Public Accounts Committee on Jan. 29th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, Mr. Christopherson. How is it possible that I could have forgotten you?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Ten months from now I can understand, but for nine more, I'm still here.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We're going to give you seven and a half minutes today.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Unfortunately, our time is up.

This is the problem when we have a very good point and there's no time left. We're going to come back to it but bear in mind the questions that were posed there and the force with which they were asked. We expect answers on them later.

We'll now move to Ms. Yip, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you for coming.

I'm going to follow up on Mr. Christopherson's comments on culture. Operation Honour is in its third year of implementation and a lot of the success depends on the culture change. Do you feel that there has been a significant culture change?

[Jody Thomas]

There has been culture change and there has been an understanding of what is considered a level of acceptable behaviour and what is not. I'm not sure we can assign the word "significant" to it yet because we don't have the data for that.

One of the problems pointed out by the Auditor General was the data reporting and our data management. Those are things that we are actively addressing.

Culture change takes time. We're talking about an institution that has existed for 150 years, that has had women integrated into it in combat roles for 30 years, and it's slow. It's an improved institution from the one I joined in 1980. Women are far more accepted but it doesn't mean that it's perfect and that things aren't going wrong and that we don't need to continue to work on culture change.

Has there been significant change? I can't say that yet but work is under way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Lieutenant-General.

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

The deputy minister is absolutely right. There has been some cultural change but not enough. We have to examine cultural change but it's far bigger than the Canadian Forces. As we said, this is pervasive in society. We recruit from society. It's going to take time.

When General Vance started Operation Honour, the response was very much almost a disciplinary approach. First of all, acknowledge the problem. When we detect the problem, deal with it, and deal with it quite rightly harshly in many cases. It's unacceptable behaviour but that sort of reaction doesn't necessarily change beliefs and attitudes. That changes the response but when people are away they know they're not being watched; they won't necessarily change their beliefs and attitudes.

That's what we've got to work on through education and training. It will take time. Sociologists will tell you a culture change doesn't take days or weeks. We're talking months and probably years.

We will come up with a cultural change strategy. It is not independent of the Canadian Forces. We will work with experts in society, with Five Eyes allies as we go forward. To get back to your question, a lot more cultural change will be required as we go forward, to once again reinforce the fact that this is completely unacceptable.

I emphasize once again that we're dealing with a very small proportion of folks in uniform.

[Lieutenant-General Charles Lamarre, Commander, Military Personnel Command, Department of National Defence]

Let me add to that as well. There is perhaps a bit of a concern that we're sitting idle while this is taking place. That's not the case. Every year, the Canadian Armed Forces turns over approximately 7.2% to 7.8% of its effective force. That turns out to be approximately 9,000 people who leave the Canadian Armed Forces or come to the Canadian Armed Forces between the regular and reserve force components.

Let me just concentrate on the regular force component. The training does occur for the reserve force as well, but I'll concentrate on the 5,350 young Canadians—sometimes not so young—we bring into our recruit school in Saint-Jean. We have, of course, non-commissioned members and officers going through that training program. For the non-commissioned members it's 10 weeks, and for the officers it's 12 weeks. During that period of time, the non-commissioned members get a grand total, spread out over four different weeks and periods of instruction, of six hours of training specifically related to inappropriate and harmful behaviour, harassment, how to prevent it, what the consequences are, and what the responsibilities are in terms of ethics and requirements to be in the Canadian Armed Forces. The officers get 6.6 hours of training to do this.

At every leadership course we have, when you talk about institutional and cultural change, we also insist that HISB and Operation Honour be trained specifically so that folks understand what's there. We're doing a tremendous amount of bystander training so that people understand that they have a responsibility to intervene and to get involved in the training or any activity that might be occurring.

When you do a combination of all these things, you do get a cumulative effect of people who are familiar with what it is. We have some surveys that we do at a lower level that go with smaller group samples—approximately 3,000 people or fewer—where we reach across to find out what confidence people feel in things like their chain of command. We've found that for the last two years, we get an over 85% rating for trust that the chain of command will do the right thing in terms of what is supposed to occur. This data is available.

The interesting thing about it is that while there is a time for making change, and we have to go forward, we are taking actions right now that are instituting the culture change you're talking about. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody right now in the Canadian Armed Forces who is not familiar with Operation Honour and what the mandates are. You have to remember as well what the vice chief of the defence staff was talking about in terms of how we make sure it's known and not hidden. Every single incident that occurs has to be reported all the way up to the chief of the defence staff. It's also reported to the supporting centres that we have.

So there are steps and movement under way to change that culture that we're talking about. It's being done through training and the like, which folks recognize the importance of, to make sure that people are aware of what their responsibilities are.

Thank you.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'm glad to hear that there is some progress and that some real steps are being taken. I found it rather frustrating that throughout the report there wasn't enough data collection. To me, you can't see results if the data isn't there.

Following on the culture question, has the overall number of women joining the armed forces declined? You also mentioned that about 85% feel supported. Well, how much of the 85% can be attributed to women feeling supported and wanting to remain in the armed forces?

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

For women in the Canadian Armed Forces, we are growing the numbers right now. We have been given a target of 25%. We're changing the processes by which we are recruiting them. If you look at our last ad campaign, “Dare to be Extraordinary”, it featured women specifically, and different ethnic backgrounds. It's been successful. Over the last three years, we've increased the number of women from 4,000 to over 5,032. We are right now doing an intake where 18% of all new recruits coming into the Canadian Armed Forces are women. We're exceeding the numbers for both visible minorities and indigenous youth coming into the Canadian Armed Forces, to meet and surpass the targets of the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” defence policy.

As far as retention goes, the retention has gone up overall in numbers. We're at about 15.8% of the total effective Canadian Armed Forces being made up of women right now. When we started this we were at 15.1%. Again, these numbers are the nascent ones. As we change in terms of how we go and do recruiting, and do much more targeted recruiting where we go and seek the talent we want from the Canadian population, we're confident that this will continue to go up.

In terms of the second half of your question, when we're talking about the confidence that we're seeing women have in the chain of command, we do examine both men and women. The sampling size is done to make sure that we understand from that...and from the regular and the reserve. This is where we're finding that both men and women have high confidence in the chain of command to be able to address their issues once they're raised.

That specifically was what I was stating there. We do have that data available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, General.

Mr. Kelly, you have five minutes.

[Pat Kelly, Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC]

Deputy Minister, in your comments you spoke twice about being in crisis mode. You said, in your opening statement, that in 2015 you were in crisis mode as you created these programs. You mentioned again the crisis of 2015. Would you currently characterize the problem of sexual misconduct as a crisis?

[Jody Thomas]

I think that any inappropriate behaviour that affects the safety of an individual in the Canadian Armed Forces is serious. It's something taken very seriously. I think we're no longer in crisis mode in terms of how we're responding. We're more measured and more thoughtful, using data and a broader range of experts to advise us as opposed to an immediate response, which was, “stop this behaviour."

We are now trying to educate, train, use experts, give more responsibility to the SMRC, and have a more thoughtful and broader approach in responding.

[Pat Kelly]

The Auditor General criticized the absence or quality of data, though. So, if we're concerned about the quality and availability of the data, how do we know what the current level of problem is in the forces?

[Jody Thomas]

Data collection, and the analysis and quality of that data, has been a problem. We have a lot of information. I'm not sure how we can draw conclusions from it as it's currently structured. Dr. Preston, in her role now as the lead for this, is working with our data analytics crew to help build the data models and the collection models. We're putting new systems for data collection into place, which General Wynnyk can speak to you about, that are more integrated.

[Pat Kelly]

Are members surveyed in a way to gauge attitude? You can measure complaints, or at least complaints that are reported, and you can draw conclusions I suppose in a variety of ways about what it means when complaints go up or down and whether it means that there are more incidents or whether there is just more reporting. But the goal here is to ensure the integrity of the chain of command, and morale, and belief in the system and its integrity.

How do you know whether or not members of the forces believe in the integrity of the system? How have you measured that?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

I'll respond first of all on data collection, and then I'll lead into surveys and how we are actually measuring that.

At the time of the Auditor General's report, we were just in the process of developing a bespoke system for tracking sexual misconduct called the Operation Honour tracking and analysis system, OPHTAS. It's now online. It's one of a number of areas, through MP reports and medical reports, where sexual misconduct can be brought to light. It's important—and I underscore this once again—that we protect the confidentiality of the person affected. We're going to be developing this OPHTAS as we go forward, and looking at ways of better integrating where we can, while respecting confidentiality, and cross-referencing the other databases as we go forward.

Getting back to measuring how effective we are—and I think it goes back to the point we were talking about earlier—you can't force beliefs and attitudes on someone. Surveys are the way we go forward and do that. We are very much committed to an evidence-based approach as we go forward. I think you are aware that StatsCan did a survey on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces in 2016. We just finished another survey, and I think the results will be published in May of this year. That will be a very important benchmark as we go forward.

[Pat Kelly]

I would like Ms. Thomas to have a chance to quickly address Mr. Christopherson's question. He asked, “Am I wrong?”, at the end of his lengthy intervention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you for the thought. We're still going to have to keep pushing that down the road a little bit, but we'll now move on to Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Surrey Centre, Lib.]

Thank you, Chair.

Sexual misconduct in any workplace, including the Canadian Armed Forces, is obviously very serious in nature. I was relatively pleased with the scope of the report and how it looked at many facets of the force's response to sexual misconduct.

While reading the report, I was very concerned by the fact that training on matters relating to awareness and prevention of sexual harassment was not always mandatory for the Canadian Armed Forces. Now that the armed forces are rolling out more mandatory workshops, I want to know how frequently these are held and how often armed forces members will be required to attend.

I think General Lamarre mentioned that new recruits have about six hours' worth of classes, or mandatory attendance, but studies show that it's extremely important for people to receive a so-called "refresher" in such matters every year or so. Is that the case now?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

I'll allow General Lamarre to comment at the end. He discussed the initial training we do for recruits and officer cadets. To address your point, this is training that we hit at every level right from my level on down. I'll very quickly go through some of the training we're doing, and if it's too much detail, please let me know.

With regard to our military police, they now receive special training in investigating sexual misconduct. They've done a lot of cross-training with the United States and they've done a partnership with the Ontario Police College on the sexual assault investigators course.

In all of our career courses, as you progress in rank beyond basic training, at every rank level there's a career course in which you have to qualify. Sexual misconduct and Operation Honour each have a performance objective, so the refresher you refer to is happening constantly at every level as people go through these career courses. Once again, right up to the highest level, we have a course that we run for colonels to prepare them to be general and flag officers; there's a section on that as well. We stress this at our peacekeeping and peace support training centre as well, particularly the applicability of sexual misconduct and sexual violence overseas, how to signal that and how to make sure we're aware of it and make sure that people are prepared to deal with that.

The bystander intervention training, I think, has been largely successful. We've trained 70,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces, regular and reserve, so the vast majority. We're expanding the Respect in the Canadian Armed Forces workshop, which is very much geared towards leaders; it's a very interactive course in which you have to reflect and you have to contribute as you go forward. We'd like to expand that more. I don't know if we'll get to the point where we will do that for the entire Canadian Forces. Once again, it's geared very much towards that leadership and dialogue role. For every command team going into command, the commanding officer of a unit and the senior NCO who supports that commanding officer must take that workshop as they go in.

General Lamarre, do you want to add anything? I know you've talked about the basic training.

[LGen Charles Lamarre]

That was a pretty thorough answer.

I would just say, also, to put a bit of an emphasis on operations, that as a former director of staff for operations, we also pay special attention to contingents deploying. When you're gathering up a task force to go overseas and they get mandated to undertake specific training, Operation Honour gets there too, along with the requirements for reporting and everything else. That applies to anybody who is going on that task force. Madam Mendès was making her inquiries about public service and everything else. If you have folks who are going with the Canadian Armed Forces deployed operations, including members of the RCMP or other police forces, they're also then subject to these rules and regulations.

[Randeep Sarai]

On that same note, when you're out in international settings, such as a UN mission or a NATO mission, if there's a claim by somebody about a commander officer or a superior sexually harassing somebody from the Canadian Forces, is there a policy or mechanism to deal with different nations' forces?