NDVA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 8, 2001

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[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance)): General MacKenzie, welcome to the meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. We're looking forward to your presentation. If we're all ready to proceed, please proceed, General.

Major-General Lewis MacKenzie (Ret.) (Individual Presentation): Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

It's an honour to appear in front of you on this day, the 56th anniversary of V-E Day, when I must say the Canadian Forces had one of the most formidable operationally capable fighting forces in the world. Perhaps there's some symbolism to us meeting today.

I congratulate you for taking on the subject, the sensitive subject, of operational capability. I hope I had something to do with it. I might be giving myself too much credit. On February 23, I in fact made the statement, which received a fair amount of coverage in the media, that the Canadian army was no longer capable of fighting at a meaningful level. I will discuss what I mean by a “meaningful level” in a few minutes.

I have to point out, however, I was not the first to say that. General Boyle, the chief of defence staff twice removed, some five years ago made the same statement—once. I presume his meeting with the defence minister the following day convinced him to not say it again.

He indicated that the Canadian army was not capable of fighting against the best, beside the best, in high intensity conflict. It was a true statement then and, regrettably, it's my opinion that it's even more of a true statement today.

I'm going to limit my remarks basically to what I know. That's the army more than the other two environments, although we will get into that, I'm sure.

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I have a very simple litmus test to back up my comment about the army being incapable of fighting at brigade level and up. It's pretty simple. If I were an enemy force commander, I would much prefer to fight the Canadian army of today than the Canadian army of ten years ago—with all the bits and pieces, and all the high-tech equipment in small numbers, that have been introduced into the Canadian forces, particularly the navy and the air force, over the last ten years.

I am talking about brigade level. I don't want to talk military jargon. I'm talking about at the team level. Considering the level that would be commensurate with our reputation, capability, and national resources, the brigade is extremely modest. We're talking about a brigade group of around 5,000 folks.

I have no doubt the individual soldiers are up to the task, in spite of declining standards in physical fitness and discipline at the altar of individual rights and political correctness.

When we have an army where a senior commander cannot tell one of his soldiers he's fat and to sort himself out, and has to write a written apology for pointing out the shortcoming in the soldier, then there's something wrong with the discipline. It happened to a friend of mine, a full colonel. However, our soldiers go beyond that. They live with it and they get on with the job at the soldier level very well.

As an aside, I would be delighted if we spent as much time on marksmanship training as we spend on sensitivity training.

Those who went up the hill at Vimy, went ashore at Normandy and Sicily, and fought off the Chinese communists in Kapyong Valley, to the best of my knowledge and from my conversations with them, did not have one sensitivity class on the way to those operations. When they got there, they weren't terribly sensitive, particularly to the enemy. I think there are probably some priorities that have to be looked at.

To elaborate on the meaningful level of combat capability, for the previous century we fought at every conceivable level, at home at the domestic level, internationally within the political level, and at the diplomatic level within the military, for the right to command our own forces on operations.

There are tens of thousands of crosses, with a maple leaf and the name of a young Canadian on them, spread around the world to prove we were there and we were noticed. We were noticed not just by our allies but by our enemies. That level was much beyond brigade.

However, I'm not going beyond brigade because that's what your 1994 white paper addresses as a prerequisite, as a necessity, for the Canadian army.

During his recent appearance here, the chief of defence staff, General Baril, indicated the Canadian Forces are more operationally capable today than ten years ago. Maybe that is averaging. I assume the army is included within that. If you can't disagree with your friends, who can you disagree with? Moe Baril is a friend of mine.

Maybe it's averaging. Maybe because the navy and the air force have received a significant amount of high-tech equipment in small numbers, it gives their score a little bit more. Therefore, even though the army has gone down, maybe the average through the forces is better than it was ten years ago. I personally don't think it's the case. To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps that's what he was talking about, although I don't think so.

I think he used a really bad example. He talked about the Gulf War. He talked about the fact that we sent some planes over there with dumb bombs, as well as ships—both of which, by the way, the political leadership directed to stay out of the fight. Don't get too close to the fighting. Ships were to stay down south in the Gulf and the air force flew CAP, combat air patrol, over the ships. We didn't send an army contingent, a company, to guard a hospital.

The point that has to be made is we could have. We could have sent a fully equipped, fully trained, competent brigade group numbering over 5,000 personnel to the Gulf to fight, if the political direction hadn't been not to do that because we were afraid of casualties—we, the government; we, the people.

If the same war happened today, we couldn't send a brigade. It doesn't exist. There has not been an exercise at brigade level where the brigade commander has been exercised in over eight years.

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Bits and pieces of equipment—the much-vaunted Coyote vehicle, which is a nice piece of kit, is in Ethiopia now; it performed well in Kosovo. It was bought for a level of command that we don't even have any more—division, which is a combination of brigades. The LAV III is a good piece of kit in numbers that would not be sustainable beyond the second day of any conflict.

You can't just throw out a few bits and pieces of new high-tech equipment and say we're more operationally capable. Fighting, as outlined in your own direction for this committee, at the combat level requires more than just a day's worth of equipment. There has to be some sustainability.

Your army is so small today that it has to patch together units for deployment. The absolute worst thing to do before you go into any operation is to reorganize. Our people do that as a matter of course 100% of the time. They're augmented by hundreds of individuals. Cohesion suffers. There's a lack of faith in the chain of command. There's a lack of faith in the family unit itself. Facetiously I would say, “Poison coffee anyone?” This is what happens when you don't trust your chain of command. You just want to get your butt through the operation, survive, and get home to mother and child, or whatever. But you do not have faith to take on any task that your chain of command might want you to take on.

I think I have a pretty good endorsement of the wisdom of that observation. Why is it that as the force commander of a 31-nation force in Sarajevo in 1992 I was sent a battalion of Canadians—the reverse of the NRG—two-thirds francophone, the Vandoos, one-third anglophone, the Royal Canadian Regiment. It was wonderful. According to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the secretary general at the time, it was the most dangerous city in the world. There was not one case of post-traumatic stress—not one.

Every battalion that followed on behind that battalion has had a staggering, shocking number of post-traumatic stress casualties. Why? Because my battalion came from Germany, sent by the brigade commander who is here today, General Clive Addy. They had played, slept, trained, worked together for years in Germany as far as a NATO force. They were a cohesive battalion that trusted each other. They didn't even need any direction from me. Point them in a direction, send them off, give them a mission, they did it, and they came back and told you when they had finished. That's a combat-capable battalion. It's not a collection of individuals. There is more to it. It's synergistic with its equipment, its people, and its training.

Now, if we have 3,000 post-traumatic stress casualties in the Canadian Forces, which is what the experts tell us, of which some have been designated as such with pretty low levels of qualifying criteria—if you have nightmares sometimes, you are classified as a post-traumatic stress casualty—I suggest that probably our entire contingent in Korea and in World War II were post-traumatic stress casualties, if that's the qualification. Some people do it to justify bizarre behaviour. So in my case let's accept 50%—1,500—are legitimate. That could well be the case.

We've got a serious problem if we're sending people on peacekeeping missions.... I know those of us who have served on missions like to compete with the World War II vets by saying that it's just as bad. We can't fight back. We can't shoot back, so it's harder on us. Bullshit. You go out and have to kill people and they're trying to kill you. I think it's probably more serious than sniper fire. Unfortunately, a number of your people, maybe 19 in 11 years—10 years now—are being killed around you by the very people you're there to help. It's stressful, there's no doubt about it. When they nailed babies to boards as calling cards in Yugoslavia, it's pretty rough on you. But it's no rougher than it was in Korea or World War II.

So if we've got 1,500 stress casualties as a result of that, there's something seriously wrong with our organization, and I think it's the structure. I think it's the fact that we have to paste together units to send them overseas—a bunch of individuals who, when the mission is over, go home to upper whatever, Saskatchewan or Cape Breton or wherever by themselves. If you ask me, the best therapy for a soldier who is suffering from post-traumatic stress before he gets into the professional chain is another soldier. You don't have that when you send together patched-up units, because they become unpatched when the mission is over.

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It's more than just putting the numbers together. The CDS—I don't know whether he did it intentionally or not; I hope not—talked to you about the fact of the vanguard in the white paper of 1994 requiring 1,200 soldiers in a battle group and 1,000 in a battalion group, and that he could do that. That would eat up five of the nine existing battalions in Canada's army today to do that. He forgot to go on to the much more demanding brigade group, which is stated in the white paper.

There's nobody left for that, and if you did put it together, it would be a collection of individuals, not a trained organization within 90 days. So there's no way we can meet that requirement today, and we could have 10 years ago.

Let me conclude by saying from my heart that I honestly believe this is one of those issues that faces the political leadership of this country that must not be determined by polls. It must not be determined by the military. It must not be determined by editorial policy.

In a democracy, the military will do what it's told. If you tell our military and our army in particular to reduce itself to zero strength and zero capability, they will do it. And the soldiers will die to defend your right to make that decision even if it's a really stupid decision.

That's the way it works in a democracy, thank God. That's what we all served for. But in return I would suggest that you owe them political leadership.

The unique structure of the Canadian Forces since integration in the early 1970s discourages pure military advice from its uniform leadership absent of political or career implications. I know. I've been there. General Powell and I have discussed the aspect of the Gulf War. General Powell—you might not know—recommended that the United States not go to the Gulf War. He argued for two days with President Bush, the senior, not to do this: “Do not do this. This has the potential to become another Vietnam.” President Bush, as was his right, with his security advisers—one of whom was Dick Cheney—said “We're going.” At which stage General Powell saluted, said “Right, sir, and I'll go win it for you.”

That's how it's supposed to work and that's why the uniform leadership, when it comes here, should have the right to give you their honest personal opinion. We are the only nation in the western world that doesn't permit this.

When I appeared in front of the U.S. Senate a number of times and the U.S. Congress in uniform and out of uniform, I was told by the defence minister, “Give them your personal opinion, Lew. Just make sure it's not government policy; it's your personal opinion.” I did that. I came home and I was called in front of the Senate special committee and I was handed a sheet of talking notes: “This is the party line, Lew. This is what you're allowed to say.” I took an early retirement as a result of not sticking to those talking points.

That's wrong. You, ladies and gentlemen, have to hear the truth, because it's not the military's decision to decide what the hell the military should do. You tell them that right now in the white paper, but you're also responsible for funding that, and at present, unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

So that's my rant. I just want to tell you how proud I am of young men and women performing in spite of the problems at the top—in spite of it. But when you go and visit these troops on peacekeeping, and you visit a company and you see a few vehicles and you're really impressed, that is not a fighting army. Wait until you go and visit them, or their crosses or Stars of David or whatever, after they get into some really serious fighting, not over two hours, not over two days, but over a couple of weeks in a sustained operation. If we're not prepared to do that or if we're not capable of doing that, then we will not be in a position to live up to our obligations within NATO, the defence of North America, or in some of the more aggressive peacekeeping operations that every successive government over the last twenty years has had an appetite for sending us off to.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I'd be delighted to respond to any questions.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

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For the information of everybody, the questioning will be a first round of rotations of ten minutes each, and the second round of rotations will be seven minutes each. So we'll start the first round of questioning with Mr. Benoit.

You have ten minutes.

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, General, for your comments. I do appreciate them.

Just for clarification—and I think it was clear enough in your presentation—in referring to the army, would you say that the army is more combat-capable than it was ten years ago?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I would not, sir.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You did make a comment that, if you're taking all of the forces and maybe some kind of averaging, the conclusion could be arrived at that our military generally is more combat-capable than ten years ago. Do you believe that's the case?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I was trying to be as kind as I could to my erstwhile colleague, the chief of defence staff.

In fact, there's a tighter argument there, but I don't believe that, no, primarily for two reasons. First of all, there are ships tied up; there are aircraft that are being grounded. I know it's not 50% because that includes the Tutors that are now contracted out. Nevertheless, we have grounded and reduced the flying hours of a significant number of aircraft. There's a critical mass somewhere, and that doesn't necessarily exist any more with our reduced naval and air force capability. That would be one of the reasons.

The other reason is that, while we have been introducing bits and pieces of some really nice equipment, thank you very much, so has everybody else. So it's not as if we've been moving forward in the last ten years, and everyone else has been standing still, they being most of our potential adversaries—not all of them, because some of them are probably stuck in the jungle in the Congo right now waiting for us on the next UN mission. Nevertheless, the numbers would probably not allow me to say that overall we are more combat-capable.

In a “gain war”, to use a bad term, where 10 years ago you had 90,000 and you have fewer than 60,000 now—probably 50,000 deployable—it's hard to make the argument that we're better off.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So personnel and just not having enough people are big parts of the problem.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Because that has a ripple effect on constant restructuring and matching together units to try to match missions. It's more than just the lack of personnel, yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. You made a comment that the LAV III and the Coyote are nice pieces of equipment, but that they would be shot down in two days if we got into a combat situation. Is the reason that this has happened that maybe these pieces of equipment were bought more for so-called peacekeeping operations than for being part of a package of equipment that would make Canada's forces more combat-ready and capable?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: In fact, the LAV, for example, is a much better piece of equipment than the war-fighting piece of equipment it's replacing in some areas. Don't forget, I was the only person in Sarajevo who was born before the vehicles were made that my Canadian troops were running around in. I watched the Jordanians, the Argentines, the Czechs, and the Slovaks all roaring by in equipment that was four or five years old. My guys went lumbering by in late 1950s, early 1960s stuff, with sandbags on the top so maybe the snipers' bullets wouldn't get through as they stuck their heads out.

In fact, it is a piece of kit that is appropriate for war fighting, but to take advantage of the opportunity you gave me, it is only a complementary piece of kit, yes. There is much more that goes with it within the brigade.

In fact, someone who has appeared before you recently was asked: if they could introduce one piece of equipment, what would it be on the wish list? I was thinking that you might ask me that, and my answer was going to be: what I would give you would be my resignation. I would resign as the chief of defence staff because you haven't told me what my job is. If you want me to go off, run around, and chase submarines, then I'll say, give me some helicopters. If you want me to go and patrol the jungles of the Congo and track down the Interhamwe and maybe get involved in an operation on the plains in the eastern part, then you'd better fix up my tanks.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So you're saying that, before you can have a discussion that is useful on equipment and on what we need in terms of personnel, you have to have a clear mandate for our military? Is that—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: You have to have a clear mandate—

Mr. Leon Benoit: A clear vision.

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MGen Lewis MacKenzie: —which you get in a white paper, and you have to support it financially and foreign policy-wise. In other words, you can't have the policy in the white paper and then expend all of our energies and equipment expenditures, etc., in other areas as a flavour of the month, which is regrettably....

And I know it's not a perfect system, but at least there should be some moral responsibility to support the government's stated policy in the white paper.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Can Canada's military do that? Does it provide what is committed to in the 1994 white paper?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: In my estimation, no, not as a competent fighting force. We're talking about operational capability here.

They'll get the numbers together. They'll get the numbers. You'll have a parade here before they dispatch for war X, and right in front of the Parliament here—it'll look great. There will be 5,000 men and women there. They'll look sharp. There will be some vehicles rolling down Wellington. It'll look great. But they're not a fighting force. They haven't had an opportunity to train for it, and they haven't been equipped for it.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In your opinion, has Canada's involvement at the level it has been involved in so-called UN peacekeeping and other peacekeeping operations been a good thing for our military in terms of developing into a military that is combat-capable and well prepared? Or has it been a negative thing?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I think, overall, unfortunately—here's a guy that volunteered for nine of them—it's been negative, as we ended the Cold War. During the Cold War we were maintaining in Germany our elite—I love that term—organization. We were maintaining a brigade there, and we were rotating people through that brigade that maintained our collective fighting skills at the brigade group level. At the same time, we could afford to fling off a unit to Cyprus or Cambodia or whatever.

When the Cold War ended, we brought those troops home, and that's all we started to do. As the military reduced in size, but the appetite for the government didn't abate for getting involved in these missions, that's why we now have...I think there are nine missions with only single-digit contingents.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: A couple of them have one and two people.

Mr. Leon Benoit: One has zero people.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Yes. That doesn't enhance our operational capability.

But in order to feed, particularly Bosnia, as most of our folks have left Kosovo.... As we continue to feed Bosnia, that means the army turns itself inside out to produce a couple of thousand folks to rotate in there. And while they're doing that, because we're so small, they can't train for the combat roles that are dictated by the white paper.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You may have given this advice, actually, to the Americans, but you said at a conference I was at at Toronto, about three weeks ago, the CISS—I'm sorry—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: That was the CISS, yes, the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes.

You made a comment that you either had given advice to the Americans, or you would if you were asked, not to get involved in these peacekeeping operations.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I gave that advice in front of the Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, three times.

Mr. Leon Benoit: And why?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I lecture two times a year on the joint flag war fighting course for admirals and generals. I've given that advice every time for the last eight years. I've now passed Newt Gingrich as the longest-serving lecturer on that course. And a number of people, including General Powell, have told me the reason I keep getting invited back is because I tell them to stay out of it.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General, and Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): I want to thank you for your frankness. I feel like starting with quite a simple question that I often ask people.

The other day we had a colonel and when he was finished reading his text, that I had heard word for word at NATO, I asked him if he had written it himself. He told me that he had but let us say that I still doubt very much that he wrote it himself.

Is it possible for a general, a Chief of Staff like General Baril, to tell a standing committee what he really thinks or is he on duty covered by orders? Yourself, have you always been that frank when addressing a standing committee?

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You were once in the army and you surely appeared before standing committees. Have you always had that frank attitude or is it that ultimately there is no real distinction between those who have the uniform on their back and those who, the day after, when they are not wearing it anymore are detached, are unshackled and can speak a lot more freely?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: It is a good question, sir.

[English]

I thought for a while that I established myself in The Guinness Book of Records for only serving 18 months in capital punishment here in Ottawa in National Defence headquarters, but in fact there are some people who beat me. Therefore, I did not move in these circles that often. But I can assure you that before I came in front of a committee such as yours, I was reminded of the policy, and I was reminded that I should not stray from that policy. I probably firmly believe that this hasn't changed.

As far as the chief of defence staff goes, far be it from me to be precise because I'm not in his position, but I would imagine that his comments were the result of a collective group of people discussing.... We're talking about the commander-in-chief, less the Governor General, of the Canadian Forces. As a result, he is surrounded by many advisers. They will be thinking of the political implications because we have an integrated headquarters now with civilians and military as equals, operating within this milieu, which is somewhat unique in the world. Therefore I can understand that there'll be a lot of pressure on him to say the right thing.

I have been unkind in the past. This doesn't necessarily apply to the CDS. I think the fact that we are unique in the western world—that a large number of our senior leaders go on to bureaucratic positions within the government, be they deputy ministers or associate deputy ministers or ambassadorships—dissuades them from being very outspoken in their comments. That is not to say that everything they say is not true, or whatever, but I think it's important for senior officers to express their opinion. In my case, there have never been any restrictions, certainly since my retirement. I sort of miss the calls from the minister the next day. It was exciting.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: I also understand your cohesion approach for larger groups. That adherence to training, in the mutual support of troops, will be such that the unit, the division or the brigade will be stronger, will resist better and will perform better.

Presently, do you think that within the forces whose number went in a few years from 80,000 to 57,000 it would be possible to train some brigades of 5,000 or 6,000 people by trying to redistribute the 57,000 so we can have brigades of 5,000 or 6,000 people who would always be together in order to develop that solidarity and that cohesion that make a lot of sense to me?

Do you think that within the 57,000 armed forces members we can shuffle the cards differently in order to find ourselves with 5,000 or 6,000 members who will train and who will go together as a unit or do you think that we will need more money and more recruiting to do that?

[English]

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: To answer your question, sir, you probably could, but you'd probably require fewer brigades. For the units that we have, the size that was dictated was based very much on the fact that we didn't want to do away with any more units. We've been slashing units left and right since unification, mine being one of them—one of the first units I belonged to, the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada. And so it was a matter of trying to maintain an organization for battle with as many of the units as we could possibly practically protect.

So the unit strengths were made very small—infantry is 601. And when you have a 601-person infantry, you probably have about 500, if you're lucky, that you can deploy—if you're lucky. There are sick, lame, career courses, etc. So therefore, if you were to do that today.... Let me go back one step. When you're asked to deploy overseas, nobody ever asks for a 601-person battalion or regiment or whatever. You have to augment it—make it bigger. If you were to do that today—and it would be possible to create those units—you would probably have to go from three brigades, as we have now, with one centred in Valcartier, one in Petawawa, and one in Edmonton, and remove one of those, combine the other two, and reduce the number of units to get meaningfully sized units that could train together. Then you would need the money, which is no small amount, to train them in Wainwright or Gagetown or wherever. They would have to come together. We used to come together once in the winter and once in the summer for major one-month-plus exercises. We don't do that any more.

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Mr. Claude Bachand: Have I still some time?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): For a very short one, yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: About the warrior's ethics, you often said that when people went on peacekeeping missions, this did not seem to affect their warrior's ethics. Some people hold a different opinion. I was wondering if it would be conceivable, for example, to specialize part of the army in peacekeeping missions because it is not quite the same approach: instead of shooting people, one sometimes has to make compromises and negotiate. There are special approaches for peacekeeping missions and a special approach when one wants to deploy combat troops. Do you think that we can train some part of the army for specific peacekeeping operation tasks and train other parts of the army in order to maintain the warrior's spirit and make combat troops out of them? Is it conceivable? Has anybody ever thought of that?

[English]

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: No, sir. I must say, I don't believe that's possible. In fact, I'm asked that question more often in the United States than in Canada. I used to talk about the warrior ethic. Soldiers will do what they're told. If they're well trained and disciplined, they'll do what they're told. There is no peacekeeping any more other than in Eritrea-Ethiopia. It's an oxymoron. There's normally semi-combat when you go into these areas. But now I say that too much peacekeeping does affect the warrior ethic in the minds of the public.

The Prime Minister has frequently referred to us as boy scouts, which is unkind, unfortunately, to both the boy scouts and the military. I know what he means—we're always there, we respond—but the warrior ethic has been eroded in the minds of Canadian people because we keep telling them that we are a peacekeeping nation. We're not. It's a sideline.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, General.

Mr. Wood, from the government side.

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General, you've been very critical of Canada's ability to participate in effective peacekeeping. I think you're quoted as saying “We have a legacy and a history to live up to”. Is it the responsibility of Canada to be a leader in peacekeeping or is it time for other nations to start doing their share? In other words, is it always up to the same people to provide the money and the troops?

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: Well, I hope you're quoting me correctly in that the reputation and legacy we have to live up to is in our war-fighting efforts, because I normally respond by saying that we're not a peacekeeping nation. We've killed more than our share of enemies in just causes over the previous century, and there is a lot of evidence that we did that very well. We and the Australians would be at the head of the list, per capita.

In 1991 we had less than 1% of the world's population and were providing 10% of the world's peacekeepers. We had 400 or 500 in Cambodia, we had 600 in Cyprus, we had 2,400 in Yugoslavia, and we had 1,400 in Somalia in 1992. Now we throw the slide up at the UN, with Canadian participation. We still have the same number of flags, same number of missions, but you have to take a look at the size of the contingents—two in Sarajevo; one in Guatemala; seven on the Iran-Iraq border. They are tiny. The biggest UN contingent we have, less the ones that are just about to come home from Eritrea-Ethiopia, is the Golan Heights, at 159, I think, last month.

Then we have Bosnia. I must say, to answer your question, we have paid our dues in Bosnia, with 21 dead, over 100 seriously injured, and billions of dollars. Surely the Europeans can take that on. Recalling the minister's comment—quick in, quick out—well, I think ten years is probably enough. Maybe it's comfortable. Maybe we're well set up there logistically. I think maybe we should be standing by for some of the other nasty spots in the world in the event the Canadian people, you gentlemen and ladies, decide that's where we go.

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We are now down in the bowels, in the middle of over a hundred nations that are providing troops. I'm suggesting we earn that reputation the hard way, with blood and guts...we're not fighting at our weight now, and other people are recognizing that.

So for us to be in a position to contribute combat-capable troops into hot spots, euphemistically referred to as peacekeeping, we're not in the position to do that right now. I think we should be, so we can also fulfil the roles that the government has directed to us in the 1994 white paper.

Mr. Bob Wood: You talked just a few minutes ago about training as a fighting force, and we're not doing that any more—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: At the brigade levels.

Mr. Bob Wood: Did that come as a result of when we left Europe, because of the fact that all our NATO partners were very close by and it was easy to get everybody together in the concentration?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: No, because you see, we did that at home. Where else can you find training areas these days? We're blessed with large training areas in Gagetown, Suffield, and Wainwright, and for artillery in Shilo, and so it was just concurrent with our withdrawal from Europe. Concurrent with this was a rapid ramping-up of our responsibilities on peacekeeping missions, which I just mentioned. That's what caused it, but the folks at home were not a military formation because they had contributed so many of their bits and pieces to continuing UN operations. Some had just come home, some were overseas, and others were gearing up to replace them.

Quite frankly, I didn't realize until about four years ago, when I took the initial Canadian contingent into Sarajevo, that there was never any intention to replace it. It was not thought that it was anything more than a six-month mission, but then it went on for eight years afterwards.

Mr. Bob Wood: About ten years ago you were spearheading a movement to open the combat trades to women. You've recently been quoted as saying, in relation to the strength of our forces: “It's hard enough to find guys to serve in the army these days because of all the other options, and we can't sit around praying for another economic recession.”

First of all, are you satisfied with the number of women in the combat trades right now? Secondly, are you proposing that we abandon any hope of finding male recruits? I think you said somewhere that you have to find about 7,000 recruits a year to staunch the bleeding and refill the ranks.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: That's the department's stated figure. And my comment to that was that if you find them—and good luck—you will turn what's left of your army into nothing but a training organization. We won't have people in Bosnia. Trust me. Everyone will have to be dedicated to training those people.

Perrin Beatty made the call to me and said, “Colonel MacKenzie, good news and bad news. Good news: I'm making you a general. Bad news: I have an interesting job for you. Introduce women into the combat trades of the Canadian Forces”, and I was a skeptic. Perhaps that's why they gave me the job.

I became converted, not just because I was a bureaucrat and I was told to convert, but also because I had the pleasant experience of having a significant number of females serving with me in Sarajevo, not from Canada but from other countries.

Providing all men and women meet the operational standard, I don't care what their genitalia is. I just don't care. In fact, there's a synergy that men don't want to be shown up in front of women and women don't want to be shown up in front of men. There's a synergy when you're under fire, because bravery is acting. We're all scared, but you want to act more bravely in front of somebody of the opposite sex. Quite frankly, it came as somewhat of a disappointment to discover that sex really wasn't on people's minds if they thought they were going to die. They wanted to work on their weapons and their kit and all of that. So that was the good news.

The problem is that you just asked me if I'm happy with the numbers. I don't give a damn about the numbers. If a woman or a man is good enough and can meet the operational standards, then they're entitled to get in. I don't want targets. I don't want quotas. There is a standard and we should be able to justify the standard. If the shell weighs 122 pounds, then, damn it, you have to be able to lift about 10 of those a minute, and that's fine. Some of the guys can't do it. Some of the gals can't do it.

Those who can and want to be in are entitled to serve. I no longer believe that a woman coming back in a body bag will have any more impact on Mom and Dad or the public than a guy coming back in a body bag. It's really racist to even suggest that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, General.

We'll move on to Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): General Lewis, I do have a few reservations when it comes to women going on the submarines. You may disagree with me on that, but nevertheless I—

• 1610

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I would only say, Elsie, if you and I were in a slit trench together, we would be a hell of a lot closer together than we would be in the submarine, and I would look forward to the experience.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Anyway, dear, I just—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: From one maritimer to another.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: We have major concerns, we really do, for our military. Hearing you today, Lew, I didn't know you were being dictated to from the top down when you were there. We have major concerns around the table about all the cutbacks that have come, over $3 billion or $4 billion taken out of the budget for the military. You know and I know that we have to have replacements for the Sea Kings. But with me, you take the politics out of the military, period. People like the generals and the brigadiers and the colonels should be allowed to come in, and they shouldn't be passed any notes telling them, this is what you're going to say. They should be saying exactly what we need to hear. That's the only way we can turn it around. It's the only way we can do what's right for the men and women who are in those uniforms.

So I'm asking you, how do we get this turned around, Lew? How do we get it turned around? How do we get the bloody politics out of it for the men and women who are wearing those uniforms?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Mr. Trudeau, rest his soul, was very smart when it came to the structure he created for the military. I was honoured to look after Mr. Trudeau a couple of times in Germany, when I was EA to the commander. He was up-front, he did not like the military—he made no secret of it, so I'm not being disloyal to his memory. When the force was unified, all the generals and admirals running around worrying about ranks and badges and things like that, that was a smokescreen. It was the integration of the headquarters, the co-equalization between civilian and military. The generals come and go every year or two, the civilian bureaucrats—good people, don't get me wrong—tend to stay there, so that's where the corporate memory is.

We created, unique in the world, an integrated Department of National Defence. Check the legislation. There's supposed to be a Canadian Forces headquarters. It doesn't exist. It's been consumed by the Department of National Defence. There's no public affairs for the Canadian Forces. Its first priority, naturally, is to the department and to the minister. That's the way it's structured. So when Desmond Morton, Jack Granatstein, and David Bercuson were asked by Minister Young to write an essay on what's wrong with the forces, the number one recommendation they made was to de-link the military and the civilian bureaucracy.

I'd die for the principle of civilian control of the military. But now it's together. If we were at the daily executive meeting right now in National Defence headquarters, at the head of the table would be two people, co-equals, the deputy minister and the chief of defence staff. It's always a committee. Therefore, what comes in front of you, I would suggest, is much more politically polished than in the United States, where the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.... You would be going after me if I were the chairman and I would be responding, giving you my best professional advice, not “Gee, I wonder what the implication of this is for the minister”.

So in order to change it, someone has to make the decision to accept those recommendations that have been made to de-link the military headquarters, the Canadian Forces headquarters, and the Department of National Defence. Then the buck will stop somewhere too. It just won't float around from in-basket to in-basket. It'll stop somewhere.

As I say, Mr. Trudeau, that was brilliant. If you wanted to emasculate the military, not to make it fight less well, but to cause it to have less influence over its own destiny by telling you folks the up-front facts, that was the way to do it.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I have to say that I have major concerns, and I don't care which party is the one that's forming the government. When it comes to the military, you know how I feel about it. When you people—and I'm looking here and I'm seeing presentations that were made to us—are coming forward and laying it right on the line now, somehow we have to get your message right to the government today that things have to change.

We have a letter we received from the Dominion Command of the Royal Canadian Legion telling us that they sent a group of people over there to entertain some of our troops, and they came back and they said, “Our men and our women didn't have the uniforms didn't have the tools to do the job, didn't have anything”, and they were truly embarrassed. Well, that's an embarrassment for all of Canada.

• 1615

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I have to respond by saying that we're here to help. When I opened my mouth and made this comment a number of weeks ago, the minister referred to me as a Cold War warrior. Well, drop the Cold War, call me a warrior—that's what you paid me for. There seems to be a reluctance to accept what I would think is fairly qualified opinion from a great many more people than me. You folks have to analyse it, but for me the answer is simple. I don't have to consider the political implications, but Doug Bland once said that the politics with defence become more important than defence policy itself, and that's a shame.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Yes, it is. I say that because when I look at the replacement of the Sea Kings.... I had some people from Cormorant who flew into my riding to take me out to dinner to talk to me. What I did was I ordered a bowl of soup, because I told them I couldn't be bought for dinner, and that was it. Now here they are, most of them. If they got the contract, a lot of that work would be in New Brunswick. But what I'm saying is, take the politics out of it. I'm not going to play politics, even though it would be good for New Brunswick. What I'm saying is, let's have an open bidding process. Let's give the men and the women the tools to do their jobs, and if that's the Cormorant or if it's the EH-101, let's give them what they have to have—not necessarily the lowest price, but the best for them. That's the way I am and that's the way I'm going to be, Lew.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mrs. Wayne. We'll start the second round of questioning now.

Mr. Benoit, five minutes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go on with an issue you did mention in passing, the quick in, quick out concept the minister brought up and others have brought up over the past few months. How do you assess this as a strategy? What do you see as the risks of this as a strategy, to start with? That'll be my first question.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I have to be a little circumspect in how I answer. I did a documentary a number of years ago on the UN—a pretty successful one; it won a New York Film Festival award. In that documentary I talked about, not quick in, quick out, but a suspend state on these missions. I made that comment while standing on the green line in Cyprus, where I found grandchildren of the people who served with me there in 1965 now walking the same line, with the UN badge on their shoulder from Austria. I was fortunate enough to find some. So there is a requirement to get out more quickly.

A couple of things bother me about the minister's statement. I wish it were driven by strategic implications or national considerations rather than resources. I'm a little concerned that it's driven by the fact that we really can't do much else. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, the concept doesn't bother me. What bothers me, sir, is the fact that early is the most dangerous. We are always preparing for best-case scenarios. The UN is famous for that. By that I mean you send in a force and you hope everything goes right, and if it goes right, you're okay. We did that in Hong Kong—not wanting to be overly dramatic. But the fact is that if you're going to go in early, then you'd better have a combat-capable force to send in, and that's not a bunch of individuals you brought together three months ago. That makes the operational capability demand even greater than what we're doing now.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do we have the logistical capability to carry this out effectively now? Say you look at Ethiopia and Eritrea, that situation. You have a Canadian contingent of about 550 about 10,000 kilometres from our shores. If they get into trouble, first, can we reinforce them, can we provide adequate support, or can we get them out of there?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: No, we can't, but other people will be lined up fairly deep to help us. My comments to the Americans have been, don't get involved in the sharp end; save yourself for the heavyweights, your combat capability for the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, when we need you—we the world. But your logistics are the best in the world, you're better at it, you have more of it, and I'd be very disappointed, in the event a mission deteriorated, if other countries weren't lined up to help us, as they did, unofficially, in Sarajevo. I couldn't be helped in Sarajevo with my force, but a certain nation south of us led me to believe that I didn't have to worry all that much, that if things really went nasty, they would be there.

• 1620

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you feel comfortable with that? If we do somehow get into these so-called quick in, quick out scenarios, do you feel comfortable relying on other countries to bail us out if we get in trouble?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Absolutely not. If you're asking me if I'm comfortable with it, no. I'm a realist. If you could assure me, as a national commander, that in the event I got into trouble there would be national resources to respond and to bring in reinforcements trained in logistics, I'd be very much more comfortable with that.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you think—and this is only an opinion, since you have no way of getting inside either the minister's mind or the government's mind—that maybe this proposal has been floated as an excuse to further downsize the number of people we have in our forces?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I cannot conceive of anyone who knows anything about the military not realizing that we've gone past a critical mass, particularly in the army, which will no longer represent a useful contribution to the international community. When I lecture to my American friends and tell them about our deployable army of 15,000, they keep waiting for the punchline. They think it's a joke. They keep waiting, and waiting, and when I tell them “No, it really is about 15,000 deployable”, they're just aghast. They can't believe it.

So if we're going to go even smaller.... If General Jeffery, when he's here, talks about reducing the structure, that's one thing, but not reducing the number of his personnel. There's no way.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: The other day, when we started our study on the state of readiness, we identified some sectors or criteria in order to evaluate the state of readiness of a unit, of a brigade or of the Canadian Armed Forces. There was, for example, the equipment or the number of soldiers.

I would like you to give us your general appreciation of the criteria that should guide us and help us determine whether or not the Canadian Armed Forces units are combat-ready. There are many factors. I know that we have somewhat of a British tradition, but there are also other ways of evaluating the state of readiness, for example, those used by other countries, including the United States.

I would also like your evaluation as to the state of readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces. If your answer is negative, that is that we are not combat-ready, which changes would you make to bring that state of readiness to an acceptable level, both on the equipment and the human resources sides?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: That is another good question, sir.

[English]

Combat capability is not something you quantify with numbers. It's not so many soldiers or so many tanks or whatever, it's how they complete their tasks. That means exercising them at a level demanded by the political leadership. In this case, it's a brigade group as part of the main body deployable into a combat situation. That requires a headquarters above the level of the one being exercised to evaluate that formation.

In other words, if it's a brigade group, then someone representing the divisional commander, the next commander up, has to exercise that group in a simulated combat situation, which is something we did regularly up until the early 1990s. That means giving what we call all phases of war tasks, whether it's offence or defence or withdrawal or whatever, and then evaluating the formation's capability to carry out those tasks.

You can do it with a live enemy or you can simulate it, as the Americans do. They ran about 16 different variations through the computer before the assault in the Gulf War. In fact, the results of the assault they chose were within 2% of that predicted by the computer. So it's not like the old days, when the computer said “Yes, sir” but didn't provide much useful information. There's a very sophisticated way of doing that now and predicting the outcome.

• 1625

You need a national training centre. The Americans have one outside of Las Vegas. They have another one for their light force. I hope that someday we will be invited to participate. The problem is that if they were to let us in, then every other nation in the western world would want to come and play too. I've discussed this with them unofficially as a retired general.

We really need a national training centre. The British have one in Canada. It's in Suffield. They operate at battle group level. It's a very good one. It has been there for 15 or 20 years. But we don't. We used to plug little bits and pieces into it, such as a company of 100 soldiers or sometimes a small battalion. But we don't have our own. If we were focusing on combat capability, we would insist on having something like that. Because we are being torn asunder by various other missions, which you know well, we don't have the time or the money to do that. It's expensive.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: Right but you are talking about a national training centre while I am asking you if we can achieve a state of readiness acceptable for the Canadian Armed Forces with the number of soldiers we have right now and the equipment we have right now. You will have to admit that the equipment is important also. We cannot send soldiers without tanks, without air support. Besides, we often hear of reports denouncing the disturbing state of Canadian military equipment. Can we also have your comments on that?

[English]

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Certainly we have never sent a contingent. I doubt if any country in the world has sent a contingent off to war happy that it has the best of everything. Our tankers did a pretty good job during the Second World War of fighting tanks with a capability that was 200% better than their own, as an example.

However, to respond to your question, with the current state of the army, it could only reach that state of combat capability with a reduced number of units, and it could use the same number of people to increase the size of those units. As identified by the Auditor General, there's a deficiency of equipment of around $4 billion, which would be required to just keep it from rusting out and to stop the hemorrhaging and start to rebuild.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

Now we'll move on to Mr. Wilfert, please.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert (Oak Ridges, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The main thrust of my question was going to be with regard to peacekeeping and peacemaking, which I think in the minds of the public are sometimes confused.

But I want to start, Mr. Chairman, with this. The purpose of the committee is to talk about the state of readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces. We are trying to obtain from as many sources as possible views as to not only what the state is but how we can improve it. My view is that if you're going to send someone in uniform anywhere, they have to have the right tools, whether it be equipment, political support, or public support.

I'm perplexed, General, by your comment that when currently active members of the military, particularly the upper echelons, come before us, we're not necessarily, to use the vernacular, getting the right goods. My question to you is, why wouldn't they give us the right goods considering that the number one priority for the soldiers they command would be the safety of those forces? I won't deny for a moment that there are areas that have to be improved. In your view, what would compel them to come here and suggest anything other than that? I've heard from other individuals who have come here and laid their cards on the table. You talked about de-linking, and I think that's interesting, considering that we're probably the only one that has that coupling of the military headquarters. Why would someone who's in a position where soldiers may be sent abroad and could lose their lives not give us the straight goods?

• 1630

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: Being retired for eight years you're still wedded to the profession. It's hard for me to answer that question because I can only speculate. I firmly believe that the structure of the organization and the daily operating within the small “p” political milieu of the Department of National Defence has an impact on the decision-making of people who are there for too long.

Guess what? When people, senior officers, are really good at the politics here in Ottawa, guess how we reward them? We keep them here. General Boyle went from one-star general to four-star chief of the defence staff without ever having gone back to the field. You could walk on water and you still wouldn't have the respect of the troops in the field if you've gone from one star to four stars without going back and touching the stations on the cross of command in the field. And that's no judgment on him as an individual at all. The fact is it's just the fact that you're here rubbing shoulders with the minister and whatever, and all of a sudden you're a four-star general and you were a one-star when you came here.

It is the structure. It has career implications if you come here and the minister is saying, look, everything's okay. With great respect for Mrs. Wayne, I used to say the Tories screwed the military as much as the Liberals ever did, only they did it with more style. It didn't hurt as much, that sort of thing, back in those days.

The fact is, the minister does not want his chief of defence staff coming over here and saying, my army can't fight. I would like to think I would say that, but I don't think I'd be chief very long.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert: But if in fact the army cannot fight, and then it is proven because those soldiers are sent abroad and they're in a situation, I'd imagine that the implications would come square on the shoulders of the minister.

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: No, sir.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert: Obviously, in the end, given our structure, it's the minister who will take the ultimate flak.

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: That would be the case, but what we're sending soldiers abroad to do—and when you go and visit them they're doing so well, etc.—is not intense combat at a brigade group level. That's the point. I'm saying we should be prepared for a worst-case scenario. They can go and do the platoon activities. They can do the company activities. They can do some of the battalion level activities, up to 1,000 personnel. But Jim Calvin, who commanded the Patricia battalion that fought in the Medak pocket before they deployed, and who used to work for me as a young captain, said, “I couldn't even do a battalion road move when I left Canada because I just hadn't had a chance to operate at battalion level.” Two months later, with a whole bunch of troops from other countries, they had to do a fairly specific operation in the Medak pocket—over a short period of time, thank God.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

We'll move on to Mrs. Wayne, please.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: General, if the minister called you today and said, “Lew, I need your help”, what are the top priorities—

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: Highly unlikely.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: What are the top priorities? What are the three or five priorities I could do today that would have an impact and would improve the state of our military? What would be the top priorities? What's the list? Give us that list.

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: In terms of personnel in the army, there is a requirement, probably, for 67,000 additional personnel. Everyone will say, my God, we can't even recruit to our current number. Sorry, that's not my problem; go and do it. And by the way, don't try to motivate people with briefcases and getting a trade for civvy street. Try to motivate them through patriotism and providing some reduction in suffering to people around the world. Drive them on that aspect.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Right.

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: So that's personnel. For the army, have a training centre where, at the very minimum, the bits and pieces of the brigade, the armoured regiments, the artillery regiments, and the infantry battalions, have to go through it and be exercised at combat level.

In the air force, recognize that fuel costs a lot more these days, and if you want to fly and you want to win top gun competitions, then you're going to have to up the flying rate. That's the fast air guys. And please give us some strategic lift so we're not using Hercules, which are a theatre tactical lift resource.

I saw today on the back page of the front section of the Ottawa Citizen there's a new Antonov aircraft, the largest aircraft in the world. My guess is we could probably put our entire army in two of them. Let's get some strategic lift so we can move the people around.

• 1635

In the case of the navy, keep up the good work, but, please, let's have enough sailors to sail our ships so we don't have to tie them up at docks in Halifax and Victoria, because they're not very threatening there.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: And let's build them all in Canada.

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Let's build them in Saint John.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: You're bloody right. Thank you. I'll buy that.

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Don't move that to the top of your list.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Thank you very much.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

Now we'll start the third round and we'll start with Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to follow along a little bit more with this quick in, quick out, thing. I asked you whether you thought this proposal had been made by the minister as an excuse for not having enough personnel, and possibly for further downsizing. The answer you gave was something along the line, I think, and you can correct me, that basically it's plain to see we've reduced the numbers to a point now where we no longer have a viable force. That's paraphrasing.

But what were you saying when you gave whatever answer you gave there? Is it that it's okay to recognize that we don't have a viable force to carry out...the way the 1994 white paper says we should; therefore, let's go to this other option? Were you saying that this is one legitimate way the forces can go, so let's look at pursuing that? Or did you mean something else?

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Yes, I did say, sir, that I was suspicious. I'm certainly not inside the minister's mind, but I was suspicious that the in and out was driven by the fact of our diminished resources, and therefore our ability to sustain those deployments overseas.

There's a certain degree—and I hate to use the term—of national arrogance associated with it, an attitude that we're the best, therefore we go in early and then we get out. I'm not sure how much longer we can keep doing that. As soon as the first really dangerous one comes along and there's going to be a high risk of casualties, I'm not sure we'll be ready to rush in there. And the UN's going to say, you guys said you were going to go in early and get this thing set up for us. I'm not sure that's going to be the situation if we're not combat-capable of doing it.

So as to whether it's a precursor to further reduction, there's no way I could guess if that's the minister's objective. I can hope and pray that it's not.

Mr. Leon Benoit: As well as having a force that can do what Canada wants to do, according to the 1994 white paper, besides the goal of having a military that's capable and combat ready, and so on, there's another goal. Former Ambassador Gotlieb, who was a speaker at the conference I referred to earlier, talked about, as did another speaker whose name I forget, the importance of rebuilding Canada's military forces to a sufficient presence in terms of the Canada-U.S. relationship. Could you comment on that?

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: I would very much endorse that because right now they think we're doing more than we are. They're rapidly discovering that, in actual fact, we're not living up to that record of the past. And if anything, we've been bragging about our contribution in the last half decade as it's been going down in overall numbers. So we're going to get caught out, and we are getting caught out. Even the UN, I'm told, is, when they look at our list...and I know we're around 30th, or something like that in contribution.

The people who are leading contributors are not there probably for the right reasons. Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria are not exactly industrial strength examples of international rights. Also, Nigeria is there for the $1,000 per month per soldier.

Nevertheless, that's all the more reason why nations like ours should be seriously in a position to take on those that are in our national interests. Our national interests, I don't have to tell you, are, broadly defined, international peace and security.

So I am also concerned that we're rapidly becoming a bit of a—let me overstate it—laughing-stock with the Americans when they see the actual numbers we're providing.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

We will go to Mr. Regan.

Mr. Geoff Regan (Halifax West, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

• 1640

General, you talked about the issue of the integrated headquarters. We've heard from various witnesses as to whether or not we're top-heavy in terms of generals and senior officers or civilians. I want to ask you about that issue, first of all. Do you feel we are in either case?

Secondly, you're proposing that the civilian and military headquarters be de-linked. What would be the appropriate working relationship between those two groups?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: First of all, it's driven very much by the structure that the Government of Canada forced on us. I go back to the integration. Under integration, for each of the major departments within the Department of National Defence, there was a military guy in charge of one of those departments and a civilian as the second in command. The other one would have a civilian in charge and a military guy as the second in command. After they were working together for about six months back in 1972 or 1973, they started comparing salaries, and they discovered that the civilian bureaucrat was making a hell of a lot more money than, say, the colonel or the brigadier.

How did they sort out the salary thing? They elevated the rank of the military person. Maybe a colonel's job was now being done by a major-general. So the increase in rank was driven by the structure of the Department of National Defence here in the nation's capital. It didn't change in the field. Brigades were still commanded by brigadiers. Battalions and regiments were commanded by colonels. For divisions, we had one on paper for awhile, and parts of it were commanded by two-star generals. The structure changed within the bureaucracy in Ottawa.

The reduction in generals, which has been significant, from over 100 to around 60, has in fact been done mostly here. We as a nation are still trying to play with the big boys, and we do so quite adequately in some areas. We have a number of senior appointments, such as 2IC in NORAD. We have appointments in NATO that drive maybe a handful of additional generals. But most of the generals are here operating as co-equals—that horrible term—of civilian bureaucrats at the Department of National Defence.

Thank God it happened, sir, because I probably wouldn't have been a general. The numbers were pretty big then. I never thought I would be, but I made it because the pie was fairly large.

If you were to de-link the military and bring it back under the chief of defence staff or whomever and had it respond to the minister's staff within the office of the Minister of National Defence, which is how I would see it, there would still be the deputy minister in charge of the civilian staff within the military. That would still be his or her responsibility, but the chief would be responsible for the army.

When something like the Somalia inquiry happens and someone points a finger up, it won't be pointed at a committee. A lot of the generals and senior bureaucrats who appeared in front of that committee said, “It wasn't my responsibility. It didn't happen on my watch.” They were absolutely right, because when you start dealing with a committee, where does the buck stop?

So, yes, there are a lot of generals, half as many as there were ten years ago, but most of the demand for them is driven by the bureaucratic structure in the Department of National Defence.

Mr. Geoff Regan: So how should they operate together? If they were de-linked, how should the two groups interact? What kind of interaction is required and appropriate?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: It's the same as in England, Germany, Italy, and France. They are working toward a common goal with different chunks of the responsibility pie. There would be the military responding to direction from the civilian staff, which would arrive on their desks probably from the minister through the civilian bureaucracy, where there would be some small military representation just to explain the terms and SOPs, things like that.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Isn't there some danger that a civilian direction would not involve sufficient comprehension of the military realities?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: It's the responsibility of the military to go back and explain that. We respond even to bad civilian direction. That's the principle.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I understand that.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I can't say, gee, I don't like that. Either I get out.... But I don't attack Parliament, as is done in some other countries. It's my responsibility as a military leader to educate you. If you tell me to do something really stupid, then at least.... General Powell said to Bush, don't go to the Gulf War. Bush said, we're going. That's when the general clicks his heels and says, now I go and do my military job to the letter of the law.

Mr. Geoff Regan: The question is that—

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Your time is up. We'll go to Mr. Bachand now.

• 1645

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As politicians, we listen to the military telling us that there are not enough soldiers in the army, that the equipment is obsolete, etc. But us, parliamentarians, legislators and members of the executive—the cabinet—are responsible for the tax base for the whole country. In this regard, there is something that is paramount for us: public opinion. I think that you understand that.

Us, politicians, like to be “millionaires” with the votes put into the ballot boxes during an election. We call that political capital and it does not necessarily consist of money. This is the way that we are perceived by public opinion. This is what public opinion is all about.

Up until now, I am under the impression that public opinion perceives money invested in National Defence as something negative. I am not talking about people here because we are informed persons. We are in a better position to evaluate the evidence heard and to recognize maybe that a greater effort might be necessary.

This is all very nice as we are sitting here in the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. But when I leave here and go to my riding, to a neighbouring riding or elsewhere and tell people that we ought to give more money to the Canadian army, they are not thrilled about the idea.

I find that the Canadian government could try a bit harder to raise the credibility of the Canadian army, by using promotional campaigns for example. This could make their task easier afterwards and would allow them to invest a bit more in National Defence. I sometimes wonder if the government is not doing it on purpose so that the situation remains the same: in doing this, they do not have to invest more money in National Defence.

I think that the rescue operations that were undertaken in Canada, notably in my riding, during the ice storm, are also very important to raise the credibility of the army. But we are not going to wait for disasters to raise that credibility. Can we have your views on that?

How could we change public opinion towards the army? How could we raise its credibility? Through promotional campaigns for example? You seemed to be talking about patriotism earlier. Is that not an avenue that you could suggest to the government so that they can convince the public that we must make a bigger budgetary effort for the army?

[English]

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Sir, there's never been in my lifetime a wider window of opportunity with regard to public opinion. All the polls—and I don't necessarily believe all polls—indicate there's a tremendous amount of support out there in the public. Now normally, a number of politicians said to me, yes, but if you ask them whether we should spend the money on the military or health care, they'd say health care. I would say health care, but it's not a choice. A nation has a responsibility. If we are to be a nation, we have to have a modest—as a minimum—contribution towards our stated goal of international peace and security in the interests of enhanced economic intercourse, etc.

So this is where the political leadership comes in. This is where you, ladies and gentlemen, have to take some political risk. It's not just that the ship's built in your backyard—you might have nothing. In fact most constituencies don't have anything military these days, but it's a requirement for the nation.

And there's lots of good news there. I get about five brown envelopes a month from people within the military saying, “Hey, General, we know you've got some influence with the media, maybe you could get this story out.” And they're all really good stories.

Mr. Claude Bachand: You should send it to the opposition.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Yes, but my point is, sir, that there is no public affairs in the Canadian Forces. It's in the Department of National Defence. It'll be looked at as to how it impacts on the minister. So there is a potential for enhanced public relations. I mean, some civvies these days are telling me how much they love the recruiting ads for the reserves on television—tanks splashing through ditches and all that. But the people in the reserves are saying, “We never see that equipment. Gee, we joined three years ago and we've never done that.” But the public likes it, because it looks gung ho, and I would encourage more gung ho rather than less.

• 1650

But we have a lot of outstanding examples, particularly overseas. And don't forget, while our folks are doing that overseas, the people at home are working two and three times as hard to fill in the positions. So there are lots of good stories at home too.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General. We'll move onto Mr. Wilfert, please.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you to General MacKenzie....

The more I have sat here over the last two weeks and listened to the state of the Canadian military, the more confused I have become. Instead of getting answers, I'm not sure what is fact and what is fiction any more.

I talk to generals who tell me the exact opposite, that in the fact the majority of the reserves do participate in the kinds of actions where they would have that equipment. Others say they aren't. Some say they are actually the same thing. In fact, we're trying to eliminate “them” and “us” between reserve soldiers and those in the regular forces.

Obviously, through you, Mr. Chairman, we are trying to make recommendations on what we think should happen, what course of action.... And the one thing I have heard today—probably it would be quite a radical suggestion, but we should look at it—is this issue of the de-linking and what it really implies, what its benefits would be. It's obvious you would have a very interesting perspective on this issue, which I would hope to explore further with you.

How do we make sure we give our armed forces whatever they need, all the proper tools—and I don't just mean equipment—so they have political support? We have to define as a parliament what the role of the armed forces is and what objectives we want them to pursue once we've established their role. What outcomes do we want?

My good friend, Mr. Chairman, Elsie and I go back many, many, many years—so far in fact that I used to have hair and hers used to be darker; that's how far we went back. But Elsie talks about how we want to take the politics out of this. I don't think there's anyone around the table who wouldn't like to take the politics out of it, except the politics is always in it, because we always make these political statements.

In your view, is it possible to create a policy minus the politics, to be able to sit at a round table where people come to say you may not like it, but this is what we believe—after we first of all have established what the roles should be—these are our objectives, and if you're prepared to put x number of dollars forward, this is what you're going to get for those dollars? If you can't establish what you're going to get for those dollars, then you won't have the kind of political or public support you need.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: When I've read some of the proceedings on the Internet, I've seen the Australian experience mentioned before. It's very important that DFAIT gets involved in this on the foreign affairs side, because we're in bed together so much now that the foreign policy objectives of this nation.... The domestic requirements are really simple to articulate—not simple to execute, but simple to articulate—whether it's air space protection, aid to the civil power, or whatever.

I would remind you that if the Montreal and Toronto police forces went on strike tomorrow, concurrently, we would have to decide which city we want the Americans to patrol, because we don't have enough army to take over from the police forces in both of those cities at the same time. I'm an honorary chief of the Toronto police force. There are 2,000 more police in Toronto than there are infanteers in the Canadian army from private to general, inclusive; however, that's a commercial.

Yes, a requirement exists for the equivalent of a national security committee here in Canada to deal with issues of internal and external security. This need has been stated by many more articulate than I. This group would very much determine what you need to tell the military to be prepared to do on various states of readiness.

There's not a country in the world where this process is slick, but it is so disjointed in Canada that it should be brought together—foreign affairs, domestic policy, security. Then you could determine whether this white paper is accurate.

When I spoke of not being able to execute the missions in the 1994 white paper, I was referred to as the Cold War warrior by the Minister of National Defence; all I was talking about was his own document.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mr. Wilfert, General.

Mr. Bryon Wilfert: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Mrs. Wayne.

• 1655

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: First, General Lewis, I'm sure you have seen the article in the paper recently about the need for upgrading the accommodations of our military families in Camp Gagetown. I was over in Nova Scotia and out in B.C. And when I see our men and our women going to the food banks, when I see what they're living in—you and I wouldn't live in it; we couldn't live in it! There has to be some money here, and it has to be put back into the military, into the budget, and it shouldn't have anything to do with politics. We want to give them greater quality of life.

You know that from the experience over in Nova Scotia—for heaven's sakes, Geoffrey, look at what had to be done over there. They set up a counselling centre on the base because families were breaking up due to having our peacekeepers away too long and away from the family too long. They set up the nicest counselling centre I've ever seen, but they had to go out into the community and raise the money, because the government wouldn't give them one penny. And it truly was a nice centre, but it was for the family—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: May I comment on that, Elsie, because I think it's very important. That shouldn't be part of the defence budget. It's wrong to say that. It doesn't have much of an impact on operational capability. That situation is a nation's responsibility—

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: You're bloody right.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: —to its men and women in uniform. What happens is when you key on things like that, then the military will be told to sort it out from—guess what—within their own budget. Then their operational capability reduces even more, because they had to take the money from training, or operations or equipment, and fix flooding basements.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: But we have to know about this, and we have to make sure the money is there for both.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Absolutely. Agreed.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Very quickly, last week the chief of defence staff said the frequent message he gives to the Americans is “Remember your allies; don't get ahead of us too far in technology”. This is his solution to keeping us interoperable with the United States.

Is this a realistic approach, or does it tell you the central command has concluded that the government won't invest in research?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: First of all, I know they won't pay any attention to us. They're good people, but they have their responsibilities as a world superpower—and thank God. If there can only be one superpower in the world, thank God it's the Americans and not some others I can think of. Nevertheless, it merely points out the frustration of the CDS in keeping up with a very expensive technological revolution.

But it's not all technology in the type of work we will be doing foreseen by the white paper. Soldiers are still important, pilots are still important, submariners are still important—and you have to have some of these people to man the equipment in at least a critical mass that's recognized as a significant contribution. In a convoluted way I'm saying here that you have to apply priorities, and one of those priorities has to be people, because we're running out of people. The Americans are going to go as far ahead as they can as fast as possible, because it really upsets their enemies; fortunately, not their allies.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: But if you were out there today and you read the article in the paper about the food banks, and the way people have to live and the quarters, would you want to be bothered going and enlisting, to live under those conditions? How can we attract people that way?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: No, but I would attack recruiting in a totally different way. I still think you can appeal to people's patriotism and nationalism.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

We'll go to Mr. Eyking.

Mr. Mark Eyking (Sydney—Victoria, Lib.): Are you from the Maritimes?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I sure am. I'm embarrassed to say I joined the army to get away from there, but—

Mr. Mark Eyking: From what part? Where are you from?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Just outside of Truro, Nova Scotia, a little place called Princeport, nothing but DVA farms. Then my dad joined up again for Korea. Then the village disappeared.

Mr. Mark Eyking: I'm a Cape Bretoner, so that's pretty close—

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I'm out of Saint Francis Xavier, an XJC and such, yes.

Mr. Mark Eyking: What's happening in our country is not a new phenomenon. When a nation doesn't put much priority into defence, it's usually because it doesn't have enemies, or it's under someone else's protection. This kind of phenomenon has been happening for thousands of years.

As part of NATO and the UN, don't we have to maintain a benchmark of some kind, or play a certain role? Don't they sit down and say, okay, now Italy's going to do this and Canada's going to do that? Isn't that part of the plan now? Are they not asking us to do more, or are we just not doing our share?

• 1700

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: Within the hallowed halls of NATO, we have significant responsibilities because the NATO charter says an attack against one is an attack against all, and we will all participate in defence. You have to realize that this now includes the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Hungarians, who are more likely to be attacked, probably, than some of our own people.

So there's an obligation there. If, for example, Yugoslavia, as it was being bombed, had decided to attack Hungary, it would have been an interesting situation for Canada. It would have had to respond to assist in the defence of Hungary.

So you're absolutely right. There is a bare minimum, and considering that our percentage of gross national product that goes towards defence is at the bottom of the NATO assessment, we've been under a fair amount of pressure for years to up that.

We've gotten away with it because we've made significant contributions within the UN or on peace operations. Why the hell should we be running around in Europe? I'm proud we did, but the fact is that from a geopolitical point of view the Europeans should have been able to look after that. In fact, they started with Yugoslavia looking after themselves, but Canada went and got involved and made a significant contribution.

So people were prepared to look at our overall balance of contribution to international peace and security. That contribution has dropped dramatically. With a major contribution with NATO in Bosnia now, and very little with the UN, less Eritrea when it comes home...only about 400 people deployed around the world.

So I rest my case. I've been making the point that we're being caught out. You are having these hearings at a time when we are becoming an insignificant presence on the international stage, and if we continue to shrink, we won't have the capability to wrap that up, either.

Mr. Mark Eyking: Maybe we should have a little mock war in Toronto or Montreal and have people say, this is what it's like to have an enemy, or this is what it's like to be defenceless, or whatever, I guess.

MGen Lewis Mackenzie: You pick a city like Toronto, and you're talking about 52% of the people in Toronto—and that's a fairly accurate estimate—coming from countries to get away from some sort of military dictatorship or a war. They understand it, and if we can't mobilize that public opinion, then we shouldn't be in the business.

The fact is that, as I speak to universities and high schools and I talk about Central American countries and Ethiopia and the satellite countries and Yugoslavia—they're in the audience. They came as refugees. They're landed immigrants. They're Canadian citizens. They understand, and our kids are beginning to understand too.

We have a role, whether we like it or not, on the international stage. We are looked at as the world's most multi-ethnic country, which has a high degree of compassion for other people who, through no fault of their own, are in pretty sorry states. I just think your obligations abroad are equal to your blessings at home, and right now our blessings, I think, are probably greater than our contribution. I'm taking nothing away from the individuals we send abroad—some of them, by the way, on multiple tours, year after year after year.

When I left the military, thanks to a whole bunch of avoiding work by going on UN peacekeeping missions, I had four rows of ribbons. I think I was the first officer since World War II to have four. I'm now pinning medals on 30-year-old sergeants, starting their fourth row at 30 years of age.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, General. We'll move on to Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm just going to make a bit of a comment first. Mr. Bachand in his questioning talked about the lack of support for the military in his constituency. I guess my immediate thought is, well, what would you expect, when you have prime ministers who have shown virtually no support for the military for how long? I'm not talking only about this Prime Minister. I think it started certainly with Prime Minister Trudeau.

And what would you expect when you have MPs who don't express, I'd say, nearly enough support for the military? Certainly, when you look at American politicians, they go to great lengths to express pride in their men and women who serve, and they do that. I guess I'd just like to ask you how much of an impact it might have on reducing the attrition rate and on recruiting if you had a prime minister who really showed pride in our military and expressed a need for the military?

• 1705

What if you had a government that spoke of a real need and showed commitment? Not the kind of commitment that shows reduced funding of 40% in the last ten years, in real terms, which is what's happened, but how much of an impact could we have if MPs were to actually show a leadership role in the constituency and express pride and a need for the military? I'd just like to know how much of an impact you think this could have on reducing attrition and on recruiting.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Sir, I can't measure it, but I think it would have a significant impact. It would have an impact, certainly, on morale.

I mean, there's a rumour that morale is bad on the forces. The sergeants major, whose advice I always take, tell me, “You know, sir, we don't have a morale problem”. Morale is when you're sullen, withdrawn, and you don't want to do the work. We have an attitude problem. Morale is okay overseas. They'll do what they're told. But they're pissed off because they don't see the support that they think they've earned.

I will share with you the fact that, before it became a cause célèbre three years ago, I think it was, I hosted for Anne Petrie for a week on her talk show. I used one of the subjects—the national military cemetery. That was when it was first broached, at least to the wide public.

You know why I wanted that? I wanted that because I wanted to remind you elected representatives every time a soldier was killed.

In the United States, the President meets the body at Andrews Air Force Base. He meets the family. It's a national event if the family so chooses.

I thought, we bring our soldiers home, in great dignity, take them to their home town in Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia, whatever. They're buried with dignity. It's out of the public eye. It's a very private ceremony. Don't get me wrong; it's done properly. But that's it. That's the end of it.

So I speak to a hell of a lot of audiences. It's how I make part of my living. I frequently ask for a show of hands. I say, put your hands up when you think I'm at the number of people we've had killed in the former Yugoslavia. Most of the hands stop going up after three or four. When I get to 22, 23, they think I'm joking. Well, I'm not. Because it's just not known.

The government, it would appear, thinks the Canadian public would be shocked by that. Shocked? Damn, they'd be proud of it. So if there's a national military cemetery here, and the commander-in-chief, the Governor General, goes to every funeral, then maybe, maybe we'll start getting the word out, which is part of what you're saying, sir.

If I could snap my finger and that could happen, I would be delighted for the men and women of the Canadian Forces.

Mr. Leon Benoit: The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies put out a little paper a couple of months back, making a bit of an extrapolation, I'll admit. They said that if attrition continued at the rate it has gone over the past year, we would have about 42,000 members in our forces by the end of next year. It sounds far-fetched, but do you believe this is a real possibility?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: It depends what happens out there in the economy. As a commanding officer in Calgary in the late 1970s during the oil boom, I was losing 35 soldiers a month from a 700-man battalion, just because they could make more guarding Woolco or make ten times more than I was paying them working on the oil rigs in northern Alberta. So it depends a lot on what happens in the economy.

The release criteria were relatively generous for someone who is thinking, “Should I stay in or get out? Maybe they're going to come and tap me on the shoulder and dismiss me, so maybe I'd better take the retirement offer and leave early.” It depends very much on what happens out there in the economy.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you think that in fact we might be down to 52,000 right now?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Yes. Deployable...not combat-ready, but.... When I say “fit”, you know, walking around, healthy, without a walker or a wheelchair.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Wood.

Mr. Bob Wood: I just have one quick question, Mr. Chairman, and then, if I have some time, my colleague Mr. Regan will do the rest.

Just to twig my memory a bit, when Mrs. Wayne was talking about the U.S. being so far ahead in technology, General.... I happened to run across...I guess it was an article in the Citizen yesterday, in which David Rudd, who as you probably know is an analyst with the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, says the Canadian military will have to find some way to separate their NORAD and their missile-related activities from the United States if Canada comes out firmly against the U.S. missile defence system.

Is it possible for Canada to separate their NORAD and missile-related activities? Will it be possible?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Well, yes. They'd have to convince the Americans because NORAD is a bilateral organization.

• 1710

I have a slightly different take on national missile defence. I don't think the Americans have any intention whatsoever of deploying it. They never had any intention of deploying Star Wars, but it sure had some geopolitical strategic implications. In fact, more than any other factor, it brought the Cold War to an end.

The process we're talking about, national missile defence, will go on for a decade or so. So they're in the early stages of bartering, like buying a rug in a bazaar: they'll make an offer, there will be counter-offers. A lot more important things are going to happen, and I don't think we have a crisis on our hands.

If we were to split it, it would be a bilateral negotiated settlement. But if we just pulled out and said, “To hell with it, we're not getting involved”, I think that would be a dumb move, diplomatically.

Mr. Bob Wood: Go ahead, Geoff.

Mr. Geoff Regan: General, what equipment would you say would be top priority for the army to replace? What piece of equipment would you acquire if you were minister and had responsibility?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Remember when I said I'd resign if you asked me that question? I can't resign from being a civilian, I guess.

Seriously, though, you have to tell me what my priorities are in that white paper. If you want me to run around and chase submarines, then I need helicopters. The ships are useless without them.

Mr. Geoff Regan: But you're telling us that a base really ought to have a brigade ready.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: And be able to replace it, yes, that's right.

Mr. Geoff Regan: And to do that, what equipment is necessary? What's missing now?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: More than anything else, people. We need an enhanced vehicle fleet, personal equipment, flak jackets—well, they're a bad example; they're terribly old and will be replaced with the new manning equipment. The small arms, personal weapons, are pretty good, but the vehicle fleet is getting tired, particularly the wheeled vehicles that move logistics and artillery ammunition, things like that. You need more of the LAV vehicles that are coming online, but you have to be able to train people on them.

You can dress it up and make it look pretty on the parade square, but you've got to be able to train it—and that takes bucks. Something all other armies are doing is computer simulation, to try reducing some of the costs of getting people more quickly into the field, and working effectively with their weapons and equipment.

I started talking about simulation when I was deputy chief of staff training in 1985. Now it's 16, 17 years later, and I'm on the board of advisers of a company that's going to provide some simulation—but it won't be issued for at least another four or five years. That's mind-boggling.

All that's possible. But the Auditor General and the Conference of Defence Associations have done some pretty detailed costing out of what it would cost to stop the hemorrhaging and start the rebuilding process. The numbers are significant, up to $2 billion a year. But the problem is that having taken money away since 1993 to pay off the deficit, it's hard to stop the hemorrhaging and start the rebuilding without a significant infusion of cash.

If the government decides not to do that, then the military leadership is probably faced with reducing people. Equipment takes ten years to get from the drawing board to being issued. Operations and maintenance—the navy, air force, and army have cut that back dramatically. We're not going to win top gun any more, because we're not flying around practising. So the only thing we're left with is personnel. You get a spike in expenses for a year as you buy people out, but afterwards you save money dramatically. So they are forced to look at cutting people.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

Mr. Bachand.

Mr. Claude Bachand: No more questions.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I just want to thank General Lew for coming. I think he's done a fantastic job. Later, he and I can debate whether women should be on the submarines. But I think he's got his message across.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Mr. Benoit, did you have a quick question?

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes, I do. And I know you would like to ask a question, Mr. Chair, so I'll just have a short one.

Major General MacKenzie, to what would you attribute the current level of attrition? How would you get right down to the nuts and bolts of why people are leaving at such a rate?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I would say the repetitiveness of overseas deployments, because that doesn't just affect the people actually deployed; it also affects the people left behind, who make up the difference in the units.

Very early on, when the RCMP started to deploy a large number of people overseas, it established a pool of personnel to fill in those vacant spots when people were deployed on UN missions. That's the ideal thing to do. The Scandinavian military does it and the Canadian air force does it. But the army doesn't, and there's a lot of extra work being done at home.

• 1715

The repetitiveness of the UN tours is certainly one concern. Another is self-esteem. I get a lot of phone calls from people asking me whether they should stay in or get out. They're upset with the lack of support they receive. Morale is not bad—I keep coming back to that. When they're told to do a job, they do it. But they're disappointed that all the media coverage focuses on the problem areas, and I can't control the media. There was the airborne regiment in Somalia. Well, that was one despicable act of torture and murder in the 100-year history of the military.

The average size of the Canadian Forces since World War II is 96,000. That's the population of Sudbury. If Sudbury had one despicable act, it wouldn't be considered a trend. Yet it was a trend here: a bunch of white racists running around the horn of Africa.

I've been back to Belet Huen three times, and I'm mobbed every time I go back: “Send back the Airborne, send back the Airborne—they built our schools, they purified our water, they built bridges.” The Canadian public never got told that story. In fact, the Somalia fire was cut off just as we were getting to that point. There was a period there for the good news.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yet I hear from soldiers regularly that one of their greatest concerns is that there is now no airborne to strive for. Becoming a member of the airborne was the ultimate goal if you were in the army, something you tried to achieve. Now it's not there.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: I wrote a paper on this when I was 25 and just Lieutenant MacKenzie—that of all the nations in the world, Canada should have an elite military. Forget about just the airborne regiment; the entire Canadian army should be an elite force. My God, it's only 17,000 or 18,000 people. They should all be elite—the tankers, the gunners, the infantry, everybody. Every one of those brigades could be a commando brigade. As a foreign commander, I would kill to have them fighting on my side.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Why don't you come back and be the chief again?

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: It's a young man's sport.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you, Mr. Benoit and, General, for appearing here. It's good to have some frank discussion on this. This is obviously a great concern, and has been for some time.

I would like to ask, is there no yardstick for measuring military effectiveness? Other nations, other countries, deploy troops just as we do. Is there some model we should explore as a committee to see if it could be applied to Canada? I sense that we don't really measure effectiveness here by any fixed standard. I'd like you to comment, or recommend a direction for us to look on this.

MGen Lewis MacKenzie: Yes, it's a complex subject—I shouldn't say controversial. Anybody could tap-dance around the issue and tell you different ways to quantify effectiveness: check what the physical fitness scores are, or count up the weapons, or look at what shape they're in, or what the marksmanship scores are. But ultimately, you have to ask the highest level of the organization, the brigade group, to do the assessment. They have to go out to the field and do it, and do it wet—using live ammunition and everything. That's what the Americans do.

Five or six years ago, I was contracted to reorganize the Irish army. It's about 15,000 or 16,000 strong. What I recommended to them, and what they established, was a national training centre—only at battalion level. Why? Because their most challenging operational commitment is one battalion in Lebanon twice a year. It rotates with the United Nations every six months, and they never operate out of that level.

So how do we tell if they can do the job? Have them do it under controlled conditions in a training centre. If the unit fails, now they know to fire the CO and organize the battalion so that it can do the job.

You can go through the quantification. The Americans have now declared two of their divisions non-operational because so many of their people are away in Kosovo. That caused a really serious concern in Washington when the divisional commander said he wasn't operational, not capable of deploying.

I dare say that if the vast majority of our units were asked, they would have to to make that same statement. Certainly every brigade would.

• 1720

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): Thank you very much, General.

I believe that will conclude the meeting.

MGen. Lewis MacKenzie: Thank you very much.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Peter Goldring): The meeting is adjourned.