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, May 10, 2001

• 1532

[English]

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.)): Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call the meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs to order.

We are very pleased today to have before the committee a person who really needs no introduction, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, retired. However, I am going to take a couple of minutes to provide a brief introduction, so that members of the committee will have some idea of the depth and breadth of General Dallaire's career.

He served in the Canadian army for over 30 years. He is a graduate of the Collège militaire royal. He's also attended numerous command and staff colleges. He's commanded an artillery regiment, a brigade group, the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean, the 1st Canadian Division, and the Land Force, Quebec Area. As members know, probably his most famous command was as the commander of the United Nations observer mission in Uganda and Rwanda and the United Nations assistance mission for Rwanda. Since February 15, 1999, he has served as the special adviser to the Chief of Defence Staff on officer professional development.

Among his many decorations are the Meritorious Service Cross and the Vimy Award. He's a Fellow of the Ryerson Polytechnic University of Toronto, and he holds an honoris causa doctorate from Sherbrooke University. He has a Legion of Merit from the United States.

He retired in April 2000 and has since then been appointed as special adviser to the Minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, in connection with war-affected children.

So General, after that introduction, we are certainly very interested in getting your comments today in connection with our study of operational readiness, hearing your insights, and getting an understanding of your views on where the Canadian Forces should be going with respect to this very important issue.

So, General, you have the floor.

Lieutenant-General (Retired) Roméo Dallaire (Individual Presentation): Mr. Pratt, thank you very much, and thank you for even considering me as one to come forward to this committee and provide a perspective regarding the future of the Canadian Forces under the rubric of readiness.

• 1535

To achieve that, I hope I will not tire you by speaking both from notes and from experience. And I will be using overheads and possibly the flip chart, as I'm a rather visual man, and a general without a map usually is very difficult to understand. So I will pursue that.

The last time I was before this committee I was the Assistant Deputy Minister of Human Resources and I was here in response to questions regarding quality of life. I must say that I got into a bit of a kerfuffle with a member and was replaced by the Chief of Defence Staff for the second and third sessions I was supposed to have here. I've got better pills this time, so I think I'll be able to handle it.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

LGen Roméo Dallaire: May I, to start with, offer enormous thanks to the initiatives of this committee and also to the previous president, Monsieur Bertrand, in regard to the strategically very demanding project called “Quality of Life”.

General Jean Boyle, in the summer of 1996, as I was commanding the Quebec area—through, in fact, the referendum of 1995-96—asked me to come to Ottawa to be chief of staff on the human resource side, but as a secondary duty, to look at quality of life. At that time, after about three months of preliminary analysis and so on, it was obvious that there was an absolute requirement for injection of priority effort and funds into quality of life. However, that was a time, of course, of massive reductions and cuts, and I was getting absolutely nowhere within the Canadian Forces and DND, because of the enormous pressures and priorities of both operations and simply the running of the Canadian Forces at the time.

However, SCONDVA took up the mantle and brought forward massive changes into the whole dimension of quality of life, and in doing that, I think, in many ways it saved the Canadian Forces from having to consider, particularly its members at large, having to go to some sort of association, if not a union, to be able to get their voices heard on the crucial needs they and their families were facing at that difficult time. In fact, I had a study in that regard, which was called a social contract study, and in that we were assessing, with the incredible tempo and the conditions we were finding ourselves in, whether or not we the generals, within the structure, would be able to respond to the needs of our members through the Ottawa bureaucratic system and of course the different authorities, all the way through to cabinet.

The social contract dimension has now been picked up by Veterans Affairs Canada. I again thank many of you in regard to this enormous opening and rapprochement between Veterans Affairs Canada and DND concerning the plight of the new generation of veterans. I call them the new generation of veterans because the bulk of them are veterans of the post-Cold War era, in this era of very complex operations, in which the forces have been at war, have been in conflict, have been shot at, injured, killed, and we do have casualties. In the arena of these new generation veterans, the system was not capable of leaping ahead, as it was locked into the traditional veterans of Korea, Second World War, First World War.

So there has been a massive shift in Veterans Affairs Canada. I am now on the committee chaired by the deputy minister, Admiral Larry Murray, retired, as the Canadian Forces representative in the work being done to recognize not only the needs of the serving members, but rather interestingly, the needs of the families or the close ones. This is a really new dimension that has been brought about by this new generation of operations in which we find ourselves.

• 1540

In contrast with the past, as my mother-in-law described to me when I came back from Rwanda.... My mother-in-law went through the Second World War with my father-in-law commanding his regiment in Italy and northwest Europe. She said she would never have been able to survive the Second World War if she had had to live it out as my wife and children did. In contrast with the times of the war, where very little information was coming about, today our families live our missions with us. They are out there with us. For every minute of the day they are awake they are either shifting channels on the TV or shifting channels on the radio stations, waiting for the next announcement that I've been killed, injured, there's been a catastrophe, or whatever. So they are living the stresses of those missions with us. They don't have the deprivations, they don't have the noise, the smells, the sounds, but they live an incredibly difficult dimension of these operations, which is the dimension of being at home and having information available to them that can in fact bring them into the traumatic experiences our forces live with in these missions.

So it is not just taking care of the members, but actually opening it up to the family, and also opening it up to the extent where families need post-traumatic stress syndrome therapy. My wife has had a very rough time over the years, but I've also had two children who've gone through therapy because of the experience they lived through with my having been overseas in a conflict zone.

So that, with Veterans Affairs Canada, is a magnificent opening. A lot of very innovative ideas are coming forward, and there is a rapprochement with the troops on the bases that has not been seen since war time. For that we are most thankful all the way round, particularly in that they want to open up the whole dimension of taking care of the families or the close ones.

I am here to speak as a practitioner. I am not an academic. I am not a theorist. I have been 11 years as a general officer, and I have served in command of every position except the army command, which I regret never having received, and in the field, in operations in war and in peace. I was also an ADM in the decision-making processes over the last years in DND and in the Canadian Armed Forces, and I was, after I fell ill, brought back to work part-time for the Chief of Defence Staff on the dossier concerning the reform of the Canadian officer corps—not change, not modification, but reform. For we entered, with the 1990s, into a whole new era of operations, a whole new era of revolutions operationally, with these complex missions around the world and the media—or let me call it transparency—where Canadian society actually wants to know what's going on inside the military and is not accepting that things are going well, with a lieutenant at the gate saying there's no comment. Canadian people want to know how we do things, how we've done things, and want to have their say in how the Canadian Forces continue to evolve within our society. That in itself is a revolution, particularly for a very staid, conservative pillar of our nation.

Of course, the other revolution is the resource management revolution. In the last decade we've found ourselves in a reduction of resources that at one stage was quite comparable proportionally to the demobilization of the Canadian Forces after the Second World War. So these were not the 1969, 1970, 1971 reductions by half that Monsieur Trudeau initiated. We actually were going into the core of the Canadian Forces and questioning whether their combat capability would remain, whether in fact that combat capability would even be required. Thus we have the 1994 white paper, which I'll come back to.

• 1545

[Translation]

I am now at the research stage. I am an experienced soldier. I am concerned about the future and the future operations of the forces. Right now, I'm working on a book, a chapter of which is going to deal with the new operational dimensions of the armed forces. They were given a role to play without anyone actually telling them anything about it. They are asked to support an ideology, a Canadian philosophy of life all around the world. They are asked to assist, to maintain public safety and to provide humanitarian aid. This is what we see them doing in the field. For almost ten years now, conflict resolution has been part of their duties.

So, in a roundabout way, if I may say so, a second role, as important as the first one, which is the classic role of defending the country and its interests overseas, has been given to the forces. This traditional role is theirs since the Westphalia treaties, signed several centuries ago. Traditionally, responsibilities are shared three ways, by the government, the people and the armed forces, whose classic role is to defend the country with the most modern, the most sophisticated tools, those which are most appropriate to fight the country's potential enemies.

[English]

However, this classic role, for which the Canadian Forces essentially were employed during the Cold War, the classic warfare of enemy against enemy, clearly identifiable by uniform, borders, and objectives, where the nation is at war and obviously the government is on wartime footing—this role remains. The risk assessment taken by the government as to what level of capability it wishes to give its armed forces remains a point of debate. Has the government, in its methods, in its instruments, received the advice and taken the decisions as to the level of risks such that it really feels comfortable in applying resources and mandates and roles to the Canadian Forces?

I would contend that since 1969-70, with the massive reductions, the cutting by half of the combat capability of the whole Canadian Forces, there has been a running withdrawal battle or attrition battle between the generals and the admirals and the government in regard to resources and, in that, a presentation or a defence of the roles of the Canadian Forces.

I am not here today to tell you whether you should slap billions more on defence, whether you should cut defence. I'm here to articulate, in fact, that we have introduced a whole new dimension to defence above and beyond, or in parallel with as priority number one, the classic defence of the nation, and this new role is the pursuit of that ideology. It is the role of conflict resolution. It is a role that requires a whole new set of skills, built upon the first set of skills, the skills of war fighting—and I'll return to that in a few moments.

I believe, having been a staff officer and a commander in the field, as well as a participant in the writing of the 1987 white paper, over the years the assessments of our readiness can be best described as hopeful. Even in 1973, as I was serving in Germany, it was quite clear, and at an annual four brigade officers study week, I said, we are here, we seem to have plans for reinforcements for the forces that are needed in the front line, but how are we going to sustain this, where are the casualty replacements, so that we can continue fighting for the next 30, 60, 90 years, whatever? At the time, I remember General Belzile saying that was a question that maybe we'd discuss at a next officers' study week.

• 1550

In 1987, being part of what I coined “Mr. Perrin Beatty's white paper”, an assessment was done of the capability requirements of the forces to be in fact what was called at the time “full and effective”. The full and effective model calls for a steady net increase of 3% per year for the Canadian Forces in order to meet not only its capital needs, but also its manpower needs.

At that time, for the full and effective model that went forward in discussions from staff efforts by the minister at the time, Mr. Perrin Beatty, it was estimated that the Canadian Forces should be 180,000 strong, of which 90,000 would be reserves. So in the army you would have a force of 90,000, with 30,000 regulars and 60,000 reserves. It had a capital budget for the army alone over the 15 years of $18.3 billion.

That white paper was, to our sorrow, about ten years too late in meeting the NATO requirement of readiness and sustainability of forces into the field, but it was also totally unaffordable. After the meetings between Mr. Beatty and Mr. Wilson in March 1987, we were going to be funded by bumps, and bumps meant we would never get the funding. In fact, two years post-1987, that white paper had been totally destroyed, emasculated, and we were down to trying to fight to save the system and capabilities.

So I've had a certain leeriness of ministers who are going to take on the problem and, once faced with the enormous complexity and the resource demand of it, don't back down to a reality check, but in fact continue to build our hopes only to have them dashed very severely.

I speak of readiness on the two dimensions of it: readiness in what is in the shop window and what can accomplish the missions; and readiness from a sustainment capability, that is to say, how long we can stay in that shop window and how much we can sustain, whether the shop window will get smaller, the mission smaller, as the operations continue.

We have gone through a whole bunch of pirouettes in recent history, and at times maybe even said to be prostituting ourselves in trying to keep capabilities alive, when really there was no will to do so by the country or the government.

I use as an example that in 1992, when we were bringing forces back from Europe and paying our dimension of the peace dividend, we were trying to save a battle group of about 1,200 to remain somewhere in Europe, working for somebody, sustained by somebody, and employed hopefully either by the German or the American allies—not a formation with all its capabilities, but a battle group, which is essentially a battalion with some added capabilities, to stay as our flag holder in Europe.

Such was the desire amongst us to keep in Europe that we produced such an option, but cooler heads prevailed, and ultimately we were told that presence was ineffective and probably not wanted because of the overhead needs and hassles, and so we brought all our forces back.

However, those discussions, at those times, were brought to the fore in the 1994 white paper, in which a critical assessment of past capabilities was conducted. Since then, there have been a number of reviews and strategic documents, and also changing circumstances, that are worthy of questioning today some of the content of the 1994 paper and whether it is still a relevant paper for the future.

• 1555

One of the dimensions that came to the fore in the 1994 white paper was mobilization and reserves. It was made quite obvious that if Canada was going to get involved in any shooting operation, we did not have the capability of sustaining casualties beyond 30, or maybe 60 days, depending on the operation. The proof of that was, of course, the 1991 Gulf War, in which the Canadian Forces participated with a few ships, some aircraft, and a field hospital, but did not deploy forces in the ground combat role.

At that point, to be deployed, the Canadian army was assessed to require about 12,000 troops. Now, 12,000 troops included NATO standards of casualty replacements to the approximate 7,000 to 8,000 front-line troops that would be committed, and those casualty replacements were there in order to sustain an operation for hopefully 90 days and possibly beyond.

We didn't send the 12,000 troops. We did not send the army. We did not send the army into an operation that was the closest we've had to a shooting war, first, because of the enormous manpower or person-power requirements, and also because of a concern of casualties and whether in fact we would be able to sustain casualties.

The deduction was that we wouldn't be able to sustain a force in the field, even in the Gulf War, without mobilizing. Ergo, can Canada participate in a shooting war with casualty replacements within the spectre of NATO classic warfare—upgraded by RMA, of course, with changing figures, but still, could Canada participate in any conflict of shooting for any length of time without mobilizing?

Today the reserves are front-line troops. Maybe it's even a misconception to call them “the reserves”. We now have 20% of our forces being deployed with reservists—in fact, my son is being screened right now. We are looking at augmenting that number because of the reductions in the regular force capability that the forces are living through.

Reserves are your front-line troops now. The armoury floor is your initial training for the initial casualty replacements to those front-line troops. If you're going to continue to fight, then you have to mobilize.

Does this country want to mobilize every time there's a shooting operation going on à la Gulf War or similar, for there will probably be more Gulf Wars? Particularly, does this country want to mobilize when in fact you're into a limited war and you are not keen on overtly declaring war, of putting the nation on a war footing?

I believe we find ourselves in this timeframe with capabilities to conduct classic operations and upgrade them to the revolution in military affairs capabilities. However, can we sustain those forces once committed, and if we want to sustain them, can we do it without mobilizing?

I would contend that the increased use of the reserves and the reduction in numbers of the regular force will force us rapidly, as we look at casualty estimates and the need therefor, and even rotation of forces....

My father went overseas for over six years. We are rotating every six months. If we go into these wars, can we keep the troops in the field for a year or two, or will we still be working on some sort of rotational basis? And if we do that, do we have the forces to rotate, let alone the forces to sustain the casualties and to remain there?

So the first point I wish to present here is the fact that we must have capabilities to meet the primary requirement established in the classic sense by nations around the world, that your armed forces are there to defend the interests of the nation, the people of that nation, and those interests can either be here or abroad. That role remains. Can we do that? What is our commitment to that? How can we sustain that?

• 1600

I would contend that right now we have limited abilities to sustain any war-footing capability without mobilizing. This does put a squeeze on the ability or desire of this nation's government and its people to be able to be a participant in a war, even as Strategy 2020 articulates a niche position in those wars. Reserves are now front-line troops. Reserves are not in the armoury to possibly someday be deployed as the replacement forces for the troops committed first.

This in itself is a complex problem to face when we look at the responsibilities and the risks our nation faces in its own defence, and in its participation in alliances like NATO and NORAD, and/or under alliances of a single-led nation like the United States in the Gulf War. It presents a problem too for us to actually be a player in the world security dimension of classic war or overt warfare. I would contend that we would even have problems in meeting the upper scale of conflict resolution—some would call the Gulf War the upper scale of conflict resolution, not a real war where the nation is at risk or the nation is at war.

So if we go in, we're in a niche, however it may be described. We're in with the shop window. Our reserves are already committed. What is our level of readiness? Can we sustain operations in the field, or do we go in and hope that the thing's over with no casualties and we're back by Christmas?

I would contend that the defence of the nation would certainly want to be at a greater depth than simply being a shop window. Even if the whole shop is reduced a bit, our window proportionately has been reduced even more than it was in the seventies. However, solving this problem is of course a major concern, because the nation is living with that risk.

But another primary function has appeared. This primary function is now in fact the bread and butter of the Canadian Forces: it is conflict resolution. Our forces are being deployed to pursue this ideology of human security, deployed in war zones, conflict zones, with diplomats, NGOs, bureaucrats from different agencies, to stabilize those situations and to permit those countries to be able to move ahead in their development and take care of their own people.

I'm afraid this new job has come to us as a surprise. Certainly, as I was commanding my brigade from 1991 to 1993—when I sent over 3,500 troops to Bosnia, Cambodia, Cypress still at the time—we were not fully conscious of this new generation of operations we were facing. We were certainly not fully conscious of the casualties such operations will bring, and ultimately we were certainly not fully conversant with the tools, the strategies, the tactics we needed in order to equip our people properly to be as effective as possible on the ground, and also to come back to Canada with the smallest number of casualties possible.

So we spent a decade on a lot of on-the-job training, and I in certain circumstances I would even consider calling it “ad hocery”. We came up with some innovative solutions and had some great successes. We also came up short in a number of areas—including one of the darkest marks in the history of the Canadian Forces and its people: the Somalia affair.

• 1605

I for one believe the Somalia situation was not one of only a few soldiers who had become renegades in their own regiment, but was in fact a problem of leadership, not only in that regiment, but also in the forces as a whole as we moved into this complex new arena of operations, an era of transparency. Perhaps in this new arena we were not in fact leading, but as a general—and I certainly speak for myself—I would describe our actions more as crisis managing, and at times merely following the flow of what was going on.

This is not how I hope we perceive the future of the forces, and when you read Strategy 2020, you can see in it the desire to develop a leadership style that is proactive rather than reactive, a style that is anticipatory and prepared for ambiguity and complexity.

But let's get back to the operations. I'd like to read a short excerpt from a book I wish to recommend to the committee. It's not a very thick book—that's probably why I read it in the first place. However, it may very well be of interest to you in your deliberations. It is by a Dr. Martin van Krefeld from Jerusalem University. It is called Future Warfare. He produced it in 1991 and the subtitle is The Transformation of War'.

Over the last few decades regular armed forces, including some of the largest and the best, have repeatedly failed in numerous low-intensity conflicts where they seem to hold all the cards. This should have caused politicians, the military, the academic advisers to take a profound new look at the nature of war in our time.

However, by the accepted strategic framework, time and time again the losers explained away their defeat by citing mitigating factors. Often they invoked an alleged stab in the back, blaming the politicians who refused them a free hand, or else the home public, which did not give them the support to which they felt they were entitled. In other cases, they thrust their head in the sand and argued that they were defeated by a political war, a psychological war, a propaganda war, a guerrilla war, a terrorist war—in short, anything but war properly speaking.

As the twentieth century is drawing to its conclusion, it is becoming clearer every day that this line of reasoning will no longer do. If only we are prepared to look, we can see a revolution taking place under our very noses. Just as no Roman citizen was left unaffected by the barbarian invasions, so in vast parts of the world no man, no woman, and no child alive today will be spared the consequences of the newly emerging forms of war, of conflict.

We have been employing the Canadian Forces in this decade at a tempo not seen since the fifties. If you remember the fifties and the return of the troops from the Korean War, it was a time when the armed forces were reaching their high-water mark, their heyday. By 1958 we were at 7% of GDP expenditures. We had nuclear capabilities. We had enormous troop and equipment capabilities that had modernized us since the Second World War, and the troops were coming back to a force that had its morale up, because it had specific missions and the capabilities to do them.

This is quite contrary in fact to the nineties, where the bulk of the forces deployed were coming back to severe restrictions and reductions. I had a corporal from the engineers who had won a medal for bravery in Sarajevo. He had re-established the pipelines to permit water to enter a vast sector of the city. He was shot at, and came back uninjured. But as he was working on the plumbing in the married quarters, he told me he would be forcibly retired from the forces within four weeks because of the reductions.

That's no instrument, no way, to ensure troops will continue to serve who were in the frame of mind that permitted them to risk their lives, and for families who saw their loved ones risking their lives.

• 1610

However, in this last decade we've had a revolution in operations. We've filled a void that existed in the old, classic Cold War era, Mr. Chair. Since the Second World War, essentially we've had war footings or capabilities in the Cold War—we've equipped the Canadian Forces, even giving them nuclear weapons, to meet this challenge.

During this time we have also had peace. Often the terms of this peace were under the UN chapter 6, peacekeeping. We gained experience in this scenario. The classic situation involves both sides wanting to stop fighting, wanting to sign a peace agreement, and only needing somebody there to make sure nobody fiddles with the books or with the different agreements.

The Canadian Forces spent 95% of its time studying, working, equipping, and training for war under the classic rubric of the NATO and Soviet dimensions. It spent barely 5% of its time in peacekeeping; it was very much a sideshow. Although I agree totally with our 40-year investment in keeping the nation of Cyprus viable and progressing—and it may take another 40 years to make sure they stop all the problems with the green line—many did not think this was a good investment. But our work in Cyprus, plus the Congo flare-up in the sixties, and the 1974 flare-up in Cyprus has had us doing our peacekeeping under chapter 6.

We have been doing aid or assistance to civil powers; I deployed as a lieutenant during the October Crisis of 1970. We've done the Olympics. We've seen the forces used a number of times to assist civil authorities with floods, even at one time replacing police forces when they go on strike.

But that was that era. In between was a vacuum. We didn't study it. We didn't train for it. We weren't even sure there was something there of any consequence. This vacuum is what hit us when the wall went down.

Over the last ten years we haven't been on a war footing. Many would ask if this war footing will ever happen. Maybe there will be a Gulf War. One has to assess this kind of risk. It is of course the government's decision whether or not to keep our war capabilities, but I believe this goal still remains, and will remain as long as we're a nation with our own security requirements to meet.

All of a sudden, this vacuum filled up in the nineties with something new to us called conflict resolution. So over the nineties we essentially tried to adapt the instruments of war and peace to meet whatever conflict we were facing. We were doing it with the best of our background knowledge on war fighting and peacekeeping. However, we face a whole new arena, for the troops, for the strategic component, for the humanitarian role, and even for the diplomats in the political sphere.

This employs the Canadian Forces 90% of the time. This is causing casualties. The troops are at war in those zones. They're on a war footing. They're limited in their capabilities, but they're not on training and they're not in a classic chapter 6. They must be trained to be able to fight.

They must have the capabilities to fight, and they ultimately need a whole new set of skills to avoid fighting and advance the demands of these complex mandates. We would certainly love to have this. I'm afraid I can't provide it, because I have no guarantee of having geniuses in the right place at the right time. We strive to go as far as we can in meeting this challenge.

• 1615

However what we do have is this: we are facing a situation where we still have self-interest guiding our deployment and our use of resources. However, this nation has opened up a whole new curve to that and in fact has opened up a whole arena of human security and humanism and of every individual being allowed their individual rights and that we recognize that need around the world. We want to intervene and to help, and we consider it to be part of the mandate of a nation such as ours. That is coming more to the fore. It certainly was articulated in the past in different ways by Mr. Axworthy. It reflects not only what would be required of the military in these new dimensions but also the diplomats, the NGOs, and the whole humanitarian dimension.

This Gulf War scenario classic was a reinforcement of the Cold War tools, so everybody said, we have the right tools, we've proved it there, so there's no problem. We'll stymie the reductions due to the peace dividend, because we believe we're going to have to fight that again. I would contend that will happen, because I do not believe, gentlemen, that this is the last conventional role. I believe we will be committed, if not on the humanitarian side, certainly on the self-interest and oil side, into the future with the modern technical capabilities to be able to conduct such operations. That may happen. I don't think we're allowed to dispense with it by simply saying probably not.

Classic chapter 6 with DMZs and so on—these are a thing of the past, rarely to be seen. Eritrea and Ethiopia are recent examples of trying to make that work. Such scenarios of the Cold War are not there any more.

We are involved in a lot of these,

[Translation]

in all kinds of operations which can't be put under the rubric of war, but are not necessarily peace missions either and which involve the use of force, in a limited way or not, and can also entail the mixed play of force, diplomacy and the other dimensions.

[English]

These are complex operations because we're into demands that are complex. Peace agreements are no more, let's just sit down and work it out, and, hopefully, with a force and a couple of years we'll sort out that overall thing. We are facing complex solutions that are worked out by the belligerence when they're actually worked out.

We thus face complex mandates. Any general officer who walks in front of you and argues that we will not go in unless we have a clear, precise mandate and know exactly what the objectives and the exit strategy are and that we're going to be out there is a general who is not living not only today but also in future operations of conflict resolution. You can't bring simplistic dimensions such as that to these complex problems. You need the capability, however, to understand them and work with them.

In Rwanda I was mandated within two years to bring a country that had been at war for four years from a peace agreement to democratic elections. We in this country nearly lost our nation in 1995 because of a problem that started in 1759. How can we impose it within two years? Imposing such mandates only creates more pressure and complications in bringing in solutions that need not a peacekeeping mission of a year or a conflict resolution mission of two years but an integrated solution of diplomats, economists, nation builders, military, police, and humanitarians over 30, 40, 50 years to varying degrees. So it's no longer short operations, unless we purely want to stop the conflict and then leave them at it.

My mandate of two years was to bring them to that democratic election. That's fine, but who was there after the vote? Who was going to guarantee the security? How do you rebuild that nation's military? How do you render it responsible to the democratic process that has just been nominated? Who is doing that? Who picks up that ball? Where is it integrated with the actual peacekeeping mission or the mission in its instance? There was nothing. All that was to be picked up, hopefully, by the UN and other agencies.

• 1620

We're involved in some pretty exotic areas. This is but one example. In Southeast and Southwest Asia, and possibly even in the Americas, we will find nations that are imploding or ethnicities or catastrophic humanitarian problems happening. So we're around the world. We're no more just in Europe. We're now around the world with the capabilities needed to work there.

In my recommendations for the reform of the Canadian officer corps, I indicated that the officer corps should be trilingual—English, French, and Spanish—to meet its requirements. We find ourselves in very complex cultures. If you want to argue or have a discussion with someone, you have to know where they're coming from, their background.

We're in areas that are not high tech. I don't care how many spy planes you have over there, all these people have is Motorolas. This is not high-tech stuff. This is the stuff of the transformation of war. This is the bulk of the scenarios you face, very complex political situations evolving all the time. Northwest is the homeland of the extremist Hutus and to the south there are the Tutsies. How do you deploy? How do you keep communications? How do you work out things to keep the peace process or whatever conflict resolution process you have evolving?

You are not facing dummies. They are trained and educated in the same schools we are. The politicians were in Paris and Brussels. On the government side they were in Canadian and British universities, and on the rebel side they were in the United States. The force commander on the rebel side is a graduate of Leavenworth in the U.S. The force commander on the government side is a graduate of École supérieure de guerre de Paris. They're not dummies. They know how to manipulate international opinion. They know how to influence their people. They know how to conduct war and conflict.

The Rwandan war is going to be one of the classics of low-intensity warfare ever to be seen. How efficient it was, superbly efficient. We find ourselves in totally unorthodox situations that are not the norm. They're equipped and trained by countries that are our allies. One militiaman who is drugged or boozed up and holding a grenade and a machete is not a problem for ten Canadian soldiers—except that you never see one. They're in the hundreds. They're in the hundreds because there are hundreds of thousands of recruits available, let alone the ones they rip away and steal and put into their forces to fight, such as child soldiers. How do you stop 100 or 200 of them from killing? How do we stop women killing other women with children when they're surrounded by a couple of hundred of these people? Do we shoot to wipe out a whole bunch? Do we shoot the girl with the machete? Do we watch? Do we fight our way in? What are the solutions to those moral, ethical, and tactical problems?

If a wrong solution is used at that barricade by a corporal, the whole mission could be in jeopardy. During ceasefire negotiations, I have seen my mission be put back a couple of weeks because one of my troops made a mistake on one barricade. These are no more the wars or conflicts of generals only. This is no more manoeuvring vast battalions. This is that every corporal has to know what's going on and be educated and trained. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more blue collar soldiers, and there's no more room for blue collar members of the forces in these arenas.

• 1625

Not only do you face many in how to solve establishing an atmosphere of security, but you also face the brutality. They kill their own. How do you investigate? How do you bring them to the fore? How do you solve the conflict between the two when they're ready to kill their own?

What do you do when the bulk of the people who are doing the killings are teenagers? When the militias are hiding behind women and children in order to shoot at us or at NGOs or at people who are moving through the convoy, do you shoot back? How many kids do we shoot before we stop those ambushes?

What instrument is needed, or do we not simply go through the blockade and watch thousands dying in different camps because there's no water, food, or medical supplies? They don't play by any of the rules. Thousands died in the churches, in the monastery. We played by the rules.

I had ten dozen soldiers killed on my command because they were playing by the rules but the other side wasn't. And our military is held accountable, not only with the UN, but also with the Canadian government and the criminal courts of Canada.

As I am a witness for the prosecution in an international tribunal in Arusha, I fully believe we should be held accountable before the World Court for the actions we take in these operations. It's not that we went in and we've done our best, and to hell with you, we have our own rules.

Working within complex rules, the transparency of the media throughout, you produce the rules of engagement but you instill fear in going beyond them. So going down every level of command, each commander reduces them so that he has some room to manoeuvre if something happens. So by the time it hits the corporal, he has that much room, and, of course, he's frustrated and not able to do the job. The rules of engagement are that wide at the top.

Training on the rules of engagement, the scenarios, trying to maximize what you can do on the ground...the nineties was a watershed of inability to grasp the rules of engagement and maximize them instead of minimizing them.

There were humongous logistic problems of keeping troops, deploying troops, sustaining troops or missions in the field in countries where there's no infrastructure, no roads, and the like.

The massive scale of people...nearly a million were killed, outright. What do you do with a million bodies? Do you just leave them there to rot and let the dogs eat them? What do you do for sanitation for the protection of the people subsequent to that? There's already 30% with AIDS in that country.

There are a million and half here, another half million there, and another half million between all these who are refugees. How do you separate them from the militias who take control of refugee camps, so that they don't build up the force to come in again, to continue to infiltrate? How do you bring the two and a half million people in displacement camps back to their camps?

How do you feed two million people twice a day? How many trucks does that require? How many people need to be involved? The scale of these needs, the nature of the needs...we had a lot of cow corn to feed them, but they had no fuel, no wood to warm up the water, no water, no instruments any more because they were on the run, so they ate cow corn and destroyed their stomachs. Someone died, literally, because of the inflation and the destruction of their stomach, because we had cow corn, we had nothing else.

Aid has to be the right one. How do we work with these people?

On my last count, I ended up with over 127 NGOs, mom-and-pop outfits that have a lot of heart but no capability. The big outfits are already looking to the next problem, and they're watching the media, and sometimes they don't have much heart and they think they know best. NGOs that indirectly aid and abet one of the sides and put at risk your forces and the people you're protecting on the other side...because the original side is stealing food, and so on.

How do you work with them, integrate them, and bring them about? How do you in fact come up with single plans versus all these other plans, as we've been doing?

• 1630

Who's writing the new philosophies, the new doctrines, and making these things work? Because that's the future. That's where we're going. That's how we're being important.

Who is educating us, training us, and giving us the instruments for the moral and ethical dilemmas we face many times a day? The corporal is facing this. What is his

[Translation]

safety valve? What can he use to get things off his chest?

[English]

We're not in a shooting war. Even in Vietnam, although there was enormous brutality, at least the American soldiers fought. You don't simply open fire here. You may have to, but that's not necessarily the solution.

How do you handle those things when they come back? How do you handle 10% in casualties? What are we doing to bring them and their families back to an operational level? Can we sustain losing 10% in casualties to these missions? What do we do? Simply take them as casualties, help them for a couple of years, throw them into society as best we can, with Veterans Affairs Canada helping? Is there not a way of preparing, sustaining, and bringing the individual and the family down to earth, from having lived the experience to being ready for the next time.

By the by, are we ready for this price for our ideology in the future? There will not only be the casualties between the ears, but there will also be casualties, deaths, body bags. Does this nation sustain that?

The Belgians pulled out when they lost their ten. Would we have pulled out? Are we capable? Is the government capable of sustaining the heat from the nation when troops are being killed in countries that pose absolutely no risk to us, where the nation's not at war?

Do we in fact send troops to potentially get killed there, or possibly, ultimately, become such casualties? Have we explained that this is in pursuit of an ideology, and this nation is willing to pay that terrible price. Have we explained that to the general population? Have we explained that to the soldiers? Have we explained that to their families?

We will recognize it. We will give the support to the people in this new role that we added on to the role of defending the nation, that is, going out there and pursuing and defending that ideology of human dignity, human security, humanism, human rights.

We have to prepare people for that. Have we articulated that? We have to prepare even the military for that. I grew up with that as a priority. Where I can assess the situation, where I can assess what casualties I'm going to take, and whether I can do it or not is my mission. If I can't, then I ask what I need to do it.

Are my personnel trained? Fed? Equipped? Do they have enough ammunition, support, in order to be able to do the mission? I ask myself, do I have the skill sets to command in such complex arenas? Do I have all the training as a general officer, as a full colonel? Have I been able to pursue the development of my capabilities in the whole new arena of very complex, intertwined factors?

When people go on these peace support, conflict resolution missions, we now have people saying this is not their mission. Their mission is to bring everybody back home and safe. When a media guy asked a full colonel during the Kosovo campaign what his mission was, he said, “My mission is to bring everybody back home and safe.”

What exactly are you doing there then? Your mission, Colonel, is to conduct the bombing and take the risks, and hopefully nobody gets killed or injured. We're debating whether the mission counts in these operations, or whether the safety of all personnel overrides it, because the nation is not at war, because the nation doesn't know what the risks are.

That debate will get more people killed if we ever do go to war. The mission dominates. The risks are assessed. These are the types of operations we're going into.

This is not the classic military verbiage or even the classic type of operation. These are the Cold War verbs that we've been using, action verbs—to occupy, to screen, to secure. NATO spent decades making sure everybody understands what each one of those action verbs means.

• 1635

However, in this new arena, tell me the definition of what is implied by the following mission: “You will establish an atmosphere of security”. What does that mean? Do I defend the borders if somebody comes in? Do I simply assist the police? What does that mean? What are the full parameters of it? That's in my mandate. That is not in military jargon.

We have not figured out the new generation of verbs. We have not, ladies and gentlemen, leapt to the intellectual revolution required in order to conduct these operations of the Canadian Forces, which are more sophisticated in Yugoslavia, less sophisticated in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Some 90% of our troops are doing that, and 95% of our education and training is still going on classic warfare.

Have we built the balance, as van Krefeld articulates? My colleagues think I'm a bit wacky, and he is a little unusual, but that's separate from that. Have we built the balance for the future? Has defence strategy in fact recognized the balance between the capabilities of classic warfare and working within coalitions, particularly with the Americans and interoperability, and also being a leader as we did in 1996 in the jungles of the Congo and lead like-minded nations to go and intervene, to participate under the rubric of the UN?

Are we in fact acknowledging that in the future our forces will be committed every day? We will take casualties regularly in war zones where this nation wants us to be in order to pursue the objective of human security and human rights. That second role has not been articulated, hasn't been recognized, with the costs to the individuals, even the compensation to those who are in that type of operation constantly, versus the classic compensation we get now, which is peacetime army, peacetime forces, essentially being remunerated for their preparation for war. That's not the fact today. There is no remuneration structure for this new primary role that we're doing and will continue to do.

My work with Veterans Canada is in fact articulating that there should be a new social contract between the people and the Government of Canada and its military that recognizes this whole new dimension, these new demands, and these new capabilities that we need.

We need junior officers who study not only classic tactics but who also study anthropology, philosophy, sociology, so they can understand the missions they're in and they can lead troops, and not simply react the best they can from the previous experience of somebody else.

The future, ladies and gentlemen, is conflict resolution as the second fundamental role of the Canadian Forces, to which lip service is being paid. Very little is being explained to the soldiers, their families, and the people of this nation.

We need a new social contract, just like the one we had for the last century on the defence of a nation. We want the troops, where the nation is not at war, not at risk, to go out there like our diplomats and the NGOs and pursue battle, pursue conflict, pursue very complex operations in order to move the values of this nation into the overall scheme of the values of the world as articulated by Kofi Annan in his seminal document at the 2000 General Assembly called We, the Peoples.

That's what this country wants. That's the new job. So let's articulate all the parameters around that and build that capability as well as maintain a strong risk assessment capability to defend the nation in a shooting scenario, either here or abroad.

• 1640

Thank you very much. I've been too long-winded, I'm afraid.

The Chair: Well, General, I didn't hear anyone interrupting you at any point, so I think that's a measure of the level of interest people had in your presentation. On behalf of all of the members of the committee, I'd like to thank you for what was a very excellent offering of your experience and insights.

You've certainly asked some very, very profound questions. You've advanced some very significant questions, not just for this committee but certainly for the foreign affairs committee. Perhaps at some point you may have the opportunity to share your views with them. I hope you do, as a matter of fact.

I know we have a number of members who would like to ask you some questions, so I'm going to go directly to them.

Mr. Benoit.

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

Thank you very much, General Dallaire, for your presentation here.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: How's the corporal doing now?

Mr. Leon Benoit: Well, I did meet with him, and he's looking forward to meeting with you. It's very important to him.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Very good.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I want to thank you for your presentation this afternoon, but also for your presentation this morning at the prayer breakfast. Seeing your presentation today and the way you're so emotionally involved in what you obviously feel hasn't been done and has gone wrong in the past but has to happen in the future, I think that's commendable. What we learned this morning at the prayer breakfast in regard to your very personal feelings as you live with the horrors of Rwanda was very compelling, an incredible presentation. Thank you for both of them.

Your presentation this afternoon talks about the state of readiness of the Canadian Forces. I think it raised a lot more questions than it did answers, although from your presentation it's pretty clear that the military is very unprepared for the kind of warfare you're talking about—conflict resolution, as you call it. And it goes beyond the military involvement, clearly it does, so we're looking at a bigger package.

I have several lines of questioning, but I'm going to start with something General MacKenzie said at his meeting here earlier. He said that in regard to post-traumatic stress disorder, speaking of the corporal, the best way to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, to deal with the whole issue, is to have soldiers who have trained together, who have lived together, and who return together as a unit. He stressed the importance of the unit. He said that when he led the mission to Sarajevo, I believe, under very difficult circumstances, because they had trained together in Germany as a unit there was not one single case of post-traumatic stress disorder from that mission, as far as he knows. He couldn't have stressed more the importance of not just bringing soldiers together from different places across the country to form a unit and then sending them overseas.

I'd like you to comment on whether you think that is in fact of prime importance when looking at this whole issue of PTSD in terms of heading it off and possibly dealing with it right after the mission in terms of keeping the unit together.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: You will not eliminate PTSD as the new generation injury for your veterans. It has taken over all the older classic injuries.

However, the whole essence of military capability is based around the unit. The word “unit” is all-encompassing. The commanding officer of a unit has incredible powers—less so now because of changes, but incredible powers were in the hands of a commanding officer. Why? Because the commanding officer led the most front-line capabilities into the most dangerous scenarios and needed that capability in order to be able to maximize his forces.

The unit was created for cohesion, for bringing people to know each other. Troops, when it comes down to it, don't necessarily fight ultimately for the flag; they certainly fight for their buddies and the people they know around them. And having their buddies around them is very comforting and very solid. However, bringing ad hoc units together, sending company groups or things like that overseas is very bad, because you risk having many more casualties in these ad hoc structured units than you do in the cohesive units. They'll all have post-traumatic stress. It could happen in an incident, it could happen at a barrier, you could fall in a hole and find yourself covered with bodies that you didn't see. But one of the best instruments to help people live through this, and not only with professional therapy, is having a bosom buddy. Bosom buddies are built in cohesive units, so you don't have to explain everything, you just have to say two words. With the 12 Canadians who came to reinforce me at the start of the war, majors and captains, a couple of lieutenant-colonels, we would say one word and we'd all start crying, or we'd say another word and everybody's laughing hysterically. But to be able to vent that in a fraternity or amongst ourselves is crucial.

• 1645

So he's right that an essential component of maximizing the operational effectiveness of the troops in the field and also troops available subsequently to be redeployed, thus reducing the number of casualties, is unit cohesion and bringing the reservists in a lot earlier, not just for three months, of which two are on the administrative side, but for six months, and keep them for another three months afterwards. Reservists are time bombs in many areas of this country, because we disconnected them and they're not even the same amongst their own group in their little area. They're different. And often there's jealousy or they are simply treated differently and isolated—they suffer all this.

It is not the be all and end all, but that's the way western militaries have fought. And when you brought in recruits, replacements, in Rwanda, the rebel forces.... Every three days of fighting, they would bring the troops in, in rotation, battalions. They would start at the section, then go to platoon, to company, and to battalion. They would bring in the new replacements and they would spend hours doing maintenance on their weapons and stuff, talking. Then they would do two hours of drill—we had studies in the eighties to get rid of drill.

You start at the section. You know who the boss of the section is, he's giving you orders to stand at attention and the like. You know who's beside you. You come to platoon. Who are the rest of the little gang? Who's the platoon commander? What's he like? What's his dimension to you, in your eyes? Then you have the company commander, and then the battalion commander. At the end they do a full-fledged parade singing, the battalion going back into the field.

Mr. Leon Benoit: One of the things General MacKenzie said about the problem and its cause was that because the soldiers hadn't trained together enough and got to know each other, they just weren't confident of what the others were going to do. The uncertainty about how others were going to react in certain circumstances, he thought, played an important part in soldiers coming back suffering from PTSD. Do you think that's possible?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: That's part of the whole cohesion structure. But that cohesion can be built if the leadership builds it, if the unit is trained together and that cohesion is under good, solid leadership, progressive leadership that recognizes the problems they're going to be facing and has solutions to inculcate that in the troops. You won't eliminate PTSD, but you'll probably reduce, I would say, the intensity in certain circumstances and, potentially, the numbers. But that cohesion is not something for which you need five years standing together. That cohesion could be built in three to six months. It can be built overnight with a casualty replacement coming in. It's all a matter of the leadership and how the leaders, the section commanders and so on, are capable of creating cohesion amongst them.

• 1650

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you believe our members who are suffering from PTSD are getting the same level of care you got and the level of care they really deserve? I know your struggle with PTSD was in part covered by the media, and so was followed by the general population of the country. It seems you did get, at least eventually, some good care and your family also received some care. Do you think the other members of the Canadian Forces receive an acceptable level of care, in fact, a good level of care? Do their families receive the level of care they need?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: What I received was care, as I made quite clear from the start—and I followed it—that was to break open old doors and old philosophies and provide for all. My family has received no care, because I paid out of my own pocket for my family. That's something yet to come.

Are all the troops getting all the care they need? There's not enough care. In 1997-98, when we started on this, the only clinic here was the one in Ottawa that was at 40% capacity. We have five clinics and they're totally overwhelmed. I am part of a project, working with Gérald Mathieu, trying to get the word out to the Canadian population and the troops, to get them out of the closets so that they come to seek help. I'm also involved in trying to convince psychiatrists and psychologists to join in helping us with those casualties. I actually have spoken to the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Next week I'm speaking at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, at an annual meeting on PTSD, to convince them to reinforce our clinics, because having the militiaman sitting in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce go to the clinic in Valcartier is not the most effective way. However, the psychiatrist in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce hasn't got a clue about the problem areas, except for the clinical dimensions of PTSD.

No, there's not enough help yet. Yes, it must expand within the civilian world, because there's no way that we can hire or produce enough psychiatrists or psychologists of our own. Are they getting all the treatment they need? They're getting as much as the bureaucracy and people who are fiddling with books and budgets and stuff will let them get.

A soldier who's in Kingston has to come to Ottawa suffering from PTSD. In the bus there's a whole bunch of other people going up for tonsils, hernias, and so on. They ask him, what's your problem, why are you going? He says, I'm going for PTSD. That's not particularly conducive to bringing people forward and getting them to go there.

The Chair: Mr. Benoit, I'm going to have to—

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Those minute details are making it less effective than it should be.

Yes, it costs a bit more money, but I'll tell you, it's much better to bring one soldier out of ten back from PTSD and make him operationally functional, far more cost-effective for all the business planners, than simply to let them wither and lose them. It's such a minute investment compared to just training one senior NCO.

The Chair: General, I'm going to have to move onto another questioner. I have to confess to committee members that I've been playing fast and loose with the rules. Mr. Benoit, you've had about 12 minutes of questions. I'm sure you don't disagree with that approach.

I want to give Mr. Bachand and Mr. Grose an opportunity for an equal amount of time. Then we'll get back over onto this side.

Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

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

First, I'd like to pay tribute to the general. You've read part of his CV earlier. I know he studied at the Military College, and I had an opportunity to meet him when he was commander there. I must say, general, that people still remember the time you were there. You were very much appreciated.

I have been quite shaken by your presentation. And it's not the first time you do that to me either. I remember seeing you when you came back from Rwanda, at the Upper Richelieu Chamber of Commerce. You made a presentation and I was unable to eat because I was too shaken by what you had said. I remember, among other things, a scene you told us about: militiamen offering women a choice between being raped and shot at or, for those who didn't let themselves be raped, being butchered with a machete. It still sends shivers down my spine. That kind of thing really shakes me up.

• 1655

It's easy to read texts like the one you wrote on the role of the United Nations in the 21st century. You contend that we have to adapt to this new role we face, which has to do with conflict resolution. I asked this question to general Baril. We train soldiers to conduct a classic or traditional war and then, we send them on a conflict resolution mission which, as you showed us, is fraught with complexities. You just opened up a new perspective for us. It's a new battlefield, a new theatre of operations. Our people, be they officers, simple soldiers or reservists, don't expect to face such situations. They must be quite taken aback. Your presentation clarifies a lot of things for me.

Now, I know what it's all about. You can have smart bombs, the latest model of gun, but when you are facing a massacre or when women and children are used as a shield to prevent you from shooting, you are confronted with a major problem. I am not a soldier and I wouldn't like to be in such a position. I think I would be totally at a loss.

It seems to me that we're going to have to focus much more on training. I wonder whether this so-called enhanced leadership model will indeed be a better model to prepare our officers for such situations, because that's what we'll have to come to grips with. I am not talking about the will of our nation or nations, if we have the same definition of the word “nation”. I am not talking either about accepting the fact that lives will be lost in peacekeeping or conflict resolution missions. I believe that even the Quebec population, or the Canadian population for that matter, is not ready for that. If we ask them whether they agree with the notion that, when we send some of our troops to participate in such missions, some lives might be lost, they are going to say no, I think. It requires a high level of public awareness and we are still light years away from that.

I hope the committee is going to work on that. I believe it requires training, not only for officers, through that enhanced method, but also for simple soldiers who must be prepared to face incredibly complex situations such as those you just described. that direction.

Thank you for your presentation. I think training is the solution.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Did Mr. Hamilton give you the green paper? I am sure he's going to find enough copies. This is a document produced when I was special adviser to the Chief of Defence Staff on professional development. In it, you'll find academically rigorous chapters on our future needs or what our officers are going to need by the year 2020, as well as on the method we are going to use to get there.

Some solutions are still missing. I argue that the new junior officer is not what a junior officer was in my days or during the Cold War. Then, we were getting three or four years of training in Canada before being sent to Germany to do the same work. That was the theatre of operations.

Today—it was also happening when I was a commander—some junior officers leave the Military College to command a platoon. There were some in Oka, in Yugoslavia or in Cambodia. They don't have time to go through the same training as before and, on top of that, they face operational problems or demands which are much more complex.

The enhanced program you were talking about was designed only to update the first part of the officers' education and training, this 15-month period we were talking about. That way, there was a continuity in terms of the education and training they were provided with, so that they could respond as needed and become leaders, instead of acting like sheep. You have to be able to handle ambiguity. That's not what we are doing. We take risks and we charge. But you have to keep things ambiguous. People have to be able to self-criticize and to recognize all factors.

• 1700

Reform meant changes not only within the officer corps, but also at the generals' level. Being promoted general doesn't mean that you stop studying and learning. On the contrary, when you have to command missions and work in the political arena, with international organizations such as the United Nations, with NGOs, diplomats, economists, people from the World Bank and so on, you have to be able to understand the challenges and to talk to these people. So generals have to go back to school. Yes a two-star general can be sent for a year or two to the Boston Business School or the Harvard Business School. It's a crucial investment to be able to meet future needs. You have to be proactive.

As you know, we have acted towards women the same way we acted towards French Canadians. It's the same problem. In 1968, out of the blue, the law required us to be bilingual. Today, 32 years later, we still don't have a bilingual officer corps. No, we don't, not yet. A number of them are bilingual, but we have unilingual Francophones and unilingual Anglophones, and officers who are not ready at all to command in the language of the troops. We aren't going to fight any more in the officer's language; we are going to fight in the troops' language. At least, we are going to tell them to go and fight in their own language. It's not the same as before.

So we still don't have a bilingual officer corps, but people have been promoted. There were numbers, quotas and all that, and we are doing the same bloody thing with women. The was no fundamental vision to anticipate the integration of women, just as we anticipate the integration of people of many other ethnic origins. It's coming..

What lessons did we learn from the Francophones' integration? What did we change? What should we do about women? What kind of environment should we create so they find healthy working conditions when they come in? We have to ask those kinds of questions, instead of simply say that they have to follow our standards, that the quota is 20% next year and that 20% of our recruits have to be women. It's bloody stupid.

We have to create an environment where women can shine. We want them because we need them. If the country is willing to send women to the front, to have women killed next to the infantry guys and to have women risk being raped, and if women are ready to face that, then fine, let them, because we do need them.

We need their skills and their capabilities, but we have to use another method. Are we going to be proactive to prepare for the arrival en masse, by the end of this decade, of people of many different ethnic origins who are going to join the forces, or are we, again, going to fiddle around? Are we preparing for that? Are we preparing the leadership? Women are going to change the nature of leadership. They are going to bring in new perspectives which, I think, are going to be very positive. Are we preparing for that? No.

Mr. Claude Bachand: It's already considered a failure. A report, where it says that the Canadian army has completely missed its objective, has just been made available.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: But does the objective make sense? Is it the bureaucracy which requires such and such a number, because we have to answer to you or to Parliament? I don't know. Should we say, yes, women now account for 20% of our troops. We did that with French Canadians and we also made a whole lot of mistakes. This is not the way to do it. Did we change the culture of the place?

Mr. Claude Bachand: Exactly.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: On that one, we have quite a way to go.

Mr. Claude Bachand: I'd like, very quickly, to ask one last question. It's a question I also asked General Baril.

You told us about what should be done to be on a war footing, about chapter 6 and about the break between two conflict resolution missions. Some people say that the military in conflict resolution, in training or used for other purposes risk losing some of their combative spirit. In other words, do you think that the army should consider having two types of soldiers: one for the national defence, the traditional, classical defence role, as you say, and the other specialized in conflict resolution? Some people are thinking along those lines and I wonder about the compatibility between those two roles.

• 1705

[English]

The Chair: General, can you take a couple of minutes to try to answer that? We have to move onto other members.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: I'll be as fast as I can.

The Chair: As I say, this is a dirty job but somebody's got to do it.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: This is peace. This is war. And this is combat capability.

[Translation]

Traditionally, a soldier skilled enough for war was supposed to have no problem with chapter 6 requirements because, essentially, with his capacities, he could be brought down one notch. Some were saying it was impossible to do this because if you put a warrior in that type of environment, he wasn't a warrior any more. Then in the 1990, there was another school of thought—and I was part of it—for whom these were the needs of today's complex wars. But conflict resolution needs do exist.

[English]

Conflict is here, and conflict resolution needs these skills more than that. So you have to not train down to peacekeeping, but train up to conflict resolution. We did a bunch of work, and I personally did that. I've just received...I'm going for a year and a half on a fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to conduct research on a whole new generation of conflict resolution skills.

[Translation]

It's a totally new dimension, a new doctrine, a new concept. Instead of saying that, I'm saying you need these skills. However the nation said that we, Canadians, are different from the Americans, the French and all the others. We want soldiers who can participate in conflict resolution. So we want them to be able to do all that. Then, we have two jobs. Are these two jobs conflicting? I say no, they are not. The combative spirit you need at that level is an informed combative spirit.

[English]

When they say...bullshit.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: We got a note from our translator on that one saying there was absolutely no need to translate.

Mr. Grose, you have the floor.

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won't take ten minutes.

General Dallaire, much as I've followed your career and have greatly admired you, I've never seen you in person before. I've never listened to your testimony, but as I sat here listening to you, I thought, I've heard this before. And it came to me where I heard it. I'm vice-chair of the justice committee. We were sitting this morning, and that's exactly where I heard it, about conditions inside our own country: we were talking about fighting organized crime.

Our police forces operate according to the law. Organized crime doesn't follow the rules. We were discussing a bill to allow police forces to temporarily break our laws and fight on the same grounds as organized crime. Organized crime doesn't shift their people around. Their people know each other for years. They're in clubs. They're in cadres, groups—sometimes as small as four or five. But they know each other and they will cover each. They will lie for each other. They will die for each other. Our police forces are not working together. Every now and again they get together and have a conference and say, oh yes, we're going to do a combined operation, but they don't know each other.

What we recommended was exactly what you're recommending for the armed forces. Our organized crime people are your rebels who know each other. We advised the police forces to do what you want to do with our armed forces who operate overseas. But what is chilling is that exactly what you're describing overseas is the situation inside this country.

What you've done to me is...I now have to fight on two fronts, in the justice committee and on the defence committee. I'm not a regular member of this committee.

The comparison was chilling. You described exactly what we were fighting this morning. This may not be of any help to you, but realize that what you're preaching does not only apply to our armed forces outside our country. Believe me, it could be used by our justice system inside this country, and don't think I'm not going to tell them that.

• 1710

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Are there any comments, General?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: May I bring you back to the Oka crisis, where the police forces were not capable of stopping your insurrection and you brought in the army? When you bring in the army, we go in to win, because there's nobody else, and then it's anarchy. It took us three months. We didn't create any martyrs. We even gave rules of engagement where the soldiers...we were to take the first casualties before in fact we would make casualties on the other side.

In this country we may find ourselves using the armed forces integrated with all these other capabilities more than one would expect.

I would bring your attention to this book by van Krefeld called The Transformation of War, where he speaks of internal security, terrorism, and all these dimensions, which are integrated and locked in with, as you say, underworld organizations, in which even the military, with the rest of the different structures, can be far more involved than one would think.

It's not just exporting that capability, but also capabilities within the nation, more than just drug running and things of that nature.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I'll take your message back to my committee.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Very good.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Mr. Goldring.

Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General, first I'd like to thank you for your attendance, and for your courage and your commitment to try to help. I do want to apologize for my absence. I really did want to hear your entire testimony today, but it was unfortunate and unavoidable.

I hope I'm not going to be repetitious in my questioning, but the first question will be related to.... We're trying to ask the various witnesses this. What is your opinion of how combat ready or combat capable our armed forces are today as compared to ten years ago? I understand there are different missions. I would think it would be more relative to the number of personnel and I suppose to how modern the equipment is and whether you feel the equipment is satisfactory for the various missions.

Could you give an answer to that? In your opinion, how does it compare to ten years ago?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: I was a general officer ten years ago in command of a brigade group, 5 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, Valcartier, with 5,200 troops. In 1992 we conducted a divisional level national exercise in Wainwright, with brigades against brigades, live troops. We were capable of meeting the requirements of certainly the Gulf War. We were capable of conducting operations against the forces that could have been committed to NATO. Our equipment had deficiencies. However, I think the training and certainly the desire was there to make do, as we did during the Second World War and many times before. It's sort of a Canadian trait anyway—to make things happen even if you don't have all the capabilities. It's this work ethic, a gung-ho ethic.

Today, ten years later, there is a lot of brand-new equipment. Some of it is in need of upgrading—mostly the air force, I would contend. We're getting strategic lift, which we never had before. The army has been significantly re-equipped, and is continuing its re-equipment, to be employed I think quite handily both in classic warfare as well as in conflict resolution.

The reserves are far more committed to operations, and thus you have more reservists with medals based on the conflict resolution operations, not necessarily full classic warfare, although they can conduct minor war-fighting capabilities in these conflict resolutions as required.

• 1715

However, there's nobody left. We just spent ten years burning out the forces, particularly the army. We've sucked dry the reserves. We now have reservists going over twice or three times. My contention is that the troops have been committed, have gone through the risks—some have been casualties—and have gained skills in conflict resolution, but they're tired because there's not enough of them to sustain it.

On the other side, on the operational classic warfare side, there has been none, because you haven't had the time to bring the troops out of the rotation of meeting these conflict scenarios to put them into areas where they can actually train in case they have to go to an escalation that might be a war or a Gulf War situation. So we've lost all that training capability and expertise because we don't deploy the brigades, the formations, the divisions, any more to be able to handle those level of troops in the field.

And that's the army, sir. The air force has maintained its levels of F-18 capabilities, its fighting, because it's committed to NORAD and they're at their job all the time. The navy has been quite extensively locked into the Atlantic fleets, and more to the Pacific fleets, actively involved in fishing and all kinds of other stuff, so their level of readiness is, I would contend, quite higher.

Mr. Peter Goldring: But in view of this, and with the expectations of recruiting and the numbers asked for, some 10,000 new recruits, would that be sufficient to allow this normal troop rotation in the areas of conflict, allow the replacement of training capabilities once again? In other words, is 10,000 going to do the job even if we recruited? And I understand we're having difficulty recruiting.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: The first thing is, what jobs do they want us to do? It's not clear to me exactly the first in, first out. If it's to meet the Canadian proposal of 1995 under Monsieur Ouellet at the General Assembly, where we proposed the rapid reaction capability at that time, in which we would send in troops in the crisis, and capabilities, both diplomatic and NGO, for three months or so, situate the scenario there and then let the normal rotation of troops go, if that's what it is, then we're simply being consistent with what we've preached around the world as an instrument to avoid crises going beyond control, or trying to bring them back under control. If that's what we're going to be doing, that's a different scenario from being committed on regular rotations in longstanding missions, which means the number of troops and capabilities that are committed to that.

Your reserves have been reduced also, as the regular force has been reduced. You want to inject thousands of new troops. That will create an incredible bump in experience and expertise, and promotion problems and everything, down the road. You need to build an army capable of fighting classically and conducting these operations, having a reasonable level of competency particularly in war fighting but a high level of competency in conflict resolution.

Mr. Peter Goldring: You mentioned earlier here, before I had to leave, numbers of 180,000 and 90,000 reserves from an earlier white paper. In your expert opinion, what do you think would be the proper number of men and personnel today for Canada's military to do an appropriate job? It wouldn't be 180,000 and 90,000. What would it be?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Yes, because the roles are not the same either. We're not in central Europe any more on the front lines as such.

We went through the 1990s with numbers that were of the late 1980s regular force, which is 25,000 to 30,000. Attrition occurred to the point where, and I speak of the army in this circumstance, there are now...I'm not sure if it's 22,000 or 20,000 left. You have to bring them up to at least that level so that you have units that can be deployed.

I come back to the point raised earlier about cohesiveness and casualty reduction, because the modern casualty in conflict is your PTSD casualty. It's between the ears. They are live, real casualties. And when they're a casualty, the bulk of them can't be redeployed. So you are taking casualties, and in that context you must build units.

• 1720

Right now, the units are being reduced to levels that, my God, remind me of the early 1970s, of very little numbers. So to deploy a unit, you have to bring in a whole bunch of other people from other outfits and hodgepodge these things together.

You have to bring units back up to their normal levels. You have to give the depth to the transport people, the helicopter people, in order to be able to sustain the operations.

I flew in the front of a jet from southern Illinois to Toronto with a P-3 pilot, an Aurora pilot, who had been out for about five years, and an F-18 pilot who has been out for a year and a half. An F-18 pilot, flying for an airline! The two are impossible to imagine. Front-line combat troops of the air force getting out to fly for an airline. And why? Because they're being...and we tried to solve that by throwing more money at it.

One of the big points was the rhythm of operations rotation. There's no life left for them with their families, and so on. They have sustained enormous casualties simply because you're rotating and moving them so much. But we haven't reduced the number of jobs—I don't think we have, anyway; certainly when I was ADM(HR) there were a number of staff jobs needing pilots. Maybe there's also internal stuff to be done.

I believe we could have argued that the air force and navy need capabilities, and the strategic forces also need capabilities to conduct their operations to meet the 1994 white paper. But you had to separate out the army and create a whole new argument for rendering the army capable of meeting these missions and also remaining combat capable in classic warfare.

Mr. Peter Goldring: You mentioned the numbers of 25,000 to 30,000 for the army. What numbers would you be asking for in the reserves?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Double that.

Mr. Peter Goldring: So that's 50,000 to 60,000?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Well, I say that maybe tongue in cheek. What you have to build is a reserve that can give you more than front-line troops, as it's doing now, because if you don't build more depth and more strength in your reserves, you're going to be into mobilization. You don't want mobilization as an up-front requirement. Certainly you don't want to mobilize the country to go to a Gulf War.

So you need the depth in the reserves, more depth than there is currently, and a depth in skills and in numbers to be able to go in there and supplement units, and even send platoons or companies ultimately to these operations of conflict resolution, maybe the third or fourth rotation into an area.

Mr. Peter Goldring: So you're saying—

LGen Roméo Dallaire: It's not 15,000 or 18,000 reservists, because there's an overhead to that. You need 30,000 or 40,000 land reservists in order to be able to sustain the level of operations, and they have to be brought into one army.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Are you saying to reclassify some of these reserve units into other uses, into other operations, rather than the front-line soldier duty?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: No, absolutely not. Simply increase the volume and the skill sets.

Mr. Peter Goldring: Increase the volume.

I think that's it, thank you.

The Chair: General, I'd like to ask a question, if I could.

I had the opportunity to spend the last couple of days in New York, talking to some of the UN people with respect to their peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone. As I'm sure you're aware, that's the largest peacekeeping operation in the world right now, standing at about 13,000 or 14,000 troops, and it's supposed to go up to 18,000 troops.

We have a situation similar to the one you flashed up on the screen in terms of a mandate, the same sort of mandate. It looked like what you had up on the screen was a chapter 6.5 in terms of the rules of engagement, as far as UN forces were concerned.

The situation we find ourselves in—and when I say “we”, I mean the international community—is that we have a lack of willpower to go up to a chapter 7 in a place like Sierra Leone. We have a lot of third world troop-contributing countries. Virtually all of the troops in there right now are from countries like Bangladesh. There will be troops from India, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, troops that don't have the same level of capability, for instance, as NATO troops. Their reluctance to go up to a chapter 7 is based purely on the issue of casualties and the fact that they don't want to put themselves at any significant risk, when they don't see any indication whatsoever that any of the western countries are going to get in there and provide some support.

• 1725

If Canada wants to be supportive of the United Nations in the future, how are we going to deal with that challenge that has been thrown up in places like Africa, where there is not enough will among western states to insert themselves into what you have described here as very messy and complicated conflicts?

LGen Roméo Dallaire: The first thing is that Sierra Leone happened six years after Rwanda, and we had a repeat of the international community's response and the UN's response to the 1994 genocide. It was exactly the same ineffectiveness that was thrown into the maelstrom there in Sierra Leone.

Second, you've also got a single nation that is conducting its operations separately from the UN. Although the French in Rwanda did come under a chapter 7 mandate, they really were operating with ulterior motives in Rwanda. The mere fact that the British didn't join the UN force is one of the grossest slaps in the face to the UN you can have, at a time when so many are arguing that we must reform and give capabilities to the UN, so it can stop being the scapegoat for everybody and provide a proactive capability in these crises. I see no argument that could convince me that the British had to go in alone and do their own show. That is totally against the whole concept of using an international body like the UN, which is still today, in contrast with NATO, the most transparent and impartial body in the world for handling these problems.

Third, we, as a middle power, must be able to move nations above self-interest. We must be able to move them into the humanitarian, human security, human rights sphere. If we do not, we will be fiddling, as we've fiddled. We will go in when it suits us and we'll go in when it doesn't suit us, but mostly we'll go in only if the casualty prognostic is very low or because there is a self-interest reason to be there.

So there's a real mind leap required, led by nations like Canada, like-minded nations, developing nations like Ghana, and so on, who recognize this requirement and who are ready to go in because there's a human dimension to that and not just a self-interest dimension to it. So there's that leadership role that this nation needs to take on, politically, with its capabilities, diplomatically, in the world—because the world wants us to do that, by the way.

Next, we must operate with the UN. There must be no freelancing. We went in 1996; we worked under the rubric of the UN. That doesn't prevent us, working with the UN, from being a leading nation in an operation. Read the results of the 1996 operation in the jungle. Everybody wrote that we should never do it again. I think that's an outright contradiction to what this country wants us to do. The people, 97% at the last poll, want us to do conflict resolution or peacekeeping. So if it also means possibly leading a mission, then we should have the capability to do it, should the government ask us, and not simply try to cobble something together.

The solution to these complex problems in those complex areas with high risk is full support for the UN. It is possibly giving up a little bit of our sovereignty to the UN, so that they can call up troops or capabilities, NGOs, or diplomats, to go into an area. We're giving up sovereignty economically with trade arrangements and so on. We're in battle with them even if we have signed those agreements. And Europeans are into playing with their sovereignty. Why can't we play a bit with our sovereignty to provide a capability to defend the state of humanity? Let the Security Council, or even the Secretary General, be able to pull 5,000 troops from around the world, capable troops, deployable troops, into an area and stabilize it before it goes amok. Give him some teeth.

• 1730

I know there are some world powers who are not particularly keen to see the UN effective. Maybe they don't want another player on the block in the international sphere. Maybe they don't want the UN to have that capability. Maybe it's better to keep the UN as the whipping boy, as the scapegoat, for all the undesirable decisions they are taking in regard to going in. They want to blame it on the ineffectiveness of the UN.

A slide I had was essentially the words of Bill Clinton in Kigali when he went through nearly two years ago. He spent three hours in the airport, with the engines running on Air Force One, and then went to South Africa and spent four days there. He said he really didn't know that there was so much calamity going on. If he didn't know, he wasn't the President of the United States. With the amount of information flowing through the intelligence networks all around, it was impossible for them not to know. But to be able to Pontius Pilate themselves out of these operations, letting thousands upon thousands of people die, and then to throw in billions of dollars of aid to wash away the sense of guilt over not trying to originally save them, is perverse, outright perverse.

In Rwanda I couldn't have $200 million to put my mission on the ground. I was bumming money from other missions. Within three years $11 billion of aid went into that region. That's not good business. Also, we had a lot of people dead—not good business. And if there's $11 billion going in in aid, who is getting that money? Who is actually getting the money for that stuff, that cow corn that's hitting the field? Is there some other entity there that might not be so sorry about having to provide governmental aid?

You can't wash away the blood of Rwanda by aid. And inability to take difficult decisions to stop these crises and these catastrophes, on an enormous scale, and ultimately then to throw a whole whack of money at it to wash away the guilt is outright perverse. That is not what this country is about.

The Chair: General, very briefly, some time ago I spoke to a senior officer in the Canadian Forces, and they said in any particular operation the Canadian Forces might be conducting, let's say, for the sake of argument, a peacekeeping operation, the maximum number of casualties we would be allowed to sustain before pulling out was five or six. I'm not sure if that's an accurate number, because it's been a while since I had that conversation. But it was a very low number.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Well, the Belgians could not sustain 10 in Rwanda within the first 24 hours of the war. And many other countries got gun shy. The Americans could not sustain 18 in Somalia. There were 1.6 million people in uniform there, and they ran. They got a bloody nose and they ran, and left it in the hands of Pakistanis and everybody else.

There is no formula for the tolerance level of a nation, where the nation is not at risk and its diplomats, its NGOs, and its military are going in. I think it's only when the nation has articulated what it's actually doing there and why it's doing it that the level of tolerance will rise. And right now we're not explaining that well at all.

• 1735

In regard to casualties, imagine soldiers going into operations where they're risking their lives knowing that should there be two or three soldiers killed, they'll all be pulled out. Tell me how that inspires the troops to do their job, to take risks, to accomplish the mission. The minute we take so many casualties, we're all pulling out, and geez, we're sorry about the three or five that got killed, but everybody else is turning tail and we're going back home. You don't send people into war zones with that type of philosophy. I told the Belgians I would never forgive them for abandoning me in the worst hour of need.

The Chair: Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: I'd like to end on a rather lighter note. I heard you mention the need for a new vocabulary, for a new philosophy. It must be quite a challenge, particularly within a multinational force where cooperation is a must.

I went to Eritrea and Ethiopia with the minister and I was able to see that it could be a problem. You are right, defining the new terms is very important. The Danish minister had invited us at his place, and we visited the rapid deployment brigade. He gave us some examples which I found very funny. But in the heat of the action, it must be quite difficult, for instance, to agree on the proper negotiating protocol when you arrive at a road block. The typical Canadian soldier is going to get out of his vehicle, listen to the people and talk to them. He is going to ask them why they have put up such a road block and he is going to offer his help. The typical American soldier is going to get out of his vehicle and give the people five minutes to do something before blowing the whole thing up.

LGen. Roméo Dallaire: With 350 men.

Mr. Claude Bachand: Yes. It's a completely different philosophy and that must be quite difficult to manage.

There are also language problems. If somebody says: there's been a minor incident, someone else may think he said: there's been a mine incident, which is of course going to change the course of action. I also noted your example, the word “secure”. If you tell Italians: “Secure that building”, they are going to concentrate on doors and windows, while Americans are simply going to blow the building up.

Can we find a universal language? We'll have at least to try and solve the vocabulary problem. If there are only Canadians and Americans, it doesn't matter too much because they can speak English and understand each other. But if you have Italians, Americans, Danes and Dutch, sometimes there are serious problems not only with the interpretation of new terms, but also to have everybody understand them.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Absolutely. You raised a fundamental issue. If we don't agree on the interpretation of action verbs, in the end, aren't we going to do more harm than good?

I was in command of soldiers from 26 different countries. As the Russians were getting off the plane, I told them I had spent 30 years fighting them, and now, they were working with me. What was their background? Some soldiers who were part of my mission were from countries where human rights were totally ignored, and it was a well-known fact internationally. I asked what the soldiers would do if they came into a village where there were women and children, still alive, but injured. AIDS was everywhere and you could get cuts very easily. I asked what these soldiers would do if they had no plastic gloves. The soldiers of 23 out of 26 countries replied that they would do absolutely nothing. They would let people die. Those who said they would do something to help were from Ghana, Holland and Canada.

There are many philosophies of life. Can you imagine how complex that whole thing may be. There isn't yet a United Nations lexicon. There are many peacekeeping schools. I am saying we are beyond peacekeeping. We are into conflict resolution. We need a new conceptual base, which entails different instruments and different skills at the individual and group level. It's in this context that I'm hoping, through my research, to help structure much more complete agreements than the existing ones on what we call interoperability.

• 1740

The United Nations are doing their best, but we are far from understanding each other. When someone talks about a minor incident, for us, it's not serious, but for someone else, from another country, it might be quite serious. The troops from those 26 countries all had different instructions.

When war and the killing started, three countries had their commander tell me that they were not going to do anything, that they were going to stay in their trenches and wait there until they were evacuated. It really doesn't help you decide what you're going to do.

What are the terminologies, the philosophies the doctrines? I think we have adjusted a lot. We have reached the stage, with 10 years experience behind us, where we can see the complexity getting worse and where we realize that there will be plenty to do around the world. We need a new base, a new dictionary, a new doctrine to solve that problem.

[English]

The Chair: Are there any other questions from committee members?

General, I'd like to reiterate my thanks to you. It's rare that we have a presentation before this committee that is as powerful and as passionate, and I would even say as provocative, as the one you made over the last couple of hours. So again, on behalf of committee, thank you very much.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Thank you, sir.

The Chair: Perhaps we'll see you again at some point in the not too distant future.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: I am sure the committee, as it did with quality of life, is looking at this not only for the betterment of the forces, but with respect to what the Canadian people want their forces to do and the risks it's willing to take. So I wish you nothing but the best in this complex arena you've now entered, with this new generation of operations.

The Chair: Thank you.

LGen Roméo Dallaire: Thank you, sir.

The Chair: The committee is adjourned.