National Defence Committee on March 12th, 2021

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you so very much for coming today, for testifying and, even more so, for taking the action you did in order to report this. There can be no system and no justice if honourable men don't stand and do what is right, even when it is not easy. By all of your accounts, this was anything but easy, so thank you very much.

I wonder if you could give us just a little bit more information on whether, when you thought you were talking to the minister's office, you were in fact talking to the minister's office, the chief of staff to the minister.

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

That's a very good question. What I understand your question to be is how I identified the veracity of the person's claim that they were the chief of staff of the minister. It was a 613 number identified, 613 being an Ottawa number. I'd have to look back at my call logs. I believe it may even have appeared on my iPhone as “National Defence”, “Minister's Office” or something to that effect.

She spoke very confidently, as if she were a very experienced public servant. She did identify herself by name. I didn't know her name. I didn't look it up or anything like that.

Based simply on that, I believed at that point that I was with the appropriate—

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

From your perspective, you believed she was the chief of staff to the Minister of National Defence. Is that correct?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

That's correct, ma'am.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

I don't want you to give us any information or any details about the actual incident, but I'm wondering if you could tell us—because it has been reported in the news—if the incident you were looking to report was widely known.

Were there a lot of people at this incident where the misconduct occurred?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Ma'am, that's a difficult question. I think I'm not in a position to share the details at this point about the complainant, the complaint or what occurred, simply because she entrusted me with her information on a confidential basis.

I've shared that information with the appropriate authorities and, as we all know, the matter is now being investigated by the national investigation service. I don't feel comfortable and I don't think it's within my purview to get into that, which may potentially put the complainant in an uncomfortable situation.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Would you feel comfortable letting us know if, in your opinion and your understanding of the incident, you were the only one who could have reported this incident?

To your understanding, may there have been other individuals who would have had the same duty and obligation as you did to report?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Ma'am, as I was not actually there to witness the incident, from what has been relayed to me, there is the potential that, yes, there could be other people who could have witnessed it and reported it. However, again, I don't want to be in a place of conjecture where I'm inferring that this is indeed the fact. There is the potential that there were other people who could have seen it and could have reported it.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

Could you also let us know if you felt that you were pressured in any way in this or other instances to not come forward and report this type of misconduct?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Ma'am, that's a difficult question to answer, again.

My personal conviction as an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces is that I will put the service and my service members above my own needs and safety. In that regard, I don't feel as though I've been pressured to not report things, and I can say with conviction that I have never not reported things.

With respect to whether there is pressure to not report things, again, I think that would be a supposition on my part, getting into the heads of others on whether they wanted to pressure me or not.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

You did mention that you were, in fact, berated for a different incident, for pressing forward to investigate misconduct and report in another situation.

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Yes, ma'am.

I can provide.... I have it sort of scripted, so I can keep it succinct for you here.

As it was reported to me, there was a Zoom call for career management of naval technical officers. Over a hundred people were on the Zoom call, including a large number of officers—mainly officers—including senior officers at the rank of captain(N), which is the equivalent of colonel in the army.

A senior officer made a comment about a female member's room, which he could see in the background. He referred to it as her red room, which many on the call took to be reference to the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. Several other members in that Zoom call followed up to echo this comparison and make inappropriate sexual remarks. There were many women on this call. One female CAF member made a complaint to me about this issue, which I reported up my chain because, in this instance, she did want to be identified. I also entered it into the OPHTAS, which is the Operation Honour tracking and analysis system.

As I understand it, someone else from another unit also made a complaint about this incident. However, there was no entry in OPHTAS about it. Mine was the only entry. The investigation—

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much for your courage to put country above everything else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to Madam Vandenbeld, please.

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

Thank you very much, Lieutenant-Commander.

I would also like to start by thanking you very much for your 21 years of service and, even more importantly, for what you're doing today. I think this is an example for everyone in the Canadian Armed Forces of how we need everybody to support those who are facing this kind of unacceptable behaviour. I want to start by thanking you for that.

I was listening to your testimony and I'd like to clarify the issue of who you spoke to. You said it was a woman you thought was the chief of staff to the Minister of Defence.

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Yes, ma'am.

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

The chief of staff to the Minister of Defence is a man named George. I know that his contact information is in the government system, which is called GEDS.

Is it possible that it could it have been somebody from the deputy minister's office? Is it possible that you misheard?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

That's a good question, ma'am.

I don't have access to GEDS, so I couldn't verify that. The name that she gave me was Amelie. I had asked if it was “Emily” and she said that it was Amelie—spelled with an “A”.

I had asked—whether it was legal counsel or somebody else—who could identify somebody by that name. Somebody has given me the name of Amelie Armstrong.

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

Just for clarification, there isn't anybody in the minister's office by that name. Thank you for raising that because I think that could be where there may be some confusion.

What happened after that? How long was it before you got a call from the national investigation service after you made that phone call? Did anything come out of that phone call?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

I'd have to refer back to my notes here.

I got two calls from the national investigation service. One was from the warrant officer in Ottawa and one was from Esquimalt.

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

I would be interested to know exactly what the chain of events at that point was.

You did speak to somebody. You've given a name that is not, apparently, somebody from the minister's office. I'm trying to figure out if that person then took it further. Did they take action? Was here something that came out of that?

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

They had relayed to me that they were going to bring the allegation to the minister. That was their statement to me.

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

Then you said you did get two calls from the national investigation service after that.

[LCdr Raymond Trotter]

Yes. I do have a document here that I'm just bringing up. It has a chronology of events, so I don't confuse the matter here.

It was on February 4 at 2:47 p.m., Pacific time, that I received the call from the warrant officer at CFNIS in Ottawa. He was inquiring about the complainant's complaint.

You had another question there, about different timing.

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

You had mentioned two calls. What was the other call?