Anita Anand, Minister National Defence
Photo Credit: MS Bard, CAF/DND
Esprit de Corps Magazine December 2022 // Volume 29 Issue 11
Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 45
By Military Woman
Question:
A year has passed since the Minister of National Defence’s apology to those impacted by military sexual misconduct. What has happened since then?
Answer:
13 December 2021 was a meaningful day for many defence team members, past and present, impacted by sexual misconduct. That was the day that the Minister of National Defence Anita Anand, the Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre, and then Deputy Minister Jody Thomas jointly apologized for failing to ensure workplaces free of sexual violence.
Some impacted members were moved by the symbolism of the event. Others were touched by the words from the defence leadership team. Many, however, reserved their opinions until they could see what actions followed the apology.
Without question, many actions have been taken by government over this last year. Most efforts have centered around the 48 recommendations from Madame Arbour’s Independent External Comprehensive Review, released 30 May 2022. At over 400 pages long, the review was a heavy read for even the most enthusiastic of followers. The review did however offer the military its long requested “roadmap” of proposed actions required to better address sexual misconduct in the workplace.
Unfortunately, most of the “Recommendations for Louise Arbour” made in a previous Military Woman column (Vol 28, Issue 5) were not followed. Sexual misconduct was still portrayed throughout the review as being a “women’s issue,” to the direct detriment of the many men impacted by sexual misconduct who still suffer mostly in silence.
The review also ignored the many expert and lived experience inputs that emphasized the requirement of a strong independent oversight mechanism to ensure defence team accountability.
The review’s legal lens, predictably, focused heavily on legal matters such as the justice system. Too often, in sexual misconduct cases especially, a judicial win occurs without any systemic acknowledgement of the true costs paid by the victims – who often lose relationships, identity, trust, health and military careers.
Monitoring and evaluation of any new program are key components of the Government of Canada’s mandated gender-based analysis (GBA+). It is not clear from reading the review, how lived experience is going to be captured as these recommendations become implemented. Without clear monitoring programs that include the impacted-person’s experiences and outcomes, how will we be able to evaluate if the Arbour recommendations helped or harmed?
Moving forward, government has a responsibility to create a transparent, equitable mechanism to allow for the safe inclusion of all sexual misconduct impacted voices, including Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+ and male.
The stand-up of “Togetherall” on 22 June 2022 was another important action item completed. This is the long overdue federal government-funded peer support program for defence team members impacted by workplace sexual misconduct. Although clearly better than nothing, Togetherall is unfortunately not an equivalent service to other government-funded peer support programs such as Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS).
Bottomline? Yes, a lot of actions have taken place in the year following the government’s apology on sexual misconduct. However, concurrently, stresses within the impacted community and change resistance within parts of the defence community have publicly surfaced.
Ottawa Citizen reporter, David Pugliese, wrote on 18 October 2022 about the end (hopefully) of legal actions between several military sexual trauma community members. One can only wonder if this fracturing of the impacted community could have been avoided altogether if government had provided peer support programs sooner.
Pugliese also reported on 15 November 2022 about the Conference of Defence Associations Institute’s annual Vimy Awards. The audience of over 600 of the defence community’s elite gave a standing ovation to this year’s award winner whose acceptance speech included criticisms for anyone making collective apologies to those “fight[ing] over who gets to wear the coveted victims’ cloak.”
One has to ponder on if someone who feels this way about military “victims” was the most appropriate choice to be awarded the lead role in fundraising for Veterans experiencing chronic pain – a condition so many military sexual trauma impacted Veterans share in.
The Minister of National Defence, together with other senior leaders, have done a lot of positive actions since the apology however, clearly, more work is still required – including on how to best address the resistance to these changes from within the defence community itself.
Update:
2022. Anita Anand moved to Treasury Board President and Bill Blair became MND.
2023. On the December 13th second anniversary of DND/CAF’s sexual misconduct apology, Michelle Douglas, Executive Director of the LGBT Purge Fund, was named as the first Honorary Colonel for the Chief of Conduct and Professional Conduct (CPCC).
2024. “Togetherall” as a military sexual trauma peer support was shut down.
The parliamentary report “Invisible No More. The Experience of Canadian Women Veterans” was published on June 12. Recommendation #3 was to have an additional apology – this time made specifically for women.
