NDVA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 3rd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, April 29, 2004

¹

1530

The Chair (Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.))

Major-General Andrew B. Leslie (Acting Assistant Chief of the Land Staff, Department of National Defence)

¹

1535

The Chair

Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, CPC)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

¹

1540

Mr. Jay Hill

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mr. Jay Hill

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ)

¹

1545

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

¹

1550

Mr. Claude Bachand

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Chief Warrant Officer Eroll Gapp (Land Forces Central Area, Department of National Defence)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mr. Murray Calder

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

¹

1555

Mr. Murray Calder

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

CWO Eroll Gapp

º

1600

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Hon. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. Bill Blaikie

º

1605

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. Bill Blaikie

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. Bill Blaikie

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. Bill Blaikie

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. Bill Blaikie

The Chair

º

1610

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, CPC)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Colonel Mark Hodgson (Army Collective Training Authority, Land Force Doctrine and Training System, Department of National Defence)

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1615

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1620

The Chair

Mr. John O'Reilly (Haliburton—Victoria—Brock, Lib.)

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1625

Col Mark Hodgson

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand

º

1630

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1635

Mr. Claude Bachand

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

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

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1640

Hon. David Price

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. David Price

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. David Price

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Hon. David Price

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Col Mark Hodgson

º

1645

Hon. David Price

Col Mark Hodgson

Hon. David Price

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1650

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

º

1655

The Chair

Mr. Murray Calder

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

»

1700

Mr. Murray Calder

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

»

1705

Mr. Claude Bachand

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

Mr. John O'Reilly

»

1710

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

»

1715

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

Col Mark Hodgson

Mr. John O'Reilly

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

The Chair

MGen Andrew B. Leslie

»

1720

The Chair

Col Mark Hodgson

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

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NUMBER 011

l

3rd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, April 29, 2004

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹  (1530)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.)): I'd like to call to order the eleventh meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs and start with our normal request to all of those equipped with cellphones to disarm them, turn them off, or whatever the right term would be, so that we're not disturbed during the meeting.

    I'm very pleased, on behalf of the committee, to welcome to SCONDVA today Major-General Andrew Leslie, who I think does not need much of an introduction after the excellent work you did, sir, in Afghanistan. He's joined by Colonel Hodgson and Chief Warrant Officer Gapp. Gentlemen, welcome.

    Let me just start by saying what I know members on both sides of the House would want me to say, expressing the gratitude of the Government of Canada, the Parliament of Canada, and the people of Canada to you, Major-General, to the other gentlemen, and to all the forces who have done and continue to do such outstanding work in the cause of peace in Afghanistan. We're very pleased and honoured to have you with us today, and we're happy to have your opening comments.

    Major-General Andrew B. Leslie (Acting Assistant Chief of the Land Staff, Department of National Defence): Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

    If it's permissible, I'll keep my opening comments very brief.

[Translation]

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    I'd like to introduce my command team, that was with me in Kabul. You've already met Colonel Hodgson and the highest ranking serviceman, Chief Warrant Officer Gapp.

    Ladies and gentlemen, your soldiers, the 2,000 soldiers who are now in Kabul and those who were there with that command team, are doing superb work in a country that was almost totally destroyed by hundreds of years of intensely ferocious war.

[English]

    Your soldiers are helping keep people alive, and nothing is more satisfying than that type of work. It's a complex blend, which may well point to the way in which we conduct operations in the future, of peacekeeping, peace support, war fighting, counter-terrorism, and humanitarian support activities, all conducted within a very short period of time.

    Kabul is a shattered city of roughly 3.5 million people, with more arriving every month, because, of course, everyone craves security above everything else, especially when you don't have it. As I say, your soldiers are keeping not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people alive.

    As you know, ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, is currently commanded by Canadian Lieutenant-General Rick Hillier, and as was true when our force first deployed in August, it operates under the United Nations Security Council resolution. So our remit in terms of rule of law is very firm.

    Ninety-nine percent-plus of the Afghan people want us there, because they themselves are thoroughly sick and tired of seeing their children and the elderly, the weak, and the helpless being preyed upon either by the warlords, factionalism, terrorism, or as a result of the grinding poverty that exists in that faraway land.

    I, my command team, and all of the soldiers, the close to 4,000 now--the 2,000 before and the 2,000 since--who have been deployed to Afghanistan feel very proud of the work we've done.

    I'd also like to make a personal comment, and that is to offer my opinion to you that your soldiers, especially the young ones, the ones who go outside the front gates of the camp wearing spotted green cloth, tan, or whatever the circumstance calls for, are very good at this type of operation. I submit to you that we are amongst the best in the world at this very complex, delicate task such as faces us in Kabul.

    But I don't want to leave you with the impression that this is an army-centric mission or an army-centric point of view. People such as Colonel Hodgson, Mr. Gapp, and I are absolutely useless to you unless we can deploy to the mission area. In this case we've received exemplary support from the entire support system here at home, from the political system, which gave us a great deal of money to re-equip ourselves with mission-specific equipment required in the theatre, and of course from the air force, on whose aircraft all our soldiers had to fly to get into that very troubled part of the world. It was a team effort, and I think it was carried off by the young men and women extraordinarily successfully.

    Sir, that concludes my opening comments.

¹  (1535)  

[Translation]

    I would be happy to answer your questions.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Major-General Leslie.

    I'm sure there are a number of questions. We'll start the first round of seven minutes with Jay Hill from the official opposition.

    Mr. Hill.

    Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Through you, I'd also like to welcome Major-General Leslie and his colleagues to the committee.

    I'd like to pass on to you and through you to all of our brave men and women who are serving overseas, not only in Afghanistan but in many other troubled spots around the globe, just how proud we are of you, as the chairman has indicated. I commend those who have served, are serving, and will serve in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

    One of the concerns I've expressed at this committee and indeed in the House of Commons--and I think it's being expressed not only out there in the general public, but even by those who serve--is how overextended the men and women who serve our country are at times. There seems to be a shortage of troops, and we're constantly asking these people to do the near impossible in the sense of constant rotations and deployments. As you're well aware, the Prime Minister has committed our nation to extend our stay beyond August, with another 600 troops for Afghanistan, in addition to the 450 who are serving in Haiti and in many other spots, including Bosnia, the Golan Heights, and Africa. I note that even some senior officers had been quoted prior to this latest announcement as saying they feared that once August was reached, we could be in a position where we could only provide 500 soldiers to overseas missions.

    So I ask you, having served in Afghanistan, if you share those same concerns about these constant rotations and the price our men and women are paying, and their families by extension, by being deployed constantly.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, Afghanistan is of course a dangerous and complex environment, but if it wasn't dangerous and complex, there would be no reason to send our men and women in uniform there to try to help.

    Past August, we are going to be leaving--I believe the latest figure is--around 600, and I, quite frankly, think that's a good thing. Having said that, I am the first to admit that my point of view is biased, having served in Afghanistan, and realizing its strategic importance--not only to Canada, but indeed to a large number of our allies--because, I would submit to you, Afghanistan is the epicentre of international terrorism. Within a 1,000-kilometre circle around Kabul is where, in my opinion, the vast majority of international terror has its point of origin. So it is in all our best interests to make sure we give Afghanistan the three things it needs most.

    First and foremost, it's time. They need a certain guarantee that NATO, all the NATO members--and there are 33 that make up the International Security Assistance Force, and of course there are 19 NATO members per se--all the partners who are currently committed in Afghanistan will stay the course. So they need consistency of effort.

    The second thing they need is security, and they're getting that, though of course they could always use more.

    The third thing they need is reconstruction funds.

    In all three aspects, I'm pretty glad to think that Canada is going to extend itself past August with the 500 or 600. As well, we're dedicating--when I say we, I suppose that as representatives of the Government of Canada it's your money--$250 million to reconstruction activities, starting from August of last year until August of the next year.

¹  (1540)  

    Mr. Jay Hill: Major-General, I didn't want to leave the impression that I or the Conservative Party don't support our efforts there, and the ongoing efforts, and the deployment. I was asking specifically about whether you share the concerns, which all of us have read about in countless studies, that we simply are short of troops, and we're asking so much of these young men and women in these constant rotations. I wonder whether you share that feeling, having served over there, that, quite simply, we need more people.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, I believe we're a blessed nation, and I believe we're really good, as I mentioned earlier, at this complex type of peace support, peacekeeping, humanitarian support, war-fighting activity. So, quite frankly, I'd like to see Canada do a lot more of this type of activity.

    With regard to the specific numbers, I submit that the only real reason why we're going down to 500 or 600 in August of this coming year is because our soldiers are getting tired.

    A former army commander articulated very publicly his opinion, which I share, that we have either too big an army for our funding, or too small an army for our tasks. So one of the two extremes has to give in the near term. Having said that, we're well aware of the defence review that's about to be launched, and we look forward to the coherence that will inevitably flow from that in telling us what it is the people of Canada want us to do, how often, and where.

    Mr. Jay Hill: I only have another minute before I turn the floor over to some of my colleagues.

    I wanted to ask, following the terrible tragedy that claimed the lives of Sergeant Short and Corporal Beerenfenger last October, you were quoted, I believe, as saying that you had some doubts about the Mercedes G wagon. My understanding is that now we have about 100 in theatre. I wonder if you still have some doubts about that piece of kit, and whether you've shared that with others, like the defence minister.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, we have some great new technologies over there that were bought specifically for us, but we have some equipment that's old, not only in Afghanistan but here in Canada, that, quite frankly, in my opinion, needs to be replaced and replaced in the near term.

    The G wagon is certainly an awful lot better than the Iltis, but it takes time to introduce new programs. So about halfway or three-quarters of the way through our mission, the G wagon started to arrive. The G wagon, of course, is a much better version of the administrative support vehicle that it replaces, which is the Iltis. The G wagon is better protected.

    But I, as a professional soldier, and my colleagues with me--you can ask them their opinion--have yet to figure out exactly what type of vehicle we think we need to delve down into the narrow maze of corridors, couloirs, and alleys that comprise a city like Kabul, because an armoured Humvee, for example, which was one of the options, is too wide. It won't fit in the vast majority of those narrow alleyways. On the other hand, something that size and that weight--I think an armoured Humvee is around 12,000 pounds--is really the minimal level that will give you some protection against an anti-tank mine, even though it's not much, because anti-tank mines are designed to kill tanks.

    To answer your question directly, if I may, the G wagon is certainly an awful lot better than the Iltis, but we in the army have yet to resolve amongst ourselves what type of vehicle we want for mission-specific theatres such as Kabul. A light-armoured vehicle, which is not light, is far too large to go in the vast majority of areas that make up where those 3.5 million people live.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Hill.

    Maintenant, monsieur Bachand, sept minutes.

[Translation]

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

    I too would like to welcome Major-General Leslie and his team. I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the general who, during the 1998 ice storm—he was a colonel at the time—came over, as head of the PPCLI, to help out the people in Saint-Jean. I think that we'd still be having a hard time of it had it not been for their contribution. I was much impressed by his leadership, the equipment and the professionalism of his soldiers. So I'd like to take this opportunity to, as they say in English, put it on the record.

    On the other hand, general, you are also on the record as saying you had many missions to carry out in Kabul, peacekeeping, peacemaking, humanitarian aid and sometimes involvement in combat. That means our soldiers have to be very versatile. In Sherbrooke, with my colleague Mr. Price, I was present at some sort of training session. We saw how things are done. We were in Sherbrooke and on patrol and we'd go see the exercises and so on. I'd like you to explain what the typical day of an infantryman is, what time he gets up, what time he goes to bed, what he does during the day, what kind of danger he must confront, how he reconciles the anti-terrorism approach and humanitarian missions like digging wells, repairing buildings and becoming friendly with the population. It's hard to become friendly with a population when you're in a Leopard tank. On the other hand you're a lot closer to the population in an Iltis jeep—that's probably what you were referring to a little earlier—but you're far more vulnerable also.

    Could you describe the typical day of an infantryman? What time he gets up, what his day is made up of, his patrols, where he goes, what kind of people he meets and the different dangers surrounding him?

¹  (1545)  

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: First, sir, it was an honour for us to work with you during the ice storm. It was a really unique and really satisfying experience. We thank you for having given us the opportunity. All the soldiers of 1^st Brigade were happy to be there.

    You've asked me to describe a typical day in Kabul for an infantryman. I'll tell you about a 24-hour period because you must understand that days don't stop nor do patrols. We work 24/24.

    For example, the soldiers wake up around 5:00 a.m. and after breakfast they prepare to go out on patrol. That procedure takes about 90 minutes. There are rehearsals, group discussions of about 10 soldiers in the section to plan their action in case they are attacked by terrorists or warlords. If there are explosions in the streets, if they lose their sergeant or their master corporal, then what will they do? What operation method will they use if there's a tragedy? Then, around 8:00 or 8:30 a.m., they go out. Each patrol lasts five or six hours.

    There are two kinds of patrol. There are those who walk around in Kabul's corridors, the very small streets that are only about two metres wide. During the day, there are hundreds of thousands of people all around the place. It's unbelievable: there are people everywhere, everywhere and there are always more coming in every week from other areas in Afghanistan because they're looking for the safety that your soldiers can give them in Kabul.

    In the mountains, there's almost no one, but those are the areas where you'll find the terrorist elements trying to penetrate the sanitary cordon surrounding Kabul to disappear into the crowd and melt into the population.

    So the infantrymen patrol for five or six hours. When they get back, after the patrol, they're still facing another 60 to 120 minutes of action. The members of the patrols discuss things with their information officers and their chain of command. They tell them what they saw in the streets or in the mountains.

    They take a small break to eat and, most of the time, they go out on a second patrol lasting anywhere from two to six hours. Most of the time, if they're patrolling in the morning, they leave that same night on another patrol. During the night, there is no one in the mountains, as I've said, and it's the same thing in Kabul. People there are so afraid of being out in the street that as soon as the sun goes down there's almost no one walking in the streets or anything like that. It's the same thing for the police officers and the militia men residing in Kabul. You have to insist if you want the Afghan authorities to accompany our soldiers when they go out on patrol because it's an extremely dangerous place.

    After a day that lasts about 18 hours, the soldiers take a small break to sleep or to do some maintenance on the vehicles or the weapons systems. And all that goes on seven days a week.

¹  (1550)  

    Mr. Claude Bachand: Is the training you get before going over there adequate and does it serve to prepare you properly for the kind of action that you've just described?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir, I think that the training level was superb. I'm responsible for all the bad things but I'm not responsible for the success of their training. The responsibility for the success of that training belongs to the people around me. They're the big chiefs and they're the ones who showed that leadership to ensure that the soldiers were properly trained.

    There's also General Devlin who was the officer commanding the 2^nd Brigade during my turn of duty, and now it's General Lacroix who is commanding the 5^th Brigade from Valcartier and who is acting as the commander of Kabul's Multinational Brigade.

    Our training lasts about three months and is done in different places. In our ranks, the training was mostly done in Wainwright and Petawawa. The excellent soldiers of the Van Doos, for the most part, trained somewhere in the U.S.A. and also in Sherbrooke and Valcartier.

    An hon. member: In Fort Bragg?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Exactly, sir, Fort Bragg.

[English]

    The Chair: Merci, Mr. Bachand.

    Now we'll go over to Mr. Calder for seven minutes, please.

    Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and gentlemen, welcome. It's always a great pleasure to come to this committee, because as I can say for everybody around this table, we're very proud of the job you do.

    November of last year I had a chance to talk to some of the reservists who had been over in Kabul and I was asking them a few questions of what it was like. They showed me a few pictures, and one thing I noticed with a lot of interest was that instead of being dressed in desert cloth they were dressed in jungle cloth, in the greens. We had a very vigorous debate here about sending our troops over with greens instead of tan. So I'd like a comment on why in fact they are wearing the greens.

    You were also talking about the G wagon, the 60 that are over there right now. I would hope they're doing a good job, because I know the Americans ran into the same problem when they had to refit 250 M150s because the Humvees would not fit into the streets. Perhaps you could make a further comment on that.

    The third question is.... I know what the terrain is like over there, and we're going through the debate right now on the purchase of the Strykers. I'm wondering, if we had the Strykers right now, would they in fact have a role over there?

    I'll leave that to start with.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Mr. Chair, I was the task force commander and the decision to go in green was mine. We had tans and they stayed in our barrack boxes, for most of the soldiers. Certain select soldiers used them for certain specific missions, when they went up in the mountains, but I don't think I ever wore mine.

    I don't think you ever wore yours, Mr. Gapp, did you?

    Chief Warrant Officer Eroll Gapp (Land Forces Central Area, Department of National Defence): No.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: The decision was mine, based on a variety of factors. First and foremost, when we got there, despite our excellent international reputation as peacekeepers and peace-support specialists in faraway places, the vast majority of Afghan citizens had never heard of us.

    There's an 80% illiteracy rate there, and a whole lot of other people wear tans, so a lot of us were fairly keen to make the point that we were Canadian--and I think now they all recognize the Canadian flag. Ninety-nine percent of the people are absolutely delighted when they see a soldier wearing green or wearing the Canadian flag in their vicinity. The very small minority, the terrorists, the criminals who don't like us there, of course, are not happy when they see Canadians, and quite frankly, that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

    So the decision to wear greens rests with me, solely.

    Mr. Murray Calder: That's the same answer I had.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, and some of my soldiers were growling at me about it. About once a month Mr. Gapp and I would have a big group hug with the soldiers, which was a big speech, and it would be two-way.

    And you have to trust me. I've known, as has Mr. Gapp, some of these soldiers for 20 years, and they're not shy. On the other hand, once you explain to them exactly why you're doing that which you're doing, most of them agree. Some never do, by the way. So that's the first reason.

    The second reason is, in a downtown maze of alleyways that makes up the vast majority of the patrol regions, the green uniform literally disappears at night. During the day we want to be seen, because in a population of 3.5 million people, where there are hundreds of thousands out in the streets during the day, whether or not you're in tan or green, you actually do want to stand out so people can get the sense that there are soldiers around them, protecting them, protecting the weak and the innocent.

    At night, though, it's an entirely different affair. The only people moving about at night are us, those who we're supporting--the Afghan police or the Afghan national army--and very unpleasant people. So you do not want to have a surprise coming your way; you would much rather surprise them. So our young men and women put on their body armour, protective vests, get their night vision equipment sorted out, and then they head out into those streets wearing green. And they are extraordinarily difficult to see, because there are no lights, nor do we want to use the lights, because when we creep up on people, more often than not, they're unpleasant.

    Mr. Gapp and I went out on I don't know how many patrols, and I think initially some of the soldiers had questions about the tans--why won't we wear them?--but we were wearing greens.

    The current commander may well change this, and that, quite frankly, is his call, but my call was to go in greens.

    Does that answer your...?

¹  (1555)  

    Mr. Murray Calder: Very well.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: The G wagon is doing a much better job than the Iltis is. But if I can relate that to the tragedies that we and others have suffered, a G wagon will not protect you much, in my opinion, against an anti-tank mine, and there are a lot of mines in Afghanistan--somewhere between 7 million and 11 million--making it, I believe, the most heavily mined country in the world.

    So we are thinking through right now what type of vehicle, relatively narrow, modular, that you can add armour onto or off of

[Translation]

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: to ensure presence, as your colleague indicated.

[English]

that will cover that sort of spectrum between keeping in contact with the people and wrapping yourself in armour. If you wrap yourself in armour and roar down the main streets, you're not actually doing your job.

    The Chair: Mr. Gapp, did you want to add anything?

    CWO Eroll Gapp: Mr. Chair, from a soldier's perspective, we know that the Iltis is old, and we have the G wagon. The one concern that our soldiers have--I passed this on to General Leslie, and as a matter of fact, I passed it onto Army Council last week--is that the roof does not come off. Right now they're hoping in the future to make this happen. The soldiers loved the Iltis for one reason. You could put the windows down. You could put your guys in there, usually three or four, and you had all-around protection. It was easy to get out of. They could react if they came under fire or were ambushed. They knew that; it was always there in their minds when they went out.

    In the case of the one that hit the mine that killed Short and Beerenfenger, Corporal Stirling said, I think it was to Canada AM, if he had been in a closed vehicle he probably wouldn't be alive today, with the ballistic blanket there. It's not that the soldiers...they're looking forward to the G wagon, but they also have concerns that the top doesn't come off. I don't know if they're using them for patrolling. But there was never any time with the Iltis that any of them ever refused to get into it.

    You have to remember that it's just a mode of transportation, and as General Leslie said, the best way for us to win the hearts and minds over there, especially in the first two or three weeks, which were critical, was to get out there and walk around to show that we were Canadians. They thought we were Americans. In one village, when General Leslie and I walked by a shop, one of the locals called us Ruskies. That was a big concern, because they hated the Russians. Of course, we went in there and told them, showed them the flag, and that was it.

    So the G wagon and these other ones, sir, are just a mode to get people from A to B. But the soldiers, as you said, can't wrap themselves up in armour. If we do, we may as well not go over there.

    That was a big thing, sir.

º  (1600)  

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Do I have the time to try to answer the third question?

    The Chair: Yes, go ahead.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, you asked a question with regard to the Stryker, whether if we had had the Stryker, the medium gun system, I would have asked for it to be deployed as part of the force, and the answer is yes. Probably not in large numbers, but as with all such combat equipment, you want to have a broad range of capability there to cater for the worst case. If things got really unpleasant in Kabul...and don't forget there are a large number of factional armies under the direct control of the various warlords in and around Kabul that I and others dealt with on a daily basis.

    They have tanks; they have rocket launchers; they have guns. If things devolved down to the worst case, you wouldn't have time to fly additional equipment in. Very often, by having such combat potential there, you don't have to use it. And we really don't want to use these systems. But if we have to, it will keep our people alive.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    You've been here just a few minutes and you've cleared up a number of misconceptions about our equipment and uniforms. So I think we're all finding this quite interesting. Mr. Calder has asked his usual good questions.

    Now, I want to go to the veteran in service on this committee, Mr. Blaikie.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I want to begin by adding my own appreciation for the work that's being done in Afghanistan by the Canadian troops, and by you, Major-General Leslie, when you were in command there.

    And I want to second the comments of the chair. Perhaps we should have had you here earlier, because I think it shows one of the inadequacies of political discourse that we could have engaged in so much hullabaloo in so many different places about whether the Canadians should have been wearing greens or tans, and whether they had tans and so on. You spent five minutes explaining it and everybody is nodding their heads saying, “Oh, I get it”. Now, there might have been a political dimension to why it wasn't explained at the time, but we'll leave that alone.

    I have just a couple of questions, really. Did you find that the opening up of the war in Iraq created any change in attitude in the people of Afghanistan toward ISAF, or was it a neutral event? Did it have any consequence there?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Well, sir, I'm sure there were some, but it was not to the extent that I personally anticipated. As you know, the Afghanis, especially the four major ethnic groups--there are many more than that, but the four major ones are the Pashtun, the Hazari, the Tagik, and the Uzbek--are not Arabic. They are very proud Muslims. They are a very proud, survivalist, graceful people who live by well-established codes of conduct, who have evolved over the centuries through self-preservation into, very recently, very strong factional groups. Most of their energies are dedicated inward, not at looking at the larger context, especially outside the borders of Afghanistan and their six immediate neighbours.

    So the impact of the war in Iraq was, somewhat to my surprise, minimal. There are so many issues that the poor Afghan transitional authority and President Karzai have to deal with that they consume the entirety of their energies. Of course, the problems that President Karzai and his teams are dealing with are horrendous in nature. I happen to think he's a great man, walking a very narrow path between bringing his nation forward into a calmer and more secure environment and disaster. It still could go either way, which is why I get back to the three things that I think Afghanistan needs. They are consistency and patience from all of us--NATO and all those who are interested in helping--security, and reconstruction activity.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie: I've gotten the odd e-mail recently from Canadian Forces members. I might have the details wrong on this, so forgive me if I'm inaccurate, but is it at Camp Mirage that they feel they're being left out of the tax exemption? They claim they're an integral part of the mission in Afghanistan. This may not be something you want to comment on, at least at the level of policy, but Camp Mirage, where I'm getting these e-mails from, is a support system for the troops in Afghanistan, is it not?

º  (1605)  

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir. Camp Mirage is a support base that has a significant number of principally air force pilots, mechanics, and ground crew. Its location is classified, mainly at the request of the host nation. It does wonderful work.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie: I was just going to ask you where it is, but now I won't.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Please don't do that, because I'll tell you I'm not allowed to say.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie: I'm not interested.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: I'd get in trouble, and it just wouldn't be fun.

    They do great work; they really do. I guess in my introductory comments I was trying to make the point that although we're army people, we are useless if we can't get there and we can't be supported and sustained, and in this case, that's the job of the air force.

    Vis-à-vis the tax issue, to be honest, I don't know too many of the details, because the vast majority of soldiers who were there when we were there are not actually eligible for that tax benefit. It kicks in on January 1, and most of our people came no later than the 20th.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie: Yes, it's because of the timeline.

    I have one last question, Mr. Chairman.

    I noticed an article in the paper today about a number of reservists going to Afghanistan from, I believe, the 38^th Brigade in western Canada. The article spoke of reservists being recruited for this purpose in Saskatchewan. I'm asking, as a Winnipeg MP, would it not also be the case that there will be reservists from Winnipeg who will be recruited, trained, and ultimately selected?

    The article suggested not everyone who's recruited is going to actually end up there, because there's some tough training and not everybody will actually end up in Kabul. Would it also be the case that reservists from Winnipeg will be heading to Kabul? Actually, it's somewhere outside Kabul, I think, if I remember the article correctly.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, on our mission, we had approximately 50 reservists. They mainly did civil-military cooperation efforts and humanitarian support and reconstruction activities.

    When we deploy the next force, sometime in August, the numbers may well be slightly higher. They will, in the main, be drawn from across the entirety of Land Forces Western Area, which is not only Manitoba, but Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. The reason it's relatively confined, in the sense of most of them coming from the west in August, is because of the army's deployment concepts.

    When we went overseas, we were a formed team ahead of time. Mr. Gapp and I were the command team for Land Forces Central Area, based in Toronto. Colonel Hodgson was the commander of the support group. Of course, General Devlin and his team were from Petawawa, as was 3 RCR, which actually acted as the heart of the issue. They picked us all up and, after a lot of training, put us down in Kabul. The same philosophy applies for each of the three areas with brigade groups.

    To answer your question, and I apologize for taking so long, I suspect the soldiers will be drawn from the entirety of western Canada.

    Hon. Bill Blaikie: Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

    We're going to start a second round of questions. On clarification, before we do go to the second round, on the vehicle, I want to be sure we understood you, General Leslie. You indicated the Iltis has some limitations in terms of protection, but it's pretty good in terms of getting in and around the limited spaces you're dealing with, where the LAV has the protection, but it's too big. You indicated that you're trying to come to grips with what kind of a vehicle is needed. I'd like to pursue that and have you clarify it for the committee, if you would. What is happening? Is there some serious analysis taking place to have another vehicle that will meet the need you're describing?

    We wouldn't want to see your troops in that situation again, if it can be avoided. Could you clarify that for us?

º  (1610)  

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Absolutely. A variety of western armies are wrestling with the same set of issues. It's a balance between protection, mobility, and ability, as Mr. Gapp said, to interact with the locals. If you disappear under armour, be it a wheeled vehicle or a track vehicle, you can't do your job.

    Don't forget our job is not to drive up and down the main streets shooting at people. Our job is to get out there and give the local instruments of authority the support they need so they can get their nation up on its feet. When we go over to places like Kabul, our job is to help the local authorities develop the institution's respect for the rule of law, the judiciary, and the police force.

    On the vehicle issue, as some of our allies are finding, you need a relatively small platform that you can do different things to. We don't know what the answer is yet. I'm sure there are some out there on the commercial market, or people are going to be working hard towards designing and offering something to a variety of armed forces, but we are not there yet.

    It's not a question of telling the people I work for in National Defence Headquarters that “I want this”. The issue exists, but I don't know what to tell them yet. I can't point my finger at one and say “I want 50 of those, as an operational stock”. We'll get there soon, but there are a bunch of considerations, trade-offs, as I mentioned, among weight, protection, firepower, width, and height. We'll get there soon, but in the interim, we'll go with what we have, as our allies are doing.

    The Chair: Thank you very much for clarifying that.

    Now we'll go to a second round of questions, five minutes per member.

    Mrs. Wayne, please.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, CPC): I note that you stated that every one of your troops there had both uniforms, green and tan, right from the beginning. Was it at the very beginning, or was it after you were over there for awhile that you were able to give them both uniforms?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: No, ma'am, I deployed with two sets of tans, and so did Mr. Gapp. Of course, we're the bosses, so if we get it, that means all our soldiers should have gotten it before.

    I was the task force commander, but I didn't actually do most of the work. The guy who did do all of the work is Mark Hodgson, and of course he would know that type of detail.

    Mark.

    Colonel Mark Hodgson (Army Collective Training Authority, Land Force Doctrine and Training System, Department of National Defence): When soldiers deployed to the mission, ma'am, they were all to get a tan uniform as well. A few people didn't, but they were the odd-sized people. So taking into account some very large sizes or very small sizes, there may have been a few soldiers who didn't get it initially. The entire force was kitted in Petawawa, except for a few soldiers for whom we couldn't get the sizes. That was carried out later, once they were made.

    So as General Leslie said, the force did deploy with the tan uniform.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: You were mentioning that 600 of our men and women were going to be over there. Are we going from 2,000 to 600, or is it just that 600 of the 2,000 who were over there are being replaced?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Ma'am, as you know, we deploy for usually six months at a time. There will be 6,000 staying until roughly August--the exact date of their return has yet to be finalized--at which point we'll be going down to around 600. However, it will be a new group of 600 arriving.

º  (1615)  

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I see.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: So all 2,000 of those hard-working men and women are coming home in August or thereabouts--

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Good.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: --to be replaced by another group coming from the west. The 2,000 now come mainly from Secteur du Québec, based in the main on the superb soldiers provided by the Royal 22nd Regiment, and everyone else, but mainly from Quebec. In August they'll come mainly from western Canada.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Okay.

    On the problem in Afghanistan, I know you mentioned that there are four different groups of people there. How do you see stability coming about? Does it have to do with religious things? Or just what is it that has caused all of this problem in Afghanistan?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Well, a variety of historical trends have created the conditions under which the poor people of Afghanistan currently find themselves. First and foremost, Afghanistan has six fascinating neighbours--Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan, and China--but above and beyond those neighbours are two key concepts.

    The first concept is the image of it being a crossroads of empire. For the last two millennia, Afghanistan has been a nexus, if you will, of political and military links that people have used as a means of traversing from north to south, from east to west, or from south to north in their various competing attempts to acquire either property and territorial gains or power.

    To give you several recent examples...or recent in Afghani terms. Don't forget, they had complex underground cisterns and irrigation systems at a time when my ancestors were painted blue, running around and clubbing each other with rocks. So they are a reflection of a very sophisticated civilization, until, for example, the arrival of Tamerlane and the Golden Horde in the 13th century, which decimated entire swaths of the population, piling heads fifty man-heights high outside the former statues of Bamian, which have since been destroyed by the Taliban. So the crossroads of empire is still very much extant.

    The second concept is one that relates to something called “the great game”. That takes us forward to the latter half of the 17th century and the 18th and 19th centuries, wherein the Russian empire at the time was seeking to expand from north to south, and the British empire, through the British East India Company and the Raj, was seeking to maintain their territorial holds in the subcontinent of India. Of course, Pakistan didn't exist in those times.

    As a matter of fact, Andrew, can I have that map?

    Sir, am I permitted to show a map?

    The Chair: Absolutely.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: The Durand line....

    Ma'am, I could go on for hours like this. I'll try not to, but I love the country, and I'm very passionately interested in trying to articulate what it is, and why it's so important for us to be there.

    So if you'll permit me, Mr. Chairman, for just a couple of seconds--

    The Chair: Mrs. Wayne has a knack for asking these very interesting questions.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: I mentioned the neighbours--Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Pakistan--and now I'll get back to the great game. The Durand line of 1893, which sought to provide a continuous border, a block, if you will, under British auspices, by British diplomats based in India in 1893, linked China to Iran, thereby stopping the Russian expansion from north to south. Within the next few decades--and a little bit of a fracas preceded that--the British found that Afghanistan was fairly easy to get into but really difficult to get out of.

    I guess the point of all this is that over the last two millennia, a variety of armies have marched through Afghanistan and for a very brief period of time thought they imposed their will on the Afghan people. But these ethnicities, who themselves have further subdivisions, would band together and make life thoroughly miserable for those who thought they were temporarily in charge. No one, in my experience, has succeeded in imposing a centralized rule of law in Afghanistan, or not yet; it's coming through President Karzai's team.

    I guess the essence of the story is that Afghanistan has a long way to go right now to pull itself back up to where it was some time ago and to progress beyond that. The issue, though, in my opinion, is not one of Muslimism or Christianity. The vast majority of Muslims--I'm talking now of Afghani Muslims--despise the al-Qaeda. They do not have a lot of time for the extremely fanatical elements of the Taliban.

    So it's a very refined nation, although it can be at times fairly brutal in terms of its treatment of elements who are visiting or trying to pass through. That brings me to another point I'd like to try to make, that we're there because the Afghan people want us there. We're there to help them. If there should ever come a time when the Afghan government doesn't want us there, then we have to leave.

º  (1620)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

    We go now to Mr. O'Reilly, please, for five minutes.

    Mr. John O'Reilly (Haliburton—Victoria—Brock, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    Welcome, and thank you very much for coming--although I don't know if I forgive you yet or not, because I think you're the guy who sent me up a mountain in a vehicle that was wider than the road. My instructions were to undo my seat belt, keep the door fairly close to open, and keep the windows down. As we made our way up there, I thought maybe there was a place for you that I could think of at the time, but we made it there and got back down. I still don't thank you for it, but it was quite an experience to see how many countries you could see from a 7,000-foot level--once you got over your fear of knowing that you had to go back down again.

    I want to just go through a couple of things that I don't think people are aware of. When our military goes overseas, or anywhere, and they set up a camp, you first of all want a safe environment. But you also need, I was told, a safe source of water. So we have obviously some kind of a purification system. I mean, the garbageman doesn't go by every day. In the countries I visited over there, there's no system of police, there's no court system, there's no corner store you can go to. It's just very chaotic.

    In fact, I saw two cars in a lot that had Ontario licence plates on them. They were all stripped down. I took down the licence numbers, checked them out--you were with me on that one, Mr. Chairman--and they had been stolen. They were on someone's insurance list. So I know that you deal with a set-up that is very foreign to what we have in Canada.

    So you install a sewer system, because usually there isn't one, you have a recycling facility, you have a communication facility. You actually set up a little city. I think people don't understand that.

    I also know that a number of those countries don't have ice cream, because four Czechoslovakians had their heads in the ice cream buckets when we went into the area. The explanation was that they don't have ice cream, so when they come to visit, the first place they go is the kitchen for the ice cream tray.

    I wonder if you could just expand on that. I had wanted to know why we had the videos and map of the area. That was going to be my first question, but you've already gone through that. And I think I'd confirm that one of the statues or monuments that was being guarded when we were there was...a slaughter from the 12th century or something. So this isn't new. If you go back into the history of the area, pretty near all of the conflicts of the world started in that troubled area for some reason or another, right back to the 12th century.

    I also want to know how close we are to a general resolution with the warlords and that sort of thing. But those are kind of political. As well, where are we on the training of the police force?

    I wonder if you could expand on what you actually do to set up a camp when you go there, because I think that's a very interesting thing that most Canadians aren't aware of.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: There are two main Canadian camps in Kabul. One is almost in its entirety purely Canadian. That's called Camp Julian. The second is an annex that we built onto the large multinational camp, mainly German-run, which is out at a place called Camp Warehouse.

    Actually, Colonel Hodgson, in his capacity as the contingent commander, acted as the manager of the camp, if you will. He did many other things, but that was one of his biggest jobs. But before I turn it over to him to answer some of your specifics, sir, I'll tell you that Camp Julian has cost you a lot of your tax dollars. And I'm not in the least bit shy about either asking for more money, if I think I need it, or about trying to get as much as I can for the soldiers who are deployed. The reason it costs a large amount of money...and it has nice facilities. The soldiers sleep in tents, but they're nice tents. The camp costs a lot of money because if things get really unpleasant in Kabul, either factional fighting or devolution back down to civil war, there's nowhere to go. There's only one way in and one way out, and that's through the international airport, because both Pakistan and Iran won't allow egress or ingress via land route. So if things get really unpleasant, everyone's going to Camp Julian.

    So it's not really a camp; it's a fortress. I'm pretty sure all of us would be much more comfortable knowing that our young men and women are behind very hefty, robust defences and bunkers than out in the open. The area where the camp is deployed was extraordinarily badly damaged by artillery and rocket fire just a couple of years ago. By extraordinarily damaged, I mean 25,000 to 30,000 people lost their lives in the immediate area of the camp as a result. So we tend to try to learn from lessons of history.

    Perhaps Mark can answer the specifics about water and sanitation and sewage and how the camp actually worked and was set up.

º  (1625)  

    Col Mark Hodgson: I'll do it quite quickly. Within a few minutes, I can probably cover it, I think.

    First off, I have to mention the theatre activation team. This is a Canadian Forces resource that is specifically designed to set up new missions. So Op ATHENA was a new mission, and the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff activated the theatre activation team, which is based in Kingston, to go to Kabul and start negotiations to find a place where we could live, operate, and conduct our duties.

    That team was commanded by Colonel Pouliot, and it deployed with recce in about the April timeframe, and started looking for a location. The sites were chosen, those being the Camp Julien site, in the Darul Aman region of Kabul in the south, and Camp Warehouse, the annex that was added on to the Kabul Multinational Brigade.

    The theatre activation team brings specialized personnel for administration, logistics support, security, and it also brings people who actually start up the initial contacts for the conduct of the mission—the operational and tactical requirements that are needed. So in terms of water, they bring water purification assets; they bring generators for electricity; they bring all of the things that are needed to set up accommodation, and so on, whether it be contracted or through military resources. The aim is to have a camp ready for when the Roto 0 personnel arrive. So when the first personnel from Op ATHENA arrived in July, that camp provided shelter, hot food, and hot showers. For a soldier, that's pretty darned good. It wasn't finished, but they didn't have to worry about that; it meant they could get off the plane, go to the camp, and the basics were provided, and they could get on with the mission. And that's what happened.

    Over the six months that we were deployed, the camp got better and better as we worked on it and the contractors developed it. But the services, as I said, whether they be electricity, admin requirements, or sewage pumping trailers, they were all provided, and we could all do it internally. But I have to say as well that Kabul had been set up in the December 1 timeframe for ISAF—making it a fairly mature mission—so there were a lot of contactors in the city to provide just about everything, including the food we ate, which was contracted through a contractor in the city who brought the food from Europe. So the ice cream you mentioned was done through a contractor and flown in from Europe. The sewage pumping was also done through a contractor. Our water was provided through wells that we dug, but initially it was provided through bottled water from a contractor. So a lot of requirements, once we got on the ground, were provided by various contractors in the city.

    Security is an important aspect. I mention that because Camp Julien's force protection was the best in the mission and was quite clearly shown to be so by other members of ISAF. I think it shows a model for the future. And the beauty of Camp Julien is that it can be scaled up or down, depending on the size of the mission. So for a new mission, the structure of the camp can be expanded for a larger force, or it can be shrunk for a small force, if it's just a company group, for example.

    I hope that answers your questions.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly.

    Monsieur Bachand, pour cinq minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Translation]

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

    Now that we've been provided with a description of an infantryman's day, I'd like us to address another matter which is very important for me and it's called negotiation. You said earlier, General, that if ever we had a very bad surprise and if things took a turn for the worse, we would have to take certain steps. Now, I don't know if its because I was an educator that I'm saying this but usually when you walk into a classroom, you know who is going to be causing problems and who probably will not. Normally, you tend to negotiate with the one who might be causing the problems. In my opinion, it is an important thing that we don't talk about enough.

    Of course, it is important for the soldiers who are patrolling to make their presence felt. However, from what you were saying earlier, it seems to be a rather difficult environment. You were talking, amongst other things, about factions who have their own cultural code. There are warlords and different factions. I'd like you to explain how it's possible, in that context, to do prevention work.

    You almost gave us a history lesson earlier on, but you must also certainly know the recent history. I'd like to know who, in that country or around Kabol, has enough fire power to present problems. What strategy is being used with those people to avoid too many surprises? Are regular meetings being organized? Do we know them? Is the information being given the intelligence services being processed and used to decide to go meet given individuals? Are you the ones undertaking those negotiations?

    There's also the matter of the translators. In this country, we greatly appreciate our translators but I imagine there's a language problem over there. How do you proceed with the translators? Are those people hired? Can we trust them in the context of a negotiation? Tell us a bit about how you go about those negotiations in order to practise prevention.

º  (1630)  

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: For the training period, we've had help from Afghans who immigrated here, to Canada. Besides, there are a lot of us who have carefully studied the culture, the history, the tensions and the links existing between the main groups of warlords now co-existing in Afghanistan. In terms of historical knowledge, there was nothing new, but in my case as well as for the majority of the soldiers it was our first experience in Kabol. It's not our first Canadian experience, as the excellent soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of PPCLI were in Kandahar about 18 months before us. Most of us, without being amateurs, were, shall we say, students of the subject.

    As for the company and platoon commanders and, at a higher level, the battalion and brigade commanders, at the ISAF level, at mine and that of my commanding officer, about 30% of our day was spent negotiating or discussing, amicably or not, as the case may be, with the warlords as well as the ministers and representatives of the Afghan Transitional Authority. We did not hold strictly to military affairs. We also examined political and economic questions and discussions could deal with the priority given to financial assistance for development. Most of our days were spent meeting with those people.

    As for our intelligence capacity, what we brought with us over there is really enormous. It is we, the Canadian forces, who have the most important and tactical intelligence system in Kabol. Those systems are very classified, but the fact remains that most of the intelligence comes from personal contact that our soldiers have established with the residents of Kabol.

    It's the master corporal in charge of the patrol who, every day, holds discussions with the local police chief, the mullahs, the elders and the men. They're the ones who provide information to the master corporal and the sergeant about the activities of the warlords or terrorists in our area. Those are the results of the methods used to train our soldiers. They are there, close to the people and they participate in their lives.

    As for the translators, we have hired some 80 local translators. Can we trust them? Not at all. They are excellent people, but we have to be very careful about the information being passed between the translators and the local citizenry. We're quite aware of that. In fact, for most of our soldiers, master corporals, sergeants and officers, this is not the first mission but rather a second, third or even fourth mission.

    Have I answered your questions, sir?

º  (1635)  

    Mr. Claude Bachand: I've heard it said that in Bosnia, we had invited the main clan lords to give them a fire-power demonstration. They were told we were extending a friendly invitation with donuts and coffee and other delicacies to come and see a practice and that we'd be honoured by their presence. I've heard it said that having seen the fire-power in question they had considerably settled down after that. Are you also using that tactic?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir. I can see that you have a really excellent grasp of our operations. Every time we fired off cannons, shells, machine guns, anti-tank missiles, rockets or whatever else, we'd invite the war lords and the local representatives of the police and militia to tell them that we're there to help them but also "don't push us around".

    One of our sayings,

[English]

“firm, fair and friendly”,

[Translation]

    was meant to transmit that philosophy. We held many demonstrations, but besides that we often met with the elders, the mullahs. Generally speaking, Colonel Hodgson organized meetings every week with the elders of the villages located near the Canadian camps or on our patrol routes.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Merci, Monsieur Bachand.

    The parliamentary secretary for defence is Mr. David Price, and I know he has some questions now.

    Mr. Price.

    Hon. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    And thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

    General Leslie, it's nice to see you again. Of course, we all had great reports of what did go on over there, and we thank you very much. I think it is important that you be here, though. I know you've been speaking around the country quite a bit and that you have got the message out, but I think it is important that you be here to get it on the record.

    As you mentioned, we're going into a defence review. I think this gives us a great opportunity, because once the defence review gets through NDHQ, it will end up coming here, and we'll be discussing it here and talking to witnesses. This gives us good background on what you need, particularly in the changing environment of war fighting, peacekeeping...and the list goes on forever.

    You were the commander of quite a few different countries at one point under NATO. One of the things we're looking at in NATO right now is how to find a way to homogenize the rules of engagement of all of the different countries. I guess that's my question to you. How did you find working with all of those different countries while having a whole series of rules of engagement that they had to work with?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: There is documentation out there on a generic NATO rule of engagement, but NATO is, as you know, a very large, very complex, sometimes cumbersome, military bureaucracy.

    By the way, it happens to work better, in my opinion, than any other previous complex military alliance of its size.

    But very often there is a certain amount of difficulty in getting all 19 nations—and soon to be more—to agree to their rules of engagement. As long as national rule for engagements fell within that framework, as the deputy commander responsible to my commander for the day-to-day operations of the forces wearing the NATO hat, you could get on with business.

    Having said that, the Canadian rules of engagement were very robust. So they were a valuable instrument allowing our soldiers to do what had to be done, and I would not like to see our rules of engagement watered down to cater to some of the other nations' particular concerns. Despite our having 2,000 soldiers on the ground and being the single largest contributor, very often in NATO, with one nation, one vote, a nation that may only have had 15 or 20 soldiers on the ground might object to a certain aspect of our rules of engagement. Well, that's their business.

    I felt very comfortable that our rules of engagement gave us the instruments to do what we had to do.

º  (1640)  

    Hon. David Price: Through you, Mr. Chair, right now the NATO transformation is working very much on trying to make that NATO template that you had a little more solid, so that it's a little easier as countries go in.

    But actually, you were also working with the Partnership for Peace group. Were they able to use the same template, or did you have a lot of difficulty getting them to fit?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, there are 33 nations in ISAF in our time. Some of the nations had national caveats, things they could or could not do. You'll forgive me if I don't mention specific nations, because I think that would be outside this—

    Hon. David Price: No, absolutely.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: For example, a certain nation would refuse to allow its soldiers to step from one side of the street to the other, because it was outside of their police jurisdiction that they were assigned to patrol. This is enormously frustrating, because of course you have, like all soldiers everywhere, worked up contingency plans. If one groups gets into trouble, they want to rely on their friends right next door to come and give them a hand right away. If you can't rely on them, then you have to seek other means of doing so.

    Another example is, certain nations—not many—would not allow their soldiers to go out at night. Criminals, terrorists, unpleasant elements operate mainly at night. If they're not allowed to go out at night, then, arguably, why are they there? But that was not a nation that actually had active patrolling forces, so it wasn't a crisis.

    You see some of the practical constraints that can kick in. Those are not part of the rules of engagement, but they are national caveats that are imposed either formally or informally by their nations' capitals.

    Hon. David Price: After this, would you have done a debriefing with NATO as far as giving them, how would I say, a little information to help out in what they're working on as far as transformation?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir, and as well, most of the nations had their senior officers or elected representatives come through to visit in certain cases. I'm not in the least bit shy, so I would often take that opportunity to provide input into what I thought of their restrictions.

    Hon. David Price: The reservists that you had in theatre, you said most of them were used for CIMIC. But were there also some who were totally fitted into units and doing exactly the same jobs?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: We had ones and twos, sir, but there were no formed units or subunits. The length of the preparation time was adequate, but not adequate to ramp reservists up from where they do their normal daily life to getting ready for the very high-end activities in Kabul.

    We had ones and twos in the medical, in the infantry, staff officers as well, engineers, and of course the civil affairs. For the civil affairs the reserves provided the vast majority. They did an extraordinarily good job because they worked mainly under Colonel Hodgson. They were out there doing all sorts of reconstruction activities.

    Col Mark Hodgson: If I could add, we've actually structured the army now so that we have reserve elements that are specializing in civil military affairs. It makes it very easy for them to transition into a new mission. The training, for the most part, is done. We have to do the theatre mission-specific training, but for those specialized reserve elements, it's a nice fit to slide them into a mission. As General Leslie said, it was a small number, really, in terms of reserves.

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    Hon. David Price: The ramped-up training they do, is it a shorter period than what you're doing with the regulars going in?

    Col Mark Hodgson: No, it's the same thing.

    Hon. David Price: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Price.

    Now, Mrs. Wayne, please.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I do have to leave after I ask my questions and get your answers. I'm very sorry about that, but I'm flying out. I have someone picking me up.

    I noted here that on August 21, after months of preparation, the Third Battalion, the Royal Canadian Regiment, was declared operational ready. I have to say I'm awfully glad, since I'm the honorary gunner of the Third Field Artillery, that they don't call me to go over with you guys. You wouldn't know what happened to you when I got there, I can tell you that.

    I noticed that Rick Mercer went over at Christmastime, Colonel, and I thought that was wonderful. On December 10 to 13, Rick Mercer performed for the CF members at Camp Julien and filmed a Christmas special that was broadcast on CBC. I thought it was wonderful that this happened.

    Anyway, I do have a couple of questions for you. The first one is, I'm wondering about the children over in Afghanistan. All of these things that are happening, what kind of an effect do you see them having on those children? How do we stabilize Afghanistan for those in Kabul and the rest, for those children, for their future?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Ma'am, we enjoyed tremendous support from a wide range of Canadians. Every experience we had with those who came to spend time with the troops was nothing less than outstanding. Really, it was very heartwarming. I know the soldiers really appreciated it. They really did.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Maybe Rick Mercer will take me the next time. I'll get in touch.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Like any nation, the future of Afghanistan rests very much on the growth potential of the children. The Taliban arose because the warlords were fighting amongst themselves, and in the absence of centralized rule of law, the Taliban represented what the people originally thought was going to be a source of relative stability and security. It very quickly turned out that there wasn't any stability and there was no security because the Taliban had a particularly warped interpretation of a variety of fatwas, all of which are incidental to the Koran. So it's not a religious issue per se. It is a bunch of extremists seeking personal power, and those are the fundamentalists within the Taliban.

    This is not meant to say, by the way, that all Taliban are bad either, but the senior leadership are out-and-out bad people—mainly middle-aged men seeking power, territory, or domination over women.

    As for children, in and around Kabul we have soldiers—not necessarily always Canadian but international soldiers—escorting young ladies to school. I'm glad to say we've moved beyond that, in large cases, where there's a relative degree of freedom for children of both sexes to go to school. The same is not true in many other areas of Afghanistan. What has to happen is that gently, in a coherent fashion, the rule of law has to spread. I know President Karzai and his three ministers of education at different levels are working very hard to introduce a more liberal, standardized school curriculum, and he's having a great deal of success in doing so. But there's still a long, long way to go.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: All of us here around this table who are on the committee are here because we believe in you and what you're doing and we're here to support you. What I would like to know is this. When it comes to the numbers of men and women in uniform, and we've gone down dramatically over the last number of years, have you looked at the funding that's required for you and your people in uniform, and how many more people would you like to see in uniform to help you? Just give us a number—we won't quote your name or anything like that.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Ma'am, you asked me a direct question. I work for you, so I now have to give you an answer.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Thank you. That's what I want.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: What can they do to me—send me back to Kabul? To be honest, I'd like to go back.

    I can't speak for the Canadian Forces, because it's not my remit to do so, and of course I'm back fairly recently, as are all of us, so I'm not aware of the other demands, and there's lots of them, on the air force and the navy. Of course, my answer depends on what the defence review is going to tell us.

    What do you, the people of Canada, want us to do? Right now, for us to keep, if we had to, two large battalion groups overseas, one in Afghanistan and one somewhere else, pick a spot, I think we need in the army about 5,000 additional soldiers, full-time. If we don't have 5,000 additional soldiers, then we will burn out our people at a continuing rate—

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    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: That's what I'm worried about.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: —and we will not be able to do, I suspect, everything that you, the Government of Canada, might want us to do. It all depends, in part, on the defence review.

    Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I have to go, but I want to personally thank you, I really do, for what you have done, and what you will continue to do. To me, you are very special and I wouldn't have stayed up here for 11 years if it wasn't for the military and fighting for them, I have to tell you that right now. Thank you so very, very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

    Elsie has been a great advocate, as many of us have tried to be, for the Canadian Forces.

    I want to sneak in a question before I go to my other colleagues, gentlemen, because it relates to just what Mrs. Wayne referred to. Many of us have been on this committee several times over the years, and the last time I was on the committee we went to Kosovo. They were just breaking down camp DK, and we went in and started talking to the troops; they were having a coffee break.

    I'll never forget the second individual I went up to in order to introduce myself. He said, “I know who you are; you taught me in high school”. As a member of Parliament and a former teacher, you run into your ex-students all over the world, literally, and it can make you feel a bit old, but it was very interesting. The point of this story is, this young man--I won't use his name, though I remember it well--had a young son 11 months old at that point. He'd seen him for one month, so for 10 months out of 11 he had not seen his son.

    All this is to get to the question. Our people who are in Afghanistan now--your troops, our troops--how long have they been there, and more importantly, how long have they been away from their families?

    Mr. Price has made the point, and one of the reasons we appreciate your being here is that it's not only an education for us as MPs but to some extent for the Canadian people and those watching.

    Can you comment on the time away from family in terms of getting ready for a mission, then deploying for six months, and then coming back but not necessarily going home to your wife and the kids right away? Out of 11 months he had seen his son one month. Can you expand on that a little bit to help us understand the demand on our people?

    I think all of us agree that we're certainly at rock bottom in terms of numbers of people, and I would think the review is going to call for some more people. I'll go on record and say I hope it will, but that remains to be seen.

    So whoever, could you help us and just comment on total time away from family when you're involved in something like Afghanistan?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: We just did a little melding of the minds, and the consensus is that it's about ten months for a six-month mission. There are certain soldiers who have spent more time away from home, especially if they're specialists who come from places far outside of where the mission was launched from, in this case Petawawa, but the average seems to be around ten months for a six-month mission. For most of the senior officers and NCOs, this is mission number four, five, six, or seven in the course of a 20-year career.

    But if I may, sir....

    The Chair: Please do. I would like you to expand on it, yes.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: A mission such as the one that is still going on in Afghanistan is extraordinarily satisfying because we are saving lives; if we weren't there, lots of people would be dead. It's just that simple. We're pretty confident the Canadian in the street has a much better understanding now than perhaps four or five years ago of what it is we do for them when we go to these faraway places.

    So the vast majority of soldiers want to go on missions. The trouble I have as a relatively senior officer, and so do Mr. Gapp and Colonel Hodgson, is that the enthusiasm to go on missions sometimes results in soldiers stepping up to the plate when, quite frankly, they shouldn't, and that's something we have to try to watch really carefully. There are a variety of mechanisms we're trying to put in place to do that, but when that bugle calls, everyone tends to drop everything they're doing to head out the door to do that which we not only have to do but in certain cases like doing because it is very satisfying work.

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    The Chair: Thank you very much for that, and I think all the committee members would agree. I think all of us have been overseas and seen our troops in their work there; the morale is extremely high, and I say that as a layperson. In terms of the military, for anybody you would talk to, the morale is extremely high and they believe very much in the work they're doing.

    While we support that and think it's wonderful, I think we have to recognize--and I thank you for your answer--that if you're looking at a six-month deployment, that's fine, but you're really looking at the better part of a year away from family, with all the stresses and strains that brings. I appreciate very much your clarification there.

    There are still a few questions from colleagues and I can understand why.

    Mr. Calder.

    Mr. Murray Calder: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    General Leslie, this has been very interesting, but I want to see if we can't step outside of the box too. I look at the issue you people are dealing with right now in Afghanistan, and it looks like what I will refer to as the three “whats”: you have the “what”, the “now what”, and the “so what”. The “what” was that we saw people killing each other in a country in turmoil and civil war. The “now what” was that we went in and stabilized the population and stopped the killing. But the “so what” is that there's a common theme running through Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. That common theme is that when you use Islam, Muslim, and democracy in the same sentence, there seems to be an oxymoron.

    Now, to get outside of the box and to bring about the separation of church and state to get to true democracy, do you have any insight on how we would take and achieve that?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, first and foremost, I will not even try to pretend to be an Islamic scholar, but prior to the mission, we, as some of you of course have done, read translated versions of the Koran. The five pillars of wisdom articulated in the Koran--these are the words of Muhammed; he received the enlightenment in 610 and then died 26 years later--are such that the Koran itself in its original versions, which obviously were not written down at one time and in one place, is a sophisticated code of social discourse amongst very disparate people who share a common theme.

    My understanding of the Koran is that in its pure form, without all the subsequent fatwas that have been issued--the interpretations that have evolved over the subsequent hundreds of years--it's actually amazingly tolerant. It is actually a tolerant code of conduct in which Christianity and a variety of the world's great religions are not only recognized but actually enshrined in terms of their linkages to the words of the Prophet.

    So I do not accept the contention that this is a Muslim-Christian or whatever religious-based conflict. I reject in its entirety Huntington's thesis of this being a clash of cultures. I would argue that it is the age-old issue of mainly middle-aged men seeking personal power, seeking aggrandizement, and seeking domination over their followers, their subordinates, which is the same curse that has followed us around as a race for millennia.

    What is happening now is some of these people, these extremists, are using 18-, 19- or 15- or 16-year-old easily influenced young men, who--and I was a young man once--sometimes don't think through the consequences of their actions. They turn to these middle-aged despots, who by the way never seem to be the ones who are killed in the various wars they trigger. All the senior leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his gang in Afghanistan are still very much alive. They package their message of hatred in a veneer of religious fanaticism.

    So the issue is not necessarily “so what” in the sense that it's not a democratic versus.... Let me try to explain this. I do not believe that democracy and Islam are of necessity incompatible. To be blunt, sir, I tend to reject that thesis. I think in time they will merge closer together on the evolutionary path.

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    Mr. Murray Calder: You had stated earlier the reason you wore the greens was because the population, quite frankly, was not well educated and could not read. Would education be one of the keys to solving that quandary?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir, it is. Over the course of the last couple of decades the Russian invasion caused an enormous refugee problem for Afghanistan. They had about 2 million to 2.5 million in Iran and at least 2 million to 3 million or maybe even 4 million in Pakistan under those awful conditions.

    The religious schools, the madrasahs, took up a burden--took up a load, if you will--through their being able to provide shelter and accommodation for orphans and young men and desperate families. Over time the lesser jihad gave rise to the curricula of the madrasahs becoming more and more focused on religious extremism. There are young men who have graduated from madrasahs, the religious schools, who can quote the Koran or a series of fatwas, interpretations of the Koran, but they can't read. They spent eight or ten years--not all of them, by the way--learning this message of extremism and hatred, but they still can't read.

    So education is very much the key, but progressing on a parallel track, you have to have security. Of course, underlying that, you have to have reconstruction funds to help the economy.

    The Chair: Mr. Bachand again and then Mr. O'Reilly.

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Bachand: I'd like to raise a subject which is perhaps a bit less interesting but that still piques my curiosity. It's also something that becomes very emotional. I'd like to talk about the loss of lives.

    When you undertake that kind of mission, you can expect that to happen. When it happened in Afghanistan, whether when certain soldiers were killed by friendly fire or when the people died in the jeep, there was a wave of sympathy and emotion that surged all the way into the House of Commons. I remember that members from all of the parties made statements. We were really saddened.

    That's what my question has to do with. Is there a major psychological impact on the contingent when that happens to the point that some soldiers, for example, might become dysfunctional and need psychological services?

    And this brings me to my other question. Are there psychological services for the people who are close. The people in the same unit? I imagine they must be affected more than the others even though we know that everyone is affected by that. What procedure do you follow when there is loss of life? I imagine that when the soldiers died in their Iltis jeep, there must have been a yellow tape all around the perimeter to facilitate the investigation. After that, what is done to advise the families? I don't know if you're finding this question too hard. This is something that does happen and we have to know how our troops are going to react in such circumstances.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: As I've already said, sir, Kabul, in Afghanistan, is a dangerous place. There are people who want to kill us because our soldiers, your soldiers, are doing excellent work there. The extremists like the Taliban and Al-Quaida make plans to kill our soldiers, not just the Canadians but also the British, the Germans and the soldiers of the 33 allied nations that are there.

    As soon as our soldiers were killed... We have the impression we're doing really important work in Kabul and we are the ones saving lives because of our presence. I think that the tragic deaths of Sergeant Short, Corporal Beerenfenger and Corporal Murphy was a huge shock for all Canadians. It's as though our spirit was under attack. I'm not expressing myself quite perfectly and I'm sorry. We had work to do. So, even as Master Warrant Officer Gapp and Colonel Hodgson were organizing the commemorative ceremony or the farewell ceremony for Sergeant Short, Corporal Beerenfenger and Corporal Murphy, patrols were going out into the mountains and into the cities. All the defensive measures, all the negotiations with the war lords went on. We cried together with our soldiers during the ceremony for those soldiers who died. We will never forget them. But after that, we went back to work right away. Otherwise, we could have lost more lives, not only lives of Canadian soldiers but also lives of citizens of Kabul.

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    Mr. Claude Bachand: Are there psychological support services for the next of kin?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Colonel Hodgson is the expert on that matter. Yes, there are psychological services for that. We've given the soldiers the opportunity to discuss things with their superior officers and their chums. For example, Master Warrant Officer Gapp, who knows the three soldiers very well, spent a lot of time with the remaining soldiers, the survivors. When there is a tragedy, there are clear procedures to be followed to solve those problems. We are soldiers and we know what price might have to be paid.

[English]

    The Chair: Merci, Monsieur Bachand.

    Mr. O'Reilly, please.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    I want to just go back to the humanitarian side for a moment. I had a group of people approach me from Fenelon Falls, Ontario, who had been motivated by the military to collect books, toys, and clothing for the children. They ran into all kinds of problems trying to get those things over there. I took it up, talked about it, and made some efforts. I knew about some of those things from my former days as a parliamentary secretary. We finally got everything over there. I have a couple of cartons of crayons from Canadian Crayola that I have to get over there too for the children, so I'll be coming again to do this.

    I went outside the Canadian military, because I thought there would be an easy way to ship two to three tonnes of clothing and toys to Afghanistan. I was told by the other side--not our military--that they didn't want books that were in English. They didn't want toys that the children had no cultural connection with, and they didn't want western clothes--and here we had five tonnes of them.

    I've now found out that once everything was shipped and distributed, the children loved to get it. I sent over a few hundred small Canadian flags and that sort of thing. The pictures that came back were really good. So I think we can reach out and touch them, but we have to find a more efficient and effective way to do it, because there are communities all across Canada that want to take after this model.

    You're smiling, so I know you were part of it, Colonel.

    But I think that's another area--the humanitarian effort we make--that we can improve on. It's a matter of finding out how we can get people organized to get things boxed properly and sorted. That can all be done at the local level, but how do we get them shipped there so it doesn't take three months? That's one question.

    The other one on the humanitarian side is about CIDA. Is there a difference in the humanitarian effort being made by CIDA--which of course is outside the military--in helping to rebuild? Do you notice a difference there, or is there a noticeable effort on our part through CIDA to help rebuild the country?

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    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: I'll ask Colonel Hodgson to respond.

    Col Mark Hodgson: On the first part of the question dealing with humanitarian aid, you can appreciate there are a lot of military airlifts going to Afghanistan, but we have to set priorities. Obviously, if there's an operational requirement in terms of the kit that's sitting at CFB Trenton, it's going to take priority.

    Many groups or organizations in Canada were collecting items. Some of those were shipped to Trenton and sat there for a long time, because it's a matter of the space available. If we need to get ammunition or equipment to Afghanistan, that obviously takes priority. But we did ship stuff, and there was more than our soldiers could handle, in terms of what was arriving in Kabul. But certainly priorities are set, so the operational needs take priority on the aircraft, particularly military aircraft.

    But there are other means, and there are many chartered aircraft coming into Kabul on a daily basis. If the will is there to get the goods to Afghanistan, they don't have to come on a Canadian Forces aircraft. There are other ways to get them there.

    On your point, sir, on deciding what is good and what is not good for the people of Afghanistan, you have to keep in mind that over the last almost three decades these people have been trying to survive, and that's the bottom line. So having almost anything is a joy to them, particularly the children.

    We have experienced on several occasions people outside the military trying to second-guess what we were doing or giving to the children in Afghanistan, particularly around Christian holidays and things like that when it's natural. Christmastime is a very good example. Many people were second-guessing whether our soldiers should be handing things out at Christmas because it was a Christian holiday.

    I have to bring it back to that survival of the fittest line. The people of Afghanistan need just about anything, and they probably would take English books even if they just looked at the pictures. But particularly with clothing, toys, and things of that nature, there's no difference between their children and ours. They really want to have things that make them look better, like clothing; practical things; and toys to play with.

    I hope that covers your question.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: Would that cultural difference have been based on religion? I'm not going to name the groups I went to, because I thought in Ottawa, with the groups outside of the military, with 131 embassies, that it wouldn't be very hard to find a lot of cooperation. I didn't find any, so I was back to the military as our only source of being able to get that over.

    I don't think all those sources are there, other than perhaps FedEx, and I don't even know if they go in there.

    Col Mark Hodgson: Yes, FedEx does go into....

    Mr. John O'Reilly: That's very costly, of course. I think most people who are gathering these things are charitable organizations, with not a lot of money, and they don't have--

    Col Mark Hodgson: That's correct. They have no means of getting it from the source.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: And I recognize that 100%. I've been on medevacs. We've done things; things changed.

    You go with what you have to do. I understand that.

    I had some experience with that, trying to get out of a country where a medevac took precedence, and we had to sit around for a couple of days, looking at ourselves until another one came through.

    I think if we're going to rebuild a country, we have to make sure we deal with the grassroots, with the children, without interfering with the culture. I recognize that. I think toys, clothes, and things that are western are very popular with people over there in fact. We have such excess here, compared to what's over there.

    Going through there, Mr. Chairman, when we flew up the valleys in Kosovo at the worst time, with no roofs on any of the houses...blown up....

    Even coming back to Ottawa, I remember walking across the House of Commons lawn and getting about halfway across and thinking, “God, I'm walking on the grass”. If you didn't drop it, don't pick it up and don't walk on the grass. It's a country of landmines. You do get that sensitivity training, even as a civilian sometimes. So I understand that.

    I would hope that we could find some way to increase our humanitarian effort. I think it can only be through the military, because you're the people on the ground over there. You know what's needed. If you want to be the good guy, you're giving somebody a toy.

    So I think I'd like to see some work done on that.

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    Col Mark Hodgson: Sir, I hope I didn't give the impression that we weren't bringing stuff in.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: No, I know you did.

    Col Mark Hodgson: It was just to say the capacity wasn't there to bring everything that was coming in. There were many organizations in Canada--

    Mr. John O'Reilly: Our organizations had five tonnes of stuff. It's not easy to transport that. I recognize that, but I just want to bring it to your.... Many of the people who send it are just thrilled that it got there. It's great.

    Col Mark Hodgson: The other point, Mr. Chair, just to follow on, is our civil-military affairs teams are trained to sort as well. So they basically look at everything that comes to Kabul from Canada, that's sent through the military, to determine where best it can be used, or if it shouldn't be used. Some of the things we had shouldn't have been sent. So they screen it, make sure it's appropriate, whether it's for age groups or the need of a facility, or if it's inappropriate and it doesn't get handed out. Certainly they had more than they could handle in Kabul.

    It's probably a larger push or drive that needs to be put behind this in terms of the supply here in Canada and getting it to a theatre like Kabul, because there is ample supply. It's getting it there and distributing it.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: So should we be considering expanding CIDA's efforts, then, or is there some other way that you would recommend? Does CIDA have any presence there?

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Yes, sir, they do.

    The Chair: We're into some policy issues that perhaps would be a very important part of the defence review. I'm not sure our witnesses now can comment too much on CIDA.

    If you wish to go ahead....

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Well, yes, sir, CIDA's there. Your tax dollars are hard at work there--$250 million over a two-year period. CIDA does a lot of the very heavy social rebuilding, infrastructure rebuilding. Certainly on this mission, much more so than in the past, there's a great deal of cooperation on the ground between the CIDA representatives, the CIMIC teams, the military, the diplomatic, and the aid triumvirate--the 3-D approach; it's working.

    The Chair: Good. Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly.

    I wanted to pursue that line of questioning a bit in the sense of our troops on the ground. I imagine they're involved in digging wells, helping people to repair homes, and that sort of thing. How is it coordinated? What percentage of their time would it be? Would there be a rotation? Would somebody be assigned to do that exclusively? What percentage of an individual's time, or a unit's time, would be for doing that type of work, compared to patrolling? How is it decided?

    I only wonder how effective the efforts are in that regard.

    MGen Andrew B. Leslie: Sir, the young men and women who go out to do the patrols, and go up into the mountains or down into the alleyways, essentially do only that because it's extraordinarily stressful and requires an unbelievable amount of training and focus.

    Occasionally, they do other things. For example, a variety of memorial projects were undertaken by the battalion in memory of Sergeant Robert Short, Corporal Beerenfenger, and Corporal Murphy. It was very much a battalion labour of love.

    The people who do the CIMIC work and the reconstruction work are now specialists. It's no longer “Hey you, get out there and give them a hand building a school”. It's a lot better thought out than in the past, which in part explains why the structure of 2,000 is as robust as it is.

    For details, you can certainly ask Colonel Hodgson. If you want details from the Canadian perspective, for example, on a typical project or something like that, Mark can answer.

»  (1720)  

    The Chair: I appreciate that.

    I would like to hear a little more on potable water, for example. I know that in my city of London, Ontario, there's a leading-edge company called Trojan Technologies. They're into water purification. I was there recently for an announcement. I asked them if they do any work with the Canadian Forces. They said they have done some and they will possibly be doing more.

    Surely, one of the first problems you encounter with people must be helping to get a source of safe water. I'd be interested in anything you have to add, sir.

    Col Mark Hodgson: Yes, Mr. Chair, I can give you a quick summary of some of the things the civil-military, the various teams, were working on.

    The key thing is basics. In most of the villages located around Camp Julien, when you talked to the elders, they were after the basics and that's it. It would be water, perhaps electricity or a generator, but something along that line. It could be a structure for a school. They were thinking in realistic terms of things we could help them with.

    The key thing for all of these projects is that it can't be us going in and telling them what they need. We have to go to their villages and talk to the elders to find out what they feel are the key things. Then they get behind the project and help us with it. We want to use their labour and resources to get it done because overall it helps the community or the village.

    A typical project we were involved in was well digging. I think you're all well aware of the drought Afghanistan experienced for almost ten years. It is better now, but it has still had a dramatic effect on the country. In the villages, most of the wells are shallow wells. They don't go any further than five to ten metres. They're all dry, or most of them are dry. You now have to go down to about the 30-metre point, which is beyond using a shovel, more or less, so you have to get someone to come and drill it. A typical well of that nature is about $10,000 U.S. It's well beyond the means of a village, but it's something we can help with. I think the number was getting pretty close to 30 wells in the six-month period that we had been able to help with.

    Another project is dealing with support to help the clinics. That's not providing medical expertise, but it's providing materials or medical supplies or refurbishing schools. It could be infrastructure in the villages, a road being repaired, or a bridge.

    We like to keep the projects small because each rotation is six months. If we can design a project that is within our economic envelope, in terms of the money we've been given and also the timeframe, it's ideal. The CIMIC teams are trained to do that. They take things in bite-size pieces, as opposed to large-scale projects—which CIDA is very good at, and it really should be their line of work—or other aid projects.

    To give you an idea, the CIMIC teams did roughly $700,000 worth of projects during six months. They were all small projects such as wells, refurbishing health clinics or schools, roads, bridges, and things of that nature, but they were very beneficial to the communities. We also garnered support from those communities for our mission. That meant, if there were bad guys in the region, they were more likely to tell us than they would have been if we had not done these projects for them.

    The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate your response to that.

    Are there any final questions from colleagues?

    Seeing none, again, on behalf of the committee and all members of the House of Commons, I want to thank you very much for being here today, for sharing your experience in Afghanistan. We want to thank you for your service there, and through you, all the men and women who have served and are still serving and will serve. It has been a pleasure for us to have you here today.

    The meeting is adjourned.