National Defence Committee on June 17th, 2024

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

When the minister says that he has to convince his own government and the allies, can that send the message that they want to try to change the way the 2% target is calculated?

We want to focus on other actions taken by Canada, which wants to be perceived as a good ally. However, at the end of the day, we know that we will not reach the 2% target.

What message does that send?

[Dr. David Perry]

I would offer that if we could convey a better message about our anticipated spending, we would have presented it. If there were a better indication of spending beyond 2029, we would also have presented that. I don't think we can actually meaningfully include anything else at present unless NATO redefines what we can include. I don't actually think we spend a lot on a lot of the other things that people commonly cite when they suggest that we might be able to bump our numbers up.

Then beyond that, I think it's also worth the committee's spending some time looking at what will happen in Canada from 2030 and beyond in terms of defence spending, because my understanding is that we've essentially moved forward a big peak in spending that was articulated in “Strong, Secure, Engaged”. We're going to hit that in 2029-30, and then our spending is going to start dropping. I think at this point it might actually drop off a cliff.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

I asked the minister about this. I asked him how it was possible to hope that spending would continue in the future, given the likelihood of a change in government. He had virtually no answer to offer.

There is no binding framework beyond a policy, which even a government in power can change.

There is also no guarantee that, in the next Parliament, what the government has announced will be maintained. Shouldn't we be concerned about that?

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

I can give you some good examples. Denmark, Norway and even Australia have established expanded committees on national defence, where party leaders participate alongside committee members. This makes a broader kind of consensus possible, and everyone contributes to the creation of a defence policy. That provides an element of security for the future, regardless of the next government.

I think Canada should explore that model more. It has to find a way to institutionalize it, as that's exactly what our allies have done, and it works very well.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madame Normandin.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have five minutes. Thank you for your patience.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We go back and forth, and there's obviously a belief here today that 2% is a big deal, and yet we've consistently heard that 2% is an arbitrary number. The way each country defines how they spend 2% is different. Recently Professor Leuprecht was here, and he said that Canada isn't doing itself justice in the way that it defines how it's spending contributions.

What would you have to say to that?

[Dr. David Perry]

I don't think that's actually accurate, because I understand that there's an agreed-upon NATO framework. You don't just get to choose your own adventure in terms of what you submit and what you don't submit. You submit expenditures that are part of an eligible pool. NATO reviews all that. If you try to put forward spending on elements that aren't considered part of the formula, then they aren't accepted. There's a methodology around that.

We don't get to basically pick and choose what we do. I wouldn't really agree with that characterization.

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

Yes, there is something—I don't want to say random—but saying 2% isn't a sure bet that you're going to get exactly what you want for it. On the one hand, is the money being well spent? Is the money actually being spent?

However, the most important part is not the absolute number of 2%. It is kind of randomly stated, but it's a relative amount. If you're doing so poorly compared to your peers, you start wondering what's with burden sharing and why burden sharing does not seem to matter to Canada as much as it does to our allies.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Building—

[VAdm (Ret'd) Darren Hawco]

I would just say, to make it tangible, you have a 30% rule for your mortgage. It's a rule of thumb that seems sensible, and it's applied and used as a calculus for how to consider a person's situation and how viable it is. There's a similarity to this rule-of-thumb approach that everyone has agreed to, and it's very important that everyone has agreed.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

In terms of that flexibility or burden sharing, I certainly am concerned.

Mr. Cormier, you spoke about peacekeeping within the DPU. It's not mentioned once.

There is that Canadian understanding that we are the founders of peacekeeping in the world. Canada had thousands of peacekeepers contributing in the nineties. Now we're not even meeting the targets we have set, which are very low. We've made promises in the world and we are not keeping them.

From your organization's perspective, do you think that the federal government needs to be transparent with its own people on that backtracking? Is this just a different way that we're going, or is there a change that's needed in the vision that Canadians have for peacekeeping in the world?

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

It depends where you put your energies, right? If you put peacekeepers in a position....

Maybe you don't necessarily want them to be in combat or in some of the most dangerous areas, and that's fair. If Canada wants to be honest with its people about the role they want our peacekeepers to take on, sure, but maybe there is training and capacity building in those nations that are providing a lot of peacekeepers, and we could be doing that a lot more.

There is a missed opportunity to envision it, but there's also, as you say, maybe a bit of a lack of transparency in how Canadians still think of ourselves in a certain way that's not reality.

[Dr. David Perry]

I would offer that we're simply not spending enough to keep doing everything that we previously committed to.

One thing I would commend in the new policy that it at least articulated some choices. Unfortunately, I think a lack of any kind of meaningful commitment on peacekeeping is one of those choices, and we're simply not resourcing enough to do that, absent making a decision not to do something else.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Can you speak to the fact that there have been dates set, or at least timelines or expectations set, on that national security review, and if that's important, to how it's important and when we need to start in terms of getting to it?

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

To be fair, it's actually really difficult to do. The Americans pull it off every four years, and that's I guess the model we're trying to establish here, but with minority governments, which have become the norm in Canada rather than the exception, it is a bit more of a challenge.

Again, multi-party consensus and working together is going to be really important in order to keep that four-year purpose. I think it's one of our favourite parts of the policy. At the CDA, we're really happy with the idea that every four years Canada will take a moment to reflect on these things.

It sometimes takes a year or two to get to the place where you can publish a policy update, so it means that if you're doing it every four years, you're practically doing it all the time, which is exactly where Canada's thinking needs to evolve to. We tend to put this off. DPU is a good example. It's two years late, but arguably, it very well could be four or six years late. If we had been doing it that way, we wouldn't have waited for seven years between the two.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Colleagues, we have 25 minutes' worth of questions to squeeze into eight, so this is going to be a two-minute round.

Mr. Kelly is next.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

I guess this is for any of our witnesses.

This DPU speaks of exploring different options. That's the theme throughout. It name-ticks a few things that are known, such as the capabilities we need on submarines and in many other areas, yet without actual, specific declarations of what the intent is, is this even a policy update at all? I mean, to say that you “explore options” is only a change in the government's policy if the previous policy was to not consider options.

Could we have your comments on the lack of specificity around actual policy changes or updates?

[Dr. David Perry]

I think that noting things are needed but not actually providing any money to acquire them is a significant problem. The policy does make a number of actual commitments of funding—enhanced maintenance, more spending on infrastructure and some investments in some new capabilities—but as I said, I think it's highly problematic to say that we need these things and then provide zero dollars to actually acquire them.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thanks.

Mr. Cormier, would you comment?

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

There are some elements that are the most urgent elements, too, like housing. That's the one that really stuck out: when I saw the housing numbers. We hear of people who are living in campers outside certain bases, of people having a hard time bringing their families or of people leaving the forces because it's too hard on the families because of housing.

You can see the numbers. In year one, there's practically zero new investment. In year two, it's a million bucks or two million. How many houses can you can build with a million bucks? That is one of the huge shortcomings here.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay. Let's talk about the expeditionary capability. Is this DPU going to enhance Canada's expeditionary capabilities?

You mentioned that, Mr. Cormier, so go ahead.

[Dr. Youri Cormier]

I'll start. Briefly, it doesn't say enough about expeditionary capacity and what the army can do, but to be fair, there are a lot of investments here that can have multiple uses, so you could actually leverage them toward expedition as well.

[Dr. David Perry]

I'd say yes, but it's very unclear for the army.

[VAdm (Ret'd) Darren Hawco]

Yes, that's the only thing I would just double-click on.

First of all, if the government doesn't have every answer to every question, it's hard for it to actually.... It wants to say it, so it will put, “Yes, we're going to explore that.” If it doesn't have every single answer, it's not going to be able to provide that, because we would reasonably expect that.

However, to close, there is a pretty wide range of things being considered in the policy as funded and to be explored, so I think the—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you. I'm sorry.