Calls for major changes to military over sexual misconduct in new report

By John Marchesan, Cormac Mac Sweeney and The Canadian Press

A highly anticipated report on how to deal with sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has been released by the federal government on Monday, and sweeping changes are being recommended.

The Liberal government tapped retired Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour last April to come up with ways to address sexual misconduct in the military, which has seen a number of current and former top officers investigated or forced into retirement due to allegations levelled against them.

The report is quite critical of the military and its leadership, saying they have failed to adequately address the issue of misconduct despite hundreds of recommendations since 2015.

Arbour said as the military operates now, some members are more at risk of harm from their own comrades than any enemy.

She is making a series of recommendations, 48 to be exact, in order to make changes to the systems in the armed forces.

Those recommendations include changes to definitions and policies, changes to the CAF recruitment and training process, giving immediate legal assistance to victims, more external oversight of the military and its handling of these cases, allowing the Canadian Human Rights Commission to investigate complaints, and calling for any sexual offence to be dealt with by the civilian justice system, not the military one, something the feds are already working on.

Last November, in one of her first acts as Canada’s new defence minister, Anita Anand accepted Arbour’s recommendation to move investigation and prosecution of alleged sexual misconduct cases in the military to the civilian system.

In December, Anand apologized to victims of military sexual misconduct on behalf of the federal government, saying Ottawa had not ensured the right systems were in place to guarantee justice and accountability for victims.

The apologies formed a key part of the federal government’s $600-million settlement agreement concerning several overlapping class-action lawsuits. As many as 19,000 claims were submitted before the period ended last November, with more than 5,000 approved for payment.

There have been many criticisms of the Trudeau government and the military for not following through on all the recommendations from a 2015 report on sexual misconduct.

There have been more than a dozen military leaders facing misconduct allegations over the last couple of years, including former chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice earlier this year.

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