It's always hard to go after Mr. Baker because I think he's saying what many committee members are thinking but can't say as well, and I think all the committee members want to help the members of the CAF with the three main problems that Christine had outlined, the chain of command, the reporting and the culture, and as I said before, that's what we should get on to.
In reply to what Mrs. Gallant said, I agree with her that there were a lot of things in the Deschamps report. The many steps that were taken by the present minister have been outlined in this committee, but there are things that were not done, and so the form that they should take is exactly what we should be discussing now to deal with those particular issues.
As I said, I'd rather we just stopped all this and got on to dealing with those three major issues to help the members in the military, but if there are committee members who still want to do the “who knew what, why and where”, as was said earlier in this meeting, there have been much more serious allegations raised, probably since this motion was written and certainly since the last meetings, related to the appointment of General Vance in the beginning.
Mr. O'Toole, when he was Minister of Veterans Affairs, passed on a potential rumour, a complaint, to Ray Novak, who very nicely came before committee and provided his thoughts on that. He mentioned that he had asked the national security adviser, Richard Fadden, about the Gagetown incident and to look into it, but the media have suggested that Mr. Fadden has said he does not remember investigating that particular complaint or actually receiving it, although he doesn't disagree with Mr. Novak's memory that he may have mentioned it to Mr. Fadden, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that investigation or that it was acted upon.
If there was a complaint and it wasn't investigated or it wasn't acted upon, then why was General Vance appointed? On all these things, I think we need more details.
I've just heard from the media. I haven't had time to sort it out. Some of it I just saw this morning and the others I was just reading about on the weekend, but the outgoing chief of staff at the time said he was crystal clear that there was no allegation related to misconduct by Vance at Gagetown that was ever brought to him, and he was helping with the appointment of a new chief of staff. He said he was crystal clear about that in the article, including that when he was helping to find a replacement, he would have remembered any allegation, he said, and he said his mind was not fuzzy at all about that.
There was another investigation related to NATO, and Richard Fadden and I think the outgoing chief of staff mentioned it, but not the Gagetown one, and as I said, I don't want to go into any of this, but I will say to those members of the committee who honestly want to go into this, who want to know “who, what and where”, that this is a much more serious allegation.
Megan Mackenzie, an expert on sexual misconduct in the military at Simon Fraser University, said that no one handled it well, but if the investigation was still open or any investigation was still open, then why did cabinet appoint General Vance? Then the military police recommended an end to an investigation, apparently on July 17, the day that General Vance was sworn in, and then four days later it was closed. How did that process evolve on those dates?
I'm sure that things are still evolving as people are researching this. As I said, if we have to go into how, when, why, and where, these are much more serious allegations and would have to be dealt with. That's not my interest. My interest is in helping the women in the military, going back to recommendations that would change the culture and the fear of reporting.
There are so many incidents. Rather than spending time on these one or two instances and one or two individuals, we should get on with the major, substantial structural problem. Even though there are hundreds and probably thousands of incidents, an incident affects people for the rest of their lives. It's not just a momentary incident.
That's why we have to put all this aside and get down to recommendations to solve those three problems so that people never again fear to choose a great career in the military with the great honour of protecting us as citizens. If they make a report of something inappropriate, they should not worry that it's going to affect the career they've invested their lives in. We should not allow that to occur because of a culture that is accepted and has occurred not only in our military but, as Mr. Spengemann has pointed out, in militaries around the world.
I think there are people on the committee who have the ability to deal with those problems and get on with them and come up with some very good recommendations. That would be my preference at this time, but I'll leave that up to the committee.