44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 5, 2022 10:00AM
- Apr/5/22 10:45:39 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is some catching up to do when it comes to equipment. My colleague talked about that. The national shipbuilding strategy is very costly and is experiencing near‑record delays.
Would immediately fast-tracking the inclusion of a third shipyard be a solution not only to improve this 2%, but also to increase youth engagement in our naval force and in shipbuilding?
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- Apr/5/22 11:36:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to cite a Latin proverb. My Latin is not very good, but long live Astérix. Si vis pacem para bellum, which means, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
I never liked this proverb, but I have to say it is still necessary, even in 2022. I hope that one day we will manage to live in a world where conflicts will be resolved through diplomacy, intellectual skills, open-mindedness, collaboration and consensus building.
National defence is a means of ensuring not only our own security and safety, but also the security and safety of populations under threat, whether those threats are natural or political and human.
Today, we are talking about fulfilling our commitment as a NATO country to devote 2% of our GDP to national defence spending. My colleague eloquently explained that the Bloc Québécois agrees, but we still need to know how to manage our groceries.
I was trained as a teacher, and I like to make things simple, to explain complicated things using simple words. When I say that we have to know how to do our groceries, we must know what we have in stock, see if it is still good, and then determine what we need before we go out shopping.
According to the Auditor General's report 3, released in the spring of 2020, National Defence does not know exactly what it has in its inventory and does not know how to account for it. There is a lot of confusion. As my colleague stated earlier, National Defence returns more than $1 billion per year to the central budget as a result of underspending. That is problematic.
The commitment was made in 2014, but we have yet to meet it. We must ask ourselves questions. What is military spending? What should it include? Military procurement is fraught with problems. What is going on? There are other problems we must examine as well, because it is all interrelated.
What is considered military spending? Naturally, it includes arms, which my colleagues spoke about at length. That said, we need arms and military means of transportation that are up-to-date and functional. For example, the CF-18s are outdated. They require more than 30 hours of maintenance for every flight hour. How much maintenance do the Australian F/A-18 Hornets need? It is difficult to know. I asked the question several times in committee and did not get an answer, so I do not know how many maintenance hours are required for every flight hour on the F/A Hornets.
It would be nice to have helicopters that do not crash and submarines that do not catch fire. Our submarines spend more time under repair than under water.
Canada ordered six Arctic and offshore patrol ships, but they cannot go to the Arctic in the winter because the ice is too thick, so they patrol the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. If they are called “Arctic” ships, maybe they should be able to patrol the Arctic. We have “polar” ships instead, except that two polar ships for all of northern Canada is not a lot.
The government bought C6A1 machine guns, first introduced in 1958, for $28,000 each. We have Browning Hi-Power pistols, first produced in 1935, which was before the Second World War.
Our anti-tank weapons are not much better. Canada has the Carl Gustaf 84 mm and the M72, both of which have an effective range of approximately 300 metres and fire straight, right at where tanks are best protected. That 300-metre range is not much compared to other countries' anti-tank capacity.
Our radar systems are also outdated, and I could go on. All of this falls under procurement. No one is checking and upgrading the equipment.
I remember hearing about how, a long time ago, our soldiers were sent into battle in the desert with green uniforms. That is also something to be considered with respect to procurement.
How about training, which is also part of the 2%? Training needs to be done with new equipment. We need to ensure that our students are training with the same equipment they will be using, not with outdated equipment. Retention also involves ensuring that our soldiers can use the equipment they were trained on.
Young people these days are very tech savvy. They want technology. They cannot get enough. I am sorry, but they will not be interested if they are given technology from 1935 or 1958, no matter how noble the mission may be.
As I said, military procurement is fraught with problems. The military does not know what is in its inventory and is unable to respond to emergencies, even during training and exercises.
The Auditor General of Canada wrote about this in report 3 from the spring of 2020. The military does not always seem to know what it has in stock. The report also mentions requests submitted to a warehouse that turned out not to have the equipment in stock. It was requested from another warehouse but was not available there either. It had to be purchased. Imagine the delays.
There are men and women waiting for training, and they need this in order to be up to date. The request was even marked “urgent”. In one case, the request involved parachutes. How can someone train to jump out of a plane if they have no parachute? Urgent means urgent. The delays are unbelievable. The tracking systems are as outdated as the equipment.
If defence spending is to be increased to 2%, it must include a major overhaul of both the supply systems and the supply sources. The challenges of knowing where the equipment is and making it available also create other problems, including not being able to use the military's equipment transportation system and being forced to ask private carriers to do the military's job. This adds to costs, and I have not even touched on the mistakes of dithering over the F-35s and the national shipbuilding strategy.
Another problem with procurement and obsolescence is recruitment. I mentioned this briefly. Another recruitment problem has to do with the Canadian Armed Forces' reputation when it comes to its treatment of women and certain minorities and genders. That needs to stop. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is being harassed and touched against their will. Imagine this is happening to a member of Parliament or one of their children. This cannot be tolerated from members of the Canadian Armed Forces, no matter how much stress they are under.
I want to get back to the obsolete technology, which is something we hear all the time. I am not a fan of the Latin expression Si vis pacem para bellum, which makes me uncomfortable. However, we are behind in terms of our technological and industrial defence capabilities. This means that not only are we unable to defend those who need it most, but we also cannot defend ourselves.
This investment will yield returns because it involves training in engineering, welding, shipbuilding, aircraft manufacturing, information technology and more. We have the brains here, and the government needs to stop calling on Silicon Valley. Let us invest for ourselves and for others. Most importantly, let us improve our procurement system, which might as well be from the Middle Ages.
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- Apr/5/22 11:47:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the oil industry will completely disappear. I think that there are some things we will always need.
However, the oil industry must be drastically downsized if we want to maintain our environment for future generations. Yes, the industry brings in money. Part of this money could be used to achieve the 2% target. It is up to us to decide as members of Parliament.
Reducing our oil consumption can only help, maybe not us, but our children and grandchildren. A real statesperson thinks about the future and future generations, not about the next election.
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- Apr/5/22 11:49:11 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I began my speech with proverb. I will now begin my answer with another proverb: Only fools never change their mind.
That being said, when we make a decision, whether it is personal, general, political or governmental, we choose one of the best solutions at the time. It may not be the best decision in hindsight, but, under the circumstances, it was the best choice.
Today we are realizing that we made a mistake that we need to correct. Let us not be fools; let us simply correct it.
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- Apr/5/22 11:50:44 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no question that we need to support victims of harassment and sexual assault.
We talk a lot about women. They are incredibly strong, they get through it, but the impact, the images and the flashbacks are there for life. Let us also consider the other victims of harassment, bullying and sexual assault we rarely talk about: men. Men can also be victims. All of these people need support.
What we really need is a major change in mentality. Assaulting someone is not being manly, and I will keep my insults to myself.
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- Apr/5/22 12:34:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, not only do the Canadian Armed Forces need equipment, but they also need to do a better job of recruiting and retaining members. One of the reasons members quit and leave the army is that reservists are being sexually assaulted and cannot take their cases to the court martial.
Maybe it is time to change that and support our reservists. When necessary, they can serve Canada just as well as regular forces.
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- Apr/5/22 1:05:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, with regard to the F-35 fighter jets and recruiting, we are told that there is no recruitment problem, but there is a retention problem.
When I look at the entirely deficient military procurement program, I cannot help but wonder if we will ever get any pilots in planes.
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