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Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)

Apr/5/22 3:48:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is very knowledgeable and I will not engage him in the “who loves 2% more” game that has been going on for a while, because it is kind of a useless exercise. I too want to pick up on the member's comments about the peace dividend during the Cold War, which is critical to our understanding of the Canadian government's casualness toward defence spending. We have enjoyed the peace dividend that is provided primarily by the American umbrella and we need to change our attitude toward defence spending.

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Mr. James Bezan

Apr/5/22 3:49:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is inherent upon all of us to start talking about this publicly so that Canadians realize it is a necessary expense of their tax dollars to make this investment, a huge investment. It is going to take billions of dollars and, in some estimates, upward of $60 billion to make the investments on an annual basis in the equipment, the bases that we need, as well as the wings that need to be modernized to deal with the new threats that we have. The Soviet Union came to a sudden halt because it went bankrupt and with great diplomacy by a number of world leaders. That has been turned on its head, and not just by what we are witnessing right now with the full invasion of Ukraine. This war started in Ukraine back in 2014 with the annexation and illegal occupation of Crimea by Russia and the war in Donbass. It has been eight years of war and all allies have been slow to rise to this occasion to prevent what we are dealing with right now.

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Mr. Xavier Barsalou-Duval (Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, BQ)

Apr/5/22 3:50:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for many years, when I have heard the Conservatives asking questions in the House, I have noticed that they are always concerned about the Liberal government's spending sprees. Knowing its past and how it manages money, we can agree that these concerns are sometimes justified. Does my colleague believe that if we increased the Canadian Forces' budget, for example, since everyone agrees that it is under-equipped, we would also run the risk of the Liberal government spending the money haphazardly as usual and of ending up with very little for a hefty price?

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Mr. James Bezan

Apr/5/22 3:51:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, the world changed in 2014. As for the investments in the Canadian Armed Forces, without continuing to rely upon the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, it was time to start making those major investments. That is why Prime Minister Harper signed on to the Wales Summit pledge that we would hit that 2% of GDP. It took the full-scale invasion of Ukraine to get there now. We have to fix the procurement system. That is the only way we can ensure we get equipment delivered faster, and we can get the kit that is required. We need to use the Defence Production Act as much as possible and ensure that there is not a misappropriation of dollars in things like defence procurement. A lot of the things that we are talking about, including NORAD modernization, are going to require us to buy off the shelf. A lot of companies around the world make it and that is the way we are going to get the best kit for our troops.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Apr/5/22 3:52:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is the massacre of civilians in Bucha and the allegations of mass rape that have shocked the world, but it really is just an escalation of the war of terror that the Putin regime has been running against the people of Ukraine. It really is a line in the sand for us in Canada and for the world. I have enormous respect for my colleague's expertise on this. The number one obligation is getting international war crime investigators in there so it can be documented because we are dealing with a disinformation terror regime, and second is getting the materials on the ground to help the people of Ukraine defend their skies, defend their communities and stop the killings and torture of their people by the Putin gang.

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Mr. James Bezan

Apr/5/22 3:53:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to continue to isolate Putin and the Russian regime on the world stage, including taking them off the UN Human Rights Council. We need to make sure Putin and everyone who is responsible for using rape as a weapon and committing the atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, which are being documented, are all pulled in front of the Hague and face the International Criminal Court for committing these atrocities. Who would have thought that we would be talking about the definition of “human rights” and about war crimes in our modern age, but here it is in our generation. It is sickening.

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Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)

Apr/5/22 3:54:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise here in the House, not only on behalf of my constituents of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound but on an issue of such fundamental importance to all Canadians, that of supporting our Canadian Armed Forces and the need to meet our NATO commitment of 2% of our GDP. I plan on taking a slightly different tack in my speech than likely many of the previous speeches that we have heard so far today in order to provide a more fulsome perspective from someone with over 25 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. First, I want to thank every single sailor, soldier, aviator and special forces operator that has served, is still serving and will serve our great country. Why do we need to invest this 2%? As has been clearly laid out in a number of the speeches, the world has changed. I would argue it has actually been very volatile for a number of years now, at least in my military career and in my lifetime, and it will continue to be that volatile and an ever-changing situation. Right now we are facing the absolutely existential threat of Russia to Ukraine and to our NATO allies, but China and terrorism are things that continue to be on the forefront of the frontier that we need to be able to address. My colleague who spoke just prior to me clearly laid out the situation in Ukraine and how Russia was posing an immediate threat not only to Ukraine but to our NATO allies. I would like to provide some additional context to just how important supporting our Canadian Armed Forces is, and how we need to be adaptable and how we need to be resourced to do that. When I first joined, one of my first operations was a domestic operation here in Canada during the ice storm in 1998. It was not something we prepared and trained for in a traditional sense, but due to the phenomenal training that our Canadian Armed Forces and our Canadian Army delivers, it was something our soldiers were well prepared for. My overseas missions were all under the NATO umbrella, with the exception of my final mission in Iraq, but I will get to that because there was a NATO connection there as well. Regarding the complete complexity of what we need to do within the Canadian Armed Forces, we are over there keeping the peace, but we are also monitoring elections and working non-stop with international NGOs and supporting other nations on the ground, including, in some cases, when riots and other situations occur, being that support network to get them out of harm's way. During my second tour in Bosnia, 9/11 happened, and I believe that fundamentally changed the globe as I am sure we could all acknowledge. It changed the dynamic and the ideas of what we were going to be able to do. It then ultimately led to the coalition of the willing to engage in Afghanistan, which then morphed into a NATO mission. I was there in combat in 2007, but ultimately it was our training mission in 2012 that was of much more importance. Unfortunately, we failed. We did not fail completely, but I do believe we failed in delivering on that, as we see now with the Taliban having taken over the reins. However, when we look at Ukraine and the training mission that has been ongoing there over the last number of years, I would argue Canada has played a critical role in supporting Ukraine in that opposition to Russia. When I was Iraq, again, although it was a U.S.-led coalition, I was part of the team that actually stood up the NATO training mission and went in and briefed the Canadian general and his team that was leading that NATO training mission into Iraq. My whole point is that NATO fills this critical role in dealing with threats from around the globe. It is our obligation. We signed up for this at the Wales Summit, and as the Liberal member for Winnipeg North clearly stated in his speech, the strength of NATO and our collective ability to stand up and defend our respective sovereignty and, frankly, even to be able to afford a properly resourced military or defence is by doing it together. Canada made this commitment in 2014, and we need to abide by that international commitment in order to contribute to our part of international peace and security. What does this 2% mean? It essentially means, as some of the other members have said here in the House, that it is pretty much doubling our current expenditures. It is important for everybody to understand just how complicated that is going to be and the impact it will have on the force structure of our Canadian Armed Forces from both capabilities and capacity perspectives. As much as Strong, Secure, Engaged, or SSE, the current defence policy, has some strengths, it alone is insufficient to provide the necessary policy top cover. I don’t profess to have all the answers, but I know that if CAF is properly supported, and this needed investment is made into our military, Canada and CAF will then be much more capable of responding, both domestically and internationally, to anything Canada and NATO requires us to do. As such, I am pushing and will push that, and I will explain a bit more on this later, we need to do a non-partisan, or at least bipartisan, foreign policy review we can agree on, which will then drive a future update to our defence review. How will we do this? First, in order to spend this money and properly resource our Canadian Armed Forces and meet this commitment, the military's biggest challenge half the time is not having that predictable, stable funding. If we do not have this programmed and understand it, it is hard to expend the money. There has been a lot of commentary about where defence spending has lapsed. Part of the challenge with that is that when it lapses we will not be getting that same bang for our buck going forward. Right now the normal inflation is approximately 5.7%, but in some sectors of the defence industry, defence inflation is at 20% in one year. Therefore, if we were planning to buy 10 ships one year, but delayed that by one year, we would then only get eight. I am not professing this is simple. When we are trying to balance a budget and make it so that we are not creating future challenges for the next generation, this needs to be done by working together. So many MPs have already stated the need for fixing our procurement system. This needs to be streamlined. We need one dog to kick, in my opinion, and I am not professing any violence to dogs, as I do like dogs, but my point is that there needs to be one person in charge of our procurement system in order to fix it. As well, we need to invest in our people because they are the most critical resource within our Canadian Armed Forces. I already mentioned the importance of why we need that bipartisan or non-partisan foreign policy and defence review. It is important because it is the key to preventing political interference and delays within our procurement process. I do not want to get into the capabilities or specific platforms because nothing drives me nuts more than hear politicians speaking about plane X or tank Y. We should be talking about capabilities in general, telling our Canadian Armed Forces and military experts what they need to deliver in Canada's interest on the international stage and then letting them come back to us with the best options available and specifically where we can properly spend this increase in our defence budgets. We have already talked about NORAD modernization. I am confident, based on what I have heard so far today, that the Liberal government will include needed funding for NORAD modernization in the budget on Thursday. However, we have to focus on filling in those key gaps within NORAD versus just nibbling around the edges. One comment was made that we have to relook at ballistic missile defence. We have to put more money into our Arctic. We can look at surveillance, UAV capacities and better engineering capabilities. We can put more money into our people, our sailors, soldiers, aircrew and special forces. Special forces is another area we could spend more money. Cyber and strategic lift are also great ideas we can spend money on. In summary, I think I have addressed the why of the motion, which are the threats and our obligation to get to 2%. The how is that it needs to be done through providing predictable funding, fixing the procurement system, investing in our people, investing in key capabilities, and ultimately having a non-partisan or bipartisan foreign policy and defence review. The world needs a Canada that maintains its position as a trusted global security partner and a reliable member of NATO. Without increasing our military spending, the government puts this at risk. Meeting our NATO commitment of spending 2% of GDP today and into the future is essential. Although in military planning hope is not an option, I hope all members of the House will support this motion.

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Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Apr/5/22 4:04:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I thank the hon. member for his service. Both of my grandfathers served in the First World War and my father served in the North Atlantic in the Second World War, but over the last 20 years, the lapsed funding for the military has been a constant. Yes, we can throw political stuff around, but I am wondering if, and perhaps the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman could also chime in on this, it is more about having the infrastructure in the military to actually take this lapsed funding, most of which is carried forward, and treat it as though it were a consistent revenue source that could be used and properly managed by the military to get the things we need.

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Mr. Alex Ruff

Apr/5/22 4:05:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a brief response. I cannot even pretend to get into all the nuances and complexity of what the member is asking. I spent a year on an army defence procurement project. In my experience throughout my military career, the biggest challenge we had, and I think this probably exists in a lot of departments, was that we felt that if we did not spend it, we would lose it. The member's idea of carrying forward does not truly work, definitely not within DND. When it comes to these defence procurement projects, the real challenge is the political interference. I believe this so much, and I do not mean they do it on purpose. It is because we can get into this idea of why this project is what we need. We can look at previous parties during different elections, with different campaigns and how they ran on certain things, but ultimately they need to get out of that. That is why I believe in non-partisan or bipartisan defence policy and foreign policy.

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Mr. Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Apr/5/22 4:06:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. This member has first-hand experience in this area, compared to most of us. We have not experienced what he has, so when he speaks to an issue like this one, we should listen to what he has to say. One thing that stood out to me in his speech was how he talked about the need to invest in the members of the Canadian Armed Forces. As members already know, the Bloc Québécois will support this motion. However, we do not know what that will mean for the budget, in light of the NDP‑Liberal alliance. What does the member mean when he says that we need to invest in people, in the members of our forces? Is he referring to recruiting or retaining military personnel?

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Mr. Alex Ruff

Apr/5/22 4:07:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, it is not an easy answer, but it is all of the above. We need to invest in our recruiting. Almost a decade ago, I tried to write a master's paper, and I failed miserably at that too, specifically about why we need to invest our best people within the Canadian Armed Forces into the recruiting system so we have that flexibility to recruit the best. As we all know, the huge labour shortages the country is facing, it is a shortage across most of the western world, so we have to get those right people. The other key aspect the government could do to help fix this is on the procurement side. One of the things that we are actually lacking within the government, in my opinion, is enough expertise within defence procurement alone. If we can invest more to get those quality people into that, it would allow the procurement cycle to improve. By investing in training, investing in support for families and investing in our members, we can never go wrong.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Apr/5/22 4:08:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his service and for his speech today. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, for Canada to meet the 2% NATO target, we would have to spend from $54 billion to $56 billion annually on defence, doubling what we spend now. Could the member share how this is justified while pharmacare and dental for Canadians, which would cost one-third of this, are not supported by the Conservatives?

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Mr. Alex Ruff

Apr/5/22 4:08:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, this is not an easy answer. It is justified, from my opinion, and we are obviously supporting putting 2% into our military, because as I explained in my speech, the world is a volatile place and people dying around the globe. I am not trying to take away from dental care or pharmacare, which are primarily provincial jurisdiction, but the point is that national defence is a federal jurisdiction issue, and it is what we should be focused on in the House.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/5/22 4:09:17 p.m.
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Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, The Economy; the hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, Disaster Assistance. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood has the floor.

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Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)

Apr/5/22 4:09:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. and very capable member for Kings—Hants. It is an honour for me to participate in this discussion, and I like to see it as a discussion as opposed to a partisan debate because this affects us all. Security is a universal problem, regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum. I am going to take an unusual tack and take us back to 1940. At that point, Canada had something in the order of the third or fourth largest navy in the world, probably one of the larger armies in the world and a growing air force. In fact, Canada was considered a place where a lot of the training took place for people in the air force. It was not a good time for the allies. The Germans were making really good progress right across Europe, literally taking over quite a number of countries, and the British were rightly concerned. The British gold reserves had been moved to Canada. There was talk that the royal family might need to be moved to Canada. The situation was pretty grim. President Roosevelt was trying to help as best he could with the allies, but he was hampered by domestic politics. Of course, Canada was involved in that war at that point in 1940 very extensively. Prime Minister Mackenzie King realized early on that Canada was going to need to transfer its security arrangements from the declining British Empire to the ascendant American Empire. To that end, he met with President Roosevelt in Ogdensburg, New York, in a railway car, and he negotiated with President Roosevelt the transfer of those security arrangements. Both the prime minister and the president saw that the defence of North America was going to take a mutual effort. President Roosevelt was concerned about the upscaling of Japanese aggression in the Pacific, and he saw the British Columbia coast as an easy entry point to North America. German subs were lurking in the north Atlantic, sometimes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and President Roosevelt felt that something had to be done. The initial position of President Roosevelt was to simply make the Canadian military part of the U.S. north command, and that was a position that was rejected by Mackenzie King, who wanted to keep the Canadian military as a separate stand-alone military under the direction of the Government of Canada and the Parliament of Canada. Out of the Ogdensburg agreement came the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. It was, has been, and still is the senior advisory body to develop defence architecture for North America during the past 80 years. However, the working presumption has been that Canada would have a fully functioning stand-alone military capable of defending Canada and contributing significantly to the defence of North America. That was very true 80 years ago, and for a long time it continued to be true. Canadians like the idea of being independent of the American military adventures. However, what they do not like is paying for it. Members will recall in this very chamber President Obama, in the nicest, kindness and gentlest way, saying that they would appreciate some help with burden sharing. Members will also recall that President Trump, in his own irritating way, said much the same thing. Secretary General Stoltenberg has also said much the same thing and has taken note of our contribution to NATO, yet the entire premise of Mackenzie King's argument with President Roosevelt was that Canada would have an independent military that was capable of defending Canada and contributing significantly to the defence of North America. NORAD was the most significant outcome of the permanent joint board on defence, and it has been a valuable point of collaboration between the two militaries. Canada has been a huge beneficiary of that treaty. That was then, however, and now is now. Over the years, through all Canadian governments, military capabilities have declined, along with our percentage of GDP spent on military spending. We have, as a previous member said, enjoyed a prolonged peace dividend. What he did not add, and I add it here, is that it has been at the expense of our American cousins. As John Manley, the former foreign affairs minister, once said, we cannot always go to the bathroom when the bill arrives. We have spent too much time in the bathroom, and the bill has arrived. “Strong, Secure and Engaged” contemplated about $163 billion of additional spending over 20 years. Unfortunately, even this relatively modest goal has proved to be difficult, as the military has lapsed about $5 billion in the last three years. The military's own readiness report makes for some depressing reading. Then along comes February 24, when, as others have said, everything changed. Our entire threat assessment accelerated the timeline way beyond anyone's previous expectations. At that time the defence committee was engaged in a threat assessment. When we began the threat assessment, none of us had anticipated that Russia would actually carry out an invasion of Ukraine. If we are to defend our own sovereignty and, as importantly, contribute to the sovereignty of others, we have to step up with real fiscal firepower. It is in equipment and personnel, and it is in personnel and it is equipment. Witness after witness after witness at the defence committee keeps telling us about CAF's problems with recruitment and retention of personnel. Military personnel are expensive. It costs literally millions of dollars to train and retain a pilot. Retaining a pilot is as difficult as training a pilot. Cyber-specialists are a hot commodity, and private companies can offer generous salaries and benefits that are very attractive. Witness after witness tells us of a procurement system that is broken. Journalist Gwynne Dyer once said that the next war will be a “come as you are” war. There will not be any time to fix anything and there will not be any time to buy new stuff, and the bills will be huge, in part because we kept kicking the decisions down the road. I am glad to see a decision has been made on F-35s, but the all-domain warning system is going to be a hugely expensive acquisition. Russia has been showing that it has hypersonic capability and that it has militarized the Arctic. If we cannot defend our sovereignty on our own, then we will have to rely on others, and if we have to rely on others, we have to hope that their interests align with ours. Prime Minister Mackenzie King intuitively understood the desire for an independent sovereign nation, and he further understood the cost of being that independent sovereign nation.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/5/22 4:19:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member opposite clearly understands the importance of making vital investments in our national defence to get up to our NATO commitments. It is also clear from the debate today that the government's partners in the NDP simply do not. They have an ideological opposition to making the investments that are required in defence and they do not understand that investing in our security is fundamental to anything else that we want to do as a country. I asked the foreign affairs minister at committee whether the agreement with the NDP involved any commitments with respect to foreign policy or security policy, and she said no. That is good news, I think. It also shows that the NDP is not as engaged in these issues as it should be. However, then I asked the minister if she was confident that the agreement between the government and the NDP would hold if the government chose to increase defence spending, and she could not answer that question. I am concerned that the NDP agreement with the government will limit our capacity to invest in defence spending and will hold the government back in doing the things that it needs to do. Does the member share my concerns that the partners that the government has in the NDP are going to put those required investments at risk?

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Hon. John McKay

Apr/5/22 4:20:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the short answer is “no”. I will just point out to all members of the House that without security, we have nothing. What we watch on our television sets every night shows that security in Ukraine is illusory. Therefore, talk about other spending in other elements of government becomes illusory. I make the core point that a government needs to provide security for its nation before we can talk about anything else.

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Mr. Mario Beaulieu (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

Apr/5/22 4:21:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government avoided making any decisions on the F-35s for seven years. In the meantime, it spent hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain the old CF-18s and purchased old FA-18s from Australia. It spent money bringing these jets up to standards and maintaining them. After this seven-year boondoggle, it has finally decided to buy the F‑35, the jet that the government swore it would never buy. Could my colleague expand on that?

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Hon. John McKay

Apr/5/22 4:22:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the F-35 is a terrific platform, particularly in the elements of interoperability. If in fact we do get ourselves involved with the all-domain awareness system, the F-35 would be a major contributor to that, as will be ship-based information systems, and as will be land-based systems. That will all be integrated, because as General O'Shaughnessy once said, “If I can't detect it, I can't defend against it.” Yes, it has been a long time coming. I hope this is a decision that will be executed quite quickly and that we will get on with the integration into the all domain awareness system that is contemplated by NORAD.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Apr/5/22 4:23:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when it comes to military spending, there are different aspects, one of which is making sure that maintenance dollars are made available as well. The Liberals have continued the expensive trend of contracting out the work to repair Canadian ships and planes, resulting in greater expenses to the military and to Canadians. Does the member believe that in order for Canada to ensure it is getting the greatest value for its money, we should be ensuring the qualified personnel in our armed forces do this work instead of contracting it out?

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