Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Pierre‑Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.
It is with great frustration that I rise today to speak to the motion that was introduced on this Conservative Party opposition day:
That, given that the Minister of National Defence has clearly lost the respect of members of the Canadian Armed Forces, including those at the highest ranks, for, amongst other things, (i) misleading Canadians on the withdrawal of fighter jets in the fight against ISIS, (ii) misleading Canadians about his service record, (iii) presiding over the wrongful accusation and dismissal of Vice-Admiral Norman, (iv) engaging in a cover-up of sexual misconduct allegations in the Canadian Armed Forces, the House formally censure the Minister of National Defence to express the disappointment of the House of Commons in his conduct.
It is no secret that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the motion. The Bloc Québécois has already asked for the resignation of the Minister of National Defence because of his ongoing failure to address sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. I was with our leader, the member for Beloeil—Chambly, and my colleague from Rivière‑du‑Nord at the press conference where we asked for his resignation.
The censure proposed by the motion does not get rid of this minister, who did not take sexual misconduct allegations in the Canadian Armed Forces seriously. As set out in the motion, the minister committed a number of mistakes, although the most serious is protecting General Vance and attempting to cover up his bungling, including failing to implement the recommendations of the 2015 Deschamps report.
As the critic for status of women and gender equality, I will start by addressing these issues in my speech. I am very sensitive to these issues, and I will speak with due respect for the victims who testified at the Standing Committee on National Defence and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I will then address a few other scandals that have rocked the Canadian Armed Forces. I will close with some suggestions to help improve trust in the armed forces.
First, while the Minister of National Defence was supposed to implement the 2015 Deschamps report, it appears that he has done nothing and that he even tried to bury General Vance’s file. I cannot believe that I am still here going over the entire unfortunate story.
Former justice Marie Deschamps released a scathing report on March 27, 2015, concerning what she considered widespread sexual misconduct in the armed forces and the sexist culture that turned a blind eye to such misconduct. The report had been commissioned in the wake of accusations against Warrant Officer André Gagnon, who sexually assaulted a subordinate, Corporal Stéphanie Raymond, in December 2011. Corporal Raymond appeared before the committee, testifying to the harm she has suffered.
Corporal Raymond filed a complaint against Warrant Officer Gagnon in 2012, but her chain of command turned against her, and she was eventually dismissed for misconduct in 2013. Warrant Officer Gagnon was acquitted in 2014, but, in 2021, after Corporal Raymond appealed the ruling, he finally pleaded guilty.
Corporal Raymond’s situation, and the accusations she brought against the armed forces, led to former justice Marie Deschamps’ report. The report contained 10 recommendations, the most important of which was to make the complaint reporting system independent of the armed forces and of the Department of National Defence. That was in 2015, and, although we are now in 2021, nothing has been done.
When she testified before the Standing Committee on National Defence in February 2021, Marie Deschamps said that very little had been done since the release of her report in 2015 and that little had really changed. She repeated these statements before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women last March.
I will nevertheless take the time to point out that these allegations are not new, and that they began under the Conservative government, since it was in April 2015 that Jonathan Vance was named as the future chief of the defence staff. Allegations of sexual misconduct had been raised against him shortly before his appointment. A few months later, in July 2015, the former minister of veterans affairs and current leader of the opposition asked his chief of staff to talk to Ray Novak about another allegation against General Vance. This allegation involved an inappropriate relationship.
General Vance denied all misconduct, and the investigations went nowhere, since there was no evidence. The military police apparently also investigated the case. On July 17, 2015, General Vance was appointed chief of the defence staff, and one of his first policies was to roll out Operation Honour, which sought to put an end to sexual misconduct. That takes guts.
How is it possible that General Vance, who was the subject of very serious allegations, was appointed, given his role and his mandate as chief of the defence staff, as the person in charge of doing something against sexual misconduct?
In fact, the very same day that General Vance become chief of the defence staff, the military police decided to drop the investigation against the man who had now become their boss. That is quite the coincidence.
The operation, which was abandoned by the current chief of defence staff, had moderate impact, but it obviously had no effect on the senior officers who were above all that. In short, the Conservatives decided to appoint someone against whom accusations had been made when he was the boss of the Canadian Armed Forces, when they knew that his mandate would be to address sexual misconduct in the forces.
Now let us look at some of the allegations under the Liberal government.
On March 1, 2018, then ombudsman Gary Walbourne met privately with the Minister of National Defence. Walbourne attempted to discuss a case of sexual misconduct involving Vance. The victim did not want to go any further in the process because she was afraid of reprisals, preventing the ombudsman from going forward. However, the ombudsman, who had credible evidence against Vance, wanted to show it to the minister, who categorically refused to even look at it.
The ombudsman wanted the minister to intervene to protect the victim, since she was Vance's subordinate and he could wipe out her career with the snap of a finger. The minister was unreceptive and hostile. Apparently, he categorically refused to look at Walbourne's evidence and left the meeting abruptly. The minister then referred the case to the Privy Council Office. After that, Walbourne tried to talk to the minister 12 times, but the minister refused to meet with him, and Walbourne retired a few months later.
The Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office exchanged emails about the situation. After that, the situation deteriorated and other facts came to light. The scandal was made public in February 2021, when Global News reported accusations of misconduct against Vance, including his relationship with a subordinate and obscene emails exchanged in 2012 with a much younger servicewoman. The woman who had been in a relationship with Vance publicly stated that she had been threatened by Vance on several occasions. Vance believed himself to be untouchable. He said that he controlled the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
The standing committee on national defence decided to investigate the allegations against Vance. The Minister of Defence appeared before the committee a few times and contradicted himself. Moreover, the Liberals did not hesitate to obstruct the investigation to prevent Liberal employees Zita Astravas and Elder Marques from being called to testify. I was personally there when I was a substitute member of the committee. It was a sad time.
From Elder Marques' testimony, we know that everyone around the Prime Minister was aware of the situation, but the Prime Minister himself continues to deny any knowledge of it. When other employees were called by the House, the Liberals sent the Minister of Defence instead. They said that they did not want their employees to testify.
The Liberals willingly turned a blind eye to the allegations. The Liberals decided to ignore the issue, while the minister flatly refused to meet with the former ombudsman 12 times and would not even look at the evidence, claiming he did not want to interfere in the investigation.
The Prime Minister's entourage knew that there had been allegations against Vance, even if the Prime Minister himself did not have all the details. Everyone around him suspected that these allegations involved sexual misconduct. There were actually emails that mentioned sexual misconduct directly. The Minister of Defence even said that the nature of the accusations against Vance did not matter and what mattered was to take action. Well, the Liberals did absolutely nothing. They did not even implement Justice Deschamps’s main recommendation, namely to make the complaint process completely independent of the military to receive all complaints of sexual misconduct.
The facts speak for themselves. As of today, four generals have had complaints of misconduct brought against them. In 2021, six years after Justice Deschamps’s report was released, the Liberals decided to appoint former justice Louise Arbour to conduct another investigation into how to improve the system. That should have been done in 2015, not in 2021. The minister never took the situation seriously. Only when he had his back to the wall did he decide to do something, but only to save his own skin, after pressure from the opposition parties in the House and the committee investigations.
To add insult to injury, the second-in-command of the Canadian Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Mike Rouleau, decided to play golf with former general Vance, despite the fact that Vance is under investigation by the military police and the military police is under Lieutenant-General Rouleau’s command. This incident led to Rouleau’s resignation and brought to light the federal government’s failure to implement an independent system to handle cases of sexual misconduct. The Liberals have done nothing since 2015 and that inaction has consequences, as this incident shows.
Since my time is running out, I will not have time to talk about everything I would have liked to address in my speech. I have been studying this case in the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and the Standing Committee on National Defence for months now. There is so much going on.
In closing, the Liberals claim that they are unaware of the nature of the allegations against Vance, with the Minister of Defence even saying that the nature of the allegations does not matter. All these events have further eroded the public’s and women’s confidence and harmed diversity, in particular. We must consider the victims. The Liberals and their Minister of Defence failed to act to restore confidence in the armed forces.
One last thing: We may think none of this really touches us, but the father of a former military member recently admitted to me that his daughter had to resign when she became pregnant. Her superior officer, with whom she had had a relationship, asked her to have an abortion to keep the matter quiet. She refused, and was asked to resign. This is still happening in 2021. We must act for the sake of the victims.