National Defence Committee on Feb. 9th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Good afternoon.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 14 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence.

As you know, this is a hybrid meeting. The same rules apply, but I have a couple of extra reminders. I would ask that all comments from members be directed to the chair. When you're speaking, please speak clearly and slowly. Sometimes I have trouble with that myself, but I think that would be a great aid to our interpreters. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our very best to keep track and maintain a consolidated order, whether you're here in person or participating virtually.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(4), the committee is meeting today to consider a request received by the clerk and submitted by four members of the committee to discuss their request to undertake a study of allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of retired General Jonathan Vance during and before his tenure as chief of the defence staff of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Just for clarification, the meeting today will be restricted to dealing with the topic at hand that the four members of the committee have requested we discuss. Members have all received the letter and have had a chance to look at the meeting request.

I will now open the floor for debate.

I will first suggest that the motion be read into the record.

Mr. Bezan, I hand it over to you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the committee coming together to debate this motion. I would also like to point out that because of the news yesterday that the Clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart, is not able to perform his duties right now due to medical leave and also from other news that has appeared, I'd like to read into the record a slightly amended motion. I move:

That the Standing Committee on National Defence begin an immediate study into the allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of retired General Jonathan Vance during and before his tenure as Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces, that at least five meetings be held in public for no fewer than two hours each, that the meetings take place before February 26th, 2021, that the following witnesses be called to testify individually before the Committee: Hon. Harjit Sajjan, Minister of National Defence; the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, Christyne Tremblay, Deputy Minister of National Defence, Jody Thomas, Zita Astravas, Michael Wernick, and any other witnesses the Committee deems necessary, that these meetings be televised, and that the Committee report its findings to the House.

That's the motion, Madam Chair, and if you wish, I would be more than happy to speak to that motion.

I would say that the news reports that we have heard over the last number of weeks are disturbing, to say the least. We all believe that members of the Canadian Armed Forces should be able to operate in an environment that is not threatening and that is free of sexual misconduct. We do not want to, in any way, shape or form, tarnish the investigation that is ongoing right now with the Canadian Armed Forces into these allegations, but they are serious and they need to be looked at.

The thing that is of great concern is that these allegations were presented to the Minister of National Defence, Minister Sajjan, and we have not gotten any clear answers from the media reporting to date on how that information was handled, whether or not the victims had been spoken to or approached and whether counselling services had been offered. We don't know what evidence was turned over to the Privy Council Office. We don't know if Minister Sajjan reported this up his chain of command and gave it to the Prime Minister so he could seek his advice. We do know that a very different approach was taken to handling the allegations involving the Governor General, with an independent review and a report being issued, which ultimately led to her resignation.

We know that this information has been out there for three years, since the beginning of 2018. I believe if you look at the record that is out there in the media, through multiple media sources, as well as what seems to be a number of contributing witnesses who have testified to the story, there is a great deal of concern that the Minister of National Defence, who is responsible and who has the authority to manage the chief of the defence staff and the department, failed to address these allegations properly. We know, through media reporting, that it was definitely brought to his attention by the former National Defence and Canadian Forces ombudsman, Gary Walbourne.

For that reason, we need to have a thorough look to ensure that Minister Sajjan exercised his authorities in a responsible manner and that he upheld his legislative and parliamentary duties as defined by the National Defence Act, as well as what is defined through parliamentary procedure and ministerial accountability. We need to hear from him, but in leading up to hearing from the minister, we need to talk to members of the Privy Council, those who were there at the time, like Michael Wernick. We need to talk to his former chief of staff and find out what they knew at that time.

I believe there's much here that the committee needs to dive into. That's why we need five meetings, but we need to do this in an expeditious manner so that we can get to the bottom of this and ensure that the morale of the Canadian Armed Forces is not damaged any further than it already has been and that Canadians can have confidence in our Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence and the Minister of National Defence, whoever that might be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

I have heard from the clerk that we just got a copy of this revised motion. There are a couple of things here. People need to see this. It's a significant rewrite. It's not just a change of date or something. There's significantly more added to it.

Technically, it looks like it is in order, but the other thing I'm struggling with here is that we have a convention that works in this committee. That's why I asked you to prioritize your witnesses. Then we'll do everything we can to get the witnesses that each party decides is a priority for them. I am really loath to start something like horse-trading witnesses in a public committee and having people say that they want this person for that reason and they don't want that person for this reason. I just don't want to see it happen. That's the reason we came up with the procedure, which I think has been working well, to have people prioritize the witnesses. Then we get the witnesses that you want.

It doesn't impact anything directly, I suppose, but I think this will make it much more difficult for us to do this job and to look into sensitive issues like this one if we insist on naming witnesses in our motion. It's nothing illegal or whatever, but it's just a caution.

I am going to suspend for a couple of minutes to make sure everyone gets a copy of this revised motion.

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

On a point of order, ma'am—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

I'm going to suspend.

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

I have a point of order.

Madam Chair, I had my hand up the whole time. Speaking of convention, because the chair is often doing other things, it's up to the clerk to be sitting there so that the opposition gets fair play. It is unconventional to have the clerk over there, where I'm out of eyeshot. I had my arm up all that time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

I don't want to start the debate until everybody has a copy of the motion. It's not fair. I just don't think it's fair, when we have a significant rewrite of a motion, to start a debate when they don't have a copy.

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

I wasn't going to start a debate on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes. We'll make sure they let us know that they've gotten a copy of the motion and then we'll open the debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

We are reconvening this meeting.

Thank you, everyone, for your patience.

Did you all receive both motions? Okay, fine. We just needed to make sure.

Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I also want to thank the other members of the committee for putting this forward as a motion.

I think we've all been shocked by the serious allegations and we all agree that it's important that our committee study this issue. Minister Sajjan takes this extremely seriously, and I have full confidence that he will make himself available to this committee to testify.

It goes without saying that we have to be very careful that nothing we say, either in our line of questioning or in the committee, could potentially prejudice any ongoing or future investigations, including investigations by the Canadian Forces national investigation service and the military police.

I believe that our committee could have a really important role to play, not just on this issue but also in providing recommendations on how we can improve on the efforts that have already been made in order to make sure that every member of the defence team, every member of the Canadian Armed forces and DND, feels that they can be safe in the workplace. This is something that, as many committee members know, I have been working on for a very long time and something the minister is very committed to, and I think the committee has a role to play in that. I also think it's an opportunity to look at the vetting process that the former chief of the defence staff underwent during his appointment.

I would like to propose two amendments, two technical changes, to the new motion that was put forward today.

One would be that we change from five meetings to three meetings. Of course the committee and the steering committee could always look at this in terms of our ongoing studies, but I think that for the time being, we should have three meetings. I note that originally there were to be even fewer than that.

The other thing is that I share the concern raised by the chair earlier that it has been convention in this committee and other committees that we not talk about which witnesses and who is going to propose a witness and start voting one by one on different witnesses during the committee meeting. Traditionally different members have submitted witness names to the chair, and I've noted that the chair has been very fair in making sure that all of the priority witnesses that any of us have submitted are actually called to testify. It's just as a matter of procedure, but I would prefer that it be done that way.

Because of that, I would like to amend the motion to take out the suggested witness names except for that of the minister. I think that one is very fair, and we can leave that in. I think the minister has always come to this committee when asked, and I have full confidence that he will do so again. In terms of other witness names, I think we should take those out of the motion and then each member can submit to the chair whatever witnesses they wish. I do note that there may have been talk of other members wanting to put forth individual names, and I don't think this is the best practice.

I am fully prepared to support the motion with those two minor changes, changing five days to three days and taking out all of the proposed witness names other than that of Minister Sajjan.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Does anyone else want to speak to this amendment?

Madam Gallant.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To the reference you made earlier, the change had to be made because, as you know, one of the witnesses has to undergo medical treatment, so it wasn't a matter of horse-trading. We were just trying to show some compassion for one of our public servants.

As far as not naming witnesses goes, it has been customary for us to do so, so in keeping with convention, I feel, as we did with different studies, we should continue to identify, just to ensure that no substitutions are made where it could be important to have the actual person we were asking for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

All right.

Mr. Garrison, go ahead, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

I am just asking for a procedural clarification.

Are we dealing with one amendment or two amendments here? It's not clear to me what the parliamentary secretary was suggesting, and they clearly have different purposes. I might be inclined to vote differently on the two proposals, but it's not clear to me whether this has been put forward as one amendment or not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Go ahead, Madam Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

My intention was to put it forward as one amendment with two parts.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks for the clarification. If that's the case, I'll be voting against the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Go ahead, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, on the amendment.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Like everyone else, I was surprised. Everyone has known since last week what we were going to do today. Normally, the parties discuss these sorts of things, but this comes as a surprise. It's out of the blue.

What Ms. Vandenbeld just proposed seems reasonable to me. I think three meetings is enough. I also think our usual procedure for selecting witnesses works, so I don't see why we would change it.

I am in favour of both parts of Ms. Vandenbeld's amendment. This being such an important issue, I think it's a good idea for the committee to spend three meetings on it, as she proposed. That's one more meeting than the initial motion called for, so it would give us more time. Of course, we should keep the minister's name in the motion, since the main reason the motion was put forward in the first place was so the committee could hear from him. He is directly involved.

The amendment is perfectly reasonable. By holding three meetings on the issue and hearing from the minister, we'll be able to get to the truth. Each party can recommend witnesses it feels are a priority.

For that reason, I support Ms. Vandenbeld's amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

Go ahead, Mr. Bezan.

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

I'm okay if we have to change the number of meetings down and put a couple of witnesses together on their own panels, but I think we do have specific witnesses who need to be called, based upon the stories that have been in the media.

If we want to ensure accountability from a ministerial standpoint, we need to hear from these specific witnesses, so if the parliamentary secretary wishes to split that into two different motions, I think we could...and she's not. I can see that she is not amenable to that.

For that reason, we'll have to vote against, because we believe that these are the witnesses who are germane to the session at hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Does anyone else want to speak to the amendment?

Go ahead, Madam Gallant.

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

Madam Chair, what we're trying to do here is to ensure that the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces have confidence that the system that has been put in place to ensure they are given fairness when they bring forth a complaint of this nature is going to be handled in the proper way.

That is what we're trying to determine here: that the system in place and the process necessary actually occur. That is why the specific witnesses have been requested.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else, then, who wishes to speak on the amendment?