THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 31, Season 12
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Host: Eric Sorensen
Guests:
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister
Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, Former Canadian Army Commander
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff
Location:
Ottawa, ON
Eric Sorensen: With public servants off the job across the country, what’s at stake and how will it impact you?
I’m Eric Sorensen, filling in for Mercedes Stephenson. And welcome to The West Block.
Eric Sorensen: It’s one of the largest public sector strikes in decades, with tens of thousands of frontline workers off the job and services disrupted. What’s the government’s next move? We asked the Minister of Children, Families and Social Development.
And, falling short on NATO targets, why some former top defence officials as speaking out about Canada’s military commitment.
More than 100 thousand federal workers remain on strike across the country. The union is looking for wage increases that keep up with inflation and more say on working from home, which many Canadians are watching closely.
The strike is already causing disruptions for Canadians. Longer wait times at call centres and delays in processing your tax return and immigration applications, and getting a new passport could take a long time.
For more now on the impact of the strike and what to expect, we’re joined by Karina Gould, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. Ms. Gould, thank you for joining us.
First, let me ask you about the impacts. You’re responsible for passports. We’ll start there. The government just got through this terrible long backlog last year and now look where we are again. How many people are being affected by the strike in terms of passports?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Well thanks, Eric, and you’re right. You know, we were in a really good place with passports leading into the general strike that started on Wednesday. Unfortunately, by law, passport services are not considered to be essential. So that means anyone who is applying for a new passport or to renew a passport, unless it is in a very set prescribed set of circumstances, will not be able to apply for a passport while the strike is ongoing.
Eric Sorensen: How many people are being affected then? At what rate are people finding they can’t get it done?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Yeah. So, I mean, there’s only a very small set of circumstances that are considered to be essential when it comes to passports by law, and as negotiated with the union. So unless you are travelling for work and you’re economically dependent on that travel and require a passport for that, or you need to seek medical services abroad, or you have a family member who is critically ill or who has passed away abroad and you need a passport to travel for those reasons, or on compassionate grounds, you cannot apply for a passport while the strike is ongoing. So, typically we—on a normal day, we would receive about 20 thousand—25 thousand passport applications across the country. Just to give you an example, on Wednesday, for the first day of the strike, Passport Canada was only able to process 500 applications because those were 500 that were considered to be urgent or essential.
Eric Sorensen: So most people, then, are not going to get their passports processed right now and are you just saying to them: don’t even try?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: So, I mean, my advice, certainly, is not to apply at this point in time because even though Service Canada can receive the application, they can’t open it. They can’t process it. So if it’s sent by mail, it will just have to wait at the processing centre. You can drop it off at a Service Canada location or a passport office, but they can’t open it. And we’ve seen, you know, most people don’t want to do that because they would have to leave their primary identity documents in that application and of course, we don’t know how long the strike is going to go on and the essential workers that are at Service Canada and passport offices are not allowed to open those applications. So, if you dropped it off and then needed those primary documents, they wouldn’t be able to give them back to you until after the job action is complete. So my best advice to Canadians is not to make that application right now because it just simply won’t be processed.
Eric Sorensen: You mentioned the service centres across the country. There are 300 of them. I guess they’re remaining open, but like can people count on being able to get their CPP and Social Insurance issues addressed, their Employment Insurance applications in? Like, what are you doing to assure that those things can be addressed?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Yeah. So this is a really good point. So, CPP, Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), Old Age Security, the Social Insurance numbers, Employment Insurance, these are all considered to be essential services under the law and as negotiated with the union. So all 338 Service Canada locations continue to remain open, however they are at reduced capacity, so even though they are considered essential, there is a reduced capacity. As you mentioned in the outset, call centres continue to be open but their capacity is reduced. The priority for Service Canada is to make sure that anyone who is receiving payments continues to receive payment, for new applications that they get into payment as soon as possible. Where people may see delays is if there are, you know, questions around the payments that they’re receiving or if there’s adjustments that need to be made, those are going to take more time because the—because of the reduced staff capacity because of the job action. The priority really is ensuring to Canadians get paid for the pensions or the Employment Insurance that they’re entitled to, but it may and likely will take longer to process any adjustments that are required.
Eric Sorensen: We keep hearing of other impacts, like no heat and water at some military bases, or 15 hundred students in First Nations communities in federally run schools are out of class now. Like what is the contingency as these problems mount?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Well, I mean, look, we have 155 thousand federal public servants that are on strike and, you know, we—they are, you know, exercising their right to strike. Obviously, as a government, we respect collective bargaining and we respect the right to strike, however, you know, we have to be honest with Canadians that this will obviously have an impact on their day-to-day lives, which we are seeing already in the services that we talked about. And, you know, we certainly hope that, you know, the union will continue to remain at the table, bargaining in good faith so that we can get an agreement at the negotiating table and hopefully end this job action as soon as possible.
Eric Sorensen: You know, historically the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has touted the fact that it has paved the way for collective bargaining back in the 1960s, for paid maternity leave some years after that. And now it’s hoping for a breakthrough on working from home. It was telework to be part of the collective agreement. Why is that an issue for the government? Why isn’t that something you can just say okay, because they are already working from home a certain amount of the time?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Well, not everyone in PSAC is working from home. I mean there are a lot of frontline workers that are a part of the PSAC bargaining groups. So for example, the people that work at Service Canada centres or the people that, you know, are reviewers from grain exports or who work at airports. Like, there are a lot of people who are not front—who are not able to work from home. We feel very strongly that it’s important for the government to be able to set the workplace conditions and where that work happens so that we can continue to main—maintain effective services for Canadians. And I think that’s something that Canadians broadly can understand. Currently, the Treasury Board guidelines for workers that are able to do some of their work from home, they’re able to do that two to three days a week and then two to three days in the office. That’s a guideline that is already in place with Treasury Board and, you know, we want to ensure that we’re creating a work environment that is both good for, you know, our very qualified and talented public service, but also is, you know, able to be there and respond to the needs of Canadians.
Eric Sorensen: Your government has employed back to work legislation in the past. Is that something that you’ll rule out using now?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: We are very committed to getting an agreement at the bargaining table. You know, we have been at the bargaining table for over—for about a year now. And the last two weeks, my colleague, the President of the Treasury Board, Mona Fortier, has been leading the work in mediation. There’s a Public Interest Commission that has said there’s a fair deal on the table for—for the PSAC Union. We want to get a deal at the table. That’s what we’re looking for.
Eric Sorensen: Do you have a time table? Like, are you looking ahead and saying well within a week or so? Is there some sort of time table that says at some point we have to respond with something more than saying I hope we get a deal at the table?
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Well you know what, Eric? We respect the right to collective bargaining. We respect the right to strike. We respect workers, both public and private across this country, and we believe that the best deals are made at the bargaining table. And so we’re going to continue to put our energy into that and certainly, I’m very hopeful that the union also wants the same thing and that we can get this agreement in place so that the impact on Canadians is minimized. Because as you mentioned, the impact on Canadians with three days of job action so far is already significant and we want to minimize that as much as possible.
Eric Sorensen: Alright. Well, good luck to both sides. Minister Gould, thank you.
Karina Gould, Families, Children and Social Development Minister: Thank you very much, Eric.
Eric Sorensen: Up next, former top defence officials weigh in on the latest Pentagon leak and concerns about Canada’s defence spending.
Eric Sorensen: New information from the Pentagon highly classified intelligence leak is raising concerns about Canada’s military spending.
The Washington Post says it obtained a document that highlights Canada’s defence shortfalls, and it says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau privately told NATO officials that Canada will never meet NATO’s defence spending target of 2 per cent of GDP. When asked about it, Trudeau didn’t exactly clarify what he’d said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “I continue to say, and will always say, that Canada is a reliable partner to NATO, a reliable partner around the world. And with our military investments with the support we give to Canadians, we will continue to be doing that.”
Eric Sorensen: Of the 31 NATO member states, only eight are currently meeting the 2 per cent spending target. Canada ranks fifth from the bottom in defence spending at 1.4 per cent. And of the sixth biggest economies in the alliance, Canada trails the other five.
This latest report comes just days after an open letter from former top defence and national security officials urged the government to take this issue more seriously. Among the people who signed, were retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, former commander of the Canadian Army, and a former Liberal MP and retired Gen. Raymond Henault, former chief of defence staff and the former chairman of the NATO Military Committee. And they join us now.
Thank you, gentlemen. Let me start with you, first of all, Gen. Leslie. The PM allegedly said we’d never meet that 2 per cent target. You were inside the government, does that sound like something he would have said?
Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, Former Canadian Army Commander: It’s possible. I can’t vouch for the voracity of the leak, of course. But all you have to do is look at the results in terms of the Canadian Forces readiness, which is woeful by the way. And you see that the current government has not spent what is required to get our Armed Forces with the equipment, the training and the number of people that they need to meet commitments, especially with the Russian bear rampaging and causing slaughter in Ukraine.
Eric Sorensen: And—and Gen. Leslie, do you think, then, that this government does not aspire to meet that NATO target?
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff: I would say that’s almost a certainty. But you notice my use of the term almost. It’s not only the question of meeting 2 per cent. Right now, we’re at around 1.27 as you mentioned. It’s also the question of actually getting money into DND and then spending it on either people, training, infrastructure or equipment. And there’s a huge bow wave of stuff, money that was promised back in 2017, when Strong, Secure, Engage, the Liberal defence policy came out. And so far, there’s a $15 billion clump of money that was promised in 2017, to implement the Liberal vision, which has not appeared in DND coffers. That’s the crisis.
Eric Sorensen: General, I know you were a Canadian representative on NATO. Is it embarrassing, this sort of lack of spending from Canada year after year?
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff: Well Eric, yes. I had the privilege of being the chairman of the NATO and military committee from 2005 to 2008. Of course, I was representing all the NATO chiefs of defence providing security advice to the—and defence advice to the North Atlantic Council. And for that very reason, attended all of the meetings of the North Atlantic Council, including during my own of the chiefs of defence and the representatives. In all of those meetings, it was always reinforced, especially at the North Atlantic Council level and head of state level that 2 per cent was a very important target form all NATO nations to meet. That is a very important factor because in terms of NATO and its collective defence mantra, if you like, an attack against one is an attack against all. It means that all of the nations have to step up to the plate so to speak and the only way that they can do that is share the burden that comes with belonging to NATO. And for Canada, if you are unable to meet that 2 per cent target, although you may be doing a number of great things as they are with air policing, with Maritime patrols and of course, our deployments to Latvia and support to Ukraine through Poland and others, you can’t necessarily satisfy all of those requirements. And as Andy has mentioned, that’s a very important factor. Without the capability and the equipment that’s required to do all of that, we fall short.
Eric Sorensen: And has that done something to the Canadian military? Are we just not ready to do what we would be expected to do?
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff: Well the Canadian military, of course, is going through a challenging period with a shortfall of people and also looking at defence expenditures and investments, which have been a long time coming. They are suffering a capability shortfall, as we all know, and even in the most recent terms, the increase to the size of our deployment into Latvia should have been done by now and has not happened. That again, of course, is a reflection of the capability and deployability that the Canadian forces has and should have, and the fact that with all of the other challenges that come and we’ve heard many of those over the last several months, they can’t necessarily satisfied all of those requirements, have to prioritize. And of course, that’s making life very difficult for our aspect or our terms of burden sharing that I mentioned earlier.
Eric Sorensen: Gen. Leslie, the letter that was written by several dozen top military and political figures, you both gentlemen, signed that letter stating that Ottawa needs to take defence more seriously. Now is the time said the letter. Why is now the time? Why does it matter?
Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, Former Canadian Army Commander: Well, Russia’s engaged in it’s—in its awful, tragic attack on the Ukraine. And that is by no means finished, and all our thoughts and prayers of course, are with the Ukraine people. But, let’s not face it—or, you know, let’s not duck around it. Russia could still somehow win. And others are going to emulate Russia’s example, should it look like they’re going to gain some sort of advantage. And let’s talk about being a strong and reliable ally. Well, people have said to me recently, well Canada really doesn’t send troops overseas to do armed peacekeeping. We do peacekeeping in general. That’s not true. And by the way, even though we invented the idea of peacekeeping, right now, we have between 35 and 50 people deployed on international peacekeeping missions. That’s half a school bus out of a population of 38 billion. We have less than a thousand troops in Latvia, whereas we were indicated to provide a brigade. A brigade is around 3 thousand five hundred to 4 thousand, which we used to have the equivalent in Afghanistan and we used to have that amount of troops in Europe when we had fewer people and less money. And it if it’s a question of money, once again, let’s just do some math. Our economy is $2 thousand billion—$2 trillion a year. What the armed forces is asking for is not unreasonable in terms of several billion more per year to get the equipment and people that they need. But once again, the money that was promised to them by this government is not getting all of it into the Canadian Forces to produce capability. It’s getting wrapped up in layers of bureaucracy and stalling, quite frankly.
Eric Sorensen: The NATO Secretary General says that all NATO countries want Ukraine now in NATO. This position was not asserted before the war, what’s changed? And do you think this will happen?
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff: Well during my time as chief of defence, we were very involved with Ukraine helping them to professionalize their army and navy and air force, and while I was at NATO, even more so. We were very intimately involved with helping them to become a reliable ally of NATO, ultimately. They’ve been a member of the Membership Action Plan for quite some time, but of course, it was slowed down in terms of political issues: government’s changing and so on. So Ukraine has been part of our mantra for—for quite some time now. And if we look at China, and again, I’ve been involved with China as well, what they’re doing in the sub China Sea, what we have seen in terms of their rhetoric regarding Taiwan, and of course, their closening of relationships with Russia, all of that lends to a change in the geo-strategic environment that makes it very important for us as well to pay attention, to make the kind of investments that are absolutely essential from a Canadian government point of view, for us to satisfy our international obligations and that is to contributing to international peace and security. So those changes are, to me, some of the more profound changes that have made things that much different since the time, for example, when I was at—on the minister’s advisory panel, developing Strong, Secure and Engaged, of putting that 20 year horizon, if you like, for defence investments and defence policy. And again, that has fallen short and that’s why, in my view, this letter is so important, because those who have signed it all agree that the strategic environment, especially the geo-strategic environment, is one which requires us to now increase the frequency and also the levels of our investment and to re-establish that capability and deployabilty and reliability that Gen. Leslie has mentioned as well.
Eric Sorensen: And Gen. Leslie, last question to you, we only have a few seconds. Do you think Canadians views are changing? They’ve accepted this shortfall of NATO for years and years. Do you think Canadians views are changing on that?
Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, Former Canadian Army Commander: I do. This is the most dangerous time since the end of the Second World War. If there are any severe miscalculations, there could be World War III. The time to provide deterrents forces, to convince the bad guy that we have the strength to withstand him—so don’t attack—is now. And our NATO allies and we live in this web of interconnectivity in terms of trade and social development but also defence. And our allies are saying Canada, step up to the plate. And the last thing you want to do is go it alone. I’m not suggesting that will happen, but be careful. Your armed forces need help and they need the attention of Canada right now.
Eric Sorensen: Gen. Leslie, Gen. Henault, many thanks for your time today.
Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, Former Canadian Army Commander: Thank you.
Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, Former Chief of the Defence Staff: Thank you, Eric.
Eric Sorensen: Up next, one last thing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is approaching and electoral milestone, but is he wearing out his welcome?
Eric Sorensen: Now for one last thing…
The Prime Minister marked his 10th anniversary as Liberal leader this month, and in a couple of weeks Justin Trudeau will reach an electoral milestone: seven and a half years as prime minister.
Over time, Trudeau’s approval numbers have fallen. Is it mounting scandals? Is it the economy? Or is it simply time? Something every modern prime minister discovers that a certain point, you wear out your welcome.
Justin Trudeau has won three consecutive elections. In the last 100 years, no prime minister has won four straight.
And since 1950, there have been 12 prime ministers in this country. Half of them retired or lost well before seven and a half years in office. Of those who made it that far, in the very next election, St. Laurent lost. Pierre Trudeau lost. Mulroney retired. Chrétien retired. Harper lost. Not one could win again after they’d been in office for as long as Trudeau has now been prime minister.
To many, Trudeau looks like he wants to test the Canadian public one more time. But if he does, he’ll also be testing history.
That’s our show for today. We’ll see you next Sunday. I’m Eric Sorensen. Thanks for watching.
Eric Sorensen: There was a time when politicians would answer questions instead of repeating memorized talking points that often aren’t even related to the original question.
Most people who run for politics do it for the right reasons: a desire to better the country. But in a time of snarky tweets, drive-by smears and a seeming race to the bottom, it’s no wonder Canadians are tuning out.
That’s our show for today. Thanks for hanging out with us and we’ll see you next Sunday.