To build on what I said in the introductory comments, we're developing and implementing sort of a unified policy on sexual misconduct. In fact, this week—to give you an idea that progress is ongoing—the chief of the defence staff approved something called the Operation Honour manual, the Operation Honour decision tree and a forces-wide message that actually defines sexual misconduct. That may seem insignificant, but the definition of sexual misconduct is different to different organizations.
All those products were informed by Dr. Preston in a sense. She defined what the requirements were. They were then passed to Commodore Patterson and her team. I think they've been looking at these products for about four or five months. Then they were re-validated, if you will, given back to Dr. Preston to ask her, as an independent body, if this checks off and if this is what she were talking about.
That process has gone on. Dr. Preston may want to add to it. I think she even had the external advisory committee look at it, and then these documents have been issued to the Canadian Forces or are in the process of being issued. It might even be today or tomorrow; it's that fresh as we go forward.
These are incredibly important documents because they address some of the confusion surrounding what constitutes sexual misconduct. How do you deal with sexual misconduct? What is a simplified decision tree? We're used to that in the Canadian Forces, yes or no. You follow the decision tree down. That is sort of translating what Dr. Preston has given into military-speak, if you will, as we go forward. That's one example of some great work that has been done primarily by Dr. Preston's team and Commodore Patterson's team that will help us as we go forward. Once again, these are not perfect documents. We're going to circulate them, and we're going to take them for a test run. We'll get feedback on them and amend them accordingly as we go forward.
I talked about the campaign plan, and I don't want to underestimate the importance of that. We're used to doing that in the Canadian Armed Forces; that's how we communicate. When we want to effect change or when we want to do something hard and complex, we come up with a campaign plan. That's the way we communicate in the Canadian Armed Forces.
It is a campaign plan to address Operation Honour, of which cultural change will be one aspect. I know I'm dwelling on cultural change, but I'm most concerned about that because that's the hardest task we have coming forward. That's changing attitudes and beliefs, as I mentioned before, and that involves everything. That involves training, it involves education and it involves what we talked about, which is getting more women into leadership roles and more women into the Canadian Forces so we reach that critical mass and just hammer home that this behaviour is unacceptable and won't be tolerated.
Another big part is that performance measurement framework. I'm quite excited about OPHTAS, the Operation Honour tracking and analysis system. As I said, it's the first bespoke system. What we have to do is develop those linkages to the other databases, all the while making sure we're preserving, where necessary, the confidentiality of the reports. I stress once again that it is completely independent from the database that Dr. Preston has. Information will only be shared if Dr. Preston thinks it needs to be shared as we go forward, but there's no link in those particular databases.
We're going to need time to collate and collect this data as we go forward. As far as I know, it's probably one of the first bespoke data collection devices or methods that we've seen in the Five Eyes countries.
Finally, we're well on our way to doing this under Dr. Preston, expanding the mandate of the sexual misconduct response centre and clearly defining the roles of the particular organization. That is not finished yet. We are still working on the terms of reference for Dr. Preston's organization and Commodore Patterson's organization, which fall under me, so it's clearly understood who does what.
Getting back to your original question, I think that was one of the bigger obstacles we had initially in the last three years, that confusion over who does what.