OTTAWA – For Lt. Col. Eleanor Taylor it was the last straw. The simultaneous investigations of the Canadian military commander and his predecessor, announced last month, prompted her to write a poignant letter of resignation from the Army reserve after more than 26 years of service.
“I am disgusted by the ongoing investigations into sexual misconduct among our top leaders,” wrote Col. Taylor, one of the most prominent women in the Canadian army and Afghan veteran combat, in an email she sent to military officers in March 13th. “Unfortunately, I am not surprised. I am also sure that the scope of the problem has not yet been exposed. Throughout my career, I have observed the insidious and inappropriate use of power for sexual exploitation. “
Almost six years after a government report concluded that Canada’s military was “hostile to women and LGTBQ members and prone to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault”, investigations into the institution’s top leaders have left the military and veterans reeling. and demanding that more be done to resolve such systemic and widespread problems within the ranks.
“The changes took place on a superficial level, but without really disturbing the core of military culture,” said Stéfanie von Hlatky, director of the Center for International and Defense Policy at Queen’s University on the reforms made after the 2015 report. “The launch Colonel Taylor’s letter allows for greater openness to conversations where it is the military culture that will be analyzed more closely, as opposed to just a series of initiatives. ”
In February, the military police opened separate investigations into Canada’s top military officer, Admiral Art McDonald, and the former head of the defense team, General Jonathan Vance, who held the post until his retirement from the army in January.
Little was publicly disclosed about the investigations, although reports emerged last month that General Vance behaved inappropriately with two subordinates. Admiral McDonald stepped down from his position while the investigation was underway.
More than a quarter of women in the Canadian armed forces were sexually abused during their careers, a government survey found in 2016, and less than one in four respondents reported the assault. At the time, the findings sparked calls from military leaders, including General Vance, to do more to encourage assault victims to come forward.
Many service members now say that the widely publicized program to end sexual misconduct launched by General Vance during his tenure was inadequate and completely undermined by the current investigation into his actions.
Colonel Taylor and others are calling on military and veterans to talk about their experiences.
“It took me a few years to get here, but now I strongly believe that we have a problem with our culture that allows for inappropriate sexual behavior and hateful conduct,” she wrote in her email that circulated among members of the armed forces. “I also concluded that we don’t have the tools we need to deal with this behavior.”
Earlier this month, a parliamentary hearing on military sexual assault and harassment highlighted that there is still no investigative body independent of the chain of command for victims of sexual assault or harassment – despite the military’s commitment in 2019 to improve its reporting process and set aside nearly a billion Canadian dollars to resolve reports of sexual misconduct.
The hearings also revealed that charges of impropriety were made against General Vance three years ago, when he was still the chief of staff of defense, but that did not lead to a formal investigation.
Gary Walbourne, the former Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman, told a House of Commons committee that in March 2018 he received an informal complaint about General Vance’s “inappropriate sexual behavior”. Without knowing how to proceed, he said he sought the advice of Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s defense minister and a former military officer who served in Afghanistan, who refused to review the details of the complaint.
Sajjan later testified that he refused to examine Walbourne’s evidence to make sure that any investigation was free from political interference. Mr. Sajjan had his team inform the Privy Council Office, the central branch of the public service, about complaints. Apparently, the matter was dropped after Walbourne did not provide details, citing his confidentiality agreement with the victim.
Leah West, a former armored officer who is now an assistant professor of international relations at Carleton University in Ottawa, said she was sexually abused by a senior officer at a party in 2008. She was found unconscious the next day. military policemen were called. They handed the matter over to their commander.
“He asked me the question that I think a lot of women in Canadian forces are asked when something like this happens: ‘How do you want me to deal with this?’” Reports Professor West. “When asking the victim how he wants to proceed, it is very unlikely that a woman, especially in a combat arm, and in this case, where the person was older than me, will say, ‘Throw the book at him, sir.'”
Today, she said that the chronic problems of the armed forces with sexual misconduct will only be resolved through a radical change in military culture and generational change.
“I think that bold action is needed now,” she said. “Those who would stand in the way of this bold action need to get out of the way and out of the forces.”
The two investigations could lead several senior officers with troubled backgrounds to retire earlier than they planned, she says, opening up opportunities for the promotion of women and men who, in her experience, are “who are morally blameless”.
Professor West said she had already been contacted by an infantry leader for advice on how to deal with the issues raised in Colonel Taylor’s letter.
Another retired infantry member, Dawn Dussault, who led an army convoy squad in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, is also looking for a complete change in military culture, although he is less optimistic about it. “Rape is one aspect, but there were so many other things that did so much psychological damage to women, it’s like the whole system is broken,” she said.
She says the increase in documented extreme right-wing extremism among the youngest members of the military ranks does not give her much hope that the next generation of military leaders will be different from previous ones.
“If more women talk, maybe that will change,” she said. “I do not know.”