National Defence Committee on April 17th, 2024

[Patrick White]

First of all, I'd like to thank you for even raising and proposing the study. I was glad to see that someone on the national defence committee had picked up the torch, because there's certainly been a lot to talk about in this study.

With respect to the recommendations, I certainly don't wish to hold myself out as an expert or as having more value than I have, but I will say that my experience, as you heard in my remarks, has been very broad. I have touched on a lot of different offices. I've run into a lot of different barriers, and I've basically been fighting for as long as the Second World War took.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's quite the context.

[Patrick White]

The comparison isn't a flattering one for our current forces.

However, I would say that in terms of transparency, fundamentally it comes down to accountability. I believe that while we can take some of the expertise that Mr. Walbourne has and implement recommendations—and we'll continue to evolve and do that over time—at a fundamental level I think the military has a lot of what it needs to solve its problems. The one thing it doesn't have is accountability among senior leadership.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It's internal will too.

[Patrick White]

That's where the accountability would come from.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Yes.

[Patrick White]

We have codes of ethics, and when you don't respect the dignity of all persons, you can be released.

I struggled to find the name of a single senior member of the forces who has been held accountable for anything other than their own personal conduct. In other words, has anyone been relieved of command for the 2,000 sexual assaults that occurred in the last year or the year before that? We're still dealing with these problems eight years after Operation Honour.

As I've told people, when you look at the facts, I don't believe that when the issues that may have happened regarding General Vance happened, he was acting alone. There was a group of people who may have been signing travel claims. There may have been people who knew about it.

As I said, if you want to change the culture, you change the culture by making people more afraid of doing wrong than doing right. That's the current state of affairs.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. White, in the beginning of this study, the deputy minister, Bill Matthews, came before the committee and stated that one of the biggest problems we had in the ATIP system and the timing of the releasing of information was that the records weren't digital and that they were working on that. However, you've suggested that even with the deletion of an email when someone retires or a change within that system, there are quite a lot of things lost.

Should we be concerned about the movement towards digitization?

[Patrick White]

Digitization may help speed up parts of the requests, and if you're able to digitize and store records so that individuals no longer need to provide them themselves....

Again, the process is that you make a request and it goes to the corporate secretary in the ATIP team. They figure out where it needs to go. They blast it out, and then individual record holders are supposed to search their emails and provide search terms. I know this because I've included my name in one of my own requests to see how that process unravels. They ask what search terms you entered. When you're looking for, as a public example, Mark Norman, but you've never used Mark Norman's name in an email, Mark Norman's emails or emails related to Mark Norman are not going to come up in that response.

As one possible solution to part of the problem, if the department tracks what terms are searched and who is solicited for a response, could we not make that available to requesters, to provide their own degree of accountability and oversight? All of the documents that I've requested in my case and the cases of the related issues you've heard today were requested as a double-check. I requested a copy of the police report to see who was interviewed as a witness, and they didn't interview the commanding officer who was present at the time. That's an example of how you need to request these records so you can hold the system accountable. It's the same as when you get your grades back in a school assignment. You might want to check your teacher's math because we're human and we make mistakes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Mr. Bezan, you have a five-minute round.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Walbourne and Mr. White, for being here today and for your opening comments and testimony so far.

When this government came to power, Justin Trudeau campaigned on wanting the most transparent government in history. Yes or no, do you think the government has become more transparent?

[Patrick White]

It's a broad question, to be honest, but I can say that at least in how things are trickling through the Department of National Defence, what are transparent are the problems.

[Gary Walbourne]

I would have to ask, “As compared to what?”

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

Compared to.... Well, they said that it was going to get better. Has it gotten better or worse?

[Gary Walbourne]

I can only speak from a personal perspective. I would absolutely say it's gotten worse.

I went through a process at the end of my career that wasn't pretty. I referenced it in my opening comments, and I suggest you go back and look at the transcript. There were about eight or 10 people involved in that whole—I have to be careful here; I'm too old to be sued—situation.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

You're protected at committee.

[Gary Walbourne]

Without exception, every one of them was promoted. No one was ever challenged on the actions they took and the part they played in this scenario.

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

Mr. Walbourne, in your opening comments, you talked about a common pattern. You had five things listed as a common pattern with multiple ombudsmen.

We can look at the situation with the former chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance. You took that to Minister Sajjan at the time. Did that follow the same pattern you had experienced and your predecessor had experienced up to that point in time?

[Gary Walbourne]

It got worse.

As an ombudsman, part of your role is to advise the minister and seek guidance on files that cannot be solved at the lower level. You have to go to the minister with issues, and sadly, a few of them are at the end of their life. If you can't get to the minister and if you get shut down, the doors are closed. Someone on staff can refuse the ombudsman a meeting with the minister, and it happened consistently after that episode.

Not only did the pattern stay the way it was in that it was lather, rinse and repeat, which I witnessed for four and a half years, but it got progressively worse after that.

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

Mr. Walbourne, with the way the current system works, the deputy minister, the defence ombudsman and the judge advocate general report directly to the minister. They are order in council appointments. The government is proposing in Bill C-66 to add to that list the provost marshal general, the director of military prosecutions and the director of defence counsel services. They would become order in council appointments and would also report to the minister.

You've long advocated, as has your successor Mr. Lick, that the ombudsman's office should become a fully independent office that reports to Parliament and is properly resourced to remove political interference. Do you believe that having more people report to the minister circumvents, as Mr. White laid out, the chain of command covering up for each other with no accountability, or does it open the door for more political interference?

[Gary Walbourne]

In my opinion, it absolutely opens the door for more interference. If you say on paper who reports to the minister.... I had to go hat in hand to the deputy minister to get the money and authority to do staffing. If we put them in the same situation.... I don't know how or in what world you think you're increasing transparency if you start bringing everyone into the house and putting them under the same set of rules.

I just think it's going to get worse, not better.

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

Mr. White, you made 11 recommendations when you appeared before the ethics committee. Do those 11 recommendations still stand?

[Patrick White]

I would say for the most part they certainly do. I'm following some of the feedback and testimony that have come out of the previous meetings here, understanding that, again, the government rejected an accelerated process for sexual misconduct victims and survivors requesting information.

At the end of the day, I would have wanted to hear in the deputy's response—which I did not hear in his defence of that rejection—information that might come into play in a court setting. If there's a statute of limitations, a limitation period or some court timeline that cannot be amended, are you going to tell a sexual misconduct survivor or victim who has to give a victim impact statement, “I'm sorry. We just process everything and all of the ATIPs we get in order”?

To your specific question, if the committee thinks they're relevant—