National Defence Committee on Feb. 21st, 2019

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

I know that Dr. Preston will be here to present in front of the committee, and she will have more details on what they're doing, but that process is under way right now. She is in the lead of going through and making the comparisons, and also using the victims' voice and putting them at the centre of everything she is doing.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

The Auditor General's 2018 fall report showed that there was a spike in third party reporting of inappropriate sexual behaviour leading to investigations, which the victim did not want done or was not yet ready to pursue.

Justice Deschamps told this committee that this is the opposite of her recommendation, which was supposed to support the anonymous victims until they were ready to file a complaint, and only then begin investigations outside the chain of command.

Why was her advice not taken? I recognize that you're building. Why was her advice not taken to place the responsibility for investigations completely outside the chain of command? The military police are part of the investigation, and from there on up the commanders are aware of exactly what is going on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to hold that question. There will be time at the end, MP Gallant. Let me know if you'd like more time.

I'm going to yield the floor to MP Chen.

Welcome to the defence committee.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

In 2016, the Auditor General released his report on recruiting and retention in the Canadian Armed Forces. Specifically he said, in section 5.25 of his report:

We found that although the Canadian Armed Forces had established a goal for the representation of women among its ranks, it set this overall goal with no specific targets by occupation. We also found that despite the fact that achieving this goal depends heavily on increased recruiting, the Canadian Armed Forces had not implemented any special employment equity measures....

The AG went on to say in his recommendations:

The Canadian Armed Forces should establish appropriate representation goals for women [in] each occupation. It should also develop and implement measures to achieve them.

We're now in 2019. Have we implemented what the AG has recommended?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

We're in the process of doing exactly that.

First of all, on the recommendation by occupation, we reflect a bit what you see in society. We can point to eight occupations in the Canadian Armed Forces where the majority of women like to work, and a lot of them relate to health care. Forty-eight per cent of all the members in the Canadian Armed Forces health service are women. We see the same thing in support and administration, those kinds of occupations.

We don't have that many women who actually want to go into and become infantry soldiers. We encourage them when they're coming through, and we're seeing a growth in that aspect as well. We believe that once you begin having more people there, you will see a corresponding growth because there will be leaders who go forward.

Right now a number of our key combat arms lieutenant-colonels, the level at which they command units, are women and this is in the combat arms work, and of course for Jean Lanthier, and these are the kinds of folks you're starting to see pierce through there, so leadership is starting to emerge.

As for being able to cite targets for each occupation, the reality is that we are setting targets for anybody for each occupation, and we encourage women, when they show up, to go into non-traditional ones and the ones where we have the most need.

For example, we're looking to increase the number of sonar operators we have to make sure we can maintain our ships and have them sailing properly. When women are coming in, we're making sure that shows up as a priority occupation.

If we spend a bit of time, we can see that, on our recruiting websites, all of those priority occupations are there, and again, the emphasis is put on making sure women can see that they're welcome in each one of those occupations.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Are visible minorities and indigenous peoples included in that encouragement in those particular occupations where they are under-represented?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Yes, they are. If you go in there and look at some of the products we have, you can tell that we have representation. We use men and women who are serving in the Canadian Armed Forces right now to represent those communities, so that, indeed, prospective candidates can see themselves when they're looking to recruit into the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

In 2016, the chief of the defence staff stated that the goal is to have 25% women, that the forces would increase by 1% each year.

I like numbers, so I drew a little table here. In 2016 there were 14.4% women and currently there are 15.7%. The goal is to have 25.1% in 2026, so there's a long way to go. When it comes to indigenous peoples, in 2016 it was 2.7% and currently it is 2.8%. That is not much of a change over two and a half years. The goal is 3.5% in 2026. Finally, with respect to visible minorities, it was 6% in 2016 and is currently 8.7%. The goal is to have 11.8%.

Out of the three groups we are looking at, the visible minority group seems to be making the most progress. How are we going to fill the gap for women and indigenous people? Are you confident that you're going to be able to meet those targets that are set for 2026?

[LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier]

I'll use the number as the champion for indigenous people.

For example, on the number of recruits, if you take the percentage of recruits who were indigenous, self-declared indigenous, 3.2% of recruits were indigenous last year in the numbers, so it shows that trend.

I run six different programs in the summer to encourage indigenous people. We had an initial intake last year of 223. I've created two new programs in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and the intake this year will be 340. To go from 2,800 indigenous people to about 3,400 to meet those targets, we need to recruit approximately 200 indigenous folks a year. Last year we recruited 162, so with my throughput, I'm very confident we'll get there.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

So you're getting there, good. I have one final question.

Lieutenant-General Lamarre, you said in your testimony earlier, “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”.

That comment got my back up, because I wear my racialized identity. The salience of race prohibits anyone from not being able to identify what their racialized identity is.

How did you get this information? I did not read that coming out of the Auditor General's report. Can you explain to me how you came to that conclusion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to hold it there. There will be time at the end, so if you're interested just—

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

I really would like to have a chance to come back and answer that one specifically, if I could.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I think it's important we get back to it, and there will be time.

MP Bezan has the floor now. He can continue or proceed with his own line of questioning.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank our witnesses for being here and thank them for their service to Canada.

I just want to clarify, General Lamarre. You referred to Operation Generation. Is that the recruitment strategy that the Canadian—

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Yes, sir, that's correct.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Is that a document that you'd be able to share with the committee? Is it public?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

I'd be happy to share that with the committee. It's a formal order that is signed off by the CDS and deputy minister. It talks about how we're operationalizing recruiting, including how it is that we have all the L1s. I am the supporting commander for that operation. It's a departure from how we used to do things.

We used to do recruiting, which was supported at a lower level, if you will. In this case, we're bringing it up to a level CDS-DM direction to me as an L1, a level one, and it's with the support of my colleagues, to make sure that we can do things. It talks about how we set when we want to have a strategic intake plan. Also, it talks about how it is that we're going to have the support from our colleagues to make sure that we have the right recruiters at the right time communicating and influencing the men and women in the Canadian population who we want to bring in.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Just give us a bit of a picture of that. If you're looking at increasing the participation of women in the Canadian Armed Forces, how would that look when you're talking air force, navy and army through Operation Generation?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

For each one of them, of course, we want to have the overall 25% by 2026. That's a goal we've set ourselves, because you want to strive for something, so whenever we're going out there, we want to use the types of recruiters and the types of strategies that can help us to increase the number of women, visible minorities and indigenous folks that are going to be in the Canadian Forces.

For example, because we measure all the initiatives we're doing, we've found that when we have young women who are recruiting and appearing in some of our online videos and the like or doing the chat rooms, which we do around the world, the reaction is very, very positive if people can see themselves, so we do emphasize the fact that we need to have more women and more visible minorities in recruiting. As I indicated in my opening statement, that pays a great dividend for us when we are going through and doing it. Op Generation speaks to us to actually go and get those types of recruiters specifically from those environments to come and be part of the recruiting team.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

We had retired Colonel John Selkirk at committee a couple of meetings ago. He's involved with Reserves 2000. Of course, more autonomy has been given to reserve units to go out and do their own recruiting. A large portion of our reserve units across this country are combat arms. They struggle with getting women's participation, though they seem to be having some pretty good success, in certain urban communities, with increasing the participation of visible minorities.

How does Operation Generation tie back into the reserve side of the equation now that extra autonomy is given to each unit?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

The autonomy, I think, is well placed. They have a footprint in the community. I'll get General Lanthier to add his comments as well.

It ties in together because we have the overall requirement to recruit. Few folks know this but every year we get approximately 800 to 900 reservists who transfer into the regular force. It's of benefit to us to have that. It does help us down the long road, if you will. From a practical aspect too, however, we share some of the same resources for the screening of potential recruits and also for such things as medical screening of potential recruits.

We need to make sure we're working hand in hand with each other to make sure that the system is able to support the throughput from both the regular and reserve forces in recruiting.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I still get the odd complaint on how long some of that takes, especially on the medicals and the screening process.

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

Yes, but—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

It's a little bit better than before, but there are still people complaining.

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

—perhaps I can just add one thing before I pass it on to General Lanthier.

You're absolutely right, and we're very conscious of that. We've reduced significantly some of the processes. I'm not surprised you're still getting some complaints. When we hear about those, we deal with them expeditiously. We have significantly reduced, however, the time for medical screening. It takes something like 14 days less than it did a short while ago. For most young people joining the forces between the ages of 18 to 23, their security screening is accomplished within about five days as opposed to multiple weeks. We've done that.

General.