One of the consistent tendencies of 2024 was that posts here and conversations elsewhere on online about the Canadian Armed Force's command crisis was the claim that it was really a moral panic, a non-controversy as most of the generals and admirals who had been accused in 2021 were exonerated since then. One thing I wrote in 2021 was that the opponents to culture change, to addressing the abuses of power and sexual misconduct, had few allies since it was hard to ally with these tainted officers. With the various court cases having been played out with one officer pleading guilty and the rest being found not guilty, the fans of the old ways now are aggressively putting forth the idea that this was all blown up out of nothing. So, first, I'd like to address this concept of exoneration, then go through the three most important cases, and then conclude with what it means for policy and for Canadian civil-military relations.
To exonerate does not mean that a jury could not be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. To exonerate means: that there was new evidence that essentially proves that the accused could not be guilty. From one legal website: "The difference is that just because you were found not guilty [an acquittal] doesn`t mean you were not guilty; it means that the State was unable to find enough evidence to convict you. Whereas, an exoneration means, the court has overturned, and dismissed all charges, based on new evidence." In none of the cases and especially the top three was there any new evidence that proved that the generals and admirals could not have committed the crimes of which they had been accused.
Instead, what happened was that either investigators or courts ruled that there was not sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals (except for one) to convict or further investigate them. To be clear, that is a high bar and an appropriate one for when one could be jailed. It should not be the standard for appointment to the highest positions in the military (or the Supreme Court). It also means that if a court can't find someone guilty, that does that mean that there was not sufficient evidence to try to the individual. In these cases, there were other factors at work that can also cause us to be at least a wary of thinking that these folks were treated unfairly: the well-documented criticisms of the military justice system by a series of reviews including the most recent by former Supreme Court Justice Fish and that it is very hard to try someone decades later. There is also the canard that women are so willing to make false accusations--when the opposite is true.
Ok, let's get into the three cases, starting with the Mulligan Man--Vice Admiral Hadyn Edmundson. He had been accused of a variety of forms of sexual misconduct and ultimately rape. His court case ended with a not guilty verdict. This was not the clear, decisive vindication that his lawyer suggested, but instead a problem common to many rape cases--of there being no other witnesses or corroborating evidence. This case is important because Edmundson had an established reputation as being problematic on sexual misconduct issues--his nickname of Mulligan Man--when General Jon Vance named him to be the head of personnel. To put a man with such a tainted past in charge of personnel at a time where the military was supposed to be addressing sexual crisis in the aftermath of the Deschamps Report speaks to Vance's commitment to addressing sexual misconduct. It also speaks to the failure of then Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan who should have been overseeing such important appointments. Chief of Military Personnel should be integral to any effort to fight sexual misconduct since recruitment, retention, and promotion are just a wee bit central to damn near everything including making sure that sexual misconduct is disincentivized. Plus there are the optics. More on that below.
The second case is Admiral Art McDonald, who made it to the very top of the Canadian Armed Forces, serving one of the briefest terms as Chief of the Defence Staff. He was accused of sexual assault at a post-exercise party, and the military investigators essentially said: everyone was too drunk at the time to testify. Maybe that is what Art McDonald considers to be exoneration, but that ain't exoneration. Of course, McDonald then demonstrated that he was unfit to serve as CDS since he completely misunderstood civilian control of the military when he sent a letter to all of the Canadian admirals and generals claiming he was coming back to command the CAF. His replacement, General Wayne Eyre had it exactly right: "We must remember that in a democracy the military is subordinate to our duly elected civilian leadership. This fundamental is paramount to our profession." That Sajjan advised the Prime Minister to appoint a man who clearly out of touch with proper civil-military relations and also having this stain in his past is another strike against Sajjan--that the PM should have turfed him after McDonald was suspended. Rule #1 of Minister-ness--take the blame for big mistakes on behalf of the PM (who should have also done his homework on McDonald).
Of course, the case that started the cascade is General Jon Vance's. In multiple comments on my blog, folks have said that I must be some kind of puritan to be upset by Vance's consensual relationship. These folks cast many aspersions at the primary (but not only) target of Vance's attention: Major Kellie Brennan. There are many responses to this, and I will focus on two: first, if there was no problem with this relationship, why did Vance seek to obstruct justice by telling Brennan to lie about their relationship? Second, relationships between superiors and subordinates are fraught, which is one why norms eventually developed against professors having sexual relationships with their students (which do get violated from time to time). That Vance preyed upon his subordinates at a time where he was supposed to leading the charge against sexual misconduct showed as much about his judgement and his sense of double standards and abuse of power as his appointment of Edmundson to chief of military personnel. (Some have said that no one was convicted, but the guilty plea is very much the equivalent of a conviction, even if a judge was willing to ignore years of Vance violating his oath when he slapped him on the wrist)
Over the course of Vance's historically long term as CDS, I talked to multiple CAF officers about Operation Honour--the effort to address sexual misconduct in the aftermath of the Deschamps Report. I repeatedly heard: "yeah, but that's led by Vance ...." I never got specifics until Mercedes Stephenson broke the story. The key is this: Vance's reputation, either from his preying upon subordinates or from his promoting an officer who skated past previous accusations of sexual misconduct, undermined the legitimacy of the effort to deal with sexual misconduct.
So, what should we make of those who argue that this is all overwrought? What are the policy implications of dismissing the 2021 accusations against an entire command cohort? It suggests we should toss out the reforms, I guess. That is, rather than having civilian oversight of promotions and rather than having anonymous reviewers for the 360 degree reviews of senior officers, we should go back to the days where those seeking promotion got to pick their reviewers. Sure, that's a great recipe for an old boys network, but wheres the harm in that? Oh, these accusations led to a military that is too woke, too concerned with including Canadians who are not the traditional suppliers of personnel to the CAF: women, LGBTQ, religious minorities, immigrants, etc. So, in a time of a steep personnel crisis, we should not worry about alienating the 70% of the Canadian population that have generally not been the target of recruiters?
From now on, when I hear folks dismissing the seriousness of the 2021 scandals, I will ask them--what reforms do you want to do away with? And if they come back with the bullshit that there are quotas limiting white dudes from joining or from being promoted, I can walk away knowing that they don't know what they are talking about.
On to civil-military relations, what can we learn from both the "exonerations" and the backlash? First, efforts to reform military justice need to continue. If people had more faith in the system, then it might serve as a greater deterrent to those who might abuse their positions and it might also serve to reassure people that they have recourse within the system or a pathway outside the system if they face sexual misconduct. Second, we need to have politicians actually care about their responsibilities as stewards of the military. That Sajjan messed up his job in so many ways and was kept around in that position for months and months afterwards says a lot about how Trudeau viewed his role as the chief civilian in charge of the CAF. This leads to a third implication: that civilian oversight of the CAF needs to be the job of more than just one person, more than just the Minister's job. It should be the job of the Department of National Defence. DND should not just be a supporter of the CAF but an overseer. The job is way too big for one person, and, no, the parliamentarians don't think it is their job.
The 2021 scandals were not just the fault of a handful of senior leaders abusing their power--it was also the fault of a broken system of civil-military relations. Both civilian and military leadership failed the CAF and failed Canada. The structures at the time facilitated and incentivized this failure. Some of the structures within the CAF have changed, but, alas, little has changed on the civilian side. Denying the problems and wishing for a glorious past where abuse of power and inappropriate relationships were seen as the benefits that came with those positions says much about those making those claims and can only lead to yet more crises down the road.
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