You’re listening to a Frequency Podcast Network production, in association with City News.
Jordan
Canada has problems. This country faces issues of systemic injustice, racism, violence, many other challenges. But fortunately, Canada has discovered a tried, tested and true way to solve these problems once and for all–with reports with lots and lots of reports.
News Clip #1
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its preliminary report on Canada’s Indian Residential School system
News Clip #2
As the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was submitted.
News Clip #3
It’s a very comprehensive report, it makes 84 recommendations.
Jordan
If you can name a major problem this country faces, I can promise you that at one time or another, and often at more than one time, one of our various governments has commissioned a report about that problem. And that report probably came back with recommendations on how the problem could be fixed. And that’s where the whole thing usually falls apart. We are very good in this country at reporting on problems to government. We are less than great when it comes to doing anything about what those reports say. Don’t believe me? Ask an Indigenous Canadian about clean drinking water. So, yeah, it’s fair to be skeptical about a new report released this week regarding sexual harassment and assault in Canada’s military.
News Clip #4
Former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour has 48 recommendations calling for major changes to the recruitment process and training of members, especially at our military colleges.
Jordan
Now, this report is not to be confused with the last report about sexual assault and harassment in Canada’s military, which was delivered way back in 2015. But all jokes aside, there does seem to be a difference, at least if you ask the people who have spent their lives working in this area. The tone in the report is different. This time, the recommendations are different. The government receiving the recommendations is different, too, and it is promising action. Now, it remains to be seen if action will happen or if this report will end up on that gigantic pile of things that Canada could have done to make things better. But for now, at least, there’s hope.
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Julie Lalonde is an advocate and educator. She has spent years fighting for change in Canada’s military. She is also the author of Resilience Is Futile: The Life and Death of Julie S. Lalonde . Hey, Julie.
Julie Lalonde
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Jordan
You’re very welcome. Thanks for helping walk us through this. It’s pretty complex.
Julie Lalonde
It is. There’s a lot of inside baseball details that are not really easy to capture in a soundbite for sure.
Jordan
Well, maybe we can start then with some groundwork for people who haven’t been following this issue as closely over the past few years. What is the Arbour Report and why was it commissioned?
Julie Lalonde
So former Supreme Court Justice Arbour was tasked by the Trudeau government to do an external investigation into specifically how the Canadian Armed Forces looks at accountability and care for those who have experienced sexual misconduct, but also those who have been accused of it. So it was very much looking at kind of the legislative side of things. This comes on the heels of a 2015 report by another Supreme Court Justice, Justice Deschamps. So this is something that’s happened before. But this particular report was really looking at kind of the legislative arm of the Canadian Armed Forces and how it could be used to address the incredibly high rates of sexual violence in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Jordan
I know we could do an entire podcast interview about just this, but maybe you could give us a quick sketch of just how high are those rates? Like, how big is this problem?
Julie Lalonde
It’s significant. And I think one of the things that Justice Arbour said in her press conference when she released the report that I think didn’t get enough attention is saying that women in the Canadian Armed Forces face bigger threats from their male counterparts than they do from enemy forces. So we know that being in the military is the most dangerous job for women when it comes to sexual violence. We don’t have great stats on sex work, but we know there’s also high rates there. But the fact that knowing you’re a woman who signed up to join the military in this country almost guarantees that you’re going to experience at least workplace sexual harassment, if not full-blown sexual violence, that’s remarkable to me. And it’s not getting the level of urgency that I think it deserves.
Jordan
So this report is certainly not the first. What was it intended to provide the government with? What is the end goal here?
Julie Lalonde
So it is on the surface. What we were told is that this was a way of looking at whether or not the military is equipped to handle sexual misconduct on its own or whether it needs more civilian oversight or certain elements sent over to the civilian system. But the cynic in me saw very clearly that this was just well, the Deschamps report was great, but it was in 2015, it was under the Harper government. We’re a new government with a new attitude. So we want our own report, and that’s kind of very on brand for Canada. We throw Royal commissions at things, and we do that kind of thing. So I maintain that the Justice Arbour report, as great as it is, was not necessary. We did not need to get these 48 recommendations. There’s nothing really new in this report. It was just a really expensive process to prove, frankly, what we already know.
Jordan
And we’re going to talk about sort of what can be done to make sure that this wasn’t a waste of time, I guess. But first, I want to circle back a little ways. When the new Minister of Defense, Anita Anand, took the post, you joined us to discuss some of your work and also just the culture and the Canadian armed forces and how difficult it would be to fix it. I don’t want to put words in your mouth about that conversation, but I did listen to it again, and it seemed to me that you were really skeptical of reports in general and what they accomplished. Before we talk about the action that might come from this report, how did the recommendations in the report compare to your expectations for it?
Julie Lalonde
They were pretty on par with my expectations. There were a few that I was surprised by in a good way, like there were some bold recommendations that I thought were really great. But it was still pretty high level, still repeating some of the things we’ve already known, including some interim measures that the government has already put in place. So nothing really surprising and really what I expected, but also what I expected in a positive way, which is at the press conference, she was very assertive in naming the problem. She didn’t shy away from being quite scathing, frankly, around the scope of the problem, the lack of action. So I think we ended up where we started. I don’t think there’s anything really revelatory in it, but I do appreciate that she was very bold in her assertions and recommendations.
Jordan
Can you briefly walk us through maybe not all 48 or so recommendations, but the ones that did stick out to you as striking.
Julie Lalonde
Yeah. So what’s important to know is that right away the government said we accept 17 recommendations right away, and the rest we will dig a little bit deeper into. So that’s really great news. But there are some pretty significant things around having the jurisdiction in terms of who investigates a sexual assault, that it would go back to the civilian system, which was the case until the late 90s. So that’s huge. More civilian oversight, an external monitor, more direct reporting to the Defence Minister around statistics and prevalence, a victim’s bill of rights, which is something that civilians in this country get, but there is nothing for military members. So that’s great. More work around prevention, which is something that I’m very passionate about.
And something that is really important, which is removal of their duty to report policy. And a duty to report policy is, on its surface, something positive. And it’s that if you hear of something or witness something, you have a duty to report it. And in an environment that is truly concerned about the welfare of survivors, a duty to report is a good thing because it forces bystanders to act on what they’re seeing and observing.
But, because the military approached this issue from a place of defensiveness and resistance, what instead happened is that the duty to report was translated by military members as if you see something, report it right away. Who cares if the victim actually consents to it? Who cares if the victim actually wants to go ahead with it? Just report it so that if it goes public, you can cover your own back and say, “well, I said something, so I’m not on the hook.” And so what ended up happening is you had a massive increase in what we call third party reporting, which is reporting from witnesses, but a massive decrease in survivors wanting to actually follow through with the process because they were pushed into a process that they didn’t want to be a part of. And so by removing the duty to report, it actually encourages people to come forward and talk about it, even in abstract terms. Like you can come to a meeting and say, “when this happened to me, I would have appreciated if someone did X, Y, and Z,” and then they could take that into consideration without saying, “oh, that happened to you. Okay, now we have to do an investigation.” It was actually impeding our ability to move forward.
Jordan
Is that one of the 17 recommendations the government did accept?
Julie Lalonde
So, yes-ish. They’re still trying to work out some of the kinks, but on principle, yes, which is huge. So there was an interim measure put in place just last week that was looking at certain contexts in which when you’re trying to access services to improve the military–so the example I gave around, “hey, this would have been helpful in my case”–those cases no longer you have a duty to report, which is great. But now we’re looking at what does that look like in any single context when someone discloses, how does that come to fruition? So the fact that the government right away was like, “on principle, yes,” is tremendous and a huge, huge advancement to where we’ve been even a few years ago, which means a real sign of progress, frankly.
Jordan
I want to ask you what this means in practice about those 17 recommendations. The government accepts them. What does that mean? Does it mean the policy changes immediately, or the government sort of acknowledges and says, “yes, we agree, we’ll do something about it when we can.”
Julie Lalonde
Yeah, it’s more the latter, just like all of the recommendations. So that’s why the public pressure is tremendously important, because some of these recommendations are quite easy to implement. So it’s been the interim case that all sexual assaults have been sent over to the civilian system. So those mechanisms were already in motion, and now it’s just going to be a permanent thing. Same thing with duty to report, same thing with increasing support services. They’ve already changed the name of the sexual misconduct office to make it more resource friendly and less intimidating. There’s some stuff that they’ve already got the wheels in motion, so those will come into place really quickly. But some of the bigger pieces are going to take time. And I think that’s one of the big weaknesses of the report is some of these huge philosophical questions don’t have a clear pathway. So one of the recommendations that I was particularly invested in is questioning the very existence of the Royal Military College. Recommendation 29 is do we even need a Royal Military College? That’s a huge, huge assertion. But how do you answer that question? Who decides? What are the qualifications? What does the committee look like that’s going to strike that resolution? Like what happens to folks who are already in there?
Jordan
We need another report.
Julie Lalonde
Yeah, we need a pathway. And that’s what I spoke with a lot of other stakeholders after the report was released. And that was our biggest sort of shared criticism was–great, awesome. But who decides the next step? And knowing bureaucracy, it’s going to be a lot of kicking things back and forth and delaying when we’re so overdue for action.
Jordan
I want to rewind just a tiny bit for people who, again, aren’t as familiar with this issue. What does the Royal Military College have to do with the prevalence of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces? Why is it such a big deal in this report?
Julie Lalonde
So there’s two Royal Military Colleges in Canada, there’s one in Kingston, and there’s one in Saint-Jean, Quebec. And they are both postsecondary institutions and a military institution. So when you leave R.M.C., you have a BA and you also have rank in the military. So it’s a very prestigious place. It’s very exclusionary. Oftentimes, students are 3rd, 4th generation R.M.C. grads. We have a number of parliamentarians, including folks like Erin O’Toole, who graduated from R.M.C., Marc Garneau. So it’s a very prestigious institution. The problem is it is both a post secondary institution and a military institution. And in Canada, the highest rates of sexual assault are against women under the age of 25. Well, when you have a post secondary institution made up of 18 to 24 year olds, where women are a very tiny minority of the participants, it is a breeding ground for a lot of nonsense. And you’re both being indoctrinated into the military and going through an undergraduate experience at the same time. And so it has long been a huge problem, not just around sexual assault, but also they’ve had a number of suicides on campus because they don’t have adequate mental health support, which most postsecondary institutions have because they have that understanding built into the University experience. So it is a mess. And by the military’s own admission, it had neglectful leadership for quite some time. So it really spiralled out. But I think Justice Arbour’s recommendation of re-examining that and saying, okay, yes, we need educational institutions for military members, but maybe just make it a grad school so that you’ve already had kind of quote, unquote real life experience or you’ve already had kind of more full-some life experience before you, at this impressionable age, are getting all of this messaging around military, and also you’re trying to find your voice in the world as an 18 year old. So that recommendation I wholeheartedly agree with, but it’s bold and it’s not easy to solve that problem. And so I really wish that she had put some steps in place, not just because the rest of us can’t figure out what those steps are, but because then it forces the government’s hand to say, “look, this isn’t too abstract, this isn’t too difficult. I’ve laid it out for you. It can be done.” And that lack of detail is what has me concerned about some of these recommendations.
Jordan
I know that in your work, you’ve been fighting for years, as I mentioned, for change in this system and particularly as it pertains to the Military College. I want to just ask you for your gut reaction. Initially, as you were reading the recommendations, what were you feeling?
Julie Lalonde
I straight up cried through that press conference. I was so emotional. Looking at the tone, like it couldn’t be more different from the Deschamps report of 2015. It was night and day here. You had the Minister of Defence, a woman of color, sitting there, taking in the information. You had the Chief of the Defence Staff agreeing with the recommendations on principle, agreeing that there are things that need to change. In 2015, the last time we had a similar report, the Chief of the Defence Staff did not agree with the recommendations, and then went on to say that sexual misconduct is a result of biological wiring. Like, he was just completely and totally out to lunch. And the government had a kind of a lukewarm response. So just the fact that, not only was the report strong in many ways and quite explicit about where the problems are, it was the government’s response and the military’s response that really gave me hope that, oh, man, we might be turning a corner on this thing. And that made me profoundly emotional as someone who feels like she’s been banging her head against the wall for so many years.
Jordan
Have you heard from other survivors of sexual violence or assault in the R.M.C. or C.A.F. since this report broke? And what are they saying to you about it?
Julie Lalonde
I’ve absolutely heard from survivors, current and former members, who are also feeling hopeful. They liked the tone of this report. They were encouraged by the military’s acceptance of the report and the government’s. Many survivors that I’ve heard from share my feelings that Minister Anand is really doing an excellent job so far, and she gives us reason to be hopeful. But they’re also impatient. And so they’re like, “Yeah, this was great. Cool. Can we go now? Can we go now?” I share that sentiment, absolutely. But overall, I would say that there’s a real level of, like, “Great, awesome. This might not have captured everything we wanted it to, but she’s saying some really great stuff. Now can we move to action?”
Jordan
What actually has to come next, and whose court is the ball in, for that to happen?
Julie Lalonde
So like all government and bureaucratic initiatives, it’s a lot of who’s on first base, who’s on second base. So there is definitely leadership coming from the Minister of Defence. So she’s owned the fact that they have to pick up the torch and run with most of these things. And then there’s another chunk, of course, that is within the military itself and the current Chief of the Defence Staff in figuring out some jurisdictional issues. It’s one thing to send all sexual assault cases to civilian systems, but I work in the civilian system and it’s awful and we have incredibly low rates of conviction. So imagine if you’re a military member trying to talk to a civilian officer and he doesn’t understand the nuance or the reality of your life as a military member. So Where’s the training going to be for police to actually be able to handle those cases and understand what’s going on there? There’s lots and lots of those kinds of pieces that are then jurisdictional. Who’s going to oversee that? So they’re going to play that game for a bit of like, okay, whose responsibility is this? But then the government has committed to wanting updates. I will say, clearly, there were many issues with the former Chief of Defence Staff, Jonathan Vance, but he really started a trend of being transparent around statistics, of releasing quarterly, yearly reports on where things are at. And so that level of accountability is going to continue. And that, of course, gives me hope, right. As long as we keep their feet over the fire, then we might see something happen.
Jordan
I know that more than anything you want to see progress on this and you want less reports and more action. How can they go about that expediently? And what will you be watching for that will tell you whether or not they’re going to actually move on this?
Julie Lalonde
Yeah. So they certainly could because again, nothing new came out of this report for those of us who have been doing this work. So they knew this stuff was coming and they’ve known what the solutions are for quite some time. So the will is the thing that’s left. And so for me, it’ll be how often are we getting updates. As a civilian stakeholder, am I going to be pulled in? Not just me specifically, but my colleagues, like, are we going to be invited to sit at those tables? Are we going to be invited to participate in those consultation processes to help define and refine and establish these new policies? If I’m not hearing that kind of outreach, then that’s going to tell me that they’re going back to their old ways of just closing in the ranks and being very insular. So the big sort of message that came out of the Arbour report was you need civilian oversight, you don’t know what you’re doing, and you should be accountable to Canadians. I mean, we pay for you and you represent us on the international stage, right. If I’m getting updated, if I feel like my colleagues and my sector are being looped in, that will tell me that okay, they still have a door open, just a crack for us to peek in and sort of give them our perspective.
Jordan
The last thing I want to ask you is, it’s been so nice to have a hopeful conversation with you about this. And I’m very happy with the optimism and the seriousness that was conveyed. We’ve been here before with reports and recommendations. I don’t just mean the Deschamps report. Any Indigenous Canadian, I think, could tell you that this government has a real talent for making pronouncements and saying that they understand, and that people should be heard, and that they’re going to get this right, and then kind of letting actual things die on the vine. Where are you in terms of your optimism about real change? And what could you see tomorrow or the next day that would make you feel more certain that this is going to be different from, again, from 2015, but also from every promise to fix drinking water on First Nations reserves?
Julie Lalonde
Totally. So my faith and my hope is not in the Canadian Armed Forces, or the Liberal government, or any government. Where I draw hope from is the fact that this report and the tone that the government is taking to this, would not have happened without post-Ghomeshi Canada, without Me Too, without Canadians demanding accountability from various institutions–from the world of Hockey to the National Ballet School to the world of government. We are seeing scandals, quote, unquote, and we’re asking questions, and we’re demanding better. And that is what has held so many institutions accountable over the last seven years or so. And so my hope is really in Canadians and what I’m seeing in them, saying, “Hey, what is going on?” I mean, the conversation around sexual assault on campuses every September used to just bum me out because the media would get it wrong and campuses would get it wrong. And then in Me Too, people are like, “No, we have high expectations. Fix this.” And so the conversation has changed in that way. And I think this is an example of Canadians holding institutions accountable, and that’s forced them to do better, whether they mean it or not. They’re doing better because they know we’re watching. And that’s 100% of where my hope comes from.
And I would say lastly, too, around this file again, we’re talking about sexual violence, but we’re also in the middle of talking about the role of police, the role of military. Also, the role of the Canadian flag, like the Canadian flag, is currently being used as a symbol of hatred. And so for years, we associated patriotism and nationalism with the Canadian flag on the back of a Canadian soldier. And now we’re asking some serious questions because we’re seeing, wow, there’s proud Nazis in the Canadian Armed Forces. There are people who are using the flag as a symbol of hate. What does it even mean to be proud of Canadians? What does it mean to be proud of our troops? Like, these are big philosophical questions, that are also intersecting with Me Too. And I think that combined conversation is what’s going to move us into a new direction, because I’m seeing everyday moderates from my small town in rural Northern Ontario saying, “Hey, maybe we should defund the police.” Like, that is so profoundly radical to where I was with these people a couple of years ago. And so that’s what gives me hope, is people are asking questions that they probably never asked before. And those voices are getting louder and that’s what’s making people think, “Oh, damn, we can’t get away with just weeping this out of the rug anymore.”
Jordan
That’s great. I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you, Julie, for this, as always.
Julie Lalonde
Thanks so much for having me.
Jordan
Julie Lalonde, author of Resilience is Futile . That was The Big Story.
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Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow. Bye.
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