[R-G] Analyst urges feds to audit contractors in Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

Copyright 2007 Sudbury Star
All Rights Reserved
Sudbury Star (Ontario)

July 20, 2007 Friday

SECTION: GREATER SUDBURY; Pg. A3

LENGTH: 796 words

HEADLINE: Analyst urges feds to audit contractors in Afghanistan

BYLINE: Denis St. Pierre

BODY:


The Canadian government should pursue a value-for-money audit on the  
hundreds of millions of dollars it is paying private military  
suppliers in Afghanistan, says an academic analyst of federal defence  
policies.

Given its rapidly-growing dependence on private military suppliers,  
"the government of Canada should at minimum fully explore the impact  
of this decision," Dalhousie University researcher David Perry says.

Perry, an assistant director of the Centre for Foreign Policy  
Studies, makes the recommendation in the latest edition of the  
centre's Journal of Military and Strategic Studies.

In his research paper, titled, "Contractors in Kandahar, eh? Canada's  
'Real' Commitment to Afghanistan," Perry documents "the Canadian  
Forces' growing utilization of private military firms on  
international operations" in recent years.

"Personnel reductions in the 1990s and a persistently high  
operational tempo have forced the Canadian Forces to increasingly  
rely on commercial support options on operations abroad," he states.

"It is argued here that while the Canadian Forces' use of privately  
provided logistics functions has remained modest to date, the  
Canadian military will continue to accelerate the rate at which it  
relies on non-military support options."

In particular, Perry says, "the personnel demands of the current  
mission in Afghanistan will require Canada to continue, if not  
increase, its reliance on private support options at ... Kandahar Air  
Field."

Perry's research paper focuses primarily on Canada's Contractor  
Augmentation Program, or CANCAP, through which contractors have been  
paid hundreds of millions to provide support services to Canadian  
troops in Afghanistan.

The research notes how Canada employed contractors on an overseas  
operation for the first time in 2000, when it awarded a $115-million  
contract to a corporation to provide logistics support to  
peacekeeping troops in Bosnia Herzegovina.

The government resorted to a private contractor due to "significant  
shortages of (Canadian Forces) support personnel, specifically their  
inability to support the ... mission, while simultaneously retaining  
sufficient capacity to staff other potential operations," Perry states.

In late 2002, the government launched a similar initiative - the  
CANCAP program - by awarding a five-year, $200-million contract to  
SNC Lavalin PAE Government Services, a joint venture between Quebec  
based SNC Lavalin and California-based Pacific Architects and  
Engineers. SNC Lavalin PAE would provide myriad support services to  
Canadian troops, including administration, communication, health,  
transportation, water supply, waste management and fire protection.

Although the contract's initial value was pegged at a maximum of $200  
million for the five-year period ending in December 2007, by late  
2003 the Department of National Defence was requesting a huge  
increase in government spending, Perry documents in his research.

That led to "a $300 million increase officially announced in July  
2004," he notes.

"The sums of money involved are not alarming on their own," Perry  
says, until they are compared to similar spending by the American  
military on its private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"From 2002 (to) 2004 the Canadian military paid a total of slightly  
more than $300M for privately contracted logistics services," he  
says. "The total incremental mission costs for those operations was  
cumulatively about $1.34 billion, thus the Canadian military was  
devoting a little over 22 per cent of the total cost of operations  
abroad toward private logistics."

In contrast, Perry says, the amount of money paid by the American  
government for similar purposes in Iraq and Afghanistan, from 2001 to  
2006, "accounts for less than five per cent of all expenditures,"  
Perry says.

Despite these facts, the Canadian government has yet to engage in a  
"value- for-money" audit on private military contracts, he says.

"To date only a single internal (Department of National Defence)  
investigation ... has examined this practice in detail," Perry notes.  
But the review did not include a value-for-money examination, he adds.

"This audit focused on achievement of the program's goal, of which  
cost savings were explicitly not included."

However, the government report did suggest further analysis of cost  
issues was advisable, Perry adds.

"It is high time that (the government) fully examine the direction of  
logistics support outsourcing in Canada ... if a reliance on a CANCAP  
like program becomes the future model of Canadian military  
operations," Perry concludes in his research paper.

A Sudburian, former city administrator Al Stephen, is headed to  
Afghanistan today to take a lead role with SNC Lavalin PAE in its  
provision of support services to Canadian troops.

dstpierre at thesudburystar.com