Evidence of meeting #134 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was moment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Brig Nicholas Orr
Trying to improve our evidence base is something we will be striving to do.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Okay.
We've also heard from witnesses that one of the concerns is the perspective of training. Often, when people go in to do diversity training, it's treated like a bit of an annoyance that you have to go through. The encouragement that we heard is that more leadership has to step in and say, “This is an important opportunity for us to learn and to become a more inclusive environment.” You said that you're not mandated even annually to do the training. Is there any leadership coming forward from higher levels to really encourage and engage with people, and show the value in receiving that training?
Brig Nicholas Orr
Diversity and inclusion training is included within our moral values and standards training, which is mandated. It's the unconscious bias training that is not mandated at the moment.
Brig Nicholas Orr
We do some diversity and inclusion training each year. I think that, again, under our culture and behaviours, getting the leadership involved in this is something that we've started at the top and is filtering down. I think we very much accept that this is not an area that we want advisers to be speaking to us about. If the leaders stand up there and speak about it, it carries that much more weight and power.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
I'm glad to hear that.
You spoke a little bit about housing and how you've stretched the definition of who can receive that. You've talked about the flexibility of work hours and deployment when possible. That's definitely come up recently.
I was in a small community called Port McNeill in my riding. A couple of navy ships came up and they did a great job of letting people come in and do tours. They took some of us out for a ride and talked about the importance of getting out to those small communities. There's a large indigenous population in that area, so they're looking at how they can engage them. I heard multiple people talking about it, especially the flexibility of work and hours. Are you going to measure the outcome of that, and are you going to be looking at how that especially opens the door to women?
Brig Nicholas Orr
Yes, we will be, unquestionably. It is being introduced. It is something that has been talked about for many years. It's been talked about in both of our armed forces, but I think we have now accepted that we just need to introduce it and then see how best to develop it as the take-up increases. Giving that opportunity is something that we've been trying to achieve for a number of years.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
One of the things that we've heard repeatedly is that, when complaints come forward about inappropriate behaviour, the process for completing that and leading to accountability is simply taking too long, which really creates an environment where people are not feeling safe to come forward with their accusations. I'm just wondering if you guys are doing any work on that process and making sure that information is dealt with more quickly.
Brig Nicholas Orr
I think we're in a very similar place to your armed forces. Like you, we now have a service complaints ombudsman. I hate it as the final recourse for complaints, but they tend to be complaints that have gone wrong. Something has definitely gone wrong by that stage, and obviously, it's a question of trying to address things before they get to that level. I think we are in a similar position as the Canadian Armed Forces. It remains a big challenge.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you.
I'm not sure how good your French is, Brigadier, but I'm pretty certain your next question is coming in French, so if you'd like to put your earpiece on, I'll give you a second to do that.
I'm going to yield the floor to Mr. Robillard.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Have you got it?
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to Brigadier Orr for being here today.
One of the challenges with diversity in the British armed forces is ensuring that the different nations that make up the United Kingdom are represented. It is also a challenge for Canada, given the cultural diversity that exists in the provinces.
How is this issue being addressed by the British armed forces?
Brig Nicholas Orr
It is not something that is addressed directly. I've never heard it addressed directly since I've been in the armed forces, because the armed forces represent the United Kingdom, and we are content that the mix-up of the United Kingdom and the representation across the country does not need to be proportional. It needs to be reflective of the United Kingdom, not proportional to the countries within it.
Obviously, within that, we do have, particularly within the army, Scottish regiments, Welsh regiments and English regiments, because we recruit by region. Within that, some of our more challenging recruiting areas, surprisingly, are some of our historically successful recruiting areas. For example, the Scottish infantry battalions are well known, but for the last 10 or 15 years, they have really struggled to recruit into their ranks. We are desperately trying to understand why this is, but I think it's a reflection of where we are at the moment. In terms of getting proportionality of recruits between the countries that make up our union, it is not something that we concentrate on per se.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Last year, General Vance acknowledged that it would be absurd to think that extremism and racism do not exist in the ranks of our armed forces. Hostile ideas towards minorities make it difficult to develop a culture of diversity and inclusion.
Can you tell us whether this is also a problem in the British armed forces? If so, how is it handled?
Brig Nicholas Orr
I would be lying if I told you it was not a problem. It is a problem. Our recruitment reflects our society, and there are parts of our society in the United Kingdom who are from the extremes of the political spectrum, whether that be far left or far right.
What we aim to do when we recruit people into the armed forces is inculcate as swiftly as possible the values and standards that we epitomize as an armed force. It is something that is spoken about from day one when they start training, but it is something that we continue to concentrate on throughout their career. It is mandated annually at one of our mandated annual training events that we have a commanding officer-led values and training session for everybody in the armed forces.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
To what extent does your country use outside expertise to promote diversity within its armed forces?
Brig Nicholas Orr
I'm not altogether sure, but certainly in terms of recruitment, we have a lot of specialists who help both in how we target our recruiting and in the production of the recruiting material that goes out to help us achieve our recruiting targets. It's mainly done in the recruiting realm, but is increasingly done throughout the spectrum of the career in order to see how other diversity can be included throughout those career streams.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
You have a couple more minutes, if you'd like, or you could pass your time.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
How does your country monitor and evaluate how policies on diversity are implemented?
Brig Nicholas Orr
We obviously collect statistics as we go through. Depending on which diversification we're talking about will depend on the statistics, but the key ones that we've been collecting for a number of years include looking at our stats for female representation and for black, Asian and minority ethnics. As of October 2018, we had 10.5% females and 7.6% black, Asian and minority ethnics within the U.K. regular forces. Those numbers went up a little more for females, but went down a bit for minorities in the reserves. That was the representation within the armed forces.
For our recruitment, our figures for BAME, again from October last year...6.5% of the total intake were for minority ethnics, against a 10% target by 2020. So we're still, one could probably say, woefully short at the moment. Recruitment of female personnel was 12.4%, against a target of 15% by 2020. We still have quite a long way to go.
In terms of representation in the rank structure, we have just promoted our first female three star officer. I know you've had a three star officer for quite a while. That filters down as you go further down the rank structure, because I think one of the other demonstrable things you can do is to have senior female or ethnic minority people in high positions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
We're going to five-minute periods now.
The first one will go to MP Spengemann.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much, Brigadier, for being with us.
I'll start with a philosophical question. It's been raised with other witnesses. There are two ways to look at the challenge in front of us. One is to look at it as the right to serve in the British or Canadian or whichever armed forces we're talking about. The other way to look at it is instrumentally in the sense that we're getting better outcomes if women and minorities and diverse recruits enter the armed forces.
Is there primacy between the two in the British discourse? Are they parallel conversations? Is that a distinction that should not be made? Should it be looked at as one issue? What's your view and what's the view of the organization on that distinction?
Brig Nicholas Orr
The main challenge is to become more diverse and inclusive. That is based on the business benefits that doing that will bring. We also consider, within that, the moral case and the legal requirements. But really, the driver is the business benefits of having a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
If you were to poll the British public—I don't know if that's been done—the person on the street, how would she or he or they react to that same question? Does the public look at it differently?
Brig Nicholas Orr
I suspect they would look at you quizzically. I don't know the answer to that question.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Okay, but needless to say, the right to serve would be an important element of the discourse going forward.
I want to focus on the business benefits as you describe them and look at international deployments. Within British international deployments, are the numbers different? In other words, do you select more carefully among the pool of diverse participants, or are they potentially even worse than the net numbers are?