National Defence Committee on Feb. 21st, 2019

[LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier]

One of the great successes of the reserve in attracting diversity is the attachment to the community. With the regular force, you join in St. John's, Newfoundland, but you end up in Shilo, far away from your community. The reserve, because it's local employment, is actually an incentive, because you can join and remain in your community, remain attached to it. For indigenous recruits, three of the largest obstacles to joining the forces are leaving their ancestral lands, leaving their communities, and being afraid that their tradition, culture and customs will not be entertained.

That's why we're now much more efficient. Every time we do an exercise in a northern area or near indigenous people, we do outreach activities to attract them. I think that's the great strength of a reserve—that local footprint, that permanent presence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamarre, in an exchange with Ms. Dzerowicz, you referenced RMC in the 1980s, when women started attending the Royal Military College. Would you comment on how successful you think we've been over the last 30 years in getting more women into RMC? Would you say it's been a success?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

It has been a success, but it's been hard slogging to get there. I think it's reflective of how we have been doing recruiting overall, without having a focus, a targeted approach, towards making it attractive to women and specifically going to get women to come and join our organization. Over the last two years, 25% of the cadets coming into the regular officer training program have been women. We specifically set the target and said we were going to get it there and move those numbers in.

When you're going down to the military colleges right now, both at RMC and at CMR, you're seeing about a 25% representation. I believe we still need to go forward, however, to make sure we can increase the numbers.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

With RMC, if memory serves me correctly, you have to serve five years afterwards for your university tuition, or your responsibility to pay for it, to be waived. Is that correct?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

It is. The payback time is approximately five years.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Do you have any statistics on how many women versus how many men remain in the military after that five-year period? Do you maintain that 25%?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Of the intake? Not necessarily. I need to nuance that a bit—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

No, sorry; of those who continue on, do you still maintain the roughly 25% women?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Actually, yes. What we do have are statistics. We do an awful lot of self-serving for this, for DGMPRA. That same organization does research analysis.

We find that women tend to stick around in the same numbers or a little bit more than men do, up to until approximately 20 years of service. It happens to correspond, oftentimes, with where families are, kids at certain stages and everything else. One of the reasons we're going out with a comprehensive family support plan is to make sure that we can increase retention as well.

As far as retaining women in the Canadian Armed Forces, we do see the same numbers as for men, up until about 20 years of service.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Good.

When Mr. Robillard was asking questions in the beginning, you talked a little bit about the recruitment strategies to increase diversity. Can you give some examples of the on-the-ground recruitment strategies? Can you give a couple of examples as to how you specifically do that?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Yes, I certainly can, if you'll just allow me to go to my notes here.

We have a number of significant pieces, not only in the programs for indigenous youth that General Lanthier was talking about, but we have different places, for example, a number of websites that portray young women who are going through basic training, so they can be followed and seen. We can tell the following-up and everything else. There are approximately 16,000 people who are following these two young women going through training. It helps to demystify what the training looks like.

We also have something called Operation Resurrection. We use the term to go after those files where people have gone quiet. When a young Canadian starts to apply, if they all of a sudden stop the application process, our recruiters actively try to get them back. We get a return rate for reviving the file, if you will, of approximately 30%.

We also have a number of advertising campaigns that are done at various detachments. In St. John's, for example, we are joining up with the College of the North Atlantic, Bonavista campus, for orientations in trade technologies. Specifically, we are trying to encourage those graduates, especially the women graduating from those programs, to join the Canadian Armed Forces.

We're doing this as well in Fredericton, career exploration in trades and technology for women. It is a forum that's being held. We go and actually sponsor the forum, to make sure women can come and see that they can be part of trades and technologies in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Clear across Canada, all of our detachments or recruiting centres undertake to do presence and to do these kinds of engagements, to make sure that we can excite Canadians to come and be part of the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Is there any more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

There is not, unfortunately.

The last formal question will go to MP Hardcastle.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you Mr. Chair.

How many minutes do I have this time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have three, but there will be more at the end.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm trying to figure out how to frame this so that you can just take the rest of the time now.

What are the opportunities? I don't want to just talk or have you defend what you're already doing. How are we going to move the needle? What do you want to see happen? You must, in all of your experience now, see that there are opportunities somewhere that can be leveraged or things that can be done a little bit differently. Where would you like to be bolder with it? Where do you see the need?

[RAdm Luc Cassivi]

I'll share a few things from my side.

I think having more flexibility in advertisement and attraction from a public communications perspective would be a great tool. Our social media presence is helping right now. We have more meaningfully adapted to modern technology and to what interests young people to communicate.

On the retention side, to go back to an earlier intervention, as senior leaders, I think we're doing great in embracing where we need to be from a diversity perspective. I think there are still struggles at the tactical level in some areas such as bias consciousness and what we may not understand or recognize as systemic biases, where we still have progress to make.

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

If I could add some other pieces, too, when you're looking at taking a generation forward again, some of the initiatives underneath are going to be different. We want to go out there—and I use the word “targeting” because that's what we're doing.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Yes.

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

We want to go and reach out to influencers, families, community leaders, coaches, teachers—those types of folks. We're gearing up to do that specific communication with those folks.

We know from the long-form surveys, for example, where women live in the Toronto region by postal code. We can break it down by age as well. Our advertising, our presence, our reaching out with letters needs to be within those specific things to make it attractive to people who may never have thought of joining the Canadian Armed Forces. We also believe that we should consider using the mailings that you send to your ridings, to make sure we put in there the opportunities that exist within the Canadian Armed Forces.

All of these are the aspects of reaching out to influence people so that they can actually consider us as people, as an organization where they'll get a fair shake and a chance to succeed. It really is a place where it's a meritocracy, so come and compete, have some fun, and serve your nation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Given the time we have on the clock and the members who indicated they wanted to speak again, I have MPs Hardcastle, Bezan, Gallant, Robillard, Chen and Dzerowicz. We'll give each member five minutes.

MP Chen had a really good discussion going with General Lamarre, and I'll give him the opportunity to continue that conversation.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I brought up an issue earlier and didn't fully mention my question. Lieutenant-General Lamarre said earlier in his comments, “I know of many members who do not self-identify as belonging to any group within visible minorities” and “They do not want to be known for being a minority.”

One's racial identity is visible and as a Canadian of Chinese descent I wear my Chinese face and I am a very proud Canadian. It is an intrinsic part of my self-identity.

How did Lieutenant-General Lamarre get this information? I know that in the Auditor General's report, as far as I can recall, there was no mention of members of the Canadian Armed Forces and their self-identity and how they identified.

Could I hear from Lieutenant-General Lamarre?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Absolutely. Thanks for raising that point. I'm glad you did because I don't want to have any misconceptions based on that.

The next sentence that I said in my statement is that they want to be identified as part of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that's an important aspect.

I heard from many members as I have as the champion for visible minorities. I have what we call a visible minority advisory group made up of visible minorities within the Canadian Armed Forces. I just met with approximately 30 of them two weeks ago. We talk about a number of issues they bring up.

At one of the previous meetings with them when I first came into the position and as we were standing up Op Generation, how we're going to recruit, I was a bit taken to task. I had members from this advisory group and other individuals who said they didn't want to be known as coming from this or that organization. When they were in, they wanted to be part of the Canadian Armed Forces. One of them, who was a general officer of Japanese ancestry, soon to retire, has been very successful in his career, was the one who took me to task for 15 minutes on this. He said when it first came out that we wanted people to self-identify, he looked upon it as something he did not want to do. He wanted to be known just as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

So when I raise the issue, it's not to say that you shouldn't be proud of where you come from, far from it. As Jean-Marc indicated, we gain tremendously from having this wide diversity, but as for them, when they're coming to join the Canadian Armed Forces they want to feel they're coming to be part of this team. I think that's one of the big things. It's a powerful feeling for them. I had both young and older members from visible minorities, different ethnic backgrounds, who said they first and foremost want to be identified as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. That's what my comment was intended to say.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

I hear you, Lieutenant-General, and I appreciate that explanation. I can't speak for the person you're referring to, but as a member of Parliament, as a Canadian of Chinese descent, I am very proud to be a member of Parliament. I would imagine any person who serves within our Canadian Armed Forces is proud to serve.

However, in any organization there is a dominant culture, and we need to be mindful that when people feel it unnecessary to self-identify as a particular group or that they believe it's not good to be known for being part of a minority, it speaks to the possibility of a cultural dissonance, the feeling they are better off being part of that dominant culture in the absence of self-identity.

I believe that any person is very well aware of their self identity if they are racialized. We should encourage women and visible minorities to self-identify as who they are and to be accepted and to have a sense of belonging in that organization. To me that is very important.

I believe that if we are looking at a situation where people feel they do not need to self-identify and they do not want to be known for being a minority, then we need to do a better job of creating that inclusive environment where they should be comfortable and to be able to do their jobs as members of the Canadian Armed Forces with pride, having the diverse lived experiences, histories and culture they can bring to the work they do.

My colleague Mr. Spengemann's question on how that diversity enriches the work of the Canadian Armed Forces gives a very good example of the importance of enabling that true inclusiveness.