when you commented in connection with the GDP issue, that really caught my attention, in the sense that if you buy insurance for a one-bedroom apartment, for instance, chances are it's going to be cheaper than insurance for a house in the suburbs that has a big lawn and lots of bells and whistles. In some respects, defence is a little bit like that. You want to protect what you have. You may have moved from a one-bedroom bungalow, you may start a family, etc., and you have more to protect as a result of that.

Some people look at defence expenditures as a percentage of GDP as a bit of a correlation in that respect, because if you have more in terms of what your economy produces and what your people have, then obviously you want to protect that. In addition, if you are involved in the whole concept of collective security and if your neighbours are spending a percentage of their GDP—and I'm thinking here of like-minded countries, like the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, etc.—then presumably Canada should be spending somewhere in the same range.

As you indicated, GDP seems to be a pretty good measure for contributions to international development, which I would agree with completely. But at the same time, if you look at where the Dutch are, for instance, I don't think the Dutch are necessarily bristling with weapons and are warmongers. However, they spend a higher percentage of their GDP than we do, yet we have much, much more territory, a much larger economy, etc., to protect. Do you have any comments on that?

Mr. Steven Staples: Yes. I think one of the questions you have to ask when you're buying insurance is about the choices you have to make. You have to assess the real likelihoods. Am I going to buy insurance against a meteor falling down on my house? No. I think that's incredibly unlikely, so I'm not going to spend money for that.

If you look at our defence policy, it is so broad, it is so all-encompassing for these multi-purpose, combat-capable forces—some people have called the idea a cliché, practically—that it justifies spending almost anything. So why would I ask, for example, if Canada should spend hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-submarine warfare? Is there a likelihood that al-Qaeda has submarines and is going to attack Canada? I don't think so, so I don't think that's a reasonable amount of money to spend right now. Is there a likelihood of Russian bombers coming over the North Pole? I don't think so. So do we need to spend that kind of money? I think we need to look at what the real threats are, and not at what they are imagined to be, and then spend appropriately based on those.

On collective defence, I know this is how NATO works. They assess what the threat is, divide it up amongst the countries, and then you get a percentage of GDP. I've been involved in coalitions all my life with a number of organizations, and that is one way to do it: the ability of each to pay. That's how you do it, but as I said, our viewpoint is that it's a reasonable way to go.

First of all, I don't think NATO has a really good assessment of what the threats are. I think they're still trapped in Cold War thinking, and the maintenance of nuclear weapons is a good example of that. And second of all, in the tests that we put forward for defence, for ensuring the sovereignty of Canada, and for UN non-combat peacekeeping, that kind of thing falls outside that, so I would disagree with that assessment.

À (1050)

The Chair: I want to go back to Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. Prior to the war in Afghanistan, did your institute make any pronouncements on where Canada should be on that whole issue?

Mr. Steven Staples: No, my project working on these issues didn't start until after that.

The Chair: Did you make any comments at the time, or are you prepared to make any comments now in connection with the advisability of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and in working with the Americans out of Kandahar?

Mr. Steven Staples: I don't want to go back in history, but I can talk about the current situation.

The Chair: But did you see that as a good thing or a bad thing?

Mr. Steven Staples: I think Canadians are going to play an important role in the upcoming mission there. I think that's important. I think the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have been woefully lacking—and we've looked at the amount of dollars that have been spent there—but I would say the mission Canada is about to undertake this summer should not be under NATO purview. It should be under UN purview, and we will be advocating for that.

The Chair: On another issue, that being the whole business of Canada's role in the world—and Mr. Benoit picked up on this as well—you said it did not come from being a military power. I would really and profoundly disagree with your interpretation of history that way. It seems to me that the only thing that secured Canada a place at the table for the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was our involvement in the First World War. The same could be said in terms of Canada's significant role in the foundation of the United Nations and the foundation of NATO as well, back in 1949, with the Treaty of Washington. In 1956, in connection with the Suez Crisis, the fact that we were able to transport a huge number of troops into the Suez on our own aircraft carrier paved the way for Lester B. Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize.

Would you not agree, as a consequence, that Canada's role in the First World War and the Second World War, as well as in the Korean War and in terms of some of our peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts, has been in part related to peacekeeping but has a very strong correlation with our ability to do war fighting?

Mr. Steven Staples: No, I would have to disagree with that. I don't think those are inputs into our stature. If that were true, then not participating in the Vietnam War would have been terribly damaging to our role in the world. At the same time, during those years, our international standing increased dramatically during that time period.

We didn't benefit from the Suez Crisis because of being able to transport. We benefited from being able to come up with this new concept of peacekeeping by using a lightly armed force between two opposing forces. That was novel and unique and staved off what could have been a terrible war.

These are the places our stature comes from. It hasn't come from the Second World War, but from our role during the Cold War. As a middle power during the standoff, we provided an important vehicle of communication back and forth to be able to advise the United States yet not seem to be seen as being so far into their camp. It's that diplomatic force that has always contributed to our stature. The Anti-Personnel Land Mines Treaty of recent times will be remembered as a Canadian disarmament initiative that has given us stature. These are things we can all be proud of.

The Chair: We'll have to agree to disagree on that, but presumably you would agree that the fact that we had the capability to move large numbers of troops into a potential crisis situation.... In fact, some people said we averted another world war around the Suez Canal. Presumably, having that military capability came in pretty handy as far as peacekeeping was concerned.

À (1055)

Mr. Steven Staples: As I mentioned, I think we should be able to ensure our participation in UN non-combat peacekeeping missions. That's something we do support, and perhaps it's an example of that. We need to maintain capacities for that, so I would agree with you on that.

The Chair: Just on that point, you've raised an interesting point in that respect. The whole issues of Rwanda and Sierra Leone, for instance, are probably pretty good examples of where the international community stood by while, in the case of Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered. Having a robust military capability that is capable of intervening in a place like Rwanda...and the same applies in Sierra Leone, where an entire country was basically held hostage by a group of thugs and really wasn't rescued until the British came in and managed to eliminate a section or a group of the thugs who were causing the most serious problems.

In situations like that, presumably you would agree—at least, I hope you would—that it's absolutely vital for countries, whether it's Canada or not, to be able to have a robust military capability that is capable of intervening in situations in which you have gross human rights violations and in which many innocent people are being slaughtered. Having that capability is very important in terms of bringing peace and stability to those particular countries, would you not agree?

Mr. Steven Staples: On a case-by-case basis, we have to deal with those. Let's look at the examples that you outlined. In Rwanda, those conflicts were fought practically with clubs and machetes. They had no heavy armoured divisions. There was no need for laser-guided bombs. We didn't need CF-18s for that. There were no submarine forces. So I think we currently have more than enough to provide for Canada's role if the government wants to participate in something like that, if they want to pursue something different today.

We mentioned earlier the possibility of a standing force for the United Nations, to which we would contribute and which would grant legitimacy to those kinds of interventions. I think we have to revisit that. It would be something legitimate to which Canada could contribute, including non-combat troops, too.

The Chair: We still have a little bit of time here, but I'm still unclear on this non-combat role. The RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, was attacking the people of Sierra Leone in Freetown, where 5,000 or 6,000 people were killed in the space of less than a week. You can't move soldiers into a situation like that in a non-combat role. They have to intervene between the civilians and the combatants, or the rebels in this particular case. How do you do that with non-combat troops?

Á (1100)

Mr. Steven Staples: The reason we stipulate non-combat peacekeeping is that the notion of peacekeeping, because it's popular with the Canadian population, is becoming so broadened as to encompass humanitarian bombing missions—so-called—as we saw in the latter part of the 1990s. Many people were opposed to the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, and I think that may be the kind of combat peacekeeping mission you would be talking about. In my books peacekeeping is a non-combat way. You have to be there to not take sides. We have to be there to promote the international will, but we need to avoid becoming combatants.

That is a much larger discussion.

The Chair: Obviously, Mr. Staples—and we only have about a minute left; I've probably taken more time than I should have—but I just can't help but think there's a very serious flaw to your logic in terms of only allowing non-combatant peacekeepers to move into a situation in which it's very clear that it's absolutely critical that the international community take sides and come to the rescue of people who are being murdered and who are having their hands and legs amputated. I saw some of that when I was in Sierra Leone, and I can tell you that it affected me deeply that the international community stood back and allowed it to happen. They should have been involved. Troops should have been going in there to protect innocent civilians.

I'm sorry, but we're going to have to wind things up at this point, Mr. Staples. I think we had a pretty good discussion at the table here today. We had lots of questions for you. We appreciate you being here, and on behalf of committee members, I'd like to thank you.

Mr. Steven Staples: Thank you very much.

The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.