Madam Chair, thank you very much.
Colleagues, I think a couple of sessions ago I was in the course of bringing you portions of the British experience with respect to two things. One is their approach to getting ahead of inappropriate behaviour in the British Armed Forces, and then also the correction and the approach to dealing with inappropriate behaviour when it has occurred.
I raise the British experience as illustrative of the systematicity across, as I've said, a number of militaries across the world that we work very closely with, be it through NATO or the United Nations or other coalitions. It's also because the British experience in particular that I started with, and there are other countries, has been illuminating. It's not just something that's interesting that's occurring in parallel. It's something that's directly relevant to our work. Some of the recommendations are issues that we have not dealt with or have not looked at.
In the context of the motion and the amendment, the amendment makes specific reference to new facts coming before the committee. New facts can come in the form of witness testimony, but they can also come in the form of documentary evidence and reports. Work that's being done on the very same issue elsewhere in the world is extremely relevant.
The main motion in its original form, I believe, if I have this right, was to cut short our work on the 28th at 2:45 p.m. and thereafter go directly to a vote on the recommendations. I'm struggling a bit, because I think there are some relevant passages in the work that both the U.K. armed forces and other jurisdictions have done. I will try to get some of that on the record over the sessions that we have prior to the formulation of what I hope will be an all-party report—not an interim report, in my view, but a report that is substantive and that has the recommendations that are required to achieve change as early as this summer.
The U.K. armed forces report is entitled “Report on Inappropriate Behaviours”. It was actually released a month after we released our parliamentary report in the 42nd Parliament that I referred to a couple of interventions ago. The committee then did not have the benefit of this experience and its deliberation, but we do now.
Let me get into some of the recommendations. They deal with a number of issues related to training and related to a concept that the British Armed Forces refer to as “reverse mentoring”, which I believe we have not looked at. Very importantly, it also deals with the role of bystanders. We've heard again and again testimony from witnesses in front of this committee that we need to find ways to give serving members of the armed forces or civilian members who are bystanders to sexual misconduct or inappropriate conduct the mechanisms that will give them the confidence to speak out and speak up and become change agents.
The U.K. proceeds with a premise that is very straightforward: “We must do more to stop instances of inappropriate behaviour occurring.” A lot of the attention that we've given has gone to mechanisms of reporting inappropriate behaviour that has occurred. There may well be inappropriate behaviour that has not been reported yet. In fact, the evidence suggests that this trend is very much there until the culture has changed. The U.K. analysis says, in addition to having proper reporting mechanisms, what else can we do to get ahead of the problem to make sure that ultimately there are no cases that are being reported, not because serving members don't have the confidence to speak out but because no sexual misconduct has occurred? That, of course, is the end state that we all aspire to.
The U.K. report states:
This part of the report considers how we should better prepare the workforce, setting the tone and giving people the skills they need to prevent inappropriate behaviours occurring. It is principally the responsibility of the single Services and Civil Service senior leadership and a significant amount of work is underway already. In compiling the Report, we identified the latest thinking and leading practice from professional bodies, academia and other external organisations including allied Armed Forces.
I made reference a couple of sessions ago to the fact that the U.K. cited us in one of their recommendations. They cited work that had been done by the Canadian Forces. There is a need for collaboration and the exchange of best practices and solutions. It states:
This is about changing the level of tolerance and cultural acceptance of inappropriate behaviour across every part of Defence and at every level. It will require concerted effort and persistent attention; success will be measured in years not weeks.
This is a line with which we may take issue. The minister was very clear. He said the time for patience was over. We want progress quicker, and not measured in years but in weeks, if not months.
In any event, preparing the workforce is a crucial aspect of this, and the workforce includes the entirety of the defence sector. The report states:
“If a team enjoys good leadership, then unacceptable behaviour, such as bullying, harassment and discrimination within the team, will not be tolerated.” Leadership is the turnkey to set the conditions for improvement in behaviour across Defence. It creates an environment in which our people, military and civilian, have faith in the chain of command at every level, share a clear understanding of what is appropriate behaviour and are empowered to call it out when it is not. Leaders set the tone through role modelling; self-awareness of their own attitudes and biases; and in developing cultural intelligence and understanding of the whole force. Realtime feedback to leaders, especially from those more junior personnel within the organisation, is important and can be enabled through the use of reverse mentoring, 360° reporting and focus groups.
Reverse mentoring, by the way, Madam Chair, for those of us who are coming across the concept for the first time, is traditionally mentorship that goes from a more senior member of an organization to a more junior member, whether its in academia, the private sector or the civil service. This is the opposite. This is putting a junior member of the serving forces in a mentorship relationship with a senior member to provide feedback and to provide lived experience of right understanding. The thinking may not be apparent, or the senior member may not have been exposed to the extent that he or she needs to be in order to be a change manager within the organization. It's an innovative concept. I believe this committee may well want to turn its attention to its usefulness in our report.
The report states:
For the last two years, the Royal Navy has operated a diversity and inclusion action group and the Royal Air Force has recently established a diversity and inclusion shadow board. Some Army units have, similarly, adopted this approach through the creation of 'Regimental Inclusion Councils' as a mechanism to capture behaviours and feedback to the Commanding Officer; this inclusive approach is especially effective in reflecting perspectives from junior cohorts.
We've heard again and again, with respect to the Canadian Forces, that there is a generational divide. The problem is one that really differentiates senior ranks within the chain of command from junior and also middle ranks. It goes on to state:
The initiative complements the Army Empowerment Programme which seeks to delegate authority to more junior levels of Command.
And thereby achieves cultural change.
The recommendation that follows this analysis is that:
Services sustain and promote connected leadership in their training and preparation of leaders. Feedback mechanisms such as reverse mentors, focus groups and 360° reporting are leading practice and should be maximised.
The report then makes reference to a concept, and I'm not sure if we've identified the nomenclature within our work, but it's called “referent others”. It states:
Academic research refers to the most visible and influential members of a group or community as ‘Referent Others’; these include leaders, instructors and others in authority. Their behaviour not only has a disproportionate effect on the construction and propagation of the norm but they are also important agents for sustaining the culture of an organisation.
Looking at leaders within defence, not necessarily in the form of the chain of command but looking at trainers, external advisers and instructors as referent others, as people who can perpetuate the norm is a key component to achieving culture change. They are the multipliers. They are the amplifiers of norms. This is the granularity we need to get to in our report. We need to find those spots within the Canadian Forces where these kinds of approaches and models are useful.
The chain of command is one consideration and a very important one. This is a broader concept that the U.K. forces have identified and highlighted in this observation, that the identification, education and preparation of referent others, given their contribution to organizational culture, is a key component.
With respect to the prevention of inappropriate behaviour, and this is really where the rubber hits the road in terms of our work, the U.K. report states:
Our Armed Forces understand the risks faced on operations and the individual judgements we ask of our people, even of life and death. The unique nature of military life introduces risks away from the battlefield too, and the risk of inappropriate behaviour is one. Experience points to risk factors that are a recurring feature of instances of unacceptable behaviour, particularly in cases of bullying and sexual harassment: tight-knit units that perceive themselves as 'elite'; masculine cultures with low gender diversity; rank gradients; age gradients; weak or absent controls, especially after extensive operational periods; and alcohol. Unchecked or unrecognized, the combination of some or all of these risk factors sets the conditions for inappropriate behaviour to occur. To stop this, people in every part of Defence—not just the leaders and line managers—need to recognise the risk and have the good judgement to do something about it.
Madam Chairman, we may add to that, not only the good judgment but also the empowerment and the recognition that if they choose to take that step, their careers and their reputations are protected, if not enhanced, because they took that step.
The report continues:
The judgement we expect of our people on the battlefield must be the same level of judgement that we expect of their behaviour in the barrack block or the bar.
Or defence headquarters or anywhere else. It continues:
Cultures and behaviours training has to bolster that judgement. It has to be relevant for the people involved and offer skills and techniques which people can use to good effect. Current cultures and behaviours training focuses largely on Service values and standards and the Civil Service Code, complemented by diversity and inclusion training. This gives the impression that it is done to maintain organisational compliance with the law and with Service values, standards and codes which, in some areas, has developed a 'tick box' attitude.
Madam Chair, this is incredibly relevant analysis. I think, again, this is the granularity we need to get to. It's easy to recommend training programs. It's easy to put money into training programs. It's also easy to say that we've trained x hundreds of people, but unless we achieve the impact that is described in the level of analysis that we have here from the United Kingdom, these efforts will fall flat and will not lead to the culture change that we need to work for, very actively, very progressively and quickly.
The report continues:
To change cultures and improve behaviours, training needs to be set in context, be well-timed and personally impactful for the participants, with a clear set of outcomes. Key intervention periods are at career inception and subsequent confirmatory command, management and promotion training courses. Training ‘Referent Others’ to exhibit new behaviours and implicitly encourage adoption by their peers has proven effective at changing norms and behaviours in some hard-to-reach groups.
Training must also take a preventative view, to help leaders at every level better understand the early signs and symptoms of a systemic degradation of behaviours.
I'm going to close with the recommendation on this portion of the report, Madam Chair, but I'll come back with additional interventions on this—