Mr. Speaker, as the shadow minister for national defence, I am always honoured to stand in this place to talk about the great work of the brave women and men who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces and how we can do more to support them, which is what Bill C-11 is trying to do.
The first responsibility of the federal government is to protect Canada, protect our citizens, as well as to protect those who serve us. There has been a rapid escalation of threats, and what we are facing in Canada is continuing to evolve. There is Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. There is the ongoing conflict we are seeing with Hamas first attacking Israel and now Israel's clearing operation to neutralize the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. There is the ongoing escalation we are experiencing in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait as the People's Liberation Army Navy of China continues to escalate in that region, using air power, as well as resources and its coast guard to exercise its power in the region but ignoring international rules such as UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Those hostile powers want our resources, whether in the Arctic or our maritime domain, and they want to be within striking distance of our continent. We have to do more to protect ourselves here and invest in our military. This means supporting those who serve us. As Conservatives, we take our national security very seriously and want to make sure we always put that first and foremost. This is why we have to invest in the people, in their kit and in the training they need to undertake to deal with the hybrid warfare, the asymmetrical warfare, we are experiencing around the world.
First and foremost, Conservatives have always said and believed that those who serve, who proudly put on the uniform, are the best of the best Canada has to offer. They deserve to have a respectful workplace that is free of discrimination, racism, sexual misconduct, and abuse of authority and position. All members deserve to be respected. We also believe that the victims, those who are dealing with military sexual trauma, deserve justice. We hope this is going to culminate in the move from the military justice system to the civilian system, if the capacity is there and it would actually result in prosecutions and true justice for the victims of sexual trauma in the military.
It has been years: The Liberal government has been in power for 10 years. There have actually been three reports done. The first report came out in 2015, and it is interesting to note that the only time the current Minister of National Defence and I have had an interchange in the House on military sexual misconduct was when he was a member of the third party and the Liberals were sitting way down in that far corner. I was the parliamentary secretary for defence, and he asked a question about what steps we were taking. At that time, we had initiated the Madam Justice Deschamps report, and Justice Deschamps had made 10 recommendations.
Then of course there was an election, and that report sat on the corner of the desk of both former chief of the defence staff Jon Vance and former minister of defence Harjit Sajjan and collected dust. They did nothing during that time. There was then the Jon Vance scandal and all of that, and I will talk about that a bit later.
We know that through the process, the Liberals finally took action. There was the Arbour report and now the Fish report, which brought about some of the things that would happen with Bill C-11. However, it has taken 10 years to get to where we are today. For 10 long years, the Liberals sat on their hands and did nothing to actually change the National Defence Act and the military justice system under it.
When we look at Bill C-11, we are concerned that it would potentially open the door for more political interference. There would be an opportunity for partisan-style appointments, such as the Liberals' giving more power to the minister of national defence to issue guidelines with respect to prosecutions. That would not happen in the normal system in Canada because it would be considered political interference. The Liberals would also be changing the appointment process in that the director of military prosecutions, the director of defence counsel services and the provost marshal are all now going to be appointed by the Governor in Council rather than the minister. We know that when things go into the PMO and into cabinet, things become quite political and partisan.
Conservatives will continue to support those in the armed forces, and we are going to make sure that we are carefully studying Bill C-11 to ensure that concerns from all stakeholders, including those in the military justice system, those in the defence industry and, especially, those who have served in the Canadian Armed Forces, as well as victims' rights groups, and that their voices are heard when we study this at committee.
As I said earlier, Bill C-11 is the former Bill C-66, with minor tweaks in language, translations and interpretation of certain clauses: 6, 67 and 68. It would amend the National Defence Act to transfer jurisdiction of most offences of a sexual nature from the military justice system to civilian authorities, including the courts, municipal police, provincial police and the RCMP. This would depend on the jurisdiction in which the offence takes place, with the exception of a sexual offence that takes place outside Canada when troops are deployed. In that case, those who are deployed would have access to the current regulations under the military justice system and the National Defence Act, and military police and the JAG, the judge advocate general's office, would still undertake those investigations with the national investigative service.
We know that section 273 of the National Defence Act provides for that. It has provided for the way that this has been dealt with historically, but there is concern about whether the civilian courts would have the capacity to take on extra cases in those jurisdictions, from the standpoint of both the court level and the police level. What are they going to do with historic cases? We already know of historic cases that have been transferred into the civilian court system that have not resulted in convictions. Instead, we have seen high-level flag officers and general officers who were found innocent or had their proceedings stayed; we have seen cases that the Crown rejected because of the way the evidence was collected by the military police and the national investigative service of the Canadian Armed Forces. We question whether that provides the justice that the victims were looking for. We definitely want to make sure that all are given a fair trial and that we support those who were erroneously charged in the first place.
What are we doing about the issue of capacity, as was previously asked by my colleague, within the military police and national investigative service when they have to do investigations outside Canada? How do they coordinate with provincial, municipal and RCMP police agencies when we are talking about things that happened on base and will require investigations done by local authorities?
Bill C-11 seeks to increase the independence within the military, one of the recommendations coming from Madam Arbour and Justice Fish, so we would avoid a situation like what happened with Jon Vance. Because he was chief of the defence staff and everybody reported to him, nobody was prepared to take on that investigation and prosecute, including the then minister of national defence, who actually had authority over the chief of the defence staff. Harjit Sajjan refused to accept evidence and walked away.
We know there are questions about how this would all work. The provost marshal, who has traditionally been a colonel, would be made a general, so we are seeing a creep of the number of flag officers again.
Conservatives question the term limits. There is an inconsistency here on how people are being appointed, now being done through order in council in the Prime Minister's Office, and we know there is going to be the ongoing issue of the length of terms: Some are for four years; some are going to be eligible for reappointment whereas some are not. Some are for seven years, and some are for 10 years. It just gets a little confusing in terms of how this is all going to work.
When we talk about the provost marshal general, the director of military prosecutions and the director of defence counsel services, we just want to make sure there is a criterion as to what we want to see for qualifications for service in positions that normally would have reported to the vice-chief of the defence staff and/or the judge advocate general. Those things are going to give these guys their independence, so they report straight to the minister and to the government. There are questions about chain of command and how that is going to work. However, these are things we can look at in committee. The same is true for the director of defence counsel services.
Consistency is important here. Qualifications are important in these appointments. We want to make sure the partisanship that happens within the Prime Minister's Office does not percolate into the Canadian Armed Forces through those who serve the forces.
The minister talked about trust. As I suggested in my question for him, Liberals cannot be trusted, especially when it comes to talking about bad political appointments. If we look at 2022, the Liberals appointed Laith Marouf to do a project. It turned out he was an anti-Semite, but they were supposed to be working on diversity. The Liberals appointed Martine Richard as the Ethics Commissioner. She had to drop out because she was related to one of the cabinet ministers, who currently sits today. It was a complete conflict of interest. They appointed Birju Dattani as the human rights commissioner; he turned out to be anti-Semitic. Of course, it was another terrible appointment by the Liberals.
Justin Trudeau completely ignored the Ethics Commissioner's warning about appointing Annette Verschuren as the head of the green slush fund. This resulted in a huge scandal of over $2.1 billion that she and her cohorts were able to take from that Liberal slush fund and stuff into their own pockets. We should not forget the current Prime Minister recently appointed Doug Guzman as CEO to the defence investment agency. It turns out Doug Guzman is a former banking buddy of the Prime Minister's from Goldman Sachs.
I do not know if we need to have these close personal friends and partisan Liberal bagmen actually getting these types of appointments. I would hate to see this being the case when we look at appointments within the national defence apparatus, when we look at those who are going to be in charge of our military justice system. That would not be fair.
The Liberals also cannot be trusted when it comes to criminal justice. They have been soft on crime right from the beginning. Bill C-75 brought in the whole principle of restraint, which puts the least onerous conditions on those who are seeking bail. This is where we get bail, not jail and repeat violent offenders going back on the street. Now, potentially, those who are committing sexual assaults within the Canadian Armed Forces will have access to that same lax and soft-on-crime approach the Liberals have implemented.
Bill C-5 is another reason we should not trust the Liberals when it comes to reforming the military justice system. The bill reformed the criminal justice system by repealing mandatory jail time and allowing very serious violent offenders to serve their sentences at home. This includes getting house arrest, not jail time, if they commit sexual assault, sexual interference or sexual exploitation. Those conditions are now going to be transferred from the military justice system, or the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces, to the civilian system, which the Liberals have almost completely destroyed.
As I mentioned earlier, we cannot trust the Liberals when it comes to dealing with sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces; our members know that. Again, it has been 10 years since Madam Justice Deschamps brought forward her recommendations in her report, and they did nothing, which could have stymied this whole problem.
Take Jon Vance, who was CDS at the time. He started up, after the Liberals formed government, Operation Honour, which turned into a complete fiasco and did nothing to support victims, did nothing to stop sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces and did not live up to the code of service discipline and the ethics that those who serve should be living up to.
As I said, we know that Minister Sajjan, at that time in 2018, refused the evidence of the sexual misconduct charge against Jon Vance. We know there are memos that went back and forth between the minister's office and the Prime Minister's Office on how they could cover this up to protect Jonathan Vance and, later, also protect Minister Sajjan for not acting upon evidence that was given to somebody who reported directly to him.
Gary Walbourne, who was the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman at the time, tried to provide that evidence and was pushed away. He was completely in the right because the only person who could deal with it in the chain of command was the Minister of National Defence. We know this went back and forth. We did an in-depth study of this in the Standing Committee on National Defence. I was vice-chair at the time, as I am vice-chair right now.
That was covered up by the Prime Minister's Office through Justin Trudeau, Katie Telford and Zita Astravas. They continued to cover up that sexual misconduct and protect the minister and Jon Vance, which is beyond me. At the end of the day, when it came to charging him and prosecuting within the civilian court, the government accepted the lesser charge of obstruction of justice. It never prosecuted on sexual misconduct and sexual assault. That, again, does not live up to victims' rights in any way, shape or form. The victims of Jon Vance still feel that they were never properly served or got the justice they deserved.
This went on. The defence committee was suspended for months on end. The chair of the committee, Karen McCrimmon, refused to hear testimony and motions. She kept suspending meetings. We were in the same meeting for three months and could not do our work as the defence committee, and we could not do our work as parliamentarians. I firmly believe that our privileges as parliamentarians were violated through that process.
We did find out, through that study, that the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's Office, former prime minister Justin Trudeau and Katie Telford were all aware of this over the entire three-year investigation.
To make things even worse, at the end of the day, even though Harjit Sajjan, the minister of defence at the time, knew about the sexual misconduct and the gravity of the problem that was happening within the Canadian Armed Forces, the government still gave Jon Vance a raise as the chief of the defence staff. That, I think, was just adding insult to injury.
We know that when it comes to political interference, the Liberals cannot be trusted. We can look at the ongoing F-35 debacle and how they continue to politicize the procurement. Our Royal Canadian Air Force and our Canadian Armed Forces right up to the chief of the defence staff today have all said that this is the jet they need and that we should buy more of them. Of course, the Liberals continue to play political football and kick the can and delay that procurement, which is only undermining the ability of the Royal Canadian Air Force to protect us here at home and work alongside our allies.
We know about things like cash for access and the wealthy Chinese billionaires that Justin Trudeau was involved with. We know they tried to cover up the expensive holiday that the former prime minister took on his private island. The ethics commissioners found multiple breaches. We know about the witch hunt that went after former vice-admiral Mark Norman back in 2018, which was politically motivated.
We cannot trust the Liberals. They have failed our Canadian Armed Forces. They have failed our brave women and men. Our warships continue to rust out. Our jets are worn out. The army has been hollowed out and our troops no longer feel like they are respected and honoured by the government.
When we really dig in and look at Liberal policies, it is a book of empty promises, like the 2017 defence policy and the defence policy update, which are all irrelevant. The government has allowed money to lapse. Because of this lack of respect for our forces, we have a recruitment problem. We are short over 13,000 troops today. Over 10,000 are undertrained and undeployable. Our forces are short 6,700 houses.
Conservatives will rectify all the mismanagement and wrongs of the Liberal government and serve our Canadian Armed Forces.
