EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 17, 1997

.0906

[English]

The Chair (Ms Mary Clancy (Halifax, Lib.): Order. We will hope Jack Frazer, our colleague from the Reform Party, will join us shortly.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux (Shefford, B.Q.): Madam Chair, will we be getting any documents this morning?

[English]

The Chair: They are on the way, Mr. Leroux.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: Well, I must say I have never seen so little planning. We get summoned to committees, but there are no documents. We are here, when we could be elsewhere. I can't get over it. I don't understand why we are so badly organized. I hope that we will get organized and get documents in advance if there are any other meetings, so that we can prepare for our witnesses. I find this unacceptable.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Leroux. The next time you would like to do that you could call a press conference.

I would like to welcome Lieutenant-General DeQuetteville -

Mr. John Richardson (Perth - Wellington - Waterloo, Lib.): Madam Chair, before you start, I would like to know where the French-Canadian representatives were when we visited the French-Canadian brigade recently. The absence of the French-Canadian input was clearly an affront to the French-Canadian soldiers in our army.

The Chair: I thank you as well, Mr. Richardson, but I think you -

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: Madam Chair, I would like to answer...

[English]

The Chair: Order. I think both of you can call a press conference. I'll certainly attend yours, Mr. Richardson.

Welcome, Mr. Frazer.

Mr. Jack Frazer (Saanich - Gulf Islands, Ref.): My apologies, Madam Chair. This is my third committee meeting this morning. I just couldn't make it.

The Chair: My goodness, you people are spread so thin I'm worried about your survival rate.

Order. This is not an unruly boys' school, gentlemen. Thank you.

Lieutenant-General A.M. DeQuetteville, commander of the air force, welcome. We are delighted to have you. I believe you have with you Colonel Bouchard.

Colonel Bouchard, I welcome you too. I understand you're going to answer the hard questions. That's what the general told me.

I would be delighted if you could make an opening presentation. Then of course there will be questions.

Lieutenant-General A.M. DeQuetteville (Commander of the Air Force, Department of National Defence): Thank you.

[Translation]

Madam Chair, honourable members, I have the privilege and honour to appear before you today to speak on issues I consider essential to the Canadian Forces as a whole, and particularly to the Air Force.

With me today is my Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Charlie Bouchard. I am convinced that General Baril and Admiral Garnett will agree with me that the results of your deliberations will have a direct impact on the morale and well-being of each and every member of the Canadian Forces and their families.

I sincerely hope that you will have an opportunity to meet as many of our members as possible in this short time. We have explained your mandate to them. They are eagerly looking forward to your visit, and to the opportunity of expressing their concerns in person, in their day-to-day work environment, so that you will get a better understanding of their situation.

[English]

The purpose of my briefing today is to outline some of the unique concerns and challenges facing the air force in Canada today and what we are doing internally to address them. Additional material has been provided as background for your use. However, there is a clear limit to what we can do internally. Hence the significance of the recommendations you will make to Parliament later this year.

Let me first try to place air force concerns in context. Over the past six years the air force has become almost 50% smaller with only a minimum reduction in operational output. Like the two other services, we have never been busier. Indeed, the orientation of the air force has changed dramatically from a relatively static structure to a dynamic posture that is prepared to deploy air resources in support of the government's policy with NORAD, NATO, and the United Nations at a moment's notice anywhere in the world.

.0910

Today, men and women of the Canadian air force team can be found across the globe. I draw your attention to recent air force successes since the end of the Cold War: the gulf crisis, Rwanda, Somalia, Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, and more recently our efforts in Zaire and Guatemala. These are illustrations of our ability to make a difference anywhere in the world. In fact, it is this global reach that poses the most significant opportunity and, equally, the most significant challenge for our remaining personnel.

Coping with these profound changes has been the focus of air force leadership over the past two years. In 1995 I initiated a commander's flight plan that is now a four-phase plan of attack to deal with the realities of fewer people, smaller budgets, and a worldwide mandate.

First, we developed a blueprint called ``Flight Plan `97'', which was designed to create a new vision and an optimized air force structure to meet these defence policy and budgetary challenges.

Secondly, we addressed air force culture. A structural vision is only an academic exercise if people don't buy in and aren't personally equipped to participate. Old paradigms do not necessarily fit new structures. We began by defining our core values of excellence, professionalism, and teamwork, and from those we have constructed a toolbox of communication and basic management skills, packaging them in a three-day course called ``Flight Plan 97 Ground School''. Eighteen thousand members of the air force team have now received this training in the last year and a half, and they are better prepared to cope with the massive reductions and changes that have occurred in the air force. This is our long-term investment in our team, whether they be regular, reserve, or civilian members.

A third element of our flight plan, also launched in 1995, was more investment in communications, both internal to our members and external to Canadians at large, and all in an effort to ensure that our air force story is better understood. The challenge of communicating better continues.

Having addressed how to get 45% smaller by the middle of 1996, we began turning our attention to better supporting the 55% of our personnel who would be staying with us into the future. In our fourth phase, therefore, we are now addressing the people issues under a program we have called the ``Flight Plan for Life''. Through a consultative process, we have given our entire team, including our families, a voice in telling the leadership what issues must be addressed and in what order these issues should be tackled. The ``Flight Plan for Life'' summary report has been provided to you separately.

[Translation]

Your consideration of this issue could not have come at a better moment. We have provided you with a summary of the report entitled "Flight Plan for Life". I doubt that any of the concerns and priorities set out in the report will come as a surprise.

However, I should point out that these concerns and priorities were not simply drafted by senior staff officers. The report contains comments and questions coming from members of the Air Force team and the solutions proposed by them. You can look at it as the voice of the Air Force. If, for some reason, you do not get the opportunity to meet many members of the Air Force team, please do read their comments and listen to their concerns.

Let me take you through a number of them.

[English]

Pay and compensation are by far the biggest concerns of the air force team, and that wouldn't be news to you. While recent announcements by the minister are certainly welcomed, I hope this is only the start of a process that will ameliorate the eroded income of military members. The discrepancies in disposable income, as created by frequent moves, geographic inequities, and in particular the lack of spousal employment support and the corresponding reduced earning potential experienced by many families, are problems still in search of solutions.

.0915

I believe our ADM Personnel, Lieutenant-General Kinsman, outlined many of these issues to you extremely well.

Air force personnel, like their comrades from other services, are prepared to deploy anywhere, at any time, and for unknown lengths of time. Notice is often short and the conditions more often than not can be extreme. It is this willingness to serve and to do so proudly, professionally, and with unlimited liability that constitutes the value-added of military personnel and underscores that they are not just civil servants in uniform. Therefore, benchmarking their civil service or even their private sector equivalents may not be the most valid approach to establishing their worth.

As you can imagine, this creates unique stresses for our members and their families. It is commonplace in the military to say take care of the troops and they will take care of you, but taking care of the troops also means taking care of their families. Members who are worried that they cannot pay all the bills or that their families will be safe and cared for while they are away will not be effective in the field. This means adequate compensation, housing, and personnel support. Again, all of these issues are familiar to you from the technical briefing, so I will not dwell on them here.

Suffice to say that the nature of service in the air force - short-notice deployments for unspecified lengths of time - makes these domestic issues even more important. Couple this with the reality that air force personnel serve in a great variety of locations from coast to coast - we have 13 air wings, and a number of these are in isolated or semi-isolated locations - and you can see that creating a safe and supportive environment at home is imperative for us. This requires that our personnel support programs be well thought out and appropriately funded and that they provide a consistent level of service across the country from one region and one wing to the next. This may be the biggest challenge we face.

Pilot retention is an emerging issue that requires special mention. In the summer of 1996 we began to notice that fixed-wing pilots were leaving the air force - and when I say fixed-wing pilots, that's a distinction between helicopter pilots and those who fly airplanes that don't have wings that rotate - at an alarming rate. By this summer we will be approximately 10% below our pilot establishment, and attrition has now reached well beyond the sustainable level. So far we have managed to sustain flying operations, but we are coping largely through staff shortages, cancelling career courses, and increasing production. We are now at our maximum pilot capacity. But given that it takes more than six years to train a pilot and at least $2 million to produce an experienced pilot, we must clearly focus on retention rather than production to solve this insidious problem. Further high attrition rates will sharply reduce our ability to effectively conduct air operations.

Pilots share many of the other concerns common to the men and women of all of the Canadian Forces. The difference is that pilots, unlike most of their compatriots, have a clear and attractive alternative to military life, that is, expanding commercial aviation. When airlines hire, we have always lost pilots. That trend is not particularly new. However, this time we are in a far more perilous position because of the general morale concerns across the Canadian Forces in recent years, and these have been exacerbated by a pay differential that makes the airline job almost impossible to refuse.

Aviation experts predict a continuing expansion that will see about 800 pilots hired by major Canadian carriers over the next five years. I'm afraid that without significant and rapid action on our part, we face a pilot shortage of very serious proportions. In this regard I will be making a special presentation on this issue to the armed forces council in May. As we make that presentation and document it, I'd be happy to ensure your committee receives those results, Madam Chair.

The Chair: We would appreciate that very much, General. Thank you.

.0920

LGen DeQuetteville: In some respects air force personnel are like everyone else in the workforces of western economies. Society has created a set of conditions where we may change careers several times over the course of a working life. This poses further challenges as we are faced with finding more and better ways of sourcing qualified personnel from industry and preparing our personnel for transition back to civilian life when they choose to move on.

Air force people tend to be highly qualified technically. We also need to capitalize quickly on individuals who come to us with civilian experience as members of either the regular or the reserve force. One of the best things we can give and also recognize is civilian accreditation, which can be applied as easily in the private sector as to recruitment. We are working on a plan to recognize both civilian and military accreditation interchangeably. However, to do so may require national standards that transcend provincial jurisdictions and licensing boards. Creating a climate where closer links can be forged with industry and academic institutions will go far to address this concern.

[Translation]

These are some of the many concerns raised by members of the Air Force team. There are of course others, including instruction, quality of the work environment, pension plan and benefits, and communication with the Canadian public. Further information can be found in the documents we have submitted. We would encourage you to look at them carefully.

[English]

In conclusion, Madam Chair, I want to thank you again for giving me this unique opportunity to address you today. I am encouraged that this important committee of Parliament is discussing these critical issues and that we are now recognizing, as did William Perry, the former United States Secretary of Defense, that quality of life for our forces means quality people in our forces. But I hope we do not end this as just a discussion.

As I stated at the outset, when you visit with our personnel it will be obvious that our air force team is fully engaged in meeting the challenges of the future and firmly establishing the relevance of their mission with all Canadians. Their operational morale is high, but their societal morale has been badly shaken over the last several years. Many issues can and are being addressed internally, but many others need your support and attention.

The Chair: Thank you very much, General.

[Translation]

Mr. Leroux.

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: General DeQuetteville, it is a pleasure to welcome you before the committee. As you can see, the documents arrived after the meeting started. I have looked through the summary of your report, and I find it extremely interesting.

Last week, on Friday, I had a telephone conversation with General Roméo Dallaire. He said that, in his view, we - the Official Opposition - appeared to be turning our backs on the Canadian Forces. I would like to assure you that we are not. As you know, we could be a mere ten days away from an election call; the Bloc Québécois has therefore decided not to participate in an exercise that is somewhat media-driven and is aimed at enhancing the image of the party in power during the election campaign. As you know, committees cease to exist soon as an election is called.

That means, General, that we will have to begin all over again after the election. And since we are convinced we will be here after the election -

[English]

The Chair: Excuse me. I just have to make a point. I want to make it very clear to the witnesses before they respond that this committee has gone to the House leader and requested something. It has been explained to all committee members, especially new members of Parliament, but it's just so you will know in light of any questions that arise. It is not without precedent that committees survive elections. Indeed when I came to Parliament in 1988 I joined a committee already in progress.

The House leaders of all three parties are aware that there will be a House order to ensure this committee survives the election and will be back in business in one way or another whatever happens. Even if there were a change of government, I think there are very strong beliefs that this committee is doing work.

.0925

I want to make it very clear that no one is under any misapprehension that this committee dies at election time. It does not and will not.

Go ahead, Mr. Leroux.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: Madam Chair, I hope you did not take part of my time.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Leroux, you have your time.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: As you know, senators will be conducting an inquiry on the Somalia affair this week and the committee will cease to exist. There is a parliamentary tradition that, generally, committees cease to exist when an election is called, even if work is resumed after the election. I agree with the comments made by the chair, but the committee will certainly be dissolved. Its work will be resumed after the election. In my conversation with General Dallaire, I assured him that, as soon as the House comes back, we would co-operate with the party in power - whether the Liberals or the Reform Party - to resume this work as quickly as possible.

We do not expect to be the party in power. We are only running candidates in 75 ridings. However, we do undertake to co-operate with the party in power. As you know, General, the committee held very few meetings last autumn. The work that is before us today, right on the eve of an election, could very well have been done then. Now my question to you is on quality of life.

You talked earlier about the importance of quality of life; there is a link between quality of life and the quality of people who enter the forces. What do you suggest in your report, which I have unfortunately not had time to look over in detail? I simply flipped through it, but that was enough to see it contains some very interesting points. In your view, what can we do to improve the quality of life in the Canadian forces?

Lgen DeQuetteville: Mr. Leroux, please allow me to answer in English.

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: Please do.

[English]

LGen DeQuetteville: I regret you didn't have the documentation in advance. As it will show, in the air force we started about one year ago with this ``Flight Plan for Life'', as we called it, which was an internal air force activity to try to address all the quality-of-life issues. At various times we brought together a number of the men and women across Air Command, at all rank levels, junior NCOs, senior NCOs, civilians, and some of our chief warrant officers, to help us articulate the issues. You have a package there of priorities of issues that have to be dealt with.

We then took a look at what we could do within Air Command, those things I have in my control. We were able to make some investments from our budget over the last fiscal year to give some resources down to our thirteen wings so they could start to get on and do us some very short-term things.

But clearly, as I pointed out in my remarks, there's a limit to what we can do within the air force. You will see in that list of priorities the very things at the top are pay and benefits. Those are the areas that -

The second most important element was terms of service. These are the contracts by which people are engaged. I think General Kinsman explained to you how we take people through to the nine-year point and the twenty-year point and the sort of contracts we have with them.

Those two issues were the number one and number two priorities if you went back, say, eighteen months ago.

Internally to the department, we have by and large fixed the issue of terms of service. Those were events we could control internally to the department. Obviously pay and compensation are exterior. I think this is the most fundamental place where you can help us in taking a look at the worth of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

We're not asking for grand increases in salary. We're simply looking to make sure that relative to other militaries, to the rest of Canadian society, members of the Canadian Armed Forces are being given their just worth. Again, I think that piece has been well articulated by General Kinsman and his people.

.0930

I would say that if you can focus on that area, a lot of other things start to take care of themselves. We're starting to get people's morale back now as a result of other things that we're doing because of stability in our budget process. We've just gone through the second year without any further personnel reductions. Getting that stability in place and now getting some adequate compensation for our people have been crucial. We've shored up their terms of service, but the pay and compensation area, in my view, is the most critical area in which you could help us.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: But I thought that had already been settled. The salary increase is in the works; I thought I understood that the minister was indeed granting a salary raise. There was a raise last year, and there was to be another raise this year.

[English]

LGen DeQuetteville: Again, this business of salary is very complicated. There is a piece of the salary equation that has to do with our benchmarking with the public service. I think there has been an agreement with Treasury Board that recognizes how much the military has fallen behind the public service over a period of time. When he was here before this committee, Admiral Murray identified what that amount was.

We have now seen the first instalment, if you will, of the catch-up. It was announced here a couple of weeks ago and amounts to a 1.5% increase for our members. Well, when your salaries have been frozen for five years, 1.5% is not exactly seen as a significant change. But people have to understand that there are a series of these instalments, hopefully, that will be phased in and will make up some of this deficit.

Secondly, as you know, the public service is in the process of labour negotiations now that the federal legislation is off as of April 1. When those negotiations are concluded later this year, the pay raise that will also flow through to the military will be determined, because again, we are benchmarked to the public service. We will need to determine whether those - les deux - will be sufficient to redress the worth of individuals in the military.

I'm sure this is something this committee will be very interested in. When you take those two components together, what do they amount to? We're talking about beyond that point, into the future. That's clearly where you are looking in order to see what the right process is for pay and compensation for the future.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: General, I am not disappointed, but it's as if I had been. You know that Canada and its constituent provinces are having financial problems. As I understand, the salaries of public service employees have been frozen for several years.

For example, the government of Quebec has just announced 6% cuts in a number of areas, including education. It seems to me that we simply don't have the money it takes to motivate people. All salaries - including those of members - have been frozen for some time. Those in Parliament since before the last election had not had a salary increase for a long time, and we have had to expect that, just as others have.

We have to try to find some other way. Of course, in this materialistic society, a person is rated by the salary he earns. Yet it seems to me there should be something else. There should be something else that really motivates us, even if we don't earn as much as we would like.

[English]

LGen DeQuetteville: Indeed, Mr. Leroux, there is a whole spectrum of things that one must do to address the bien-être of our people. Again, on our list we have things like more investment in non-monetary rewards, more presentations for the work that people have done, acknowledgement of the outstanding accomplishments - and we have made significant investments in those areas.

.0935

I've also mentioned that the operational morale of people is, in my view, quite high. If you visit our air squadrons and talk to the young technicians and pilots, you will see they are very enthused about what they do. But when you ask them how things are at home, that's a tougher story because they have been hurt badly over the last several years by low pay.

Because of portability, people in the military have the problems of not being able to establish equity in a house and spousal employment. I don't know what the facts are across this country, but a great number of people rely on a dual income. That option is very difficult for those in the military because we keep moving them around. It's difficult for spouses to find employment if they don't have any fixed reference point.

So one of the things we're doing within the air force is looking at longer tour lengths. Traditionally, we've moved people every three or four years. We're trying to work towards a policy of longer tour lengths. We get a whole host of benefits by doing that. We get the opportunity for spouses to find employment and for children to stay in school longer. As we've consolidated on fewer and fewer bases, there are more work opportunities on those bases for members to progress through their career, and we don't have to move them. Of course, we save on the very high cost of moving people back and forth across the country every year. So that's another area we're working on.

We have worked to increase the quality of our single and married quarters to the extent that, when our people are moved into what we call temporary duty, where they're sent to another location, maybe on a course or for a short period of time, they have a decent facility to sleep in and to take their meals. We've made some investments there to try to improve their quality of life.

We are doing a whole host of things. There has been a great increase in the number of family resource centres. There's a brand-new one at Cold Lake. The one at Bagotville is located in a vacant school on the base, and they have a wonderful family resource centre there. Again, we're trying to put some investment in there.

At the end of all of that, there's still an economic issue here. People in the military have felt disadvantaged. It has hurt them economically and it has hurt their security. So when you talk to them, that does become the primary thing in their mind.

Mr. Jean H. Leroux: Thank you, General. You can be assured we will work hard on that when we come back after the election.

The Chair: Mr. Frazer.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Thank you, Madam Chair.

General DeQuetteville, welcome. It's nice to be in your company again. I have some feelings about the timing of this committee, as Mr. Leroux did, but I want to take advantage of your being here to get some answers from you.

I want to go first to one of the points you made with regard to going anywhere, any time. I've always contended that for everybody in the air force, it's their job to get the wheels in the wells, the airplane in the air, and the job done. If that is being accomplished, then that goes toward enhancing the morale of the people because they see we are being effective in doing our thing.

You mentioned going anywhere. I am aware now that you've retired your last refuellers. To my knowledge the conversion of the A-310 to air refuelling is not in progress at the moment, and there was talk recently of hiring civilian air refuellers. Can you update us on that, please?

LGen DeQuetteville: Indeed, Mr. Frazer. Strategic air-to-air refuelling is crucial to our ability to deploy our fighters wherever they have to go. For example, we had a squadron in Turkey last summer as part of a NATO exercise. As well, last summer we sent a squadron to the Pacific for the first time since the end of the Korean war. You need strategic air-to-air refuelling to do that.

.0940

With the demise of the 707 we are in a period where we don't have a solution in hand. We do intend to look for a solution in the Airbus, but in the short term we are looking at leasing options. South of the border there are opportunities with people who are doing contract work for the United States Navy and Marine Corps and we're looking to try to take advantage of that over the short term until we come up with a final solution around the Airbus.

Of course the Airbus is our vehicle of choice. It's already doing passenger and cargo service for us, and we want to integrate air-to-air refuelling, but we want to do that at a price that makes good sense to us.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I guess my concern with contracting out is that normally when something comes up, that sort of resource is in high demand and we might not have the priority. Unless we have an in-house capability, we are somewhat suspect in our acquiring it.

LGen DeQuetteville: You're absolutely right. In an ideal world we would have preferred to have had the Airbus option in hand, but so far we haven't come up with a satisfactory negotiation with the Airbus industry.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I would like to go to another point, and that is your concern about the attrition in the pilots. I recall at one time we said it was absolutely mandatory for people to have 240 hours a year to maintain their proficiency. I understand now we're down to about 190. Is that correct?

LGen DeQuetteville: It's more like 200 or 210.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I always contended that the 240 hours made our pilots better than those we were compared with, certainly in Europe. I think the Germans were running at about 190 hours. Our people, in my opinion - and granted, it's biased - were superior to them, and I think that had to do with the flying. Has the reduction in the flying time had anything to do with the attrition of the pilots?

LGen DeQuetteville: No. In fact, I guess the best testimony to our continuing operational prowess would be the William Tell victory of our F-18s last fall. For the last two years our Aurora maritime patrol crews have won the Fincastle Trophy, which is their world series in the maritime world.

In all our restructuring we have tried to protect the front-line resource to the extent possible. That has been our objective: to keep the front line, cut the fat, and cut the overhead. That's why we're cutting headquarters by 46% in the air force, all with an effort to underpin flying operations.

I think the benefits are out there. Again, if you visit our people, they are operationally challenged, they have good missions, by and large good equipment. We have things to do out there to modernize some of our equipment, but operational morale is not the issue. It's when you get into what I term ``societal morale''.

Mr. Jack Frazer: If I can move to that, then, General, way back before the military became hooked to the civil servants in parity and the rest, the pay in the service may have been lower but the perks that went with it, the cheaper married quarters rents and other advantages that came to people by virtue of their being in the air force or the army or the navy, made the difference. I wonder whether we're really achieving the best results by saying now we're going to have equivalent pay. Wouldn't it be better to revisit the past and recognize that service people are special, they are different, there's a different mandate, a different challenge for them, and maybe they can't be treated like civil servants and they have to be treated differently?

LGen DeQuetteville: Mr. Frazer, that's a very valid question. There are only a few of us grey-haired folks - some with no hair - around who remember when we weren't benchmarked with the public service. You're quite correct, that has had a tendency to draw us into this notion that it's just another department of government, because all negotiations are benchmarked in that way.

I think that's a point the minister was trying to make when he invited this committee to take up the challenge: to go back and re-examine the whole validity of benchmarking our pay and compensation directly against the public service; should we go back and re-examine some other way of doing that. I thought that was a very important point.

Mr. Jack Frazer: One example is indulgent flights for service people to fly on air force airplanes. I understand now there's some concern about that because the civil servants can't do it and therefore they don't want the military to do it.

.0945

What is the policy on it? I subscribe to the convention that if there's an empty seat on an airplane going from A to B and somebody is qualified to fill it by virtue of being in the service, it costs no more for that seat to be filled if that person actually wants to fill it. We should therefore do everything possible to increase morale by providing this.

LGen DeQuetteville: Our refined policy is pointed in that direction of making sure. We do have airplanes that travel to theatres of operation in which our people are operating, and we should be focused on family reunification. When there are seats available on those airplanes, people should be entitled to travel in them. That's the thrust of our policy now.

What has been lost there - and you would recall this - were the sorts of training flights that went around the world. They are there primarily for the proficiency of air transport crews. Some of those flights still exist, and they're essential to training, although we now do much more of our training collaterally with regularly tasked missions. It was putting people in those kinds of seats that had some unfortunate media attention attached to it. As a result, we have basically restricted people from going on those kinds of global trainers.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Again, I would submit that if there's no additional cost entailed to the government or the taxpayer, there's no reason why they shouldn't do that if it's a reward for service rendered and so on.

The Chair: You should call a press conference on that.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Jack Frazer: I'd be willing to, Madam Chair.

LGen DeQuetteville: The difficulty is that if one of those flights touches down in an exotic place and members in uniform get off, there's this perception that we have some sort of subsidized travel that members of the public service or other Canadians don't have. That's the dilemma. We thought we took a very pragmatic approach by not allowing people to go on those global trainers, restricting them instead to where we have people on operations and where family reunification is involved.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I guess it would certainly create a furore, but I still contend that it would be justified. If it were properly explained to the population, I think they would accept it as a reasonable thing.

Do I have a little time?

The Chair: You do. I'm stunned. Keep going.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: You're not running again are you, Jack?

Mr. Jack Frazer: No, sir.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Jack Frazer: How many people are in the air force?

LGen DeQuetteville: We're on our way down to 13,500 regulars, 3,000 civilians, give or take, and 3,000 reservists. We have cut our regular force by 45%, our civilians by 50%, and we're doubling the number of our reservists from 1,500 to 3,000.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Is there some provision for that to go to 5,000?

LGen DeQuetteville: Potentially, but with the same amount of money. We could hire reservists for fewer days and get more of them engaged. That opportunity is there.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I have to ask you the obvious question. How many air force generals are there?

LGen DeQuetteville: Working down under 65 - we'll be down to around 20 air force generals. In the air force, per se, in our new structure, we will have four in Winnipeg and three in Ottawa, and that's it. All the rest are in other locations - NATO, NORAD, other parts of the headquarters here in Ottawa. But within the air force itself we'll be down to six or seven generals. As you know, we're closing our four groups this summer and are consolidating in a single operational level headquarters. We will run all of the operations from Winnipeg.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Except for the one that's going to Trenton?

LGen DeQuetteville: No, what will go into Trenton is something called a contingency capability centre. It will just be an appendage of the headquarters in Winnipeg, which will really have this responsibility for helping us pack up and deploy on these global operations we go into.

Mr. Jack Frazer: When he was here, I mentioned to General Kinsman the practice that was used in the overseas postings in the foreign affairs department, and that was a rating index for bases. This was an attempt on my part to say that we could rationalize the difference in cost of living between Halifax, Cold Lake, Bagotville, Winnipeg, and so on. Has this been considered beyond there?

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LGen DeQuetteville: That's one of the points we tried to make. In terms of disposable income, we ought to be searching for a formula that tries to protect that for our members, regardless of where they're posted.

There are challenges among the three services. The navy, operating from Halifax and Esquimalt and major metropolitan centres, has a different set of considerations than the army does, and the air force is different yet. When we are looking at things like outsourcing health care, dental care, and a lot of our personnel support, that's great in Winnipeg and in Halifax. It's not so good in Gander and Cold Lake and other places where the local community simply doesn't have the resources to be able to pick up on that.

We have a real challenge in trying to get an equitable standard, if you will, across our three services and in trying to recognize the distinctions among them, and right across the thirteen wings of the air force. We are looking at formulas to do that. Your point's well taken.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Computers are marvellous things that way.

LGen DeQuetteville: Yes, computers are great, but it's what you feed into them.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Certainly, but they allow you to consolidate a whole bunch of information and extract good info.

LGen DeQuetteville: Absolutely.

Mr. Jack Frazer: May I have one last question?

The Chair: No. You can have a second round, though. Thank you.

Mr. Richardson.

Mr. John Richardson: Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson.

General DeQuetteville, I appreciate the overview. Things are so fluid in the forces now that one needs to have an overview about every two or three months.

Here's the first question I want to pin down. Have the expectations of the pegging of the Canadian Forces to the public service pay...it seems to me - and it's just an impression I have, I don't have any hard facts - that we never realized the expectations the Canadian Forces personnel had for that pegging. It seems to me that we're always behind in realizing the closeness to that pegging.

LGen DeQuetteville: Indeed, Mr. Richardson, and I think that was the point Admiral Murray made very clearly when he appeared before your committee. He pointed out exactly what that disparity was as agreed to by the Treasury Board itself, and therefore those sorts of numbers are now out there. Our people understand that disparity. It's not just perception; it's reality.

Mr. John Richardson: Yes, and it shows up at the bottom end and the top end in the loss of real purchasing power through this arrangement. As you said, the Minister of Defence has given us the mandate to look at that relationship. I think it's something that we should probably do, Madam Chairperson, by having somebody from Treasury Board address us on that issue.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I'd vote for that.

Mr. John Richardson: I'm sorry to -

LGen DeQuetteville: It's a very key point, and I'm certainly not the expert on this, but I believe the issue is that it is a policy; it's not legislated. Therefore, this is why the implementation has tended to lag, as opposed to it actually being legislated and -

Mr. John Richardson: Since it's been part of our hearings and we've heard a lot about it, from the very lowest level to the highest, it's an established concern in our mind. I think we have enough evidence to take forward. We want to hear why the policy wasn't implemented. We want to see what the rationale was and what we can do to see that it is brought up to date.

May I go on a little further?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. John Richardson: Mr. Frazer asked some pretty concrete questions. In the general sense, to me the tragedy is losing the pilots we have. I think our training program is one of the best in the world, as alluded to by Mr. Frazer, the flags for flying hours - Was it a red flag at Cold Lake?

LGen DeQuetteville: It was a maple flag.

Mr. John Richardson: The maple flag. We had a chance to see the briefing and the quality of the set-up at Cold Lake, and I was very impressed. Now it's an open market and these people will go to where they're best compensated and to where their lifestyles can be enhanced and the family conditions will be more consistent.

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I think that kind of factor has to be written into our pay, because you see the number of places people are posted to around the world with the air force, navy, and army. The general public reads about them being there, but they don't know about the kinds of dislocations and stresses that puts on the rear guard, which is the families back home, and the uncertainties and the unlimited liabilities that are involved. How can we get that in as a major factor? I'm sure they realize it at the Treasury Board, and I'm sure the public realizes it. But it is an employment dissatisfier. Because it's an employment dissatisfier, if that was private business, there would be extra money for that.

LGen DeQuetteville: I think you've touched on a very visceral issue for us. In a unified armed force such as we are, we have traditionally treated all officers or all categories the same. So we don't make distinctions between MARS officers and air officers and pilots in their basic categories. We do that through some supplementary means, such as an aircrew allowance, a sea duty allowance, or a field allowance for the army. We try to make up some of those things.

We have this dilemma on the one hand of being a unified force and wanting to be a unified force, but on the other hand recognizing the law of supply and demand as any business would. If you have a critical human resource, your choice is either to pay them an appropriate amount or to give them enough support so that they aren't attracted to the outside. That's the challenge an employer would face.

In the past when we've faced this dilemma, we've never been able to do anything about it because the unified nature of what we're about has carried the day. So we've just toughed it out. This time we're focused on pilots as the critical example, but it could be other trades, such as MARS officers or air traffic controllers.

As you know, we are being asked to put our department on a more business-like footing. We have business plans, and we are better able to measure what it costs us to do our business. We have to start to approach the human resource issues in those terms. If it costs me $2 million to create a pilot in seven years and then they walk out the door, just pushing the button to start developing another one is not a good approach for a business. You have to find a way to keep those people in so that they don't attrit on you, and to save the very high cost of retraining and going through that whole process again. We're marketing our NATO flying training around the world at $1.25 million U.S. per pilot. It's an expensive business. It's big business. So we have to work on the retention end as opposed to the production end.

Mr. John Richardson: I just wanted to ask one follow-up question.

The Chair: You have time.

Mr. John Richardson: Just to tie the knot on what you've discussed here, I agree that if we can cut down the costs and input by retaining longer, it would be a factor. What we have to do is sell it hard. A lot of young people come into the air force. To be a pilot is a significant drive, and it's a career a lot of young boys and young men dream about, and women - I knew I would get a harrumph out of her. But they also see that there's a life thereafter.

Let's take it from another career perspective. They're going to say, I can join the Canadian Forces and get a $1.5 million vocational training plan. I can serve for five to seven years in order to get a lot of hours in, and then I can turn my pay level there into a pot of gold by going into a commercial aviation job, where I will be able to fly home at night and I'll have the same home for the next part of my life. It's a very wise decision by the young person from the point of view of their career.

LGen DeQuetteville: Sure, it is, and we feed right into it. One of the ironies here is that if you understand our terms of service, we have a short-term period of nine years, and then we have a re-engagement process that goes through to twenty years. At nine years, if people choose not to stay with us, we give them a big pot of money to help them transition to civilian life.

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If you plot the average pilot's salary for the first nine years, it actually exceeds what someone might get paid going with an airline for the first nine years. Where do the curves cross? Right at the nine-year point. So just when we have paid them more than they would get from going to the airlines for the first nine years and they come to that point in their career where they have to make a decision, we give them a pot of gold. Now they can join the airline, and within about three years the airline is paying them 40% or 50% more than we are able to pay them.

It's a real dilemma we're in here. We have to find a way right at that nine-year point to keep their attention.

We get to another problem at the twenty-year point, where their pension starts to become an issue. They can get out at the twenty-year point, go join Canada 3000 or Air Canada, and now they have their pension plus what they get from the airline. We're stymied again.

So the nine-year point and the twenty-year point are real problems for us. The twenty-year point is less of a problem, because this is a young people's business. We're looking for a certain amount of national attrition at the twenty-year point, but the nine-year point is the one that's killing us, and that's where we have to -

Mr. John Richardson: I hope we can develop a strategy to solve the problem.

The Chair: Mr. O'Reilly.

Mr. John O'Reilly (Victoria - Haliburton, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Lieutenant-General DeQuetteville and Colonel Bouchard, I thank you for coming. I'm amazed the Bloc Québécois thinks this is some kind of a political event. I'm also revelling in the fact that I've been spending four years with this brown-bag Reform watch and now we want to do something different.

I'm very encouraged, Mr. Frazer. I have to tell you I'm really encouraged. I just feel so good about this.

Mr. John Richardson: Now, now. Jack has always been positive.

Mr. John O'Reilly: I have a lot of respect for Mr. Frazer. He has experience and he helped me to eliminate the word ``footprint'' from the vocabulary of the military. I have to thank him for that.

At the start of these hearings I took them very seriously and put out press releases and asked for submissions from people in my riding who have retired and people who are near retiring. I've received twenty or thirty replies, and some of them are interesting.

Pilots age 45 at their retirement package felt they were encouraged to leave. I would have you address that, and how you can turn that around. Some of them now driving from Trenton to Toronto and flying for commercial airlines have put in ten years of commercial at Air Canada and so forth. But all of them I've talked to have felt they were actually encouraged to leave and the incentive was there for them to leave because, as you mentioned, it is a younger person's game. Yet they had ten years of flying service left and it could have been taken advantage of at a time when it was probably needed the most.

Captain Nierlich, who is from my riding, appeared very recently in his home town for the Sunderland maple syrup festival. It was a tremendous morale booster. When I questioned him on how this winning of the top gun award, the team, and so forth were treated by the air force he was very hesitant to say anything, but his father certainly filled me in on what we should be doing. He was one of his great boosters. His idea was if the air force could free these people up, book them into events around the country, particularly in your cadet training program and some of the other things, you would have natural ambassadors of goodwill. This whole team, whom I've met, are tremendous boosters. To see 100 people lined up to get his autograph - You think, why can't we take advantage of this? I'm a salesman. I wasn't thinking of selling the autographs, but I was thinking of taking advantage of that situation.

They don't have enough time to do this. Yet if you want to recruit, you have the natural ability to recruit when someone pulls this off. But then you don't hear from them again.

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I ask all my questions at once, by the way, so you'll have to keep notes here in case the chair cuts me off the odd time.

I also attended a cadet graduation this summer in the town of Lindsay. I think it was 31 graduates who received their wings in the cadet program; young men and women who had earned their wings. I want to know what kind of incentive is being offered them to join the military, and particularly the air force, and what can be done to help them continue a career. When I talked with them they weren't really sure of what happens now, other than yes, they have wings, and yes, they can fly. They're all very young people.

That's a series of questions. The last one I'll ask, if I have time, will be on your opinion of the unified forces, but if you want to answer the -

LGen DeQuetteville: That's a very good line-up, Mr. O'Reilly. Thank you.

About encouraging pilots to leave at 45, it may have been some people who took our force reduction program in the last three -

Mr. John O'Reilly: Ten years ago.

LGen DeQuetteville: Oh, ten years ago.

Mr. John O'Reilly: The guy who wrote this says he's been out for ten years and flying for Air Canada.

LGen DeQuetteville: I can't recall programs where we encouraged people to leave ten years ago, other than if it were just moral encouragement. Financial encouragement, no.

Of course we were in a situation, as we started this fairly massive drawdown circa 1990, of having more pilots than we were going to need when we got down to the force structure we're planning on now. Like everyone else in the service we had a force - Some pilots left in 1993, 1994, and 1995 through the force reduction program. We did finance pilots to leave at that time because we did have a surplus.

Then we went through a period of about a year and a half or so where we actually had new pilots stacked up at the door of our training plant at Portage and Moose Jaw because we couldn't put them through the process fast enough. That became a big dissatisfier. Kids would graduate from RMC or university and then spend a year and a half waiting to go on a flying training course because we had a surplus of people.

About a year ago we finally brought that into equilibrium, just at a time when we came out of the recession and the airlines started to zoom ahead, with growth out in the Far East at 8% and the airlines' growth in Canada, with 800 pilots projected over the next five years. All of a sudden, in a two- or three-year period, you went from a surplus situation to this deficit we now find ourselves in.

So yes, we did encourage people to leave back then, again because of this notion of being able to predict the need for pilots when the training period is six years long. Here we are now with the deficit. Six years ago, in 1991, we should have opened the tap to solve this problem. Well, everyone knows where we were in 1991. Obviously there was no way we could have done that. This is a terrible dilemma, trying to predict where you're going to be six years down the road all the time and matching your supply and your demand.

On the issue of why we aren't getting the Steve Nierlichs and others of their ilk out around, of course it's also part of this insidious dilemma. We're already 10% short. We're trying not to take that out of squadrons. We're trying to take it out of staff billets and headquarters and not send people on courses they should be going on. A little has been taken out of squadrons. It's always a dilemma for a squadron commander to make the judgment to take people out of squadrons to send them to other events.

We are using Steve at Air Show Canada this year, out in Abbotsford. He'll be out as part of that opening. He is doing some other things for us, as are others. We have a large chunk of assets we put on the road every summer as part of air shows. That's where we think we get the most bang for our buck in terms of getting our young men and women face to face with the public.

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I was telling your committee chair that tomorrow morning I will be in Moose Jaw to anoint the Snowbirds and approve their show for the start of this year. Then they will be on the road. They are, of course, our great ambassadors for recruiting and for advertising what it is that we're about in the flying business. It's a dilemma between how much you do in that direction - You take the resources out of the squadrons to go out and market - we have to do some of that - but they also have full-time jobs in their operational roles. That's a dilemma for us.

The issue of cadets is a very valid point. Just last weekend I had my honorary colonels conference and my air command advisory council in Winnipeg. We talked about this issue of cadets. We offer flying scholarships. I believe we offer about 35 scholarships a year. We take cadets that come out of the flying program and buy them time while they're going to university or wherever in order to keep them interested in flying, with the hope that they will choose to make a career of the regular force. Some do and some don't. Obviously we want them to, but just by virtue of going through the cadet program they're better Canadians. We definitely want to target the cadet movement to see if we can bring more people in.

But again, that doesn't solve our problem, because those people are now at the front end of that six-year sausage machine that I've talked about. Even if we recruited some cadets tomorrow it would be six years before we would see them with a set of wings coming out of Moose Jaw, and then another three years before they have an operational tour on a front-line squadron. It's a very long process. That's why working on retention is so much more important, in our view. We will work on production, but retention is crucial.

With regard to the notion of the unified force, I believe the pendulum is now in exactly the right place. The recognition of ``one size fits all'' that Mr. Frazer would certainly remember was something that just didn't work well for us.

But now, as we are coming back to having a very strong unified headquarters here in Ottawa, purple headquarters - I myself spent five years in a purple capacity there. We will now bring the chiefs of the army, navy, and air force into that headquarters this summer. General Baril is already there.

We will have a unified force, but we will still have the reality of the people out there who fly airplanes, the people who go to sea, and the people who go into the army. Those aren't interchangeable pieces on anybody's chess board. We must have a structure that caters to the development of people in each of those three services. We must have a strong unified force that pulls all of them together and makes the decisions on what mix there will be and who we want to send to Bosnia, or wherever the next escapade happens to be around the world, and I think we have it just about right now.

Mr. John O'Reilly: Could I ask one quick question?

The Chair: All right, quickly.

Mr. John O'Reilly: With respect to the marketing end of it, there were no recruiters per se at the events I attended. It's hard to keep that enthusiasm if you don't get the names of the people who are enthusiastic about it.

With respect to marketing, when you're sending people out, whether it's the Snowbirds or Nierlich or any of that crew, you should consider also sending your recruiting staff out and having them set up a desk and do some active marketing. If they're not interested in being pilots, they may be interested in some other career in the forces.

Also, much to your curiosity perhaps, even though I am an inland person, I am in favour of new submarines.

The Chair: Hear, hear!

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. John O'Reilly: I think they're part of our program. I'm glad now that I know Mr. Frazer is going to be in favour of this, too. We can equip the navy as well as we equip the airports.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I've been in favour of it for three years -

The Chair: He's always been in favour of submarines.

Mr. John O'Reilly: One final question, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Will you hurry up?

Mr. John O'Reilly: It's a short one on the airbus refueller.

Did I not see an airbus refueller at the Trenton air base show this year?

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LGen DeQuetteville: No. I would hope so, but I don't think so. You saw a C-130 Hercules, which does refuelling.

Mr. John O'Reilly: It had a Canadian stamp on it, so I assumed it was ours.

LGen DeQuetteville: Absolutely. We have five of them. The C-130 is a great airplane as a sort of gas station in the sky, something you can put in one location. When we send fighters up into the Arctic, we also send a Hercules, which orbits, so the fighters can go and do their thing and come back to that point to get refuelled.

The Hercules cannot fly as high as the F-18s, nor as fast. So when you're trying to go from A to B, say, across the ocean, trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, the Hercules cannot escort the fighters. That's why we need the strategic air-to-air refuelling piece of the 707, and that's why we want to make that investment in the Airbus. I hope to be able to show you one at Trenton one of these days.

Mr. John O'Reilly: Good. I'll look for that next year.

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

Mr. Collins.

Mr. Bernie Collins (Souris - Moose Mountain, Lib.): Is this the same day?

Thank you very much. Setting aside that nonsense I listened to a while ago from my friend who has departed, let me say that certainly I'm committed, and, through the chair, I'm sure Mr. Frazer and all of us who are here agree that the direction we go in in both the short and long term is very important.

You touched on a whole series of things, and I'll try to condense them, if I might. One, I had the 30 air cadet squadron out of Estevan come to Ottawa. We tried to obtain some transportation. Hell, I might as well have asked for a 707 or an Airbus because the success in that was zero. I don't know what kind of message it leaves with some people, and I don't know how we work it through.

One of those young people there had his wings, and he had to get them out of Winnipeg.

Years ago I was fortunate to be able to get my wings through a flying scholarship. But at the end of the day, after I had put in the required hours, that was the end of it.

I'm concerned that we have some kind of liaison, because there was nobody there to meet them. I flew down from my home to meet them here, to greet them and say hello, but I would like to think we had some kind of communications structure so we could say, I want you to meet some people in the military and here they are. They were cheesed off because the House wasn't open and the Speaker wasn't here. I just wanted to touch on that one.

You talked about a three-day course called ``Flight Plan 97''. I hope I have it right. What I want to know is at the end of the day, what do the people on that course come away with?

I understand pay, but in the profession I was in, I really didn't see that pay was the end. I wanted to know that at the end of the day people appreciated that the job you provided for those you were serving was the right kind of job.

Unfortunately, in the last while we've had a public out there that has become very cynical about what the hell's going on in the military. We have a public that feeds on one example that may be unfortunate, and the 99 examples that are good we never hear about.

I think what Mr. O'Reilly and others have said is, look, I think you have every right to go out, and if it means more public relations, do it. I think we have to be supportive and say we're going to put up the money.

Let me go to one other issue. I'm very concerned that we put in $2 million. If I was a business person and I put you in charge and I said, we're going to be paying $2 million to get this guy up and flying, I sure as hell don't want to find out three years later that he's not on board. I'm just giving you a personal opinion, but I don't think nine years is really the juncture we should be revisiting. I think if we're going to put that much of a commitment towards a person, they have to make a longer commitment to it so that we don't get these kinds of misadventures.

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You talked about women and the pay thing. I don't know what you've done in the private sector, but it seems to me that if we have a lady whose husband is leaving and she goes with him, we could do some linking. We could say, look, Matilda is leaving but Harry's coming and his wife would fit the bill. Could we enter into some corporate enterprises so that we do this both in the business structure and at the end of the day?

I know lots of people who would go into flying, but I think we have to do some linking now, whether or not it's through the military. I'm glad to see you're going to the base at Moose Jaw. I think it's an excellent base.

So we encourage young people by saying that this is a hell of a career for them and they'll enjoy it. It's not only in flying, it's the whole package. I like the flying, whether or not it's because you're here from the air side. What kind of a program do we get?

I've covered a whole series of things, but I would be interested in some of your responses.

LGen DeQuetteville: Thank you, Mr. Collins. Let me see if I can try to take some of those on.

You talked about the issue of cadets. Cadets are a bit problematic. For example, you may not be aware that I don't look after air cadets. It's a national program, but I have a regional responsibility for all cadets. I look after land, sea, and air cadets in the prairie region. There are some benefits to that and there are some obvious weaknesses. There would obviously be some advantages to having the air force look after air cadets.

In terms of recruiting, you could maybe make some of those connections between the regular force and the cadet program. Those connections may not be as coherent as they should be by virtue of the organization, but that's a whole other issue.

Again, further to this event of the past weekend, though, I can tell you that one of the points for action that we took out of those events was a revisit of the linkages between the air force and the air cadet program. We have started some work in that area.

You mentioned the Flight Plan 97 Ground School and the message that came out of that for our people. I guess it was aimed at building their confidence so that they were prepared to move forward with where we were trying to take the air force. We explained to them what we were trying to do structurally, and then we took them back to their core values and discussed those. We gave them some communications training, interpersonal training, and team-building exercises, and then some direct tools on how to work in the new environment we're going into. We're pushing more and more responsibilities to young men and women right down at the lowest rank level and we're expecting them to be accountable, but what are we doing to help them prepare for that?

I think the program was a great success for us. Again, in your travels, I would invite you to visit any of our air wings. You will find that Flight Plan 97 Ground School is well understood out there. Ask our young people what they took out of it. It's been very gratifying to me personally, but I would rather you got it from them than from me.

On the issue of pay, I understand what this country has been through economically and that your constituents have also been disadvantaged. Therefore, how much stomach is there for a military that comes and bleats about pay?

Further to a question asked earlier, there are other things we ought to be working on. I think the commitment you get out of individuals in the military goes far beyond pay. If pay was at all reasonable, that would be a non-issue. People don't join and put on a uniform and go through what we ask them to go through for the pay; none of us do that. For many of our people in the last few years, though, it has been virtually a survival mode. When people are in a survival mode, those are the things that become the most emotional for them.

Again, our people are not asking for double-digit raises. They're just asking for some recognition to work back toward their worth. If we can redress in some realistic way, the whole pay issue will disappear very quickly. That is our challenge.

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You mentioned the issue of this investment of $2 million per pilot and what is the commitment people should have beyond the nine-year point. That's exactly the sort of thing we're working on here. Whatever we do at that nine-year point, whether it's a bonus, which some other air forces have used, whether it's an increase in the basic salary, whether it's a flying pay incentive, a commitment must come with that. We're talking about things such as five years. If we can get them through that nine-year point, then they tend to be quite content for the period on out to twenty years. That would be very much part of whatever package we come forward with.

Finally, you talked about how we had better interact with the corporate world and enterprises out there in terms of opportunities for spouses. We are doing some things in that area. We have something called an ``industrial reserve program'' in the air force. We have taken it up with a number of industries that service our airplanes. CAE in Edmonton looks after our Hercs, Bombardier in Montreal our F-18s, Bristol in Winnipeg. We have MOUs with those industries where they provide members of the reserve who are then able to come in and join the air force and help us out.

That works well in the major cities of the country. The dilemma we have with the sort of thing you are suggesting is in the Cold Lakes or in the Goose Bays, the areas where there isn't much on the outside we can trade off with industry in a direct way. That becomes the challenge again: for us to establish programs across the air force that are universal and independent of location.

Mr. Bernie Collins: Just so I don't lead you astray, let me assure you I feel very strongly that if we're going to get the best qualified, then we should pay them accordingly. I don't expect you to go hat in hand and do the kinds of things we want you to do and then we ask you to subsidize the rest of society. I think that would be foolish. I think we have to visit this very quickly so we restore what you have in your program for Flight Plan 97. We have been in economic straits, but the point has come now where let's make it a commitment that it's going to be a first priority. If you people know we are committed to the service you provide through the monetary aspect, the other things we have to visit will be a hell of a lot easier.

I think what Mr. Frazer said has some merit. As we move from base to base, how do we build in - You talked about longer stays, which may come into it, but if you're going to Goose Bay and then you're going to Cold Lake or wherever, some kind of compensation package should be built into that structure to make those adjustments you won't have down in Halifax or wherever.

I'm sure the committee is of one mind that for far too long you have been patient in waiting for some kind of adjustment to the monetary compensation package. I think Mr. Richardson has pointed it out. Let's go back to that agency of government that really has to deal with it and say let's put it into action. I can talk to you all day and if we never do it, it isn't worth a hill of beans. The time has come for us to make sure we visit that and do it. Then at least there's a little light at the end of the tunnel, such that we're serious in getting these things resolved. I want the families to understand as well as you people that we are committed to the service you provide on behalf of this country.

LGen DeQuetteville: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Frazer. Leave some time for me, because I have a few questions.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I'm sure you would have, Madam Chair.

General, I want to commend you first of all on your Flight Plan for Life. I think it's a vital thing when the time is available to let people not just sit on the bus but know where the damn bus is going. They are more capable of understanding the demands that are made on them and so on. They are more motivated to get on with the job. I think that's a super initiative you have taken.

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Both Bernie and John talked about cadets. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but it used to be that the cadet movement was prohibited from encouraging people to go into the service because that wasn't the purpose of the program; it was a citizenship program. But if you checked, I think you would find a substantial proportion of people who are in the cadet program eventually do gravitate toward the service that interests them. Is this still the case?

LGen DeQuetteville: I can't cite you statistics. The point, the concern, is certainly valid, and we recognize that we need to do more there. Again, our support for cadets is as a national program, a nation-building program. As I say, it's a benefit to Canada even if nobody comes into the regular force. But we obviously also want those people to become highly motivated and we want to take advantage of the cadet program in all three services.

Mr. Jack Frazer: General, I'm concerned with everybody in the military and in the air force. Going to the pilot problem, however, you're talking about an identified pilot surplus. I recall that we released 500 pilots back in the mid-1960s and we suddenly found we were 500 short. That's been going on ever since that time, and we obviously haven't learned. It strikes me that the vital thing that's required to stop this is stable funding and stable tasking. If the funding is there and the tasking remains basically the same, surely our planning for future needs can then be made stable, if I can use that term. Would you agree with that?

LGen DeQuetteville: I agree with that to the extent that I think the third piece is the relationship with the commercial industry out there. That is always the unknown. You've been through this, and there have been at least three cycles of it in my career. That's the thing that's different about the pilot equation when it's compared to most other trades in the military. You have this aviation resource out there that becomes the pull, so when the two things you cite don't work, it just compounds the problem. People gravitate to someplace where they can get paid at least 50% more, work probably 30% less, and have a stable environment in a major metropolitan centre in order to raise their families and where their spouses can be employed.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I would pose to you that you could identify and in fact quantify the percentage of people who are likely to leave the service and go on to the other thing. If you had the stable funding and the stable tasking, you could identify the attrition that you're going to enjoy anyway. You would then have a stable platform on which to make your plans to provide training to answer the attrition. Is that not correct?

LGen DeQuetteville: In fact, some of the things that - Charlie has met with the major airlines. Of course, they're in business and are not interested in a contract per se, but we're trying to work towards something that might see us tell them that we will give them so many pilots at their 20-year points, and the airlines can be guaranteed of getting these pilots with this capability at the end of 20 years. They'll get the same number every year - it would almost be a contract on our part - but would have to try to leave alone the ones down at the nine-year point. We can then do things to retain those pilots, and if we can get them through to 20 years, we will have received good value from them and have given them an opportunity to then go on to the commercial industry while they can still have another 30 years' employment out there. Everybody would win if we could come up with that kind of an arrangement.

Mr. Jack Frazer: That's a super idea. I hope you can negotiate with China when it takes over Cathay Pacific, although that may be a difficult one.

In regard to pilot attrition, I was concerned when you said in your briefing ``So far, we have managed to sustain flying operations, but we're coping largely through staff shortages, cancelling career courses, and increased production''. It strikes me that this may drive some of your attrition. When you take people off a known career course because they're badly needed, it certainly doesn't enhance their potential for advancement in the service, nor does it enhance their morale.

LGen DeQuetteville: It may be a moot point on morale. You can probably remember yourself as a young pilot. You probably would have preferred to be flying than going to staff college. Having said that, getting those career courses is crucial for their development and their ability to move onwards and upwards.

By the way, we are also looking at a two-stream approach. We have had a tendency to take all of our pilots and put them through all of the professional development courses and staff courses. We're looking at following some other country, notably the British. In fact, we're essentially at a point where maybe we will identify only 50% of our pilots with the potential for future leadership responsibilities and we will invest in the career courses in those individuals, the staff duties. The other 50% will basically stay in flying jobs, and we'll maximize their output but their career expectations will be restricted. If they change their minds somewhere along the way, they will have opportunities to transfer over to the other side. That also will eliminate some inefficiencies we have by trying to drive everybody through the same pipe to be the CDS.

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Mr. Jack Frazer: That worked well with the permanent flight lieutenants in the RAF. They've done well.

Spousal employment. I'm torn here, because in any other occupation when you're asked to move or are moved it's normally a promotion or a personal choice that you want to go. In the military this is not the case. I'm wondering if, that being the fact, a case couldn't be made for saying there has to be more pay. The majority of families now have two workers in the family to provide the necessary funds. Is there a case to be made to say the individuals in the service, because of the demands the service puts on them, should be paid more so their spouse does not have to work? You can ease it by the longer postings, I agree, but you can't solve it completely in that way.

The Chair: You sure can't.

LGen DeQuetteville: I don't know how. That's one approach, obviously, but there are others, such as better training and education opportunities for spouses, so when they are on a tour at Cold Lake, for example, they can upgrade their education with some support from the service, say, to offset the fact that maybe they have had to give up a job in Ottawa or Toronto or Winnipeg -

Mr. Jack Frazer: But if they go from Cold Lake to Bagotville, then what?

LGen DeQuetteville: This is particularly insidious in the fighter community, where those are our two operational locations and the opportunities for employment are limited.

There are a variety of ways of getting at this. We don't profess to have - I don't know if there are any other points we've looked at in the support package for spouses that -

Mr. Jack Frazer: I guess I was leaping at what Mr. Richardson said a while back, something I've argued for a long time. It's that the equation of civil servants with the military is flat wrong. It just doesn't work, because there's a totally different demand and mandate for them. If we could get that recognition forward, then maybe the people would be willing to say these guys have to be paid more because their spouse cannot work; it's just not there.

I understand this is going to inhibit spouses who want to work, but maybe that's part of deciding to join the service. If you join the service, this is one of the things you have to accept. I don't know.

I would just like to close -

The Chair: While you are ahead?

Mr. Jack Frazer: - by quoting William Perry, whom you mentioned earlier. What he said was basically if you look after the troops, they will look after you. I subscribe to this 100%. I think where we've fallen down over the last 20 years, almost, is we have not provided adequate funds to provide adequate equipment, we've not been able to support the people with their needs, and I think this has impacted on the forces. The only thing we can say has saved us is the dedication of the people who work with and for you. I commend them, and I commend you for the initiatives you've taken so far.

The Chair: Before I begin my comments, I would like to say I'm glad Mr. Frazer acknowledges that some spouses want to work. It's a personal belief of mine that men should have the same access to self-fulfilment in the workforce as women.

On that note, I think we should perhaps leap on Mr. Collins's comment about looking at arrangements from place to place if you get a transfer. I realize there are certain base locations where it's going to be difficult no matter what. There are some problems we have to know we're never going to be able to solve to everybody's satisfaction.

Tuesday at Valcartier - and I realize there are differences between the services, but I think in particular some of the problems are clearly common to all three. We talked about such things as you've mentioned, General, including the outsourcing of health care.

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One of the officers was unable to be with us early in the morning because his wife had gone into labour and they were speeding off to Quebec City, not that far away or that difficult to get to on a bright sunny day over a good highway in the month of April. If that young woman had gone into labour and had to be rushed to a hospital in Quebec City in January, it might have been a different story, because when we were there in January we were in the teeth of a blizzard for two days. The fact that their hospital had closed down was clearly a concern.

There were other things. In talking to the family support people, the various officers, the commanding general and others, they all raised questions with regard to divorce rates, family violence, and the effect of deployment on not just the member of the military who is being deployed, but on the wives and the children and the husbands and the children who may be left at home.

They raised the question of two members who happen to be married to each other being deployed at the same time. I brought up the question of child care, which we realized was even more serious than we had thought in that situation - and that situation is certainly not unheard of. Obviously everyone tries as much as possible not to have both spouses deployed at the same time, but it does happen. I know it certainly happened in Halifax during the Gulf War.

But there is also the fact that the spouse left at home has more exigent child care demands than can be dealt with, certainly at Valcartier, and I assume it is no different on other bases.

We also talked a great deal about spousal employment support. One of the things we heard as well had to do with the fact that when a spouse of a member of the military applies for a job, doors start to slam as soon as he or she says, ``Yes, I'm married to a member of the military''.

Again, I think Mr. Collins' suggestion about perhaps dealing with local employers and trying to get job sharing - job sharing is not exactly the right term, but for want of a better term, that's what I'll call it. That might be something.

We also heard something that really struck me, that is, the question of how much telephone time a member who is on deployment can have with family. The story that still wrenches me is the one about a two-year-old whose father had been away for a year. It took six months for the two-year-old to get used to the fact that his father was indeed his father and was someone he would go to and - there are no words. We all know how that feels.

Obviously those are major issues, but I'd just like a few comments from you on that. Let me say that these are the things that while no less important - and the pay issue is terribly important, obviously, but even the best rates of pay will not solve a number of these problems.

LGen DeQuetteville: Absolutely, Madam Chair. Thank you.

The issue of deployments in some respects, as in the air force, is not the same issue as it is in the army.

The Chair: I understand.

LGen DeQuetteville: The army, of course, has had some very difficult times over the last several years. We're finding that the navy has a different situation, too, and I would contend that ours is different yet.

As we are finding ourselves deployed in the manner I described, we have gone away from the static base posture that Mr. Frazer would recognize, to where it's now not just the pilots and their airplanes that go away somewhere; we now have airfield engineers. For example, in Haiti we just sent an airfield engineer flight - most of them were reservists, actually, from Newfoundland - an airfield security flight, to support that army mission, as well as our helicopter squadron. We tend to have more and more chunks of our air force that are in the non-flying business actually deployed.

We have UNMOs in Guatemala and we've just taken over the NATO responsibility in Bosnia for all of the airlift. A Canadian air force team is looking after all the resupply and air resupply into Bosnia. It's being coordinated by a Canadian air team. There are no airplanes involved other than our Hercs and the Airbuses.

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So the nature of deployments for us has been that we don't take a lot of formed units, an infantry battalion or a ship that sails; we tend to be penny-packeting people from all across the air force to fill out these deployments we take. You don't have the sort of unit responsibilities the army and the navy have both well established to look after those who are left behind when the unit deploys. What happens now? When Fred and Mary and Joe from a wing go as individuals, how does the unit pick up that responsibility?

Visiting the base transport section at 17 Wing in Winnipeg a couple of months ago I was struck that on their wall they had a picture of seven people out of their unit who are deployed in places around the world as ones and twos. That was put up there to remind them that these are their co-workers who are off on individual deployments. They have a responsibility to remember that those folks are gone and look after the people who are left behind.

As an air force we have to do more collectively to recognize this emerging reality for us. When you see deployments in our list of the top twenty gripes our people have, it is that issue. It's not whether there's a colour television in a tent in Haiti. That's not the issue. It's how we look after those who are left behind.

The Chair: General, it had not occurred to me until you said it that in some cases it might be even more difficult for those families, because if you're at Valcartier when a whole group has gone, at least you have a whole group of other families in the same boat. It was the same thing when the three ships left Halifax for the gulf. We had a family support centre. It was difficult, but at least there were lots of others. In your area you might be the only one, and it is perhaps a lonelier set-up.

LGen DeQuetteville: Absolutely, and our family resource centres are playing a tremendous role in helping us with this problem.

The Chair: I agree.

LGen DeQuetteville: On the issue of married spouses, again, it wasn't too long ago that we wouldn't let people be posted to Europe, for example, if they were a single parent. Now we have more and more married spouses and we have to find ways to accommodate the fact that there may be situations where they both have to deploy and then we have to be able to look after the dependants appropriately. I don't think we want to get into a situation where we say, all right, you're married, so you don't both have to deploy, because that has the potential to transfer the load to those who aren't in that situation and they end up picking up a disproportionate share of the resources.

When you talk to young families - and I talked to one in North Bay just last Friday. It's exactly in that situation. They are both quite keen. They are ready to go. They recognize it comes with a deal: they put the uniform on and they have a responsibility to be deployable. But we have to find a way to make sure we can look after the dependants who are left behind.

On spousal employment, working with local employers in job sharing, I take your point. This is a problem for us, as I've identified, and we will continue on it.

I think a lot of it lies in education. Through our family resource centres we're putting material on the Internet that will allow spouses to come in and understand their opportunities a bit better. That's one thing we're doing...and the notion of the longer term, so if we can now say to the local merchant or the local employer our people are now here for six, eight, nine years as opposed to just three or four, it changes the equation on slamming the door when they show up for employment.

On the issue of telephone time, I know access to communication so people can call back home periodically is one we're dealing with as a department. I'm afraid I don't know where we are. I know it's a problem we're addressing, but we're not working on that in the air force.

The Chair: Mr. Richardson, you had a brief question.

Mr. John Richardson: Yes, it's brief, but the answer may be long.

This is not as relevant to the situation, but it has bothered me now for the last three or four years that we've been on the committee. We're drawing down, drawing down, drawing down, but strategically, at what stage in personnel planning and equipment planning do we look at force expansion? We've drawn down to just about the base at which we can't even train for force expansion. I would hope that at some time in the future we will hear from National Defence Headquarters on a plan for rapid expansion in case of the requirement for that. I have been hearing about it, so I'll ask you if there is such a plan in place, or if are we working on this strategic plan.

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LGen DeQuetteville: Mr. Richardson, I can't give you specifics on where the department is. That would be the responsibility of somebody like General Campbell. But I can tell you that in the air force we have the opportunity to double the size of our reserves, with the potential to go up to 5,000. We think a lot about mobilization when we do that. That's very much a part of these industrial reserve MOUs that we're now signing with industry.

Those MOUs, by the way, guarantee members' one-year availability for deployed operations, with the companies picking up the responsibility of protecting the jobs of those who are gone for a year. The deal is that if they are sent to us for three to four weeks as class A reservists, we pay them as class A reservists and the company picks up whatever increment there is in their salary. So the reservists are not disadvantaged, and it doesn't cost them any vacation time. They get the training at one of our air wings and are then available to go on a year-long deployment. It's a very excellent program that we're starting to spin up, but it's very much a part of the question of what would happen if we have to expand and of how we would go about it.

Mr. Jack Frazer: Is that the exercise, General, that one-year thing?

LGen DeQuetteville: Have we actually sent anybody? I'm not aware that we have sent anybody yet, but that is in the MOU with each of these four industries - I think that's how many we have now signed up to that MOU.

Mr. John Richardson: As we draw down, that has to be jacked up. This has to be kept in the balance as far as the country's strategic plan is concerned.

LGen DeQuetteville: That's a very valid point. With the stability that's now emerging, I think you'll see us turning more and more of our attention to it. Again, it's been quite a survival mode here in terms of getting ourselves around how we're going to get down to where we have to go. That's why Flight Plan 97 was trying to build a structure for the future: to take into account mobilization in whatever manner we have to take in the air force.

Mr. John Richardson: Thank you.

The Chair: Members of the committee, thank you.

General DeQuetteville, Colonel Bouchard, thank you very much for your contribution. We'll be in touch.

LGen DeQuetteville: Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I think that as you get out to visit some of our air wings, you'll get the real dose. You're getting it from me, and I appreciate that limitations are therefore brought with it. You need to get out there and actually see our people in action, because you'll get the true story there.

The Chair: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, I think we will probably have a meeting of the committee on Wednesday afternoon. One of the things I had mentioned to our tireless clerk was the possibility that we might have the U.S. military attaché or someone from there to give us some comparisons.

Mr. Jack Frazer: I thought there was going to be a farewell party for me.

An hon. member: There will be. We may incorporate that too, Jack.

An hon. member: We'll get General DeQuetteville to arrange a fly-over.

The Chair: That too, but we'll ask Richard to explore that if nobody has a problem with it.

Mr. Jack Frazer: What time?

The Chair: It would probably be at 3:30 p.m., but it will depend. There may be a different witness, but I'd like to have one on Wednesday.

Mr. Jack Frazer: But we are going to meet?

The Chair: If we have someone to hear on Wednesday, we will try to do it. However, there will not be a meeting next Thursday. I think you can depend on that.

The meeting is adjourned.

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