National Defence Committee on April 6th, 2021

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I just want to respond to a comment from the parliamentary secretary about the question of whether sexual misconduct by General Vance was widely known and where that comes from.

I refer once again to a Global News Mercedes Stephenson interview with Major Brennan on February 21, 2021, in which Mercedes Stephenson asked Major Brennan whether senior military leaders knew about Vance's inappropriate relationship with her as a subordinate. Major Kellie Brennan responded, and I quote, “I know because I've told them.”

It's very clear that many people believed that the sexual misconduct allegations were widely known.

Now, as we're running short of time today, I just want to return to what I think is some very important testimony from Mr. Wernick, in which he talked about other things that could have been done. He talked about the fact that the minister could have taken the envelope and passed it on to PCO. He talked about the ombudsman having an option to further redact information and pass it on to PCO.

He maybe got cut off a bit short. Are there other things he would have suggested that PCO could have done at this time?

[Michael Wernick]

I think there are other timelines that PCO could have pursued had we acquired more information at some point in the process, after March. We did not forever close the file. Had other information come in, we would have sat down and tried to figure out a process going forward, and I think people have come to this committee and suggested other routes.

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

The last thing I'm going to return to is the question of tenure. It's hard not to refer to it as extending General Vance, but you've been very clear that a choice was presented to the Prime Minister about when the change of command should take place—whether it was before or after the election, essentially—and that's quite understandable in those terms.

Would the Prime Minister have consulted the Minister of Defence on that question of the timing of the change of command, or was that merely between the Privy Council Office—yourself—and the Prime Minister?

[Michael Wernick]

I don't know about other conversations. The Prime Minister and the minister would see each other every week at cabinet, and every week at the Liberal caucus they would run across each other, so I cannot vouch for conversations I wasn't part of. He may or may not have asked the minister about tenure of office.

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

I'm just asking whether that would have been a normal thing to have happen with GIC appointments. Normally, would ministers and the Prime Minister talk about that, or would the conversation be between you and the Prime Minister exclusively?

[Michael Wernick]

Well, it's a bit hypothetical. What I remember of the note was that it was extremely clear. There was basically a four-year option and a five-year option. The issue of whether his candidacy for NATO was a factor is in the note he received. I don't know when that note actually made its way to the Prime Minister's desk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

All right. Thank you.

Madame Gallant is next, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Lick, your office produced a legal analysis of the events that transpired in 2018 when former ombudsman Gary Walbourne informed Minister Sajjan of an allegation against General Vance. Why was the analysis done?

[Gregory Lick]

The analysis was done for me, so that I could understand what options may have been available during that particular process. You have to remember that I was not there during those meetings and therefore I was not aware of any of the conversations, nor was my office.

After what we first heard about in the news, in the media, I wanted to understand what particular options would be available and whether there were options that my predecessor could have taken—that type of thing.

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

It also compared Minister Sajjan's testimony to the legal framework that Mr. Walbourne was operating under. Can you reiterate for the committee whether you believe Mr. Walbourne acted appropriately with the evidence he held by approaching Minister Sajjan with it?

[Gregory Lick]

Certainly in this particular case, as we have heard in the media—and I'll go with that particular assumption—the complainant wanted to seek protection from reprisals, and I think allowed my predecessor to go forward to the minister to say, “Look, we have this particular issue and these are the types of allegations.” In that particular case, we have to remember that any advancement of any investigation, whether it goes to one body or another, is controlled by the complainant.

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

The necessity for privacy for an alleged victim is paramount when information is brought to the ombudsman. Did that prevent Minister Sajjan from directing an investigation to begin into the allegation with the information he was given by Mr. Walbourne?

[Gregory Lick]

In this particular case, the allegation.... It's hard to say what the conversation was with the complainant. I don't have inside knowledge as to what that conversation was, but all I can go on is that my predecessor, Mr. Walbourne, was looking for protection, for “top cover” as he called it, for the complainant, before anything would go forward.

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

Minister Sajjan has repeatedly claimed that he did the right thing by giving the information to the Privy Council Office. Was he right to wash his hands of the allegation after they refused to investigate?

[Gregory Lick]

All I can say is that the outcome that we saw in the end.... The allegations were not pursued. That is the real issue at heart. Why were they not pursued? It's my belief that the complainant did not have the confidence that anything would be done going forward. That is the problem.

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

Mr. Walbourne testified that there were options the minister could have employed to investigate the allegation, despite not being able to name the alleged victim. Do you agree with this?

[Gregory Lick]

Yes. I think there were options that could have been pursued, but importantly, the complainant needed some top cover or needed some protection or some confidence to be able to pursue some of those allegations, and that person I think in the end did not receive that, or was not confident, and therefore nothing was done.

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

Were you in Mr. Walbourne's situation, how would you have liked or expected the minister to respond?

[Gregory Lick]

If I were to ask him.... As my predecessor has said before in testimony, he was looking for top cover, for some protection or some coverage, that “yes, you will not have reprisal”. Even those simple words might have been important in enabling the complainant to pursue some particular avenue. Was PCO the right way to go? Perhaps it was, in terms of its ability to carry out a particular investigation like that. That's one option, but importantly, I think, the complainant, in the end, did not have confidence that an investigation by PCO would have worked very well.

Perhaps if we look at the Governor General's investigation and how that occurred.... It was extremely public. It was very public that PCO contracted out to have it done. There was a result. There was an outcome. Perhaps that would have given the confidence to the individual that it would have been the right way to go, but you can't expect that every member of the Canadian Forces knows what the competency of PCO is in carrying out something like this.

What we owe our members is some external body that can oversee these processes so that they are done fairly and meet the needs of the victim, but also meet the needs of due process as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Baker, please.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Mr. Wernick, I wanted to go back to you quickly on the topic of culture change. It's come up in a lot of your testimony and Mr. Lick's testimony today and in previous meetings.

I used to be a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group once upon a time. If BCG was engaged to work on culture change—and I worked on a number of those projects over the years—one of the things we thought about was what the framework was, what were the categories of things that had to happen, and over what period of time that had to happen, if you will. I'm oversimplifying, but that's the summary of what that would look like and what we would want to produce.

If you were producing this for us—and I realize that this is the “back of the envelope” version of it—what are some of the key categories or steps that need to be taken, in your view, to change the culture? You've talked about legislation, but not all changes come through legislation.

[Michael Wernick]

Yes, it's a huge question. I don't think I can entirely do justice to it.

Let me interject a couple of things responding to the exchange with Mr. Lick. Obviously, you have to get things in the right order. The Rideau Hall investigation was in 2020, and was not known or could not have have been known or even imagined in 2018 when we were looking at...but it does represent the ability of the PCO to go and do a fact-finder. They're not comparable, as I said, because in the Rideau Hall case, there were multiple complainants and multiple witnesses to interview, which was not the case with General Vance.

I will go back to your question. I spent three years trying to move the culture of the civilian public service, with mixed results. You've dredged up a reminder that in that very month of May 2018, my friend Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General, tabled a report on the pay system, which was quite scathing about the public service and talked about a culture of obedience to ministers. I went to the public accounts committee and sparred with him about the issue and so on.

I'm very aware that changing the culture of a large organization made up of tens of thousands of human beings is not an easy thing and can take time. I think the legislative foundations are important in terms of the incentives and disincentives, consequences and transparency. You have to do a lot of probing and testing of the workplace, through surveys and other mechanisms, to find out the heat map of where the issues are. You have to appoint the right people to the right positions and lead by example. It goes into the training program, the schools, the Royal Military College and so on, so it's a broad and comprehensive thing. Again, I would point to the Wigston report, because it attempts to lay out an architecture for that, and I think you would need that.

In this case, knowing what we know, that the Deschamps report was not enough, that Operation Honour was not enough and that the system seems to have failed this complainant and this issue, we do need to attack the basic software of the legislation here.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

I would like to give our thanks to our witnesses for today. It was a very helpful session and I appreciate your sharing your very valuable time with us today.

With that, I'm going to suspend for the transition to the in camera session. I'll see you all back here in 10 minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]