Madam Chair, thanks very much.
It's good to be with you, colleagues.
It feels a little bit like déjà vu. I said consistently from the outset that there are two components to our work. They are of equal importance, but in terms of the real heavy lifting on culture change, it is probably the more challenging problem. Everybody has pointed to it. Every single witness has said that the culture needs to be changed.
That culture pre-existed, with informed speculation, the tenure of General Vance as CDS. It requires the recommendations that, as I alluded to in testimony in other sessions, a lot of countries have gone through or are going through. In parallel with that, we have a number of important cases that have come forward, including two former chiefs of defence staff and most recently, Major-General Fortin.
We can see each of these cases as being emblematic of a much deeper cultural problem. To use a metaphor that might not perfectly fit, it's maybe the tip of the iceberg. Unless we look at the iceberg itself, take it apart and look at the recommendations that will really change the trajectory of the Canadian Forces as an employer within which sexual misconduct no longer happens, we will not do our work.
Yes, the opposition is perfectly within their right to chase after additional testimony. In this case, I think we have heard testimony that's starting to be very consistent with respect to where accountabilities lie. Messages have come from witnesses, including Ray Novak, the former chief of staff of the former minister of defence, who has said that it is “inappropriate” in our democracy to involve elected officials including ministers or prime ministers in investigative processes with respect to misconduct. There is clarity on that.
There is also clarity with respect to the systematicity of this problem. There is clarity with respect to challenges relating to the chain of command, to demographics in the Canadian Forces and to the long existence of this issue. I think it would be a disservice to Canadian women if this committee was not in a position, prior to the summer recess, to put forward recommendations that aren't simply approved with a simple up or down vote, but that have been subjected to discussion and debate among the committee, and are prioritized and identified as the ones that are able to really make progress in a most expeditious manner, in parallel with the work of Madam Justice Arbour.
Let me take the committee back to 2015. I have referred to this previously, but maybe it bears repeating briefly in the context of this amendment that's now before us. I'm referring to an article published on April 22, 2021, in the Ottawa Citizen by David Pugliese where it is reported that General Jonathan Vance boasted that he was “untouchable” by military police. Further in the article it referred to the fact that he claims to have “owned” the Canadian Forces national investigation service. We have received much more recent evidence that's before the committee, and there may well be witnesses that we could bring in to illuminate this evidence more closely, but in my estimation that is not where the real work is. I will explain that in a minute.
According to that evidence, there was an investigation under way in 2015 at the time of the appointment of General Vance under the former Conservative government. Shortly after General Vance's appointment, that investigation came to a halt. If you take that evidence in conjunction with the testimony of the general's reported statement through media testimony that he “owned” the investigative service, that is really where the systematic nature of this problem lies.
In 2015, how could the appointed head of the Canadian Forces be in such an asymmetrical position of power and so removed from parliamentary oversight that he could boast about owning the Canadian Forces national investigation service? If it's true that General Vance was able to bring an investigation to a close at that time, that is an issue that every member of this committee across party lines should be seized with and should look at.
In that respect, it's not irrelevant who comes forward in terms of complaining against whom. That is incredibly important. It just points to a much more systematic problem that we need to solve. We have to weigh that against the timeline towards completion of this parliamentary session and the need to put out a report that has substance and recommendations.
We have had testimony with respect to ministerial accountability and the ministerial roles involved in this government with respect to Jonathan Vance. The Minister of Defence himself came and testified for six hours.
We have had staff from PCO. We have had Katie Telford, from the Prime Minister's Office, and Elder Marques, former PMO staff. We've had extensive testimony that pointed to the conclusion that it is not appropriate to involve either the minister of defence or the Prime Minister in investigative processes relating to the chief of the defence staff. The systematic nature of the problem is his reported ownership of the authority that is now investigating and, presumably, potentially, wasn't at the time of his appointment, or its investigation was truncated shortly after his appointment took place. That's a problem that I think we should all be concerned about.
I haven't seen symmetry within the thinking of this committee to look at these questions, to look at the recommendations. Yes, we've heard testimony. Yes, we have a pile of recommendations that have been put forward, but what is this committee going to say in June of this year to give confidence to the serving women, the former serving women of the Canadian forces, the men who are allies, Canadians of all genders, Canadians of all walks of life who wish to serve in the Canadian forces and feel that they can't, or the ones who are already serving and feel that they don't have a voice and that they can't come forward or, if they do come forward, that their careers and their futures are in doubt because they have taken the step of speaking out?
Those are the systematic questions that are exemplified in the cases that we have looked at and the cases that we've studied that are properly investigated by independent authorities. I think we have gathered the political and policy evidence behind them that we need to make recommendations urgently to take our country forward.
Again, I've pointed to a number of other militaries similar in nature to Canada's in the sense that they are military, they are subject to liberal democracy and parliamentary oversight and, at the very same time that we're talking about this, they are struggling and, in some cases, have put forward recommendations and processes that have been illuminating, quite helpful and could potentially be emulated. I've injected those thoughts into the committee's discussion and will continue to do so.
We have some work ahead, and I think we need to focus on the iceberg without in any way slighting the significance of the victims of the cases that are before us and that we've studied in the form of the individual allegations that have been made.
Thank you, Madam Chair.