Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the extra 45 seconds. It is much appreciated. I was worried I would not have time to go through the departmental plans.
Where I left off before question period was that I wanted to get into the departmental plans. This is where the rubber hits the pavement. This is where we see the priorities of the minister. Is he actually taking seriously the sexual misconduct allegations, stories, and individual cases of men and women who have been abused by others in the military? What I discovered is that the government is not taking it seriously, and the minister is not taking it seriously.
Let us go back to the 2018-19 departmental plan. It has “Annual # of reported incidents of Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour in the Defence Team” as one category of priorities, and then under “Target”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”. It has no available indicators of where they were at. Under the field “Number and type of actions taken in response to reported Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour incidents by the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”.
I will move on to the following years, 2019-20. Under “Annual number of reported incidents of Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour in the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”. Again, there are no indicators anywhere, no reported numbers anywhere. Under “Number and type of actions taken in response to reported Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour incidents by the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”.
I will move on to the next departmental plan, 2020-21. Under “% of the Canadian Armed Forces...who self-identify as victims of harassment”, the target is “Less than 11.9%”. The minister signed off on every single departmental plan. Less than 12% is one in eight members of the Canadian Armed Forces to suffer being inappropriately harassed in the workplace. The actual results for 2018-19 were 17.7%. This is the first time there are actual numbers being presented here.
Now, in the departmental plan for 2021-22, the fields actually change, which is pretty typical of the government. We have “Annual number of reported incidents of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces”. Members would think that by now the department would have it figured out, but no, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2022”. There are two wonderful little asterisks, and they leave it for well into the future.
If the minister was actually serious, if the words he says in this chamber and outside in nice statements actually meant anything to him, he would have followed through in the departmental plans that he signs off on and ensured that there was follow-up and actual, real targets put forward. This is why the House has come to the moment now of censuring the minister, because he has shown a dereliction of his duties, an irresponsibility of command and, overall, he has led the Canadian Forces into disarray. The situation we find ourselves in is entirely of his own doing.
As was mentioned during question period, this is a minister who served in his post the longest of any member of cabinet. He owns the entire last six years; they are entirely his responsibility. We are making a judgment call here, as members of Parliament, to hold him personally accountable for his own performance, which, as we can see in the departmental plans, does not meet the standards of what a minister should be doing.
As the member for Kildonan—St. Paul said before me, the minister has shown an extreme dereliction of duty and of his own responsibilities as the top member responsible. He is the political head of the department, the political head of the Canadian Armed Forces. It falls to him at the end of the day, and he has fallen far short. We must vote to censure the minister on this matter.