Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank all of my colleagues for their interventions, and in particular Ms. Vandenbeld for very personal reflections on the role of the Canadian Forces and the powerful sentiments that she put behind her illustrations and arguments.
As we come up to the 76th anniversary of D-Day celebrations this weekend, I think it is incredibly important that we all reflect on the contributions of the Canadian Armed Forces—the historic contributions and the current and future ones—including the important peacekeeping operations that we are part of today and operations through NATO.
Maybe I can suggest the argument to the committee that there are two components to the issue of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces that we are dealing with.
One is a moral component, in the sense that it is simply wrong. It is flat wrong for this behaviour to be present and to continue. All members of the Canadian Forces have a right to serve in a safe, secure manner that is free from bullying, harassment, assault and any kind of misconduct.
The other consideration—and I will be careful in terms of where to position it, as the moral component is the most important component—is an operational consideration that affects the Canadian Forces in a broader sense, Madam Chair. It affects every army and every force within the set of our allies and friends that are currently working with us across the world. It's the question of trust.
The trust in the Canadian Forces has very quickly and very fundamentally eroded through the ongoing issue of sexual misconduct. It's been amplified by the two prominent case that we are studying. If members of the Canadian Forces can't trust each other, all the cultural components that we consider valuable in terms of the culture of excellence, service, camaraderie and looking out for one's fellow members of the Canadian Forces on the battlefield and in the halls of defence headquarters in Ottawa become eroded very quickly. This mistrust that is driven by the sexual misconduct has wider ripples inside the Canadian Forces. We are all following the news headlines closely and we don't need to look much beyond them to see the impact of this. It also erodes the effectiveness of organizations like NATO, of which many militaries are struggling with the same issue.
There is a defence component and an operational component to this. Ms. Vandenbeld was spot-on when she mentioned that the questions of supremacy, racism, homophobia and other drivers of exclusion and division that manifest themselves here in Canada and elsewhere in the world are incredibly relevant to the work that we're currently doing.
That's why the reference to this committee's previous work in the 42nd Parliament on diversity and inclusion is important. That's why the report of Mr. Justice Fish is important. Questions with respect to military justice are important.
We're facing a large, systemic problem that has a fundamental moral component, but also a very prominent and potentially very worrisome operational component.
Restoring trust takes time. Restoring trust takes an admission that we have an issue. This is an admission that many of our witnesses have openly made, including the minister when he spoke to us for six hours. Acknowledging that we are not meeting the expectations and that we are not protecting women serving in the Canadian Armed Forces is an incredibly important first step. I think that acknowledgement is there across party lines and across levels of service and government.
The follow-up is where the rubber really hits the road and where this committee, in terms of parliamentary accountability, needs to do its work. That's why we need to look closely at the work of Madam Justice Arbour. She is an independent authority who has been given a mandate with great urgency and great scope.
We need to complement that as the mechanism of parliamentary accountability to the Canadian public. We're elected. We're members of this committee. The expectation of the Canadian public is for us to come out and take steps and make recommendations that will heal the trust that has been eroded and broken. That takes time, but, in the minister's words, “the time for patience is over.” We need to act now and we need a complete culture change.
With that in mind, Madam Chair, I would like to take the opportunity to finish an important part of the experience that our British friends and colleagues have identified and reported on with respect to dealing with inappropriate behaviour when it occurs in the armed forces. Their conclusion like ours is that they have to do better. Their report focused on how they could improve the response to incidents when they do occur, judging in particular that they need to build trust and confidence in the complaint system, improve reporting of inappropriate behaviour and the support of those who are affected.
They proposed new governance structures to provide stronger centralized oversight and support, a single point of reference for data on inappropriate behaviour coupled with the ability to identify and share leading practice across the organization and offering alternatives, and potentially anonymous pathways for raising concerns of inappropriate behaviour or service complaints. Very interestingly, the British report says that this is the experience of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Australian Defence Force. In this part of the report, they recommended the establishment of a new central organization in the U.K., which they call the “Defence Authority responsible for cultures and inappropriate behaviours”. They also recommended in parallel a review of the service complaints process.
To the extent that we still have pending cases, cases that have not been reported yet, dealing with inappropriate behaviour when it does occur is of fundamental importance in the U.K. and here in Canada to the restoration of trust. It's only one component, but it's an important one.
The report noted:
a common theme among organisations who had faced endemic behavioural problems was a very low level of reporting initially, often combined with a perception that all was well.
We're far beyond this point in Canada, but that was the insight gained from the British experience. It was only when a significant event prompted further in-depth investigation that the extent of the issue became apparent, and it's clear to us, Madam Chair, as members of this committee what those events were in the recent weeks.
The report continued:
The majority of cases found in the evidence we looked at from Australia, Canada and the private sector, pointed to a general lack of confidence to report inappropriate behaviour for several reasons.
Before I cite them, I want to point out to the committee that the reference to Canada in the British report is footnoted to the ERA and Madame Deschamps' report of 2015.
Those reasons include the following:
fear of adverse consequences on the complainant’s career; fear of not being believed; belief that nothing would be done and a lack of transparency in the outcome of a complaint; inadequate or insufficient consequences or disciplinary action; complaint process not independent of the chain of command or line management; lack of anonymity for the complainant; amount of time taken to achieve a resolution.
The conclusion in the British report is that the number of complaints of inappropriate behaviour is under-reported in the service complaint system for similar or identical reasons. They make the following observation:
The Service Complaints target is to resolve 90% of all complaints within 24 weeks. In 2018, the Service Complaints Ombudsman reported only 50% of complaints were resolved in 24 weeks. We found the average target in the private sector for resolution of complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour is 40 to 45 days.
There are very important discrepancies, and as you can see, Madam Chair, the U.K. really took a sweeping look at the issue all the way over into the private sector, which is really the parallel that we're concerned about, which will help us in line with efforts that are going on in the private sector to identify those additional constraints that we face within the Canadian Forces with respect to the reporting structure and the chain of command and other factors.
The report continued:
The private sector reports an average number of complaints of inappropriate behaviour equating approximately to 1% of the workforce per year of which 25%-40% is usually reported anonymously. By comparison, the Service Complaints Ombudsman Report in 2018 recorded that the Services received a total of 1,185 complaints of which 763 were deemed admissible and only 190 (25%) were related to bullying, discrimination and harassment. This represents less than 0.1% of the strength of the Services.
This low reporting rate of inappropriate behaviour has been attributed to the issues that we just talked about, the chain of command and others, and the report goes on to take a look at U.S. data from 2016. The report further states:
In 2016, the United States Department of Defence estimated that only 7% of those who experienced a sexual assault came forward to report the incident to the military. In 2018, this rate was approximately 30%. Other common reasons included: concerns that reporting would negatively affect their career; nothing would be done; confidentiality would not be kept; because servicewomen blamed themselves; work environment concerns; would be treated differently by leadership; and would be seen as weak.
All of these factors go to the question of trust. If people cannot trust the complaint system, it is a fundamental driver of the overall implication of mistrust with respect to the Canadian Armed Forces—the U.K. armed forces in this case, but by extension, the Canadian Armed Forces—as an employer, and most importantly, an environment where trust is fundamental to the operational effectiveness and also to the safety of the women and men who serve. If you cannot trust the person next to you, you're not going to be an effective member, and the entire unit, and by extension, the entire forces will be ineffective.
The U.K. report recommended that “Defence should consider a call for evidence on inappropriate behaviours in conjunction with a sexual harassment survey in 2021.” I think it would probably be valuable for us as a committee to have an exchange on that recommendation and the implications here in Canada.
There are also thoughts on anonymous reporting as an essential component to restoring trust. The report continues:
While some people will feel able to report incidents of inappropriate behaviour through their chain of command or line management; many will not. The United States, Australia and New Zealand Armed Forces have utilised a restricted reporting method allowing an individual to seek support for a sexual assault without initiating an investigation, thus remaining anonymous. The United States restricted reporting data is compelling: all victims indicated that they would not have reported if the only means had been through a formal report. In 2017, 24% of those reporting went on to convert to a full report initiating an investigation. Key to this is that the report must be recorded to enable an understanding of the level of incidents. Internal employee support networks provide valuable assistance but are not the answer. The army's sexual harassment survey in 2018 recommended the introduction of a web-based anonymous reporting tool for inappropriate behaviours, so that service personnel can make the army aware of these behaviours without fear of repercussion.
In the U.K., Madam Chair, this initiative is not yet resourced, so the report makes the recommendation to “Resource, develop and implement an anonymous tool for reporting inappropriate behaviours across defence.”
I raise this portion of the report again to highlight the importance of finding a pathway to effectively empower members of the Canadian Armed Forces to report inappropriate behaviour. We're not yet at the stage where we can assume that there will be no further incidents or that there will be no further reports. The fact that we had two cases, back-to-back, directly implicating the former chief of the defence staff shows the systemic entrenchment of the issues. We're not yet at the stage where we can even say there is a particular amount of light at the end of the tunnel. In parallel with that, as I've indicated in previous submissions and as structurally incorporated in the U.K. report, is the importance of finding ways to discourage this kind of behaviour from ever happening in the first place. These were my submissions and recommendations based on the U.K. experience with respect to training, feedback loops and innovative new mechanisms like reverse mentorship.
In short, there's a lot of work to be done on the question of trust. It takes time to restore it. The urgency is incredibly high. It will not be fixed tomorrow, but we have to start tomorrow if not today. I think that's the message we heard from the minister, that the time for patience is over. Again, the issue of trust is an operational component as much as it is a reflection of the moral breakdown that for far too long has been going on in the Canadian Armed Forces and so many other forces across the world. This moral breakdown is the result of a failure to take account of the role of women in the forces and the right of women and all genders to serve in the forces.
The challenge is monumental. The pivot point is trust, both with respect to the moral implications and the operational implications. Thinking forward, Madam Chair, if we look at our friends and allies within NATO who are suffering this issue in various degrees, unless we get on top of this systemically, the operational effectiveness of the alliance can and potentially will be called into question. This is in addition to the fact that we are facing a wrong that we are not righting. That's why I'm so emphatic about the responsibility being on the shoulders of this committee to do this work now, in the few sessions that we have left.
We can do it. I think Mr. Bagnell's proposal is an excellent one. We can find those recommendations that we can get behind. We can have a discussion, focused and short, on how to prioritize them, how to connect them to each other, what kind of sequence we need to set up to make sure those recommendations are mutually reinforcing and that they can cross-leverage, also, the work that Madam Justice Arbour is doing in parallel.
There's a huge amount of work in front of us on the most important issue, in my view, that this committee has faced in recent history. It is a runway to achieving something that will add value to the future of the Canadian Forces.
I will turn it back to you on this thought, Madam Chair. I still have a couple more things to say before I finish my remarks on the Wigston report. If there's time, I will briefly comment on the follow-up report that the U.K. put into place a year later. It's really just a year ago for us now. It led to some very interesting and innovative conclusions as well as additional recommendations that identified some gaps in Wigston that did not work. I think we have to turn our minds to the possibility of doing that here as well. If we put forward some recommendations that get implemented and a year later it turns out that they don't have quite the right emphasis or that they have to be changed, altered or resequenced, what kinds of mechanisms can we propose to the Government of Canada to make sure we have that flexibility, that adaptability, to make sure that whatever gets put in place doesn't just get held out as investment X to say that we've approached the problem? There's also a need to follow up and make sure they actually work and deliver the results in the longer term. The fact that the U.K. was able to do that within a year suggests that a government, a member state of NATO, should have that flexibility and does have that flexibility. That's an additional thought for the committee's deliberation.
With that, Madam Chair, I will turn it back to you. Thank you.