Evidence of meeting #23 for National Defence in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was investigation.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Leona Alleslev Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
So PCO, despite being asked by the Minister of National Defence to make it their business, felt that without that specific piece of information, it would just get left.
As an Individual
Our judgment in mid-March was that we had reached an impasse. There was no complainant to interview, no witnesses to interview, and it would have been inappropriate to confront General Vance. There was no path forward.
Conservative
Leona Alleslev Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
There were fact-finding missions without complaints in other instances.
As an Individual
No, there would have been complainants to interview and witnesses to interview.
Conservative
Leona Alleslev Conservative Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
As a result, potentially, a raise was given to an order in council appointee while unresolved allegations remained unreviewed.
As an Individual
Yes, because the conduct issues did not cycle into the performance rating discussion for 2017-18. The raise that was given in the spring of 2019 was the economic increase. It was three years of catch-up for inflation. Every single Governor in Council appointee in the Government of Canada got a raise in the spring of 2019.
Liberal
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you, both, for being here to speak with us today.
Mr. Wernick, I want to clarify something from your testimony. Was there someone else, to your knowledge, who could have been spoken to or interviewed by PCO to further an investigation?
As an Individual
Not to my knowledge. I think that the impasse was created, in good faith, by Mr. Walbourne's unwillingness to share any information with us and by the complainant's unwillingness to trust the process, as Mr. Lick....
I think that Mr. Walbourne was acting in good faith. The minister was acting in good faith, and we were acting in good faith, but it created an impasse.
Liberal
As an Individual
I was certainly not aware of any at the time. I know that other things have been suggested to this committee, and I think you'll have to look at whether in your report you want to.... There are other scenarios and other paths perhaps that could have been taken by Mr. Walbourne, by the complainant, by Minister Sajjan and by the Privy Council Office. There are many hypothetical alternative timelines.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Okay, but at the time, there were none, to your best judgment?
As an Individual
That was our judgment, and this was not the only issue—and I would like to come back to that at some point. We had other preoccupations about the senior ranks of the military at the time, and I concede in hindsight that they probably caused us to lose focus on the issue around sexual misconduct.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
One thing that I think is important to come out of the committee's work is how we move forward.
Mr. Lick, I think you spoke to that at the outset. You urged us to stop the political posturing and work on addressing the problem, and I think you spoke to working on changing the culture.
Mr. Wernick, what do you think needs to be done to change the culture in the Canadian Armed Forces to address the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault?
As an Individual
It's an excellent question, and if you bear with me, I think there are a few layers to the answer.
Part of it is to recognize that it's a big problem and a challenge that goes beyond any one individual, and that lopping off the dandelions and changing the leadership at the top may have been necessary but wouldn't have been sufficient to put the Canadian Forces in the place that we want them to be.
If you look at the Wigston report in the United Kingdom—which I commend to the committee and anybody else who's watching—it's a comprehensive report on the same issue arising in the military of the United Kingdom. It's a very comprehensive blueprint for going forward with 36 recommendations, and the Johnson government committed to following up on it and has tabled follow-up reports every year on progress against that. I think some mechanism similar to that would be necessary.
I agree entirely with Mr. Lick that whatever body you parliamentarians decide to create, it should be legislated and permanent. I think one of the ways to go forward is that instead of waiting for the government to table a bill, this committee and the status of women committee could give the government advice on what the design features of the bill should be. I'd be happy to talk about that further.
Liberal
Liberal
As an Individual
I think Mr. Lick raised a very important issue. Are you going to entrench the requirement that you need the consent of a complainant to move forward, or would you give the investigating body some discretion to proceed without that consent? That's a huge issue, and I don't have a view on it, but you'd better tread carefully on doing that.
You have to contemplate all kinds of scenarios, including the person at the very top of the chain of command being the object of the complaint, and what you would do in that case, and so on. It's analogous, I think, to what's going on in the RCMP, which is wrestling with the same issues. Having a process in place, as we've learned at Rideau Hall and elsewhere, isn't enough. I agree with Mr. Lick entirely that if you don't have trust in the process and people don't feel they can come forward, you can have all the formalities and powers and investigative bodies you want.
The Government of Germany created new structures a couple of years ago. France last year conducted an investigation into sexual abuse in its military academies. President Biden spoke about sexual harassment and misconduct in the U.S. military just a month ago on International Women's Day. There clearly is a deep-rooted issue in dealing with military cultures and building the kind of military cultures that we want in the 21st century, and appropriate recourse systems.
My advice to the government—which I'm not in the business of giving anymore—is that they could table draft legislation as a white paper and make it a less partisan exercise in building the legislation, or they could use Standing Order 73 and refer the bill to this committee before second reading and give you lots of scope to amend it. Here, I agree with what Mr. Lick said on making it less partisan and less about going through the past. I think it's important to establish what happened, but I think all five parties in a minority Parliament should be able to work together and put together a new piece of legislation.
Legislation would be necessary but not sufficient. It's a much broader agenda than that.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, I want to say that I've greatly appreciated the presentations of our witnesses so far. They're very informative.
Are you or have you been in a similar situation? Is it easy for you to get in touch with the minister?
Mr. Lick, the former ombudsman, Mr. Walbourne, stated that he made more than a dozen requests to meet with the minister, after his meeting on March 1, 2018, and that these requests were all denied.
