Art Eggleton

[Canadian Armed Forces, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the chief of defence staff has made it quite clear that our policies are to be adhered to with respect to a harassment-free atmosphere. That is going right down the chain of command.

In addition, we have put in place harassment advisors. There is the national investigative service that I mentioned before. As well, good training programs have been put into effect over the last couple of years.

We will continue in this way to ensure that men and women can work together in an harassment free atmosphere.

[Canadian Armed Forces, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I indicated that I had no statistical information which would indicate that it is any worse than in Canadian society.

I would also say that it runs against the core values of Canadians and of the vast majority of the men and women in our Canadian forces.

What the hon. member does not seem to have heard is that I also said that what I read in those articles with respect to that kind of conduct, behaviour and attitude is disgusting. That kind of behaviour is not going to be allowed in the Canadian forces. We have taken action and will continue to take action.

[Canadian Armed Forces, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I also used words like disgusting. I used words like unacceptable, in addition to all of those words.

We simply are not going to tolerate it. We are dealing with the matter and will continue to deal with the matter.

[Canadian Armed Forces, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yes there is zero tolerance. We have zero tolerance for this kind of incident of sexual abuse. We do not want those people who are the perpetrators of sexual abuse to be a part of the Canadian forces.

We have, in fact, taken a number of measures to create better training. We have a new program called the SHARP training program on harassment prevention. We have harassment advisers. We have the new national investigation service that operates independently of the operational chain of command, and soon we will appoint an ombudsman. We are taking every measure that is necessary to put that policy into effect.

[National Defence, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, let me remind the hon. member that the Somalia commission got three extensions, went on three times as long as it originally indicated it would.

Lo and behold when it did make its recommendations, 83% of them were fully agreed to by the government and are presently being implemented as is gender integration and our policy of not allowing sexual abuse, getting to the bottom of all these issues and making sure that men and women can work together in a harassment free atmosphere.

[National Defence, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. Again their research is faulty.

Many of these people have been brought to justice. Many of them have been convicted and in fact have been put out of the Canadian forces.

We intend to continue to get to the heart of these matters. We intend to deal with matters that are past, present and future in a just way.

[National Defence, May 25th, 1998]

Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker, but according to the defence critic of the Reform Party the problem is having women in the military to start with.

He is suggesting, so it seems, that what we should do is get rid of the victims. What the government is suggesting is that we should get rid of the perpetrators.

[National Defence, May 25th, 1998]

Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker. We want justice to prevail in these cases. We want to fully integrate men and women into the Canadian forces. We want them to be able to work side by side in a harassment free and an abusive free environment.

We have put new training procedures into effect. We will do whatever is needed to make sure in future the message is clear that there will be no such discrimination in the Canadian forces.

[National Defence, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, let me say unequivocally that the government will not tolerate matters of sexual abuse or sexual harassment in the Canadian forces.

The government is taking action. We have established harassment advisers in each of the units across the country to help us deal with these issues. We have established the national investigation service which provides for military police independent of the operational chain of command to be able to investigate these matters.

Very soon I will be announcing—

[Foreign Affairs, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we have received a request from the Italian government to provide earth-moving and excavating equipment, specifically 10 Bobcats. In fact, we are going to send these over to Italy together with Canadian forces personnel to operate them. They will be arriving with three Hercules aircraft, taking both the people and the Bobcats, plus a backhoe and four CF personnel to operate it.

We will be arriving in Italy this Sunday.