National Defence Main Estimates 2006-2007, Part 2

The Bloc Quebecois

Only one MP from the Bloc spoke during this discussion, and that was the party's Defence Critic, Mr. Claude Bachand. I found his remarks petty and small-minded. He seemed to have only two points on his mind, both of which were shallow enough that they should not have occupied his time as entirely as they did.

The first point was the allocation of resources between hunting the Taliban insurgents and providing reconstruction. This is a key question for a mission such as the one we're involved with in Afghanistan, but Mr. Bachand chose soundbites over substance, and so squandered his opportunity to contribute to Canadian policy in any meaningful way:

The minister himself agreed in committee that the main objective was to drive out the people who had sheltered and supported the authors of the September 11 attacks. If this is the objective of the current mission, the Bloc Québécois feels that it has not been achieved because reconstruction and diplomacy are also important. The 3D approach included not only defence but development and diplomacy as well.

My question is for the minister. How much time and money does he intend to spend before moving on to the two other Ds, development—or construction—and diplomacy? He has said himself on several occasions that it was not by military operations alone that Canada would accomplish its mission in Afghanistan.

This question is unproductive on a couple of levels. First of all, the 3D strategy (Defence, Diplomacy, and Development) is a whole-government approach. Obviously the military is the key component in the Defence aspect, and less so in the Diplomacy and Development facets. Likewise, Foreign Affairs would be more involved in the Diplomacy side than in the Defence. This common sense proposition seems to have escaped the member from Saint-Jean. Secondly, the 3D's aren't sequential steps, they're concurrent facets of a single effort. The question a reasonable and informed observer would ask is what proportion of the government's effort should be devoted to each aspect of this effort, and how that proportion should change in response to the changing environment on the ground as the effort progresses. Unfortunately, Mr. Bachand is either unreasonable and uninformed, or he simply does a good impression of those dubious qualities when speaking in the House.

The MND's response - which he had to repeat for the PQ critic, since it didn't seem to sink in the first time around - was a good one:

Mr. Chair, the primary purpose of the military in Afghanistan is actually to support development. We have recently committed extra forces to defend the provincial reconstruction team. We have now committed a full infantry company, a reinforced infantry company, to defend the provincial reconstruction team whose primary mission is to get out among the people and improve their lives.

The battle group is there not only to protect the PRT but to protect the Afghan aid programs, the U.S. aid programs, the Afghan government, the UN aid programs, and all the aid programs. The battle group is there to keep the insurgency under control so development can proceed.

When I talk to troops, I tell them that our mission there is to protect the development mission. That is why we have put so much military effort in there.

Our focus has not changed. It is the same mission that we inherited and we are carrying on with it. What has happened in the meanwhile is that the level of violence has gone up and we have had to react. If we do not keep the level of violence down, we cannot continue with our projects.

In other words, we don't fight the Taliban for the adrenaline rush, we fight them as a means to an end: to create a security situation that enables development to take root. If I were an aide to the minister, I would have made sure he had a verifiably true story to tell about a school Canada built, or a well we dug, or a bridge we constructed that was destroyed by the insurgents, just to hammer home the idea that one cannot separate the suppression of the insurgency from the development and reconstruction work that needs to be done for the overall mission to succeed.

Reasonable people can disagree on the proper mix of the 3D's, but they cannot mangle the entire foundation of the concept as Mr. Bachand has done.

His second point of focus was even more disappointing:

When the government decides to invest billions of dollars, it is the duty of the member from this corner of the country to claim his region's share. Some $13 billion are being invested in aeronautics. That is why I am emphasizing this.

I want to come back to the first contract negotiated with Boeing. Earlier, the Minister of National Defence told me he was not the Minister of Industry. I know that, but he is nonetheless a minister of the Crown and since he attends all cabinet discussions, he is in a position to answer these questions and not wash his hands of it.

And he is the one who establishes the specifications. In other words, the minute they say a plane has to have such and such a radius of action, a range of so many nautical kilometres and a load of so many thousands of kilograms, we know full well that there is only one company for the job and that is Boeing. The government wants to do business with Boeing; and that is its right. I am not saying it is not, but the government also has a duty to obtain the most economic spinoffs possible.

I have nothing against Boeing. It is currently a major multinational company in the world and it has a game to play. It has corporate interests to defend. It is playing its role and the minister has to play his, just like all the other ministers have to play theirs.

Perhaps it was simply a bad choice of words, but I find myself disgusted with Mr. Bachand's characterization of serious defence procurement decisions as a game. Perhaps he was saying it in the Shakespearean sense of "All the world's a stage," but I doubt it. He seems to truly believe that this is a great contest, where his primary focus should be on what he can get for his own little fiefdom out of the government's defence contracts.

Someone needs to sit Mr. Bachand down and forcefully explain to him that a successful defence procurement is one in which the military obtains the equipment or service they require in a timely and efficient fashion; all other considerations should be subservient to that aim.

The implication that the pork-barrel needs of Mr. Bachand's constituency should outweigh the operational needs of the Canadian Forces is abhorrent. Mr. Bachand should be ashamed, as should his party for letting him represent them in such a fashion in this discussion.