National Defence Committee on May 21st, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you, Mr. Bagnell.

We will move on to Madame Vandenbeld, please.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you for all the thoughtful interventions before me in today's meeting, and particularly Mr. Bagnell's. I noted at the very end that he explained well, I think, how complex and complicated the solutions are to these issues that we are facing in the Canadian Armed Forces right now and how cynical the motion is, both the not wanting to have a government response to our committee report and the limitation of the two minutes per person to be able to debate issues that really require a lot more thoughtfulness.

It's not obvious what the correct answers are. I think we have done a very good job of outlining what the problem is, and we know that there is a very significant problem. However, the answers differ depending on who you speak to, on what perspective they bring. We know from history that very often you can put in place solutions, that you can put in place programs, like Operation Honour, that look like they will solve the problem and that then have unintended consequences and don't achieve the results we're looking for.

Just in terms of the motion itself, I do believe it is very cynical, Madam Chair. I have referred to it, in fact, as a “poison pill” motion. I don't believe there is good will on the opposition side to actually really want to work together in good faith to get these reports done. The fact that we are now sitting here half an hour before the end of the last scheduled meeting before the summer break really disappoints me.

The opposition members know, both in private and in this committee—and other members of this committee, Mr. Bagnell and others—that we have made many overtures to try to find a solution to this impasse. I'm certainly not going to speak publicly about those overtures, but they were done very much in good faith.

I think we all want to see this report, this and the other reports. Given that we are now at this eleventh hour, I think all of us feel a little bit deflated about the fact that we're unlikely to see some of these recommendations, especially the ones that matter to the survivors.

I just have to say, Madam Chair, that there have been arguments that all the committee needs to do is talk about the finger pointing and who did what right and when, and talk about the politicians. If it had been three meetings, if we had stuck to the original title of the motion, done the three meetings, had the minister here and then reported on that, that would have been different. However, the fact is that we then continued as a committee to call witnesses, including survivors, professors, experts, people from the Canadian Armed Forces, officials and others who have been working on this throughout their lives. There are people who came for whom this is their life's work. They have been putting forward solutions for decades. To have those people come to this committee and give that testimony and to then turn around and say that we don't need to include any of that in the report, I think, is unfair. It's unfair to the witnesses. It's unfair to the survivors. It's unfair to the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces.

It is really too bad because I think Mr. Bagnell's proposal that he's made several times now, that we at least go through and find the things we all agree on.... I thought that we did all agree on at least those proposals that help us move forward for the women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces, and it's becoming very evident to me now here that we don't.

Putting these very cynical motions, knowing that these are motions that we would not be able to support, such as not having a government report.... I think it could have been different, Madam Chair. It could very easily have been different.

The word “filibuster” has been thrown out a lot. I would just like to remind particularly those who might be listening that the opposition holds all the cards right now. You've heard me say many times, and you've heard others say on this committee, both privately and publicly, that if we were to have adjourned the debate at any moment in the last month, we would have gone to the next item of business immediately, which is the study of the report. Madam Chair, you'll recall that not only could we go to the study of the report but we were doing the study of the report.

Without saying what happens in camera, we were actually advancing quite well, I think. We were actually talking to each other. Somewhere along the way, the opposition has been putting these what are known as 106(4) motions, which immediately ended the topic that we had been talking about. Then they came in with another meeting and another new motion. It's been one after another after another. I can't remember how many hours this meeting has been going on. Over the last month there has already been 26 hours of overtime in addition to the times that we were scheduled to sit.

Each time, in good faith, we've debated it and then we have agreed. Each time we have agreed and we have had somebody else come in, another witness, whether it was Elder Marques or Katie Telford or the minister for six hours. Each time they came back with something else, until it became readily apparent that it wasn't about trying to get a report done; it was really about just dragging it on. No matter what we agreed to, they were going to keep coming up with more motions.

That became even more evident when we as a committee agreed to a certain timeline. We spoke with the clerk and analysts to see how long they would need to be able to translate and format the report, get it out and table it in the House. We agreed to a timeline in this committee that would have allowed us to get all three reports tabled. The opposition just blew through that timeline, again with motion after motion, with 106(4) after 106(4), with all the procedural tactics.

I would remind everyone again that when somebody is filibustering, it generally means that they have control of the meeting. But the opposition could have said at literally any moment that it moved to adjourn debate. We would have adjourned the debate. We would have gone directly to a study of those reports without these unreasonable limits of two minutes to speak. Then there would have been no back and forth, no dialogue. If they really want dialogue about this and want these reports done, the opposition holds all the cards here. They have the majority on the committee. They have been holding all the cards from the beginning. Should this report unfortunately not be able to be tabled before the summer recess—which is looking more likely—I don't want there to be any doubt about who held the cards in terms of deciding whether or not that would happen, as well as about the level of effort by me personally in conversations in this committee, and by Mr. Bagnell, who has proposed different ways to move beyond the impasse to build consensus. Again, I just want to express my disappointment before I go into some of my remarks today.

Given that it looks as though we're going to continue to debate this motion and Mr. Bagnell's amendment to try to ask for a government response—and frankly the least we should be doing is asking the government to respond to our recommendations. Barring that, we have heard a lot of very good recommendations, which, at a minimum, I want to make sure are on the record. I want to make sure they're right here on the record in a format that at least can be picked up by the CAF, by DND, by the government, by the minister, and by Parliament so that we actually have these here today at least.

With regard to these recommendations, I'll remind everyone—and I've been reading through them for some time now—that they are coming from the survivors. They are coming from the stakeholders, the experts, the academics, the people who have come as witnesses before this committee and other committees and who have reached out to each one of us. I know there are many people who have reached out personally to all of us.

Given that we are short on time, what I would like to do is to read the remaining ones that I haven't yet gotten too. I'll read them all and then comment on some of them.

Again, these are not in my voice. These are in the voices of the survivors. These recommendations were brought to us. These are the ones specifically on culture change. This is a summary of those recommendations. The reason, again, Madam Chair, I'm putting these forward is that I think it is important that in speaking to Mr. Bagnell's amendment we have a government response, and if it's not going to be a response to a committee report, at least we can put this on the record so that the government can look at these.

First of all, it recommends updating the path to dignity and respect to identify and reflect factors that increase the risk of workplace harassment.

Madam Chair, we've heard a little bit about the path to dignity and respect, and Mr. Bagnell actually cited some of our witness testimony that said that it doesn't really go far enough. I know that when it was put forward, it was put forward as an evergreen document. It was really intended to be the beginning of the discussion.

I'd note, actually, that this path to dignity and respect was put forward in October. It was done based on, at that point, some significant work recognizing that after four or five years Operation Honour wasn't having the intended result. Again, I believe that those who worked hard on Operation Honour did so believing—to simplify it—that by simply ordering this to happen that could work; but there were some very good aspects to Operation Honour as well, and there were some successes, which we haven't talked about. But, by and large, I think all the survivors we heard from have said that it didn't work. It didn't achieve the intended goal.

Recognizing that last year, a year ago, long before the crisis, long before any of our committee studies or any of the events that have unfolded since February, the department and the Canadian Armed Forces, the minister, had already started working on how to achieve culture change, because the recognition was that the reason Operation Honour wasn't working was that you couldn't just put in place what needed to be done. You had to also change the underlying culture. That's what we've all been talking about in this committee.

I think that updating the path to dignity and respect is very important, because the underlying intent on culture is very important. I know there have been survivors who have come back with recommendations about it, who would like to see it expanded and would like to see other things included. The fact that we now have Lieutenant-General Carignan and Madam Arbour working in this area is actually going to be very helpful in terms of what we do on the culture change and where we take the path to dignity and respect.

To state again, this was done last October, and I think that those who are saying that nothing was done until February or March.... We were already working on this. In fact, we were working not just on this. The minister is the one who commissioned the Fish report to look at the military justice system. In December, the minister actually created an advisory panel and a secretariat on racism and discrimination in the Canadian Armed Forces, which again is another piece of the culture change that has to happen. These things that have been in the works for many years, on top of Bill C-77, the declaration of victims rights, on top of creating the SMRCs and doing a review of all the unfounded cases, and a lot of the other things that have been done over the years.... This has been an iterative process that has been going on since 2015, since our government came into power, and I think that needs to be recognized.

It has not achieved the results, and that's why we're here. That's why we need these recommendations and that's why we need a government response to these recommendations.

That's the path to dignity and respect.

The next one recommends addressing the social factors that inhibit sexual violence reporting and challenge central tenets of the CAF. There are three things that are mentioned: obedience to authority, normative conformity and group loyalty. I noted in Mr. Bagnell's intervention that he actually was citing I think it was Dr. Okros, or one of the witnesses we heard, where he talks about things like “obedience to authority” and “normative conformity”. I think this issue of group loyalty is actually something we should delve into.

These are not bad things in the military. I think what we need to realize is that there are parts of the military culture that are actually needed—this group loyalty. And again, I use a non-gendered term—what's often been referred to as the band of brothers, the brotherhood, which, again, in itself shows that it is not inclusive. But it's that concept of being part of something bigger than you and having each other's back.

I recently spoke to a veteran about when you go into battle with someone and the lifelong loyalty and the lifelong bond that comes from that. No matter what, 50 years later you still have that bond of having been through that battle and having each other's back. You never forget. It was a very powerful thing to hear.

I have not been in the military, but I've worked in Bosnia and Kosovo and other places I worked alongside and witnessed a lot of that culture—the strength of that kind of bond, the loyalty and the unit. I don't think anybody wants to lose that. The problem is the flip side of that, which is that sometimes that loyalty can be twisted into protecting someone even though they have conducted behaviour that is harmful to that group, that unit and that team.

When we talk about the complexities, I think that's what we're talking about. I know that people have been saying to me and to others to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. When you talk about culture change, it can be frightening for some people because there are aspects of the culture that have worked and have worked for decades and generations. We don't want to lose that.

Then you look at the other words here, like “normative conformity”. What has to be recognized is you can't have group loyalty if certain members of the group are not part of it and if the loyalty is only to some and not to others. You can't have obedience to authority if that authority is excluding and is perpetuating behaviour that is harmful.

The normative conformity that we've heard about from the witnesses is very harmful to people—and not just to women, racialized Canadians, indigenous Canadians or LGBTQ2. It's harmful to men who do not conform to that particular normative.

We know that within every gender there are completely different ways in which people engage one another and behave and learn. To only put one forward.... I think it was Mr. Bagnell, or it might have been Mr. Baker, who talked about the warrior culture. To only take one form—almost a stereotype or a very flat idea of behaviour—and say that is what is accepted and all the other behaviour isn't.... What that means, to be honest, is that the men who don't actually naturally conform to that very aggressive warrior culture and that masculinity will also be excluded.

When we talk about the exclusion, the group and the unit, it isn't just about women. We know and we've seen throughout this that the sexual harassment, sexual violence, assault and all of the ways in which gender is used to minimize, diminish and exclude from this group has a particular harm that is unique to those who have experienced sexual violence, whether they be men, women, trans or LGBTQ. We talk about exclusion from that group and we talk about harm, but then you add the sexualized nature of it.

I just want to be clear again that what we've heard from all the witnesses and what I've heard in a lot of the stakeholder engagements I've done and from those who I've spoken with recently, is that it isn't about sex. It's about power. It's about abuse of power. This is why in the military.... A little bit later we have another recommendation, which I might skip down to, actually.

The next recommendation talks about examining how sexual misconduct interacts with consent in asymmetric professional relations. This is the key.

The first time I read this I had to think a little bit about what this meant, because not having been in the Canadian Armed Forces myself, not having been in a military, this is something unique, these asymmetric professional relations. This is why there are certain things that are considered sexual misconduct in a military environment that wouldn't necessarily be considered criminal or even be punished outside of the military. It's because of the power. It's because of the asymmetric professional relations where, particularly—again, I've not lived it, but I'm echoing what I've heard—you have people who have so much authority.

I remember one woman saying to me that it was somebody who had the authority to tell her when she could go to the bathroom, when she could go to sleep and what she could wear. When you have someone with that much authority over your day-to-day life.... There's such a hierarchy. When something like this happens, it's a betrayal, and it's an abuse. It is an absolute abuse, because even if the person in authority believes that they have consent and that the person wants to receive this attention, it's not possible because of this asymmetric relationship.

This is where I think there are a few—and I don't know if I'll get to all of them in this intervention—of these recommendations that talk about that kind of relationship and whether or not somebody not saying no, or not reporting something means that they consented to it. It is very clear that there are occasions where, because of the authority that exists, there is fear of retribution, fear of career reprisals.

Some of the people I have spoken to were very young when these things happened to them. I spoke to some people and it happened 30 or 40 years ago, when they were 19 or 20 years old. When your commanding officer asks you to go to their barracks—or tent, in the case of the person who called me—and you're 19 years old and there's this power differential, can you say no? Often people will laugh along with the joke, or go along with the behaviour and pretend that they're okay with it, not because they're okay with it, but because they are afraid. I'll go back to the wording that there is this asymmetric professional relation. I think it's very important that three or four of the recommendations here refer to those words, “asymmetric professional relations”. It's why, when we look at military justice, the code of discipline and what is an offence in the military as opposed to in other day-to-day civilian life, we have to look at it differently.

We have to make sure that those in authority understand the power they have. I have spoken with some men who have said that they really didn't realize that the person may or may not have been willingly receiving the attention, because of the way the person may have interacted. They didn't realize their power. I think training is needed on these power differentials that exist. We need to make sure that there is training on how to understand your power and not use it in a way that is going to harm others.

The level of harm, I think, has been underestimated. This has done significant harm. As I said, I have spoken to people who have carried this for 30 years. This has been with them for 30 years. That level of harm that happens.... We need to make sure that people in authority understand the power that they have to do harm and the impact their behaviour can have on people.

To go back to the group loyalty that's been mentioned here, it has an impact on the group. It's not just because you're losing talent or you're losing people who could have contributed in enormous ways.

Again, some of the survivors I've spoken to have said, “I think I could have served my country well. I think I could have been good at this.” There's a loss of the potential of what that person wanted to do to serve, and there's a loss to our country of what they could have done if they had been given the kind of environment that would have allowed them to contribute fully, so I think this is one of the most important recommendations.

The next recommendation here talks about providing clarity on which aspects of CAF culture must change and which are allowed to remain the same. Again, you know, it's very easy for us to say the culture is terrible and everything is bad, and it's a little bit dangerous because, as in the previous recommendation here, I think that—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Go ahead, Mr. Bezan.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Liberal members have been speaking ad nauseam for quite some time. I tried to get on the speaking list earlier. Where am I in that speaking list? I know that we only have five minutes until we normally suspend these meetings instead of trying to adjourn and we are going to be running out of time here. As a mover of the main motion, I'd like to speak to it before we shut off this committee before the end of this session.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Chair, I'll end my intervention here. I'd be happy to make sure that others have a chance to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Mr. Baker, Mr. Robillard and then Mr. Bezan is what we have right now.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Madam Chair, I believe that there are no other committee meetings after one o'clock, and this is during the day, so there might be an opportunity for more resources. I'd like to see us extend this meeting so that we have an opportunity to fill the debate and bring this to some sort of close, at least on the amendment proposed by Mr. Bagnell.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Chair, I'll cede the floor to Mr. Bezan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Go ahead, Mr. Bezan.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you.

I want to thank Ms. Vandenbeld for ceding the floor and allowing us to close off this debate.

This has been going on for a long time, since May 21. Let's point it out. We're in meeting number 32. There have been ongoing suspensions. This is the fifth meeting, and we're almost into the tenth hour of debate on the amendment proposed by Mr. Bagnell that says, quite simply, to table a comprehensive report from the government, a response to the report, if we ever get to the report.

All the debate we have listened to over the last month has barely touched on the issue of the scope of the study, which was the sexual misconduct allegations against General Vance and Admiral McDonald. We had a report that came from the status of women committee—I think all of us support the recommendations that came forth—that looked at the broader context of the issues around sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, but, when it comes down to the issues of ministerial accountability as tied to the chief of the defence staff, that is where the Liberals have continued to filibuster.

We hear they don't like that term. When these minutes are finally published and people have a chance to read them through, they will see that Liberals dominated this discussion talking about recommendations from other committees and other countries and other studies that were not done by Parliament itself, rather than talking about the issue of trying to come to a decision on how we go forward to write a report.

This obstructionism has not hurt just our filing a report on sexual misconduct as it relates to General Vance and Admiral McDonald and the lack of action taken by Minister Sajjan, but this also prevented us from finalizing our reports on mental health and on how our Canadian soldiers responded to the COVID-19 crisis and were impacted by it.

We heard a lot of witness testimony that didn't appear at this committee read into the record. I believe that was done as a part of political grandstanding. I think it was insensitive to those victims. It's disrespectful to our armed forces. I have to say that, while watching these politics play out, I've never been more disheartened, and I've been a member of this committee for the past 10 years.

How many more victims were re-traumatized by listening to their testimony read here without their permission? In that time frame, we know that every three days someone within the Canadian Armed Forces is sexually assaulted, and because we dragged our feet and allowed this obstructionism to take place, we were not able to come to a final decision.

It's disgusting. It's egregious that Liberal members put more time into protecting the Minister of National Defence, the Honourable Harjit Sajjan, rather than protecting the women and men in uniform. I would say that this is complicit in the overall cover-up of sexual misconduct. These ongoing suspensions and contemptuous behaviour borders on violating the privilege of all members here.

Knowing that, it is the top of the hour. It is the end of the session.

I do now move to adjourn meeting number 32 of the Standing Committee on National Defence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn?

(Motion agreed to)

This committee is adjourned.