Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to my colleagues for their previous remarks.
I want to circle back to a couple of points. One is the government response. I think it's incredibly important that we ask for a government response. Colleagues have outlined why that is. It's a question of accountability. Unless we hear from the government what its reflections are on the recommendations and the tenor of the report that we're going to put forward, we have little way of ascertaining to what extent we're actually impactful and to what extent we're going to help move the yardsticks.
I'll use an example that I cited in previous interventions. The U.K. had its 2019 “Report on Inappropriate Behaviours”, as they called it, issued in July 2019. Fairly shortly, a year later, the Right Honourable Ben Wallace, MP, Secretary of State for Defence in the United Kingdom, issued a report entitled “Unacceptable Behaviours: Progress Review 2020”. Those kinds of things can happen if you ask for a government response.
From that experience, we see that if the right recommendations are made and put forward, positive action can follow in very short order. I think that's really one of the issues here that we've talked about this afternoon and in previous sessions. It's not only the urgency of the issue that's at stake. It's also the importance of making sure that we have recommendations that are actionable, that are impactful, and that aren't going to sit in a drawer or be ineffective if they are implemented. I think the government response is important for this committee to be seized with, and any additional studies that it may undertake, but also for the Canadian public to see what the government's reflections are and what its path forward is in response to our report.
I have two other quick points on Mr. Bezan's motion. I think one of the challenges we've seen is that it's not so much only the two-minute restriction in itself. I mean, for the sake of expediency, one can sort of follow the logic of why you would restrict time. We do this in committee all the time when we have witnesses. We have carefully negotiated allocated time periods. The challenge is if you tell a member they may speak only once, because that prevents any kind of debate building on comments that were made previously by colleagues, specifically with respect to recommendations. If a colleague has an idea of how to amend a particular recommendation and they've already spoken, then she or he will not be able to come back in again to give a reflection. You don't get a cumulative debate that may actually get us to the same side of the issue, if not the same side of the table.
For that reason, I think it's important that we be more flexible. While bearing in mind Mr. Bezan's overall concern that we need to finish this report in short order, to be able to land it, I don't think the two-minute restriction, if it's framed as speaking only once, will be helpful in that respect.
Mr. Bezan also mentioned—I think I'm quoting him correctly here, but he'll tell me otherwise if I'm not—that this was the “easy path forward”. I think by “easy” he did not necessarily mean to take the issue lightly; he meant the most expedient way forward. I just want to be clear here, on the record, that the issues are complex. Testimony after testimony and intervention after intervention that we've heard from colleagues, some very thoughtful across party lines—in some cases, anyway—indicate how complex the issues are and how important they are to Canadians and, most importantly, to the family of the Canadian Forces currently serving and veterans.
For that reason, I think we have to be mindful that the easy answer isn't going to cut it: an expedient answer, yes, but we are entering now into the final stage of our work. There are complex challenges before us, coupled with complex recommendations that need to be thought through. I think it was my colleague Mr. Bagnell who said that complex problems that are responded to with simple answers will often be faced with ultimately the wrong answers. We need to take the time to think this through, but expeditiously.
I'd like to thank my colleague Ms. Vandenbeld for her most recent intervention with respect to recommendations that she put forward. I'd like to complement them briefly with some of the insights that are in the concluding section of the report from the U.K., which I've presented over a number of sessions. They relate to the topics of bystanders, recruits, social media and transparency of action. I'd like to get them on the record again, in light of the fact that if this motion passes, we will basically be truncating our discussion with respect to any additional input that may be made.
The issue of bystanders is incredibly important, not only in the Canadian Forces but in broader society. The elimination of sexual misconduct really is driven by the need to find different behaviour from bystanders, be they civilian or be they serving members of the armed forces.
On this point, again, the U.K. conclusions are illuminating. The report states:
Recent academic research refers widely to the role of bystanders in influencing behaviour in groups. Everyone is a bystander; we witness events unfolding around us constantly. Sometimes we recognise events as being problematic and we might decide to intervene—and become an active bystander; or not—and remain a passive bystander. There are many factors which will influence why we decide to intervene or not but when we do decide to intervene, we are sending a clear message to the wrongdoer that their behaviour is unacceptable.
The U.K. is drawing attention to the need to change bystander behaviour within both the civilian and the military elements of their armed forces.
The report cites a quote from Edmund Burke, who wrote in the mid- to late 1700s. The quote says, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Appreciating when this quote was written will lead to an understanding of the fact that this is not gender-neutral language, but perhaps importantly, with respect to this issue, really it is the behaviour of men in large part that is at question. It is also the question of male allies. Again, the status quo will be maintained if people don't act, and bystanders have a particular role.
The report continues:
In empowering active bystanders, skills development and the creation of supporting challenge and reporting mechanisms is critical to the success of introducing effective intervention programmes. Several valid and reliable proprietary bystander intervention programmes exist but all such programmes require significant investment in training and education at all levels of the organisation. Bystander education equips people with the knowledge, skills and confidence to intervene; to challenge inappropriate behaviour; to call it out; and to report it. The Defence Academy active bystander intervention programme is judged leading practice in this regard.
These are the observations of the United Kingdom report on the question of bystanders. They recommend the investigation, development and implementation of bystander training across defence. That's a recommendation that complements the comments that were made by Ms. Vandenbeld in her previous intervention.
The section goes on to recognize that more data may be required from recruits, and in this respect the U.K. report actually refers to us and the Canadian Armed Forces' work, stating:
The Canadian Armed Forces are considering whether or not to gather additional information on new recruits to have a better idea of the values, attitudes and standards they possess on joining, to assess risk and protective factors and therefore better tailor and focus training. We recommend consideration of the same.
The message back to us here is that as we develop this report, other countries are going to look to us, and in fact are already looking to us, with respect to what we do. There is a heightened attention that is signalled by the U.K on our work or our potential steps with respect to gathering information on new recruits, something I feel the committee should be mindful of as we develop our report.
It is this granularity and this kind of interaction between us and other jurisdictions through the work we do that require some consideration and debate on our behalf, and not just in the sense of having the opportunity to intervene for two minutes without necessarily building on the comments of other members. I think, more systematically, we need the freedom to interact with each other to figure out what the right answers are, especially when it comes to the integration of the work that is already being done in other jurisdictions.
The recommendation by the U.K. is “Consideration should be given to gathering additional values, attitudes and standards information on new recruits to assess the risk and tailor preventative training.”
On social media, the U.K. makes a comment that perhaps requires some consideration on our part, especially considering what Ms. Vandenbeld said earlier about young people and social media:
A widely acknowledged behavioural challenge is the increase in the transmission of social media messages with a sexual content. Whilst efforts should focus on this area, it is recognised that this is part of a broader societal challenge. Although there is an expectation that the more junior cohorts are more familiar with social media and online activity, some focus group feedback has suggested that this cohort, described as “digital natives”, do in fact require some training and education surrounding their conduct online.
This takes us into a broader conversation in the civil sector with respect to online bullying, harassment and misconduct. Perhaps we should turn our minds to this in a more thoughtful manner than the U.K. has had the opportunity to do here. It's a simple one-paragraph statement. We may want to elaborate on this, in light of the work that many of us are engaged in at the parliamentary level, outside of the Canadian Forces, with respect to online harassment, online hate, and the work we're doing in that regard, and feeding that back into the recommendations we're making with respect to social media messages by current or former members of the Canadian Forces.
Finally, there's a heading “Transparency of action”. This is fundamental.
Transparency of action needs to be communicated and evident to all Service personnel and civil servants. This should include greater transparency of the consequences for perpetrators, to bring to life the policy of zero-tolerance, energise values and standards and tackle elements of organisational cynicism that action does not get taken. Culture and behaviours—and the consequences for victims and/or perpetrators—need to feature as a routine conversation in the work place, and throughout training provision; it must be consistent and persistent.
This section of the report concludes there, with a call for “authentic leadership”, “relentless engagement” and “consistent communication” across the U.K. forces.
Bystander training, immersive role-playing training, and social media training are all good examples of programmes we recommend should be implemented across Defence. This will require concerted effort, resource and persistent attention over many years by Defence senior leadership, and leaders and line managers at every level.
Over the course of the interventions I've made so far on just the British experience alone—and I indicated there are experiences from other countries that the committee may wish to consider or at least take note of—there's a granularity here that can catalyze our work.
I know our time is short, but by looking to what was done already elsewhere and what was done successfully, we not only step to the side of our allies around the world that are facing the same problem, but we signal to Canadians that this is an issue that far exceeds our borders, that is systematic in nature, that is based on the way the military has acted generationally for too long, and that the culture change that's required is much more multilateral, if not global, in areas like peacekeeping and deployments around the world that the Canadian Forces is a part of.
I'll leave it there for the moment, Madam Chair.