Waterloo Region Record

They really love playing the good old blame game on Parliament Hill

Geoffrey Stevens

They are busy playing the good old blame game again on Parliament Hill. This time, the game combines two familiar elements: sexual misconduct in Canadian Armed Forces and a breakdown in the chain of accountability for a purported scandal, a high-profile affair involving Jonathan Vance, the former chief of the defence staff.

Who knew what when? Who passed along how much information to whom? And what did whom do with it?

Where did the buck stop? Did it stop anywhere? Or did it get lost along the way, the casualty of an opaque system of accountability that invites evasion and denial.

The latest scandal consists of allegations of sexual misconduct, denied by Vance, that, while CDS, he had an inappropriate personal relationship with a female subordinate, a major, and that some years earlier, in 2012, he had sent a naughty email to a female corporal suggesting she might enjoy vacationing with him at a clothing-optional resort.

In the civilian world, a CEO who had a consensual affair with, say, one of his sales managers, would fuel coffee-machine gossip — he might receive a gentle suggestion or two that he be more discreet — but, as long as the relationship did not adversely affect his job or involve the firm’s money, he would not be fired or lose his reserved parking space.

It’s different in the armed forces. Generals and majors (or corporals) are not co-workers in some touchy-feely workplace. The military is not a democracy. Its organization chart is a command structure. Its directives are orders meant to be followed without protest.

If, hypothetically, a colonel were to order a major to terminate her romantic liaison with a more senior officer, she would be expected to obey, or resign. But, as members of the armed forces know only too well, and as their political overseers keep struggling to grasp, it is not so simple when command authority and the chain of accountability come up against issues of rank, sex, personal privacy and the exercise of free will (to the extent that civil right is recognized in a military organization).

What if the senior officer in the relationship that the colonel wants the major to end happens to be their mutual boss, the top general? The colonel may be as fond of his job as the major is of her lover. Is there no room for consideration of such human factors in the Canadian Armed Forces?

The rule seems firm: no intimate relationships between officers and their subordinates, not even if a relationship is consensual and the subordinate is not in the senior officer’s line of command. It is a rule that would be laughed out of court in the civilian world.

There’s a complicating issue in the Vance case. Major Kellie Brennan

claims that he ordered her to lie about their relationship and warned “consequences” if she did not follow his orders.

It was the opportunity or risk of coercion that led the Harper Conservative government to appoint retired Supreme Court Canada Justice Marie Deschamps to investigate the CAF’s handling of complaints of sexual misconduct, harassment and abuse. When she reported in 2015, Justice Deschamps recommended the establishment of an independent body, outside the military command, to investigate complaints.

The Harper government did not act on the Deschamps report and the Trudeau Liberals kept spinning their wheels until late April when they announced that another retired Supreme Court judge, Louise Arbour, would conduct a second inquiry — this one to tell the government how to implement the recommendations of the first inquiry.

Amid this silliness, the legitimate issue of sexual misconduct in the military has become secondary to the blame game. Who should be blamed for bungling the Vance file? If not Prime Minister Trudeau or Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, how about Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford. Last week, the Conservatives introduced a motion demanding that the PM fire her. They lost the vote, but the blame game plays on.

The legitimate issue of sexual misconduct in the military has become secondary to the blame game. Who should be blamed for bungling the Vance file?

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, retired recently from teaching political science at the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.

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2021-05-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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