Madam Chair, culture change is a very broad concept. At a very broad level, it implies a change in attitudes, values and beliefs of individual members. It also, to bring it down to an individual level, involves changes in behaviour in terms of how people treat each other at the individual level. But it's also about policies and processes and programs that are available within an organization. The reality is that you're never going to change every single individual member of the Canadian Armed Forces to have consistently the same values, attitudes and beliefs. What you need to do is create an environment that makes the type of harmful behaviour that they act out upon each other completely unacceptable. If a person chooses not to control their behaviour, the environment has to control it for them and has to have swift consequences to it. There needs to be a top-to-bottom approach that looks at individuals and at culture and values and attitudes, but you also need to look at it from beginning to end. You need to look at who is coming in, how they are being indoctrinated, what is happening to them during the course of their career, how leadership is developed, how leaders are leading, and what is being promoted or rewarded. When things happen, when things do go wrong—because they will go wrong—you need to have the appropriate policies and processes in place so that people have a place to come forward to, responses are timely, people are treated compassionately, things are effectively resolved, and, in the end, hopefully, you retain people and they continue to be productive members of the armed forces. To me, that's what culture change looks like.
On April 6th, 2021. See this statement in context.