National Defence Committee on Nov. 6th, 2025

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. MacKenzie, earlier you gave some statistics on how cases were decided. Research shows that 80% of victims do not report.

We know that C‑11 will provoke reactions because it seeks to put in place better mechanisms for filing complaints.

Do you think this will encourage victims to report their attackers more often?

[Prof. Megan MacKenzie]

As I think I mentioned in my opening comments, this is only one piece of the puzzle in terms of the entire life cycle of sexual violence, which includes prevention, the addressing of the incident, collecting proper data and the justice system.

I do think there could be a positive feedback loop in terms of greater accountability leading to greater trust and, hopefully, reduced levels of sexual violence. There is a possibility that this one piece will have an effect on reducing the number of victims and fostering trust. It's important to remember that the justice system is set up so that.... In cases of murder, for example, we do have examples of cases brought out of the justice system, and we haven't had an example of that causing an inability of the military to handle that particular problem.

I do think there's a potential for a positive feedback loop if we start to see greater accountability.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you, Professor MacKenzie.

Thank you, Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

James Bezan, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'll try to leave some time at the end for Ms. Gallant.

I want to look at the application of what we're trying to do in moving investigations and prosecutions into the civilian system. If you have an example where we have a number of soldiers who are training at CFB Wainwright, the accused is from CFB Shilo, the victim is from CFB Petawawa, the witness is from CFB Valcartier and another witness is in CFB Edmonton, you have two different provincial police forces that are going to be involved. The RCMP are going to be involved because of it happening in Wainwright and somebody is from Shilo, and you also have the Edmonton police involved because one of the witnesses is there.

Who is in charge? Where is the jurisdiction?

[LCol (Ret'd) Rory Fowler]

Ultimately, the jurisdiction where it's going to be prosecuted is going to be where it occurred. If, in your example—I'm sorry; you mentioned so many bases—it occurs in Wainwright, it's going to eventually be prosecuted in Wainwright.

What we're going to see is a slippery slope because you're going to have witnesses in a bunch of different jurisdictions, and the Minister of National Defence isn't the boss of any of those police forces. You can have all the memorandums of understanding you want. Coordination of such investigations is inherently difficult, and you're going to have them going to the military police saying, “Could you help us?” Bill C-11 allows for that slippery slope because the military police can secure evidence. Well, you're conducting an investigation when you're securing evidence.

There is a slippery slope that is going to be self-governed by the military police and by the civilian police. This occurs frequently, because we have to remember that, even if all of those CF members are on one base when the alleged offence occurs, by the time it gets reported, they may have dispersed. A lot of these offences occur when people are conducting training and they come together on one base. You're ultimately going to have difficulty investigating that, whereas right now, if that were to happen, you would have one police force investigating it—the Canadian Forces national investigation service.

I'd love it if they were better at it, but at least you have unity of effort.

There's another issue that arises, which is the prosecution. It's going to fall to a Crown attorney in that region, in Wainwright, to be responsible. There's a cautionary tale here—it's in the notes that I provided to the committee—which is the prosecution of Master Warrant Officer MacPherson. That was an allegation of sexual assault that allegedly occurred before Bill C-25 came into force, which meant that Canadian Forces did not have jurisdiction under the code of service discipline.

Those allegations and the investigation were referred to a Crown attorney in the region where it was alleged to have occurred, in New Brunswick. It's my understanding that it was referred to the Crown attorney twice. Both times, the Crown attorney said that there was not a reasonable prospect of conviction, which is the threshold that an ethical prosecutor must apply. He reported back and said, “I can't prosecute this. There's no reasonable prospect of conviction.”

What happened? The director of military prosecutions proffered charges for a court martial, even though they didn't have jurisdiction. Commander Sukstorf, who was the presiding military judge, held that they didn't have jurisdiction, and that was upheld by the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada. In that case, the chain of command and the director of military prosecutions wasn't willing to accept what the civilian prosecutor said, so they tried an end run. At the very least, Master Warrant Officer MacPherson benefited from being able to make full answer and defence in the court martial.

What happens if the prosecutor in Wainwright says that there isn't a reasonable prospect of conviction? They won't turn to a court martial because they can't. What they'll do is turn to something like an administrative review and attempt to prosecute the offender using a system that is not designed for that purpose. This is what happens when you take away tools from the chain of command.

Contrary to some of the indications that I've heard, what we've seen over the last five years or so is a chain of command of the Canadian Forces that is increasingly motivated to deal with allegations of sexual misconduct, to the point that they will even use tools that are ill-designed for such a purpose in order to prosecute when they feel they don't have the tools available.

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

Is it the case then that they would get a plea bargain or the penalty and call it “conduct unbecoming” under the code of service discipline or other administrative measures?

[LCol (Ret'd) Rory Fowler]

There's another case that I mention in the materials that have been provided to you—R v. Corporal Spriggs, 2019—where, in the wake of the decision from the Court Martial Appeal Court in R v. Beaudry, 2018, temporarily the code of service discipline lost jurisdiction over offences like sexual assault.

What happened in the Spriggs case was that the military prosecutor withdrew the charge of sexual assault that had been laid and substituted a charge of disgraceful conduct to maintain jurisdiction.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you, Mr. Fowler.

Mr. Malette, you have the wrap-up for the last five minutes.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Professor MacKenzie.

Further to the issue my colleague Madame Lapointe was raising, what would be your top legislative or policy recommendations to ensure that the CAF provides consistent, trauma-informed and independent victim resources?

[Prof. Megan MacKenzie]

My top recommendation would be that it follow through with the recommendations that have been made over the last two decades. We have endless recommendations that have been made by expert reviews that cost a lot of taxpayer dollars and were informed by a number of experts. We have the recommendations in Justice Arbour's report, the recommendations of Fish and the recommendations of Deschamps. Where those overlap is, number one, an independent justice system outside of the military.

I do think it's been wonderful and important to see the sexual misconduct resource centre being given more resources in terms of supporting victims. They still need to be supported in collecting data, because it's very difficult to address a problem that you don't fully understand. We still have very poor data on where the sexual violence incidents are happening.

The U.S., for all of its problems, collects fantastic data on sexual violence. We know at which bases, for example, women or men are at the most risk for sexual violence. We know the outcomes of justice and cases. Collecting better data so that we can better address this problem is very important in next steps.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Duval-Lantoine.

In your experience, what lessons can we learn from other jurisdictions that have implemented independent survivor-centred resource systems for military victims or complainants?

[Charlotte Duval-Lantoine]

Actually, it is Professor MacKenzie who has done extensive comparative research. I'm a historian of Canada, so I will leave it to Megan to answer that question.

I'm throwing the ball back at you.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

We'll lob that one right back to Professor MacKenzie, then.

Thank you.

[Prof. Megan MacKenzie]

Could you repeat the question, please, so that I'm sure I'm answering it correctly?

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

That's fine.

What lessons can we learn from other jurisdictions that have implemented independent survivor-centred resource systems for military victims?

[Prof. Megan MacKenzie]

I've studied defence forces in the U.S., New Zealand and Australia, as well as others, and I think we certainly haven't seen rates of sexual misconduct or sexual violence decrease significantly in any of those countries.

The gold standard in terms of collecting data and offering different options for victims has been the U.S., despite the fact that rates of sexual violence are still high in that defence force. However, the U.S. allows victims to have restricted and unrestricted forms of reporting. There are a number of supports for victims.

We also simply understand the problem better in that context. We know, for example, that Fort Bragg is the most unsafe post for service members, and that allows us to provide more resources in that particular post.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming forward and for sharing your concerns.

If you give me a moment, I'm going to pass it over to Mr. Bezan.

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

We are studying Bill C-11, and the witnesses have been excellent. If any of you would suggest amendments to the bill, could you put those in writing and send them in to the committee so that we can consider them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Actually, I was going to suggest the same. I appreciated the differences in concerns and the sharing and highlighting of ways that we can take proper steps to improve the system and use Bill C-11 as a means to proceed to do so. I thank you for that.

Before we adjourn, I also want to ask for two agreements.

Is it agreed that the proposed budget in the amount of $500 for the briefing with the Minister of National Defence on his mandate and NATO defence spending be adopted?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

That's great.

Is it also agreed that the proposed budget in the amount of $36,500 for the study of Bill C-11, an act to amend the National Defence Act and other acts, be adopted?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Lastly, we cancelled our last meeting on Tuesday, November 4. It is the intention to convene our next meeting on Monday, November 17, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., which means that we may have three meetings that week. That may offer some conflict, but we'll put out a notice and you guys can determine your availability so that we can stay on schedule.

With the committee's agreement, we're adjourned.