You're so kind, sir. Thank you.
Thank you all for being here.
First, I want to thank the Auditor General and just point out how lucky we are to have a system that allows us, almost in mid-flight, to be able to take a look to see how well we're doing on something that's so important to everyone. I liken it to landing on an asteroid. This is a difficult kind of audit, and it needs to be treated differently from the way we normally do. This system serves us very well. Having just visited another continent and another country, I appreciate how well we do things and the difference that makes.
I also want to say very directly to the deputy, the senior officers here and virtually everybody who's here from the department that I have no doubt in my mind that every single person, like every member of this committee and everyone staffing us here, cares about this issue as a priority and would give anything to make this go away, and are prepared to do anything to make it stop.
But clearly, we're still not getting there. Even with all the goodwill and all the power, absolute, raw.... I'm not exaggerating. When you're talking about the military of Canada, you're talking absolute, raw power, and we still missed it.
Colleagues, I've spent the better part of four hours going through this report, and I'm sure many of you spent that much, if not more, time. It was at about hour three and a half when suddenly, for me, the shoe dropped. As some of you know, I have a bit of a background in command and control, and I sort of understand these things a little better than I do, say, a lot of other things. Here's the key thing for me, and I'm going to ask the responders to think carefully about where to go on this. The external review is what started all of this. The external review said very clearly, as the Auditor General says on page 7:
The External Review recommended that the Forces establish an independent victim support centre outside the Forces, staffed by experts. The centre would provide confidential support for victims without the obligation to make a formal report and without fear of reprisal. The External Review also recommended that the centre be responsible for preventing inappropriate sexual behaviour, coordinating and monitoring training, monitoring accountability, and conducting research, and that it act as a central authority for data collection.
By the way, there are some good things you're doing. That needs to be said. We kind of gloss over that. There are good things being done, and we appreciate that.
When I look at where the auditor had criticisms, I see they were in the areas of preventing inappropriate sexual behaviour, coordinating and monitoring training, accountability, and acting as the central authority and data collection. So, all the areas that were a problem were the areas that the centre was given responsibility for.
Now, 5.34 on page 8 says:
However, we found that rather than giving the Centre all the responsibilities that the External Review recommended, the Forces gave it responsibility only to provide initial victim support by phone or email, and to give referrals.
The Auditor General goes on to say:
We asked the Forces to explain this assignment of responsibilities, given its acceptance of the External Review recommendations. Senior leaders explained that the Forces’ leaders must perform the responsibilities that the External Review recommended; otherwise, it would undermine governance and accountability.
Lo and behold, the whistle gets blown and we find that all the areas that are a problem are the areas that the centre should have been given responsibility for, but wasn't, and the military pats it on the head and said, “No, no, we know best, we'll do it within”. Every one of them is screwed up.
When I look at the action plan, I count at least 12 or 13 times where it says the centre or SMRC will ... and it involves activities. When I look at this, Chair, to me the action plan should have said—and this is just my opinion—we screwed up. We didn't implement what we promised to in the first place and now we will.
Am I correct in assuming that one of the big problems with the culture change is that there were recommendations from outside saying go to this external body, load them up with these responsibilities, make sure they've got the advisory committee, connect them to your military leadership and that's how you go about making change?
That's what the review said. The military looked at it and said they were going to do all that, and when everybody went away the first thing they did was say, you're not getting any of that responsibility. Do not kid yourself. They just stripped it away and left them with a little framework and a pat on the head, saying you can just play a role, we'll take care of it. Every one of those areas is screwed up.
I want somebody to tell me where I'm wrong, that one of our challenges isn't that military culture where something from the outside comes in and immediately walls go up about how things are done.
I get it. It is human nature, but the role of leadership at the level in front of us now is to burst through that. Deputy, if you disagree with my assessment, I'm going to hang on every word, and if you agree with me, I'd like to hear what we're going to do to change that. I see you've fixed it here, but what are we going to do going forward to ensure that, when we need to make changes like this in the military, there is no gap between what we promised we're going to do and how we say we're going to do it? This failed right here; to me, that's where the failure was.