Status of Women Committee on April 13th, 2021

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Do you provide them with any training before they do the reviews? What kind of training is it?

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

We provide them with training on privacy. We consulted the Office of the Privacy Commissioner before undertaking this program.

We give them training on the format of our police reports. As part of the review, they have access to the complete police report. We have to train them in some of the SOPs of the military police in how we structure our reports. Then we let them do the review and come up with advice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I have to apologize to the committee. I don't know what I was thinking when I was looking at the clock. We actually did have time for your full five-minute session.

We'll go back to Ms. Alleslev for two minutes and then Ms. Zahid for two minutes, so you get your full time in.

Ms. Alleslev.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you. I was wondering what was happening there.

Thank you to the witness.

I wonder if you could give us some information about the statistics that you keep. Do you keep a record of all the allegations or complaints that are brought to your attention? Do you categorize them by the nature of the allegation?

Do you keep a record of how many are referred from your organization back to the chain of command, as well as the number of cases where charges are laid or where lesser charges are laid than what was indicated at the beginning of the process?

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

The Canadian Forces provost marshal produces an annual report that is publicly available. As part of that report, there's an annex that makes public all our investigative statistics for all the offences and the crimes that we investigate.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Is that even the ones that you deem are not worthy of investigation? I didn't see that information.

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

If a complaint or an allegation is referred to the military police and it doesn't meet the threshold, then we're not investigating that offence.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

You don't keep a record of the number that didn't meet the threshold versus the number that did.

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

I believe that information would be captured in our database.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

We also heard that there had been cases where evidence has been lost, tampered with or charges have had to be dropped because of issues around evidence. Do you keep a record of that as well?

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

Certainly there's policy around evidence. Yes, our evidence is tracked into our records.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Zahid for three minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

My colleague Anita Vandenbeld will take those two minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

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

Thank you.

Thank you for being here as a witness and for answering our questions.

You mentioned Bill C-77 in some of your testimony. I know some are saying it hasn't come into force yet, but many elements are already in place. You referred to some of them, including of course, Bill C-77's primary objective, which is the declaration of victims rights.

I was wondering if you could tell us a little about how Bill C-77 is being implemented and rolled out, and what changes are being made accordingly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I think he's frozen.

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

Did he hear my question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I don't think he is still connected. I think we lost him.

Let's suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We lost the brigadier-general. I wanted to thank him, but we'll move on to our second panel.

I'm very pleased to welcome Allan English, who is an associate professor in the department of history at my alma mater, Queen's University; and Alan Okros, who is a professor in the department of defence studies at the Royal Military College.

Each of you will have five minutes for your remarks. We will begin with Mr. English.

[Dr. Allan English, Associate Professor, Department of History, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I teach Canadian military history in the history department at Queen's University. I have also taught senior officers at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. I served for 25 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Armed Forces as an air navigator.

The acting chief of defence staff, Lieutenant-General Wayne Eyre, has stated that Operation Honour is finished and that the CAF would “develop a deliberate plan to go forward”. Today I will briefly examine four actions that Lieutenant-General Eyre indicated would be part of that plan: an external review of the CAF and its culture; increased training; improved recruiting; and re-establishing “trust where it has been broken”.

Justice Deschamps' 2015 external review into sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in the CAF, followed by government reports, as well as numerous academic papers and presentations have made abundantly clear the nature of the problems and their solutions. The issue now is not identifying the problems with another external review or, as Lieutenant-General Eyre put it, listening and learning, but in actually addressing the problems.

Lieutenant-General Eyre said that the CAF would increase training until there is “a constant drumbeat of reminding our members what rights look like”. However, an evaluation of CAF training on inappropriate sexual behaviour by the Auditor General in 2018 reported the following:

We found that the chain of command delivered briefings and training that did not increase members’ understanding of how to respond to and support victims, but instead created confusion, frustration, fear, and less camaraderie.

These findings have been confirmed by personal accounts of some current and former female CAF members. They stated that training was often delivered by unqualified senior members of the unit, who used it to criticize aspects of Operation Honour and to blame female unit members for causing trouble or undermining unit cohesion.

Lieutenant-General Eyre also reiterated past CAF commitments to improve recruiting processes to increase the number of women in the CAF, the latest target being that females should make up 25% of the CAF by 2026. However, a 2016 Auditor General report noted that with no targets or strategy, the CAF was unlikely to achieve this goal. The report also documented long-standing failures in the CAF recruiting and retention system, dating back almost 20 years, that the CAF has failed to correct.

Finally, Lieutenant-General Eyre said that new efforts would be made to “re-establish trust where it has been broken.” However, one of the goals of Operation Honour was to “win back members' trust”. With Operation Honour, the CAF tried to address sexual misconduct in its ranks through “the direct, deliberate and sustained engagement by the leadership of the CAF and the entire chain of command”. Recent revelations about the sexual misconduct of some senior CAF leaders suggest that they have forfeited the trust of their subordinates, and will, therefore, be unable to make future change without effective external oversight.

In conclusion, the actions that need to be taken to address sexual misconduct in the CAF are well known. However, to be successful they must be subject to sustained and active oversight by a truly independent body. That body should be external to both the Department of National Defence and the CAF, as DND's senior leadership includes many retired former CAF members who were part of the problems in the past. While the detailed planning and implementation of solutions to problems of sexual misconduct in the CAF must involve CAF members, their actions should be subject to the scrutiny of an independent body with the power to require compliance with its directives.

Over five years, the CAF's leaders were unwilling or unable to deal effectively with sexual misconduct in its ranks. Therefore, external oversight is the next logical step to take to confront this issue. Otherwise, the CAF is about to head down the same path to failure that it has followed in the past.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Before we go to Mr. Okros, I see that the brigadier-general is back.

Thank you so much. We lost you there. I will give you the opportunity for a final comment in response to Ms. Vandenbeld's question.

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Could you please repeat the question?

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

Yes. It was about how Bill C-77 is being implemented.

[BGen Simon Trudeau]

On Bill C-77, as it's being implemented, I don't know the status of where it is in implementation, but what I can say is that we've proactively included in our policies, orders and SOPs aspects of the Victims Bill of Rights.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

I want to thank you very much, Brigadier-General, for being with us on our panel and for answering the questions. If you want to stay, we're going to have a very exciting discussion.

We're going to go now to Professor Okros for five minutes.