Vincent J. Curtis 5
August 2015
Poor General Vance.
As the new Chief of Defense Staff, General Jonathan Vance could not
devote his first speech to how he would make the Canadian Armed Forces into the
newer and sharper bayonet that it needed to become to meet the threats of the
future. Instead, he had to deal with a
steaming turd of a report that concerned sexual harassment in the CAF. His first order as leader of Canada’s
military was that the “harmful behaviour” has to stop.
In the pantomime of rhetorical tennis, General Vance
successfully returned the serve, but this was hardly the move he would like to
have made.
The purpose and first principle of the Canadian Armed Forces
is to deliver combat power. Practically
everything the CAF does is ordered and organized around this aim. Essential to the delivery of combat power are
the discipline and morale of the troops performing the act. The less disciplined and the lower the morale
of the troops in combat, the greater the risk of defeat and of higher than
necessary casualties. Discipline is what
aids in the creation of a durable morale.
Service on an overseas tour requires mental and physical
toughness. Often, the job on tour
involves working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for weeks at a
time. There is nothing to do on the off-hours
except personal admin. The training
delivered to enable a member to endure such hardships increases mental and
physical toughness.
The External Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual
Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces was written by Marie Deschamps, the
External Review Authority, and a former Justice of the Supreme Court of
Canada. The ERA seems to have spent most
of her career in the law profession and has next to no experience in the
military. The report was written from
the perspective of a civilian immersed in the issues of the day, and in a
tone-deaf way no attempt was made to relate the recommendations to the peculiar
mission of the CAF.
Its deficiencies in reasoning are noteworthy. The report famously claims that the CAF has
an “underlying sexualized culture” that is hostile to women and LGBTQ members
and conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment. Unless I missed it, no LGBTQ members were
interviewed, and the inference that the alleged sexualized culture is hostile
to them as well as to women was made purely by the ERA. This, combined with ‘conducive to…’ would be
rhetorical devices used to make the hostility and danger appear bigger than
they are.
But the larger claim, that of an underlying sexualized
culture, upon review has little merit intellectually or on the basis of the evidence. This is a case of fastening upon a particular
tree in the forest. The CAF is many
things besides a fighting force, and the ERA could just as well have observed
an “eating and talking culture,” on the grounds that members of the CAF spend
far more time eating together and talking to each other than they do engaged in
intercourse of a sexualized nature with each other, or engaged with the enemy
for that matter. But the ERA was to
investigate sexual harassment, and with determination she found it.
The evidence of a sexualized culture advanced by the ERA was
the prevalence of swear words and euphemisms by used NCOs in the presence of,
and directed towards, the junior ranks.
(Apparently, the derisive use of the word ‘pussy’ was taken to be a
sexualized word rather than a reference to something small, soft, cuddly, and weak.)
Such speech, if not accepted by the officer cadre, tolerated it. The ERA noted that women of higher rank did
not find a sexualized culture in the CAF, and as a rule did not help younger women
of junior rank cope with the difficult new world opened to them in the CAF.
The repeated, successful performance of duty over a long
period of time and in difficult and arduous circumstances is what gains a
member the respect of other members of the CAF.
Respect is what these women of higher rank have earned. Women of junior rank and of less experience
are granted only a modicum of respect by their seniors. They are acculturated to a world of political
correctness, in which no means no, power relationships are illegitimate, and
consent is not given under conditions of intoxication. The ERA is of this world. The Prime Minister and MND are of this
world. Consequently, the CDS must have a
foot in this world.
The fact that some women in junior ranks may fold up in the
face of a politically incorrect world raises the question of how they would
fare on deployment. And that is the
point of CAF training and “culture”.
An entire brief could be put together drawing attention to
the contradictions and poking holes in the reasoning employed by the ERA in
reaching her recommendations, none of which bear upon the delivery of combat
power. Claiming to support morale, these
tend to undermine discipline.
Poor General Vance is offered next to no guidance by the ERA
in implementing its recommendations since the terms employed are so slippery or
vague. (Eg. “Establish a strategy to effect cultural change to eliminate the
sexualized environment….)
The CAF will survive this battle with the forces of
political correctness. But I am sure
General Vance would rather be sharpening the bayonet rather than stickhandling
with this report.
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