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]

Thursday, March 12, 1998

• 0915

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.)): Order. Good morning, everyone. We now have quorum.

As the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, we will continue along with our hearings on the general, overall well-being of the armed forces.

Mr. Bertrand cannot be with us this morning. To quote my colleague Mr. Proud—and this is an air force quote—he apparently landed “wheels up” in his front yard this morning due to the ice, and has injured his back. But we will continue on in his absence.

We'd like to welcome today Professor Gilles Paquet from the University of Ottawa and Professor Terry Copp from Wilfred Laurier University.

I understand, Professor Paquet, you will be starting off the presentation. We'd appreciate it if you would limit yourself to maybe ten to twelve minutes—the same goes for you, Mr. Copp—so that will we have plenty of opportunity to ask you questions when you conclude.

The floor is yours.

Professor Gilles Paquet (Centre on Governance, University of Ottawa): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have circulated a sheet of paper that you can read in French or English, whatever your preference, to make sure that some of the key points I want to make this morning at least stay with you if I do not express them that well.

Some of the problem you have been wrestling with about the idea of a social contract between the military, the citizenry and the politicians is, it seems to me, a very important idea. It's an important one because we are now ending, if you wish, an era in which the armed forces have been really left on their own, in a sort of anarchic state, and it seems to me that this is unlikely to be possible in the future.

The problem, however, that I would like to draw your attention to—this was part of the longish paper that I know has been distributed to members of the committee—is that a number of assumptions are in danger of limiting considerably the nature of your work.

I know there is a great interest, if you wish, in the well-being, in the narrowest sense, of the poor officers of the armed forces. We know it's been hitting the news that members of the armed forces are going to some type of food bank. The danger in looking at the issue purely as an income issue, as an employment issue, is that you're in danger of losing sight of the fact that the armed forces, to me, are not—and I underline the word “not”—only a job; as they used to say in my youth...I'm obviously old enough to remember when people were “in the service”.

What is true for the armed forces, even extremely true for them, is also true for public servants in general. I think we have been in danger of examining only the bottom line and the income statements about these individuals rather than looking at the status they represent.

What are these assumptions? It seems to me we don't know any more what it is we want the military for. Is it really a combat force we have? Is it a peacemaking force we have? Not to ask these questions is simply not to define the problem properly.

We also know that separate facilities are not possible any more for the armed forces. There used to be a time when they told politicians to send money and not ask any questions. In the new world in which we live, this is impossible. Even the armed forces know that. By being tempted to recreate a phony special status without specifying what it is, one would perpetuate this sense of separateness without really having delved into it sufficiently.

All of this is to be said in one word: We need a new quid for the new quo. If in fact there's a quid pro quo there, we need to understand what we demand from these people in order to know what's worth paying for and delivering to them.

The very dangerous simplification I hear around this debate is the debate only between politicians and the armed forces. As you well know, the downfall of General Boyle did not come from politicians; it came from public opinion. It came from the fact that he presented to Canadian citizens justifications that turned out to be unacceptable to the citizenry. To deny that citizens are going to be involved in the future in the running of the armed forces is wrong.

• 0920

When the armed forces, during the ice storm, went to Quebec, they went there after discussion with the Quebec government, which insisted—quite rightly, it seems—that they did not bear arms. It means, therefore, that even the provincial governments in some ways are part of the governing system of the armed forces as we know it now.

General Dallaire was accused in Belgium of being responsible for all sorts of crimes. Governments external to this country are now demanding accountability from our armed forces.

This is not the old world, in which they lived in a small, closed world, accountable only to themselves. So for you to raise the question of their pay or their well-being without raising the problem of what it is they are accountable for, or what is their burden of office, is very dangerous.

The danger comes also from the fact that the temptation on the part of the armed forces is to declare themselves, as they do, subject to unlimited liability. In that debate, when you keep it only with politicians, you have people who claim unlimited liability vis-à-vis you people, who say, on the face of it, what can you do except unlimited commitment?

We know you're not ready and willing to do this, and neither is the population. Unless we get away from these dangerous simplifications and get at the core of the issue—that is, what it is we're expecting the armed forces to do—recognizing that in the new world in which we live there are accountabilities not only to the Prime Minister and the Queen but also to many other parties, including Canadian citizens, I as a person will only allow people to bear arms because I believe they are morally and ethically better than I am. Therefore, who should be recruited in there means a lot of things about the nature of the armed forces.

I think these types of issues have to be brought right to the forefront of your debate about the social contract. I'm terribly worried about the fact that it will be reduced to pay and working conditions.

Why is it I think it's wrong to go only that narrow way? I tried, in my longish paper, to present four models of governance of the armed forces.

One, the old one, is separate facilities—send money and don't ask any questions. I'm quite sure some portions of the armed forces would like to go back to this world. Unfortunately, it's gone.

The second one, and a dangerous one, is to regard the armed forces only as employees and therefore to start talking with them. In fact, there has even been talk of their unionizing. At the end of the day, it's reducing dramatically the role of the armed forces, and the service, to an employment contract. I happen to believe that the danger of dealing only with those pay issues and welfare and working condition issues in your debate is that you will dwarf the social contract to nothing more than an employment contract. That to me would be reducing dramatically the status of the armed forces as I would like to keep them.

The third possibility is to try to deal with some special status, as a special deal that is not understood very well. I think that is also fraught with danger, because in all that, you would avoid facing the issue of what the hell we want these people for.

The fourth one is the model I call “professionalism”, recognizing that the members of the armed forces are professionals. Like medical doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, they are not subject only to employment contracts for casual workers. They have a burden of office that is particularly heavy and important. Understanding this will lead us to give them conditions commensurate with their commitment, but only if we go to some trouble to define what their burden of office is.

What is it going to be? Do we want a combat force or do we want peacekeeping force, or gendarmerie? It's not for me to define, but we should talk about it.

It seems to me you have to recognize that politicians have violated the old moral contract with the armed forces. I thought the armed forces had a moral contract with the citizenry: they would take on the risky job of risking their lives for us. That's the quo; the quid is that we give them resources that are at least going to help them minimize that risk.

When debates became political, contracts for helicopters were cancelled. As a citizen, I could only feel that the moral contract had been broken, that we had in fact decided to not provide maximum support any more. Because these people had unlimited liability, we decided to nickel and dime them and decided to provide only adequate support. If this is the only adequate support we can demand, can we expect adequate commitment? I'm not sure.

• 0925

New social norms have been imposed on the armed forces. Everything from the charter down has also constrained dramatically the work of the armed forces as we know them. The new participatory democracy has demanded that these people be accountable. By ignoring these broad issues, we are in some ways in danger of now allowing their status to sink down to the level of just “other employees”, with maybe a clause for danger pay.

My sense is that, as in the public service but to an extreme, we have to fundamentally accept that these people are in the service. One of the major things you will have to account for in your social contract is the thing that they give, and that is the loss of freedom. Those people give freedom. In many ways, they have no choice but to move here and there, to react in all sorts of ways. That is much more fundamental than just measuring the consumer price index and indexing their pay somewhat to be commensurate with this or that.

Recognizing these central issues will be necessary for a moral contract or social contract with the military that involves the citizenry; involves the recognition that the provinces exist and have become enmeshed in the running of the armed forces; and recognizes that in our role internationally, other countries now feel free to comment and make reference to our armed forces. In that much bigger world, we need to define the rules of the game, and it seems to me this committee has an important role to play there.

On whether or not it can be done, I tried to argue in the paper—and it may not be satisfactory to you—that any change in the culture of a large organization like this will take 5,000 days. To many of you, 5,000 days may appear to be very long. To the best of my knowledge now, it's my life expectation. If I can only expect to live 5,000 days in the best of all worlds, is it too much to expect that during that time, some of those reforms are going to be undertaken? I don't think so.

Mr. John Richardson (Perth—Middlesex, Lib.): I hope you have some kind of warranty on those 5,000 days.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you for your very interesting views. I'm sure we'll have lots of questions for you when that time comes.

We'll now move over to Dr. Copp. Doctor, you have the floor for ten to twelve minutes.

Professor Terry Copp (Co-Director, Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University): Thank you very much.

The approach I've taken in my paper is somewhat different from that of my colleague. It's perhaps more limited, but also perhaps more focused on an immediate agenda. I would like to begin by stating clearly the premise from which I began, and that premise is the sort of thing you might expect a sort of common garden historian to bring to the analysis.

First of all, I assume we're operating within the framework of the 1994 white paper, and that we're defining the armed forces, their roles and missions as they in fact exist today. If the government issues a new white paper that redefines the armed forces in a fundamentally different way, then many of the comments I am offering today would, it seems to me, be largely irrelevant and should be put on the side. They would at least need to be readdressed. That's premise number one.

The second premise stems particularly from a comparative study of what is going on in the British and U.S. armed forces. I personally am convinced that while there are serious problems in the Canadian Forces, those problems are probably the kinds of problems bound to emerge in an organization that has undergone the kind of stress that the Canadian Forces have undergone in the last decade. To be downsized by more than 30%; to have the entire international environment change when you had trained, equipped and developed doctrine for an older international environment; and to require your senior officers to manage, in those horrible words that we use, “the re-engineering of the armed services”—which was really a massive downsizing of the armed services, of course—with limitations on careers and a sense that those young people who joined the armed forces to pursue one kind of career now found themselves in a very different environment—to be very brief, my own view is that the Canadian Forces have done a superb job of adjusting to the enormous changes that have been imposed upon them.

• 0930

I also make the point in my paper that I don't accept the view put forward in the media that there is a leadership crisis in the Canadian Armed Forces. It seems to me quite clear, again, that given the challenges they've had to confront in the last five or six years, the armed forces have dealt with them effectively.

Indeed, I deny that the culture of the armed forces is the culprit for incidents such as those that occurred in Somalia because in my common garden view of the world, I find that in most of its deployments, whether it be in Haiti or in the last years in Cyprus or in Bosnia or in the dozens of other places where the Canadian Armed Forces are active, our record has been outstanding and is so recognized by our allies. The best professional judges of the performance of the Canadian Forces are in fact their counterparts in other areas, and I could simply argue that the Canadian Forces are regarded as highly skilled and highly professional by their peers.

I'm struck by the fact that if the culture of the Canadian Armed Forces and the leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces produces positive results in most cases, or indeed in almost all cases, and produces difficult-to-defend and difficult-to-explain results in isolated cases, then in simple analytical terms it is probably not the culture or the institution or the leadership that is at fault, but rather the specific situation that needs study. So if you weren't coming from those premises, then the arguments I make now would be of course quite different.

Fundamentally, I argue that the notion of a social contract—I prefer the term “charter of military service”—is a notion worthy of pursuit in this year within this committee, and I suggested some wording for such a contract or statement of purpose. I deliberately understated the words. I didn't reach for grandiose phrases because I thought everybody might like to have a try at it, but I do accept that the notion of a relatively simple statement made by the Government of Canada on behalf of the people of Canada as a statement to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces is a desirable objective in the short run.

I then, as I was asked to do, went through a series of options that I think ought to be considered.

The first option that is put forward is the simple declaration of a charter of military service or a social contract. I've listed that on the paper so I won't repeat it now.

The second option that I discuss is unionization. I must say that at our symposium one of my friends and colleagues, Professor Marc Milner of the University of New Brunswick, devoted his entire paper to the question of the unionization of the armed forces, and I think he did an effective job of arguing the case for unionization.

I myself, as a sometime labour historian and sometime student of these issues, am not opposed in principle to the notion of unionization. I simply think that in the context of the late 1990s, given the changes that are taking place in the armed services, this is simply not something that is likely to happen in any environment that I understand, and therefore I lay it aside. It's not a silly idea; it's just not an idea that I think should be pursued immediately.

In option number three, I suggest that the social contract should take the form of the declaration that I've already referred to, together with what I'm calling, for simplicity, a quality of life initiative. In a rather long section of the paper, I outline the steps that have been taken in the United States armed forces under a presidential quality of life initiative to give a high profile before the Senate, the House of Representatives and, indeed, the American people to a series of changes being undertaken.

I then go on to point out that in fact the Canadian Armed Forces, in their modest way, have been following a parallel program. They haven't packaged it as a quality of life initiative. They don't have the imprimatur of the Prime Minister, as the Americans have with President Clinton, and they haven't tied it in with the leaders of the Senate and the House of Commons, but in a number of areas the Canadian Armed Forces have been taking steps to redress the most obvious and serious problems confronting them.

I then suggest, in option four, the possibility of a social contract declaration and voluntary collective bargaining. One of the other speakers in our panel, Dr. Donald Savage, the former executive secretary of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, did a detailed presentation based primarily on an analysis of the RCMP staff association and suggested that an association such as that might well be a model in which issues such as quality of life, wages and working conditions, etc., could be discussed. Dr. Savage suggested that the evidence of the workings of the RCMP staff association suggest that this was a highly successful system that had not disrupted the chain of command or caused other morale problems in the armed forces.

• 0935

I conclude by opting that I myself would, in 1998, choose the quality of life initiative, along with the declaration of a charter of military service by the Government of Canada. In my judgment, the armed forces are undergoing constant change, and to develop the systems, to put the systems in place for voluntary collective bargaining of the staff association type in 1998-99 would place even greater stress on an organization that is constantly reacting to new changes.

Finally—and I hope I have stayed within my ten minutes—I make suggestions about how the declaration of the social contract or the charter of military service might in fact be implemented and be given something other than a kind of vague statement. I suggest there are only two options available to us at present. One of them is to enact in the declaration, as a piece of legislation, a primacy clause—and I will not instruct parliamentarians as to exactly how that would be done, because I'm sure you know more about this than I do.

The second approach that I would suggest is to follow the precedent of the Prime Minister's 1995 initiative in which he introduced a motion in both the House of Commons and the Senate to recognize Quebec as a distinct society within Canada. With that motion passing in both the House of Commons and the Senate, it acquired a status or a stature that removed it from simply a common garden statement. I suggest that if the committee was to agree upon and be able to recommend a social contract declaration or a charter of military service, the proper route for implementing it would be such a joint resolution...sorry, I don't mean a joint resolution. The proper route would be a resolution of the House of Commons and a resolution of the Senate of Canada, endorsing the charter of military service.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you.

I know we have a number of people who want to ask questions of both Professor Paquet and you, Professor Copp, so we'll get to those right now.

[Translation]

We will start with Ms. Bujold of the Bloc Québécois. Ms. Bujold, you have 10 minutes.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold (Jonquière, BQ): Thank you very much. I have only just had the chance to read your two reports. I'm not usually the one who attends meetings of this committee. Your reports have raised a number of questions for me.

Professor Paquet, you proposed four models and then made observations on each of them. I would appreciate it if you could go over the four models, which are very dissimilar, give a synthesis of them and explain in greater detail what could be done to go still further, in light of the upcoming symposium.

Mr. Gilles Paquet: As my colleague, Professor Copp, mentioned, the symposium was organized by the Armed Forces in January. A number of us were asked to review possible models for a social contract. I don't think there is any fundamental difference between the position I am defending and that of my colleague, Professor Copp. The content of the declaration he spoke about is very important because the framework in which the Armed Forces operates is currently changing.

Can we really consider diminishing the status of the people in the Military to that of ordinary workers? That's one of the models that I reject. I am opposed to it because we are not dealing with a simple labor market model like that for carpenters or junk dealers. This model does not apply and it would be dangerous to diminish the status of the Armed Forces in this way.

The other extreme model is that of complete separation from the rest of Canadian society, in which the Canadian Forces would be allowed to continue, as before, to exercise total authority under their own laws, a state within a state. That could have described Hydro-Québec at one time!

• 0940

That model isn't acceptable either, because of the nature of the relationship that exists between the Armed Forces and the rest of society. This relationship has changed in a democracy where partners have more right to monitor each other's behavior.

The third model looks at whether the Armed Forces should have a special status. This is a terminology that has been used to mean a number of things, and it could also be used to save us from having to investigate the real issues. An institution can be given special status without being told why. This might partially resolve the problem, but not completely. It seemed to me that the most useful model was that of the professional soldier. If we accept that model, we must define what we expect from our military, something that is not all clear right now. As my colleague, Professor Copp, put it so well, when you persistently slash a group's resources and then demand that it carry on as though nothing had changed, this is clearly a situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The Canadian government, which has steadily reduced the resources available to the Armed Forces, will have to decide what it thinks is important and what it doesn't.

Second, I felt it was important to recognize that when we talk about pay and working conditions for soldiers, we must not limit ourselves to the rigid framework of the collective agreement. My colleague, Professor Copp, spoke of a two-pronged approach—on the one hand you would have the general declaration, which seems to me to be very important, and on the other hand, you would have a type of collective bargaining, more or less comprehensive, which could be more flexible than the usual union model but similar to the one the Royal Canadian Mounted Police adopted.

For me, the important thing is that the declaration be extremely clear about recognizing the fact that we are asking people who join the Armed Forces to leave behind part of their freedom and that we are agreeing to pay what this costs and to provide reasonable working conditions. Other countries recognized this need long ago in the form of a kind of moral contract between their Armed Forces, their politicians and their citizens.

In my report, I spelled out what the definition of the declaration would include. For example, when I say that I would like to be able to say that I reject the idea of people bearing arms in my country unless they are morally and ethically superior to the average citizen, obviously that has implications for the selection and the general qualities of our troops, which may or may not be present, but which would be spelled out by a declaration that points the Armed Forces in that direction.

That's why it seems to me dangerous to reduce the problem to that of a collective agreement or salary negotiations. These problems certainly exist and must be dealt with. However, I would like them to be placed in context. Here my views converge with those of my colleague, Professor Copp, who has suggested the idea of a very clear declaration defining what we expect of our Armed Forces. The declaration would become the basis for a moral contract or charter that would define the quid pro quo.

On the basis of this underlying definition we would determine what working conditions and pay seem reasonable for this type of work. I think the danger of focusing on this second stage and fixating on the idea of a collective agreement is that we would not get to the heart of the matter and we would not have an opportunity to redefine what we expect from our Armed Forces.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): You have some more time.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I'll come back later.

[English

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Okay, we'll go to Mr. Proud for 10 minutes.

Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, gentlemen. I was very interested in your presentations, especially when you said a couple of things about what the role of the forces is. As you said, Professor Paquet, I think what we're doing here has to do with more than money and living conditions and those types of things. And I totally agree, Professor Copp, that the government should make a statement to the armed forces as to what we expect of them and what they should expect of government.

Of course, I have a problem with the fact that over maybe the last fifty years, too many statements have been made by governments in the other direction. During the defence review in 1994, my suggestion to the committee and to anybody who would listen to me was that whenever a government gets into financial difficulties and cuts are made, one of the first places it can cut is in the defence department, and a lot of the time the public and the social activist groups will jump for joy. But I think governments never look beyond that, and they never look down to the social part, to the men and women on the ground, the people, as you say, in the reserves and on the armoury floor. They never look down to the bottom of it.

• 0945

I always said that the idea of a strong armed forces wasn't hard to sell to the public. The problem was to sell it to the treasury benches. I think that is one of the reasons we have this committee today—to study the problem we're into now. For the last 50 years, since the end of the Second World War, every time there were cuts to be made, one of the first places to get cuts was the Department of National Defence. We always said to the men and women of the forces that they had to make do with what they had, and they've done a tremendous job of doing that over the last number of years.

I don't think that's been fair. I believe we need to have some kind of a statement by the governing parties—and this hasn't been done by just one party over the last 50 years—and I believe that we have to look at what we can do for these men and women when we say, “This is what we expect of you and this is what you can expect from us”, because they do play a special role in our society. Both of you people, as professors, would have heard the saying from a long time ago that when you talk about losing sovereignty, there's no quicker way to lose your sovereignty than to give up your armed forces.

Be that as it may, I think we are very fortunate here in Canada that we have a neighbour to the south who wouldn't let anything happen to us that way, mainly because it might happen to them too, not because they're doing that as the greatest people in the world—although I do think they are. I think they would do it for their own sake.

We have tended to live like this for the last 50 years, and we did it before the Second World War. We let our military run down to a very minimal state, and then we paid the price, they tell us, when the Second World War started, because the people didn't have adequate training and we lost a lot of people unnecessarily.

I believe this committee has a vital role to play in the future of our armed forces. We're looking at the social problems they're encountering, but I guess I'm asking you whether you agree, to some degree, with what I'm saying, that we have to look beyond that, that we have to look at what the governments have done over the years.

If we're serious about having an armed forces that's adequate, combat capable and well equipped, then our government has to commit to them in a way that they can operate without the fear...as one of you said, the days are gone when it's “send us the money and we'll do our job”. That's not going to happen, but there has to be a way in which we can make a commitment. We tried to do this in 1994 in the joint committee. One of my suggestions was that we commit 1.5% of GDP for their budget. That didn't fly, obviously, but I think it was a suggestion that was worth the effort.

From the comments I've made about this, I guess the problem I'm going to have and the committee is going to have is this: how do we convince them they have to do this?

Thank you.

Prof. Terry Copp: I do agree with the point you're making. At one point in my presentation to the committee, I make the point that the Chief of the Defence Staff made before you: if, for example, the committee is going to recommend a pay increase, particularly at those junior ranks where there seems to be a very strong case to be made for it, the military simply can't do it out of its existing budget. As General Baril said, the money will have to come from outside the envelope that is currently assigned to national defence, because if we take the money out of the roughly $9 billion, then we're going to have to cut back on training, maintenance and a whole number of areas.

Indeed, in my paper, I sketch—and I'm sure you've heard this from others—the fact that even under those circumstances, where additional funds are allotted for a pay increase, the problems the military faces in a fixed budget, with the kind of pressures that are placed on it at the moment, mean that something has to give. You either buy new equipment and therefore don't have it available for training, or you concentrate on maintaining the highest degree of readiness and you sacrifice. In the short run, some other changes would have to be made. Those are the kinds of demands that we're imposing on the military.

• 0950

I quite agree with you, because I studied the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. We've done this to the Canadian Armed Forces repeatedly and then a crisis has arisen. We've then said, “Hey, boys, get going. You have to be there and you have to do the job. We're sorry we didn't help you get ready for the job last year, but today is today, so get to work.” It's to the enormous credit of the armed forces that somehow or other they've always been able to respond to those demands and put a viable, if sometimes sketchily viable, force in the field.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: I think you're right, and it seems to me that the reason we've allowed ourselves to do it is that nobody stood up to say it was wrong the last time we broke our moral contract with the armed forces. Professor Copp is probably more optimistic than I am, but I find that the quid pro quo I'm talking about is that if people are willing to give their lives and undertake a great amount of liability personally and we start nickelling and diming them, my sense is that they won't be the next time.

If you read the papers today, you find that the armed forces are losing their pilots. They don't have enough pilots to man what has to be done in this country because the pay is grossly below what is offered for competent pilots in the private sector. If these people are in fact competent but we also ask them to give their freedom while offering them a very small portion of the salary they could get elsewhere, it is hardly difficult to understand why they will flee.

But the question is the definition of that moral contract to begin with. What worries me most is that the last time the helicopter issue was debated, I did not hear anything from the government benches or from the opposition benches about the commitment to this moral contract between the citizens and the politicians on the one hand and the armed forces on the other. I happen to believe that the benefit of a declaration—it may be something that will be empty—is that the declaration could also be quoted back, could be used to shame the politicians who would simply go the easy route and break this contract whenever it is convenient.

Mr. George Proud: I think there was a roaring from the benches from both sides about these things. I don't think it got out to the public, but that's the problem you face, of course. One of the things we ask is how we sell this to the public. It's something we have to work harder at as members of Parliament, and something we have to do more of. We tried to do it after we did our defence review in 1994. Some got press coverage on it, some didn't. It is an issue that's uppermost in our minds—in my mind especially—to know the people believe the military needs better equipment, needs more money, those types of things.

The other thing that I always argue with the senior officers and the senior bureaucrats in the military, of course, is that I believe they could also be more responsible and could do a better job of spending this money. From all of the reports you hear from other areas, I think they have a bit of a problem there, too.

So with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): We'll go to Mr. Pratt, and then we'll come back to Madame Girard-Bujold.

Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In listening to both of your presentations, Professors, I seem to detect at least a little bit of a disagreement with respect to the role of the armed forces. Professor Copp, you seem to take the white paper as your guide post in terms of what this social contract should involve. Professor Paquet, you seem to be asking more questions about the role of the armed forces and what we should be expecting of them, whether they should be a peacekeeping force, a gendarmerie, or a combat-capable, quick-deployment type of force. How do you account for the differences there?

• 0955

Prof. Gilles Paquet: Let me account for myself first, and then let Terry speak.

My mind is open on this. My sense is that you cannot continue to cut and demand that they continue to provide all the services they were providing with 40% or 50% more resources.

They may, on the armed forces side, insist that it is very important to remain a combat-ready force to meet our international obligations and this and that. But then we have asked them to deal with problems internally, like in Winnipeg and in the ice storm, and we ask them to be everywhere we decide to go as peacemakers. All of these things have been added.

My sense is that you cannot pretend that the issue will disappear. If in fact the situation is evolving and the resources are declining, to my mind you cannot simply refer back to the commitment of 1994 if, de facto, you're not providing the resources necessary to do a good job.

So as for the debate about what the role of the army is to be, I think it would be disastrous, to use the right word, to reduce our army to a gendarmerie, but it is not unreasonable to think that the type of budget decisions that are made are driving us to that.

In some ways, my worry is that we avoid the issue of defining the quid for the quo because it's convenient for everybody. On the one side, the armed forces pretend that they'll make heroic efforts to continue to do everything, and on the other, the people on the political and financial sides pretend that since they don't yell too much they must be able to do it. At the end of the day, both parties are going to lose.

My argument is that I don't know what you people as elected leaders of the country want the army to be, but I think you owe it to us as citizens and to them as the armed forces to open the debate about it and clarify it.

Mr. David Pratt: Are you saying, then, that the 1994 white paper is basically out of date because circumstances, the financial constraints of the government have—

Prof. Gilles Paquet: I would regard it as a document of historical interest.

A voice: Whew!

Prof. Terry Copp: If I may, I'd like to comment on that. Certainly the situation envisaged in the white paper has begun to be undermined by circumstances, but again, I was extraordinarily impressed—this is one of the things I do as a profession in that I'm a military historian and I study both the past and the present of the Canadian Armed Forces—with the adaptability the forces showed. In fact, when we talk about combat capability under the circumstances of the 1994 white paper, the military selected areas where they could maintain a high degree of what we'll call “credibility” as a combat-capable force, recognizing that other areas would have to go.

The balance is a very fine one, but as of this day in 1998, we have not lost our capacity to be a combat-capable force in a number of areas that the Canadian Armed Forces have defined. We cannot do everything, but we can do a number of things extraordinarily well.

The difficulty is that under the scenario in existence right now, as the next cut comes out of the budget and the next reduction of personnel takes place, as we go down to roughly $9.1 billion, I think—I have it in my paper but I've forgotten—in 1999, the challenge really becomes serious, and it's quite clear that it becomes serious because of its impact on the operations and maintenance budget. You really are going to have to steal money from operations and maintenance in order to sustain capital equipment.

Maybe you can do that until about the year 2000, and because we bought the fantastic frigates that we possess as a force, because our fighter aircraft are not obsolescent and because the new armed personnel carriers are adequate for many of the missions that we would wish to carry out, the armed forces retain, in a short run, a two- to three-year period, the combat capability that was envisaged in the white paper.

But I agree with Professor Paquet that if the citizens of Canada and the Government of Canada continue to squeeze the armed forces, then we need a new white paper, because we will have undermined the possibilities of the 1994 white paper and Canadians will have to make up their minds—again—about what they want.

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My last word is that we live in a world where the odds are absolutely overwhelming that at some time in the next five or six years the external affairs minister will call over to National Defence and say “I need a mechanized battalion with air support in country X tomorrow, get going”; and the Minister of National Defence will say, as he has said almost on every occasion since 1956, “You were just advocating in cabinet that less money be allocated to military expenditure, and now you want us to do this!” Then the Prime Minister will phone the Minister of National Defence or nudge him and say “Do it.” That will be the end of the issue and the Minister of National Defence will have to put together that force.

I'm saying to you if we create a gendarmerie, if we do follow the notion of making the force less than combat capable, what we'll end up doing is sending young men and women into danger without the capacity to be as effective as they should be. I give you that as a promise or forecast.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Madame Bujold.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I'm very glad to be hearing all the information you're giving us. But I would like to go a bit beyond it.

I see from reading the documents that were given to me, that everyone, including Mr. Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence, and General Baril, says that a clearly spelled out social contract between the Armed Forces and Department of National Defence is required at this time. We must do it now because it's true, everything has changed. The rest of us have changed as well. Everything has changed—the peacekeeping missions that the Canadian Forces undertake now, living conditions, working conditions, etc. I am also aware that it will be these people who are going to have to sit down at the same table and define this contract.

I would like to know what should be spelled out in this social contract, in the charter that is supposed to regulate everything, in the contract governing salaries, physical conditions, and so forth. I would really like it to be defined, this social contract, because it's a pressing current need.

I think I recall Professor Copp saying that the social contract should include a clause protecting privacy. Certainly the defence budget has been shrinking steadily. Everybody knows that. I would like us to go a bit beyond that. It is politicians who will define what happens, after we have defined our social contract spelling out what the military owe to the government and people. So we have to define this social contract. I would like you to sketch its broad outlines for me.

[English]

Prof. Terry Copp: In the statement I included in my paper I operated on a level of generalization about what the Canadian people and the Canadian government owe the members of the armed services. I do say, and I think I would reiterate, that I think the declaration ought to be in broad, general terms and stand as a commitment or a recognition of responsibility to people who give up their freedom and who enter into the service of their country.

My own preference from there would be to establish in the armed forces a parallel to the United States quality of life initiative, in which non-commissioned members of the armed services would participate as delegates, as participants in the discussion. I think the list of issues is really quite evident and I've identified them specifically in the paper, but I believe if you were able to get non-commissioned members to participate in the process of discussing these issues you would have them buy into and become part of the process of development; or, if we were really bold and went for a voluntary collective agreement, then clearly the NCMs elected by their counterparts would have a fundamental role in defining the issues and bringing them to resolution.

I think that's fairly clear. What we get confused about is whether or not the future shape of the armed forces, its role and its budget, could be part of such a declaration. I don't believe they could be. I don't believe any government in a parliamentary democracy would surrender to even legislation that had, as a primacy clause, the right to make the fundamental financial decisions about the allotment of funds and roles that would be given to the armed services.

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I understand that the committee has to keep addressing this broad issue of what the purpose of the armed forces is to be. As I said when I began my presentation today, though, we really have to assume that the 1994 white paper, with some necessary modification, is the premise from which we will begin for the purposes of the social contract. These are the armed services we're going to have for the next four or five years. I think that's true. But what do we do with the young men and women in those armed services for the next four or five years? I believe we address that by a declaration and a quality of life initiative.

I hope that's helpful.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: You say you would like military personnel at all levels to participate in working out their salary scale and their working conditions. I think this is a new kind of vocabulary, which the Canadian Armed Forces need to get used to. But perhaps I'm wrong. This isn't a usual process for them, is it?

[English]

Prof. Terry Copp: No, you're certainly right. It isn't the system that is currently in force, and it's fair to say that a number of people in the armed forces are concerned about what they call the impact of this on the chain of command. In the armed services, you still tend to do what you're told if the person telling you what to do has a higher rank than you. That's a remarkable experience for most of the rest of us.

I argue in the paper that a non-commissioned member participating in a discussion of a COLA clause or a family resources centre on a base is not breaking out of the chain of command. He or she is simply functioning in a different role in discussing working conditions. But the moment that NCM leaves the table, he or she reverts to the rank of corporal who does what a sergeant says, more or less.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Thank you.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Mr. Richardson, and then Mr. Clouthier will be next.

Mr. John Richardson: Mr. Chairman, thank you. I would like to thank both the professors for coming here to present their thoughts before this committee.

We're going through a hard time, and there are so many factors impacting on this. Even though they think they know when they look at the armed forces, I don't think people know what they're all about, what these people go through from the day they join as sailors, as soldiers, and as airmen. They go directly to boot camp. They're taken out of society and they're given a training program that's very intensive during that period in order to orient them towards the military life. A lot of it is traditional training that has come down through the centuries in order to get them focused on that, and it's necessary. They then immediately go back and are either transferred to a ship or for some further training so that they can join a ship's company, I believe, or they go to an infantry battalion in which they go through some other kind of training program that will allow them to reach the status of leading infantryman trained, or mortarman trained, or anti-tank trained and tank operator trained.

But they're on this escalator right through. It doesn't stop for them. And what do they get? They sometimes get thirty days' leave. That's their annual if they can get it. And we're always working these people. We say we only work them when we send them offshore, but they're working all the time. They work long hours, and when they go for collective training that is so necessary for ships to get together and act in a unit, as a brigade or a division in the army, or as a wing or a group in the air force, they have to practise this level of training if they're going to be of any use as combat trained.

When they're away for thirty days, they're training almost twenty hours a day to get the maximum training experience that they can get, and they're exhausted at the end of that kind of training. It's intensive.

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I think people who have never seen people in the navy, the army, or the air force train, and the kind of intense action they go through in that group training, which comes from sub-unit to unit, then to brigade or divisional level in the army.... I can't explain it so well in the navy, but I do know about it and I've seen it happen.

That's just on the training side. Then we in the House of Commons.... Every time somebody has a hiccup around the world, one of our ministers comes up and says “Aye, sir, ready, sir”.

How ready are we? We have one commitment to NATO to have a battle group ready to go at a specific time. We have the same for our ships and the same for the air force. I don't think people know how many demands and how many states of readiness are placed on the existing forces. Yet everyone is prepared to sacrifice them for every damned thing that happens around Canada or around the world.

They are wearing them out. I don't think they are worn out just because of pay. They are worn out period, because they are posted frequently and they are posted for training away from home. The lifestyle is one hectic pace.

We say, oh, well, I see people at National Defence Headquarters. Those people are posted in and out. It seems static, but that's one of the few static times they will get, to be at National Defence Headquarters.

I would just like people to understand that kind of demand. These long postings and the frequency away from families lead to a lot of family stress as well. They are just like any other Canadian. They want a family. They want to be married. They want to have children. But how many Canadians get that kind of interruptions, to go to the Sinai, or the Golan Heights, or Bosnia? Some of them are on their second and third tour over there. It is not a fair practice if you are working for GM. If we did that in GM, I tell you what, there would be one standstill on the assembly line.

So I think our foreign minister, our Prime Minister, and others involved in making decisions about sending them off...just ask what about the wear and tear on our force, first. We are training for war, which is the primary operational training, first to meet the commitments of NATO, but I don't think we can continue to say “Aye, sir, ready, sir” for everything that happens around the world. At some stage we have to start to be selective and look at the mental health and the physical health of the people in the forces.

I know the commanders of the navy, the army, and the air force don't like to say they can't do it. Their pride gets ahead of the reality. But at some time somebody is going to have to say “My soldiers are worn out” or “We can't undertake that; our sailors are worn out. We can't undertake that”; and the same with our airmen. I haven't been hearing that. Pride is getting in the way of good judgment.

I just think our people are maligned. The unfortunate incident in Somalia has set us back in the eyes of the public. Certainly the people who went over to Somalia, except for the small group that carried out the terrible heinous crime against the Somalian.... We have served well, and we served well in Somalia except for that one hiccup.

I'm just asking the historians.... While we have the people in place and we do need to pay them better, we do need to see that there's a little more stability in their family and home life. The big base concept, the navy splitting itself almost 50-50 on either coast, the army going to the large-base concepts in the west, in central Canada, and in Quebec and in eastern Canada, will make for less posting and a less hectic life for the people. How much, we'll only know after looking at it after five years. But we must look at our people as human beings and see how much wear and tear we are putting on them.

We talked about the five items in your note here. I want to tell you, you should follow a young infantry corporal around on training for a day; just a corporal, and then follow around a young lieutenant or a major on training and see how much sleeping time these people get when they're on manoeuvre training over 30 days. It's very limited and they get damned tired. We really think we know a lot about it, but get on a ship and see how much work these guys are doing or watch around an airfield and see when these people are on manoeuvres how much work is required at the bottom end to keep the helicopters in the air.

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I just ask people who know about it through reading to go and see it and feel it and touch it, and sleep on the damned cold ground when it's raining and then get up and move. I think we're not telling the full story of what happens to our soldiers, sailors and airmen. They were heroes in Quebec, they were heroes in the Saguenay and they were heroes in Winnipeg. These men and women have been used to doing this for years, just in their own training, and I ask people to take a good look at that.

I have great sympathy for the idea of a social contract, but I'd like to look at it very carefully before it is set up, to make sure that it really would meet the needs of the sailors, soldiers and airmen in our forces, that it's not just a guise to get more work out of them, and to see that they are properly accounted for in time off and in pay.

All I can say is that I'm damned proud of what's left. I think it has a core that is capable of building up the forces, but the direction and support have to be real, from the Prime Minister on down, and that support has to come from the public as well. But if we don't have the Prime Minister on side, we have some difficulties. I don't know that the Prime Minister is not on side, but some public demonstration of it periodically would certainly go a long way towards lifting the morale of the troops.

I appreciate what you've given us as outlines in your frameworks, Professor Paquet and Professor Copp. We need to get ourselves focused around some nucleus to operate from, and I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): You can make a comment if you want. I don't know, John...was that a statement or a question?

Mr. John Richardson: As for a question, it would be about the fact that I don't want a superficial look at this. I want people to really feel, smell and taste what these people live on a daily basis—before they get into this in some sort of sanitized room and make some decisions about it.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Professor Paquet.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: I think you are right, and at the same time, it's dangerous to appeal to passion, as you do so well, because passion is necessary—you're right—but I think what is important is that you people are involved, if you do your work well, in the transformation of Canadian values. The typical armed forces personnel I meet in the typical airport in the U.S. wears his or her uniform with pride because there is also pride given back by the population. We have, I think, to develop a capacity for recognition of all of these things.

One of the points about the declaration Professor Copp and I were talking about, this moral contract, which may appear to be on the surface purely rhetoric...but some of this rhetoric is in the same nature as the Charter of Rights, which at first was a bit of a statement that was broad and vague and meant very little. But it took hold of the country afterwards and is now penetrating every aspect of our lives, good and bad. It's fairly important that you recognize the need for what may seem to be so remote from reality, this notion of a recognition, a declaration, a moral contract, because unless we start from this, we will not be able to educate the population.

And you are quite right, it has to start from very high up. And I don't read the mind of the Prime Minister either, but certainly he has been particularly prudent in declaring himself—in the midst of all those controversies—about the importance of these people to the country.

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So in some ways, even though it may appear to you so remote from reality to focus on this solemn declaration, there is an immense amount of power in these words once they are there and once they can be used to remind politicians and citizens of their commitment to the armed forces.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Thank you, Dr. Paquet.

We'll go to Mr. Clouthier, and then we'll be back to Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Hec Clouthier (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Lib.): Professor, I'm very interested in your social contract. As you know, it's probably predicated on something Jean-Jacques Rousseau said: it's the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. But listening to my colleague John Richardson, I find it's very difficult to determine which avenue to pursue here. It's nice to have flowery phrases, but words alone are not enough if we're not prepared to back them up.

Whose fault is it? It would be very facile for the members of the military to say it's the politicians' fault because they don't want to give us the funding. Being a neophyte politician and coming from the field of business, I believe a lot hinges on money. We have reduced our budget from about $12 billion to $9 billion, and if we continue to do so—and hopefully we will not—that will lead one to believe that perhaps pay raises and better equipment, which in my estimation would turn out to be better morale for the military, are not in the cards.

Having said that, my question to Professor Paquet would be, do you believe we can do as well with our military if we happen to downsize it? The reality of this situation is that if the money is not forthcoming, we just can't afford to do some of the things we want to do. So perhaps the only way—and it wouldn't be my choice, if it were up to me—would be to downsize further the number of military personnel, because at least then you could probably pay the people who are left a better wage and simultaneously upgrade the equipment.

Professor, what do you think? The reality might be that we have to do it.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: You're right that it may turn out it is financially impossible for you to convince your masters or colleagues to come up with all the money that is necessary, but then it becomes crucial to discuss with the armed forces what you can reasonably expect from them under these circumstances.

The thing I find difficult to live with at this particular time is the denial on both sides, to be quite frank—the denial on the part of the politicians, who are saying there was a lot of fat out there, so they can do all these things with less money; and the denial on the other side, maybe out of pride or whatever, of saying, yes, we will do it and pretend we have the resources to do it.

My sense is that it's false. We are at the present time entering into the danger zone, in which we could be faced with a real crisis. The next time, we may not have, in this very fast-moving world of ours.... We're not in 1945. The next time the crisis will hit, and we will need something important from our armed forces. It may be a matter of days, a matter of very little time, and if we have developed an incapacity to do these things, we will be in fact endangering the population very seriously.

The thing that worries me is that it is true that the families are hurt, it's true that we have to pay reasonable wages, and it's true that we have to make sure work conditions are all right, but all of that, it seems to me, follows once we have recognized the value of the services from these people.

As it stands now, I'm not sure that, if you asked every Canadian on their income tax return this month to check how much money they're willing to put for the armed forces, they would put very much. I have to ask myself, why is it that our leaders—you—are not there defining that? Monsieur Clouthier mentioned that there have been rumblings. It did not reach me. Maybe in academe we are blind, but the idea is of people standing up to say, “We have violated our moral contract with these people. It is unacceptable to be politically expedient with things that are in fact our commitment.”

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There are even cases where people would say this recognition is almost more important than bread. In fact, I'm quite sure if you were to provide the armed forces with a very clear recognition by the citizenry and the politicians of their central importance, that would go a long way towards attenuating some of the unease.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: I agree with you, Professor, but I happen to disagree a bit with Professor Copp when he says there doesn't seem to be a problem with the leadership. I believe if we must take responsibility, being the politicians and the citizens of Canada, some of the leadership in the military must take responsibility too.

I believe there's a very real dichotomy amongst some of the senior officers in the military between the time when they are in power or working for the military and when they are out. I've seen it here since I've been on this committee. There seems to be a real epiphany for some of these retired generals.

I agree with my colleague John Richardson that the quality of life for some of the low-ranking officers or some of the NCOs, the privates, has been infringed upon, but how are we to know unless some of the generals or the colonels will actually stand up and make that point of view public? Some of them will not do it, or they choose not to do it, for whatever reason, but as soon as they are retired there seems to be a real epiphany: oh, well, we've had some real difficulties here and we have to do something about it. Well, we've had two-star generals, sitting right where you are, saying they couldn't do anything about it; but after they are retired they want to bring the problems to the fore.

I say to you the responsibility has to be shared by both politicians and the military. They have to get together and they have to make the general public aware of some of the very real difficulties faced by the lower-ranked people, as my colleague John Richardson so eloquently put it. There are some real difficulties in that regard, but the leadership must come from within the military also, intrinsically, because we are not with them each and every day.

Prof. Terry Copp: I wouldn't like to be caught arguing that the military is in any way perfect. The argument I was trying to make is that if you go back as recently as 1989, we had a stable international environment called the Cold War. We had functions clearly defined for the military. We had, I think it is fair to say without being partisan, a white paper that defined a very different view of the military. We were in fact promising new equipment and a new mandate related to that world. It was out of that world of the 1980s that the frigate program and other such things were produced.

Then between 1989 and 1991 the international environment changed very dramatically. Then we embarked on a whole series of measures to downsize the armed forces. Then in 1994 we redefined them in the white paper. Then no sooner had we digested the white paper than we began to downsize the armed forces all over again.

You've taken an organization that was close to 100,000 strength and taken it down to 60,000, with rumours that we are going to go down to 56,000 by a normal process of attrition. You have asked a group of senior officers to attempt to manage a situation.... I would suggest to you in my case universities, which have had to undergo this process, or corporations.... The costs in morale and the costs in how to manage have been enormous.

That is why I would like to say to the committee that if you are personally convinced the armed forces are going to receive further significant budget cuts and a further downsizing is going to take place, for goodness' sake, don't put out a social contract declaration. The armed forces will laugh it out of court. Almost every one of them would prefer to have their capacity to perform their missions well sustained over any other change. That goes right down to the lower ranks. The notion that the armed forces are going to continue to suffer from month-to-month attrition of their capacity to function is the single most serious assault on military morale.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: I agree with you, Professor. That's why I believe we have to be very careful on this social contract. It would most definitely have to be a broad-based mission statement.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Mr. Proud, you have just a quick question.

Mr. George Proud: I just want to bootleg on my colleague here.

About the business of the cuts to the defence budget, we said this very strongly, and I probably agree with you, you didn't hear it. We said to those in charge, you can't cut any more; we are down now as far as we can go. We didn't want them to go as far as they went, where they are right now. We said they couldn't go any farther because if they went any farther, what they would end up with was a very inadequate police force. They wouldn't even have a military.

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Those are the facts, but in listening to you people, I guess what we have to do is make them that much more loud and clear to those who are out there. Hopefully, we'll get the support of all our colleagues in this business.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Mr. Benoit, are you ready to go?

Mr. Leon E. Benoit (Lakeland, Ref.): Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): The floor is yours.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Good morning, gentlemen. I apologize for not being here for your presentations. I do have some questions for you, though.

Mr. Copp, Mr. Clouthier said that you made the statement that there doesn't seem to be a problem with leadership in the military. I think I would agree that there are many good people in leadership positions. They are probably trying to provide good leadership as best they can under the current system. But General Clive Addy was here at our last meeting and he made it very clear that, try as they might, the leaders are interfered with by the people in the department, in the bureaucracy, even on such a basic issue as looking after the injured in our forces. They can't even assure that the people who are injured under their command are going to be properly looked after because of the interference from the bureaucracy. It seems that a system that just cannot function properly has been built up.

I don't know what you were really saying with your statement, or whether you know what you were really saying, because I didn't hear what went with it. Generally speaking, however, it's possible that it's not the people in the leadership. The leadership certainly isn't functioning well with the system that we have, I believe.

I'd just like you to comment on that if you could.

Prof. Terry Copp: The issue is what many critics of the military, including many retired officers of senior rank, call “civilianization”. That's the word they used when the combination of uniformed commanders with civilians at National Defence Headquarters led, in the view of many people, to a blurring of responsibility and a blurring of function. In my judgment, for whatever my judgment's worth—it may not be worth much—it's an argument that has to be handled very carefully.

The truth is that, particularly in the last decade, the armed forces have repeatedly been asked to carry out roles that require them to interface with the United Nations; with, as Professor Paquet says, other organizations in other countries. I'm not at all personally convinced that the individuals who served as civilian counterparts to the military always did a bad job, or that the uniformed officers in the role were always right. I agree there has been tension.

I suppose my argument, sir, is simply that I live in an environment—as does Professor Paquet—in which, for whatever reasons, the Government of Canada and the governments of several provinces have decided that universities could be effectively downsized, except that we had to take more students as we were downsized. We got smaller and smaller budgets, fewer and fewer professors, less and less library resources, and more and more students, but government and society said we had to learn to cope. I'll tell that you in the process of learning to cope, there's been a lot of conflict, there has been a lot of meanness of spirit, there have been a lot of mistakes made. Most universities have struggled to continue to do their job, though, and that is to try as best they can to educate the youth of Canada and to sustain research.

That's simply the argument I'm making about the army. I'm not saying it's all gone well. I'm just saying that, given the pressures they've been under, the armed forces are not nearly as bad as they have been portrayed in the media.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But if there are $5 billion more thrown at the military next year, would the problems with the way the military works or doesn't work be solved?

Prof. Terry Copp: My short answer is that they would not be. It's a complex human organization in which, when you solve one set of problems, a new set of problems will appear. But if you allow $5 billion for the military, a large part of it could be used to address these social contract issues of wages. That would constitute a very substantial change for the people in the field whom we referred to.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But from witnesses we've had before this committee, although it seems to me that pay has come up often, the most serious issues that have come up don't involve the money. That's apparent especially in the conversations afterwards.

The money is important, certainly. I know it's important to deal with the pay issues, don't get me wrong. But the fact is that many people in the services really don't feel they're valued and don't feel they're being treated fairly.

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It's actually issues such as splitting the family apart unnecessarily. They understand well that if they are going on a tour of duty overseas, that's part of their life. They are willing to do that. But then they come back and a few months later they are sent off here, sent off there, and they are just not allowed a family life. That type of issue is a bigger concern.

Then there's another. You talk about its being a complex organization. I think that has to be considered part of the problem. We've gone through this whole Somalia inquiry. Many of the problems in the way the military operates came out. Yet we've seen just recently, for example, people have appeared before this committee....

One person I talked about yesterday in question period, Simone Olofson, from Cold Lake, appeared before the committee and expressed her grievances, then received a threatening letter from the deputy judge advocate which chastised her for appearing and left it very clear that she had better not say anything against the military again—after the Minister of National Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff had said, come and listen to us, we'll listen to you this time and we are really going to change. This indicates to me the change hasn't happened, and I have to ask the question: is it possible for that change to happen?

Prof. Gilles Paquet: There are ways in which one can also misrepresent reality by drawing attention to a wart on somebody's face.

You are right. For the time being, the big transition...and when you say some of the people in the armed forces are complaining about the bureaucracy, tough bananas. The problem is that was a time when the armed forces used to be entirely separate facilities, with their own rules. They will have to learn, unfortunately, to deal with reality out there: the citizens, the politicians, and the bureaucracy. They don't like it? Tough. They will have to adjust to this.

So you should not take too seriously this call of “It's not our fault, it's the fault of the bureaucracy”. You are right.

Secondly, true, there has been mismanagement. I only know about the letter you talk about, the one in the newspaper this morning, that it's a lack of judgment. There are such things. But one would be—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Lack of judgment would be fine. If this Major Barber made a mistake, people make mistakes. But when that got to the minister, why wasn't the minister apologizing profusely to this person, just saying we've made a huge mistake here? Why is it so hard just to apologize, then have this major go to the lady and apologize?

First of all, the minister in question says, well, you got your facts all wrong. Twenty minutes later, out in the scrum, he says, well, we've apologized.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Mr. Benoit, if I can break in, I'll get back to your questions. The clerk has advised me that apparently a letter was sent to the chair from the judge advocate, as you suggested, stating that it was a misunderstanding. He has apologized. Apparently it won't happen again. The chairman is also replying to Ms. Olofson.

Mr. Leon Benoit: The chair of the committee.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Well, in fact I talked to Ms. Olofson last night, and she had received no apology.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): No, nothing yet, but she will be receiving an apology. I'm just bringing you up to date.

Mr. Leon Benoit: It's an attitude in the military that I thought would be changed as a result of the Somalia inquiry. And it's more the way the minister handled it than what the major did. People make mistakes.

Certainly I don't think that mistake is justifiable in any way. It's very serious, a clear breach of trust. People were told, come before this committee, they will listen and will try to make some change. And it's not just a breach of trust for Ms. Olofson. The word gets around. It's around to everyone on that base, and it gets across the country. We found that out as we were travelling. It gets from one base to another. It's a breach of trust for every person who has appeared before this committee.

What are we going to do now? How are we going to trust that some disciplinary action isn't going to be taken in the future, as we continue to travel?

Prof. Terry Copp: I don't at all want to underrate what you are saying. When we began our discussion sessions the young woman who was examining morale in Kingston was told by the Kingston base commander that she couldn't do it and to get off the base. She'd been commissioned to do it, but it took about a week to get the lines of communication between Ottawa and CFB Kingston straightened out. I would certainly be critical of the way the military has handled that, in a number of specific cases.

• 1040

I will just appeal to you and say that one of the things the Canadian public doesn't seem to be willing to understand is that in the vast majority of cases where the Canadian Armed Forces have been deployed, they've been able to function with exceptional skill and professionalism, time after time. We have to remember that when we're remembering incidents like the Somalia incident or this silliness of the JAG.

And you know what the media is like.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Maybe that's more...because we have some excellent men and women in the forces, right from the bottom up, and I have been impressed—

Prof. Terry Copp: You don't stop being an excellent man or woman when you're promoted to the rank of major-general.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Then that shows—

Prof. Terry Copp: There's no necessary thing that happens to you—

Mr. Leon Benoit: I don't think you would in most cases, and that shows there's a serious problem in the structure. I've heard in enough places now, at this committee and through speaking to people, that the core of the problem is that there is too close a connection between the military, which was never meant to be a part of the civil service, and that bureaucratic statement, the department. There's just too close a tie and there's too much interference by the department in the activities of the military.

If we're going to have a military that's going to function well—and I believe it's critical that we do—then we must have more separation between the two bodies. I think that just has to happen. I agree with you: why would men and women who are good men and women in the lower ranks suddenly not be good people when they're in the higher ranks? I don't believe that.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: I would beg to differ on that. I don't think you ever will be able to get back to the time when the separate facilities for the army...whatever you may wish or they may wish, in the new, much more open democratic system in which we operate now, we have a right to demand accountability to the citizens from the armed forces. You have the right, as a politician, to demand accountability. And this is one thing that the armed forces will have to learn. They have to deal with many stakeholders and they have to make sure they can communicate with them and persuade them.

Mr. Leon Benoit: They sure haven't learned that yet. They haven't been accountable yet.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: It is not the only place where there is a lot of learning to be done. Many of our institutions, which used to be hierarchical, vertical, autocratic—even our political parties—are in fact learning that they can't do it this way any more and that this is going to be a long learning process. You're right.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you, Mr. Benoit. If you have some other questions of our witnesses, we'll get back to you in a second.

Mr. Paquet, I have one question for you. It's been an hour and some odd minutes now, but I hope you haven't forgotten your opening statement in which you said that we should involve the citizenry and the provinces more. Can you elaborate on that? Are you suggesting that we should bring more ordinary citizens to this committee as witnesses? Or what—

Prof. Gilles Paquet: I think what we have forgotten is that in the old days the link between the armed forces and the Prime Minister and the Queen was very clear. It was responsible to the Prime Minister and Queen. I'm saying that de facto—not in the law now, but de facto—as we bring more of these partners into the system, we have had to take them into account.

If a Belgian government can criticize General Dallaire, if in fact NATO has a right to demand things from us, and if the Premier of Quebec can say on what condition the army can do this and that in his province, let's realize that this is reality. And the citizen himself, who has been left out of the equation a lot, is now becoming more and more.... As I said earlier, when a general did not provide a justification that was recognized by the citizenry as acceptable, he was, for all practical purposes, history.

The citizen has to be persuaded that the armed forces are important but he also has to recognize that, as a citizen, allowing other citizens to bear arms and to impose violence on them is something that he has a right to do, and he has a right to withdraw his consent whenever he doesn't feel like it.

I feel that in the U.S., when they had difficulty with their armed forces at the time of My Lai and the legitimacy of the armed forces was in fact falling, they went into a very major refurbishment with regard to selection of their personnel and training of a different sort, because the point was that they were trying to “re-legitimize”, in the view of the citizen, the role and the importance of the army.

• 1045

I for one said I feel comfortable in allowing the armed forces to bear arms in my country only if they are morally and ethically better than I am as a citizen. That demand may not be formulated in a legal document, but it would be part of that moral contract we have to talk about.

In the same manner, I'm not saying that any veto right has to come from any premier, but if de facto, in operating in their provinces more and more on the occasion of some crisis, they have to become involved, recognizing that all of the stakeholders will have to talk it over and recognize the reality of each of them is more reasonable. I don't even dare to enter the minefield of what would happen if and when there's a separation of one portion of the country—not thinking about it in advance, not asking ourselves who these people are accountable to. To whom do they have to justify their behaviour?

For the time being, I'm only saying it is not only any longer up to the Prime Minister. It is up to many other people intervening out there, except we have great difficulty wrapping our minds around that new multiplicity of accountabilities of the armed forces. I'm afraid you people on this committee will have to start thinking about it and come up with some creative solutions.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): You also point out that a social contract is more of an informal agreement concerning proper behaviour and also shared goals, beliefs, and attitudes. If this is an informal agreement to broad principles, is it necessary, in your mind, that it be so specifically defined, as some of your colleagues would suggest? Can we define the social contract without this turning into a technical or philosophic argument, or is that inevitable?

Prof. Gilles Paquet: It depends. The Magna Carta is my notion of a moral contract that bound all of us. It simply was at the time reminding people of a certain number of basic truths and basic facts.

The more you become technical and precise, the more contentious it's going to become. So, as Professor Copp mentioned, the declaration is bound to remain, like the Charter of Rights, in general language. But it has to be forceful enough for people to feel that there is some commitment and that there are ways to expose violation of that particular commitment.

I prefer the expression “moral contract” myself, because some of those things cannot be written down, but “moral” has a very strong commitment element. I would feel that if I have made a moral commitment.... This is why I said the government violated the moral commitment they had made to the armed forces in this quid pro quo: you risk your life, and I'll give you the equipment to do it. We violated it and nobody denounced it.

I say, therefore, that the declaration, the charter, the moral contract, has to be put in such words that it will be easy for the citizen to understand when it is violated, and it will be easy for some—us, you, others—to explain to the citizens that something has happened that is unconscionable and unacceptable.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you.

[Translation]

Any other questions, Ms. Bujold?

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I think it was Mr. Richardson and Mr. Clouthier who said that people today don't recognize the value of the Canadian Forces. Mr. Richardson gave us some very specific examples showing that people do not understand the work done by our military.

I think we're going back to the beginning. Your observations, Professor Paquet and Professor Copp, prove how important it is to define their role and it is also important that all Canadians have a voice in drawing up the definition. We will never be able to be proud of our Canadian Armed Forces if no one tells us exactly what their role should be. The role of the Canadian Armed Forces must be defined. You know, there is a military base just next door to my riding, and I often run into members of the military. They're not very happy inside the existing structure.

In the past, as you know, the military were inside a gilded cage. Nobody had the right to poke around in all the defence- related matters. Nobody could get inside. It was a structure enclosed on itself. I said it was a gilded cage. It would perhaps be a good idea to shake that gilded cage and finally start talking about the role that our military has played in the past, the role they're playing at present and the role they will have to play in the future, so that all Quebeckers and Canadians can be proud of these people who have decided to join the Canadian Armed Forces to defend their country and take part in peacekeeping missions.

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Everything you have said proves to me that is important to define their role, and soon.

I don't know if Professor Paquet ... ?

Mr. Gilles Paquet: I think you're right. The most important element in my presentation today has been to remind you not to let yourselves get bogged down in problems of pay, working conditions, or family support. These are all very important problems, but if you deal with them one by one, in isolation, you won't resolve the key, which is the general direction in which our Armed Forces ought to go. This moral contract, as I call it, is needed to shape all the other kinds of subsequent decisions. If I have succeeded in convincing you that the role that politicians want to give our Armed Forces must be a bit better defined, I won't have wasted my time.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Professor Copp, I would be interested in your opinion on what I just said.

[English]

Prof. Terry Copp: I'm not sure again whether the issue that concerns you isn't the question of the future shape and structure of the armed forces, in the sense of the roles it would play both in Canada and in the outside world. If that is the issue, I did quite deliberately limit my own remarks in the sense that I believe the maintenance of a combat-capable force, organized more or less essentially as it is today, is of vital importance.

I would simply like to say—it's partly in response to a comment made earlier—as a student of military history and as someone who has directed others, I can say flatly that in the post-war history of the Canadian Armed Forces, on a number of occasions the Canadian Armed Forces have in fact said to the cabinet, we don't really have the resources to do what you want us to do, and the cabinet has said, do it anyway. Indeed, at a conference recently I pointed out that there was not a single occasion between the Pearson intervention in the 1950s and the 1990s when the Canadian government said no. They may occasionally have said, well, we can't quite do that, but we can do this instead, will that do? But they never said no.

In my judgment, and I think this is made evident by Prime Minister Chrétien's acquiescence in a role in the Gulf build-up after the position he took much earlier on that question, when the Gulf War broke out, the geopolitical reality within which Canada lives will mean the politicians will require, because the public will demand it, that Canada be in a position to participate in a wide range of missions that will require combat-capable forces. So I find it inconceivable that we could move away from a military that would be capable of serving with our allies in situations that are unknown and unpredictable. The only thing we know from the past is that they will happen and they will be a surprise.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard Bujold: What you're saying is very true. How did you reach this conclusion? We're on the threshold of a new century. Conditions have changed. Everything is in a state of flux at the present time. The role of the Armed Forces is also changing. If their present and future role is properly defined in a charter, governments will not be able to do anything but acquiesce in their demands for resources to carry out this new role. It has to be defined comprehensively, as Professor Paquet said, and not necessarily in every detail. It will be one more element helping them carry out their mandate. That's what I think. Your questions lead me to believe that it is even more important to define it so that governments and politicians cannot decide to flout things that are defined in their mandate, present or future.

[English]

Prof. Terry Copp: I agree.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Thank you.

[English]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): John Richardson.

Mr. John Richardson: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Again, Professor Paquet and Professor Copp, I would like to thank you for coming forward, and particularly for laying something concrete before us as a plan that has great consequences for the forces as we move forward.

I would like, on behalf of all of us on the committee, to wish that if you're involved in this and you're nominated to be involved in it in a big way....

At some stage, Mr. Chairman, I would like to see that at intervals they would keep us in the picture, so we could be supportive of such a program. I look forward to that in the future.

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I welcome the step, and I welcome seeing two of you here. We can easily relate to you. I certainly liked the forthrightness of both of you in your answers. There wasn't a lot of dancing around on the ice. I appreciate that.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Mr. Benoit.

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

I've heard this term “social contract” quite a few times now. I get really nervous even about the term. If a focus were put more on defining the role of the military, trying to make structural changes to make it such that the military body could operate without as much interference from the bureaucratic side....

Then I think you made an important statement, that politicians will be pushed by the demands of the public. You're saying the public demands that Canada will be involved in all these things around the world. If that is the case—I'm not sure that is what the public has said on many of these issues, by the way—then shouldn't the government be dealing with that by having the top politicians in the country acknowledge the importance of the military, which was talked about earlier, and letting Canadians know?

And it has to come from the Prime Minister. In thirty years I haven't heard a Prime Minister say that we need our military, that they perform an extremely important function in this country, that we depend on them for our security. I haven't heard a Prime Minister say that in thirty years. The defence minister says that. I don't think I have heard a top politician, other than the defence minister, really say that in the last thirty years.

Five, six, seven years ago I wondered why we had to spend $12 billion on the military. What were we getting for it? The message that came to me was we don't really need them any more; the Americans are going to defend us, so what do we need them for? That was the wrong message. I've come to realize since then how critical it is to have a military, including a combat-ready body within the military.

But how can that ever happen? How can the citizens of Canada decide to support that it's worth putting the tax dollars into the military if our top leadership, including the Prime Minister, won't come out and clearly get that message to the general public? Until that happens, I don't really see any real hope for any change that's going to amount to anything.

I would like your comments on that.

Prof. Terry Copp: It's so easy to agree with you. In the last election campaign I was very surprised that none of the political parties really addressed the question of the future of the military. I remember asking Doug Young, the then minister, if he would, during the course of the campaign, describe some of the problems confronting the military and indicate that the government had proposals about it. He said no, I don't believe the military will be an issue in this election campaign. He was right; it didn't turn out to be.

Mr. Leon Benoit: It won't be if the Prime Minister and the top politicians don't make it an issue.

Prof. Terry Copp: I agree.

Prof. Gilles Paquet: But then it's difficult for me to understand why you're so worried about the social contract. In fact, the social contract route, the declaration route, the attempt both of us suggested this morning, is to get the government and the Prime Minister to make a declaration, to commit themselves formally, even though it's morally and not legally....

I know there's something of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau ring about the social contract that may be bothersome, but I would urge you not to go over it, because many of the points you're trying to make would in fact be served very well by the existence of a moral or social contract of that sort.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you very much.

• 1100

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bob Wood): Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Paquet and Professor Copps, for your thoughts this morning. With some of the questions, you've obviously touched a nerve on a lot of our members, which is great, and your candid remarks are most welcome. It's been very helpful to the committee, by the number of questions that were asked. So thanks for joining us this morning.

This committee is now adjourned until 9 o'clock on Monday morning, when we'll reconvene at CFB Kingston.