The Drivers of Culture Change Facing Reprisals

On this blogpost, we will build on the leadership failures that took place in the Party Flight to address another barrier to culture change in the Canadian military.

Once more, let us go back to the past. In 1998, Maclean’s revealed to the public eyes the normalization of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). They exposed a culture of dismissal of complaints and cover-ups by silencing and re-victimizing the women who came forward, and that of their allies. 

One story made the cover of the magazine in the summer 1998: that of retired Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Everett Boyle. An initially well-respected and highly praised air force base CWO, Boyle fell from grace in 1990, following his persistence to address serious harassment allegations made against one of his superiors, a colonel. However, because Boyle was a non-commissioned member and the accused was an officer, Boyle could not investigate. He brought the matter to the attention of his superiors, but they asked him to overlook it and warned him of the consequences of pursuing the allegations. He ignored their warning, bypassed the chain of command and investigated the accusations. As a result, Boyle’s commanding officer dismissed him from his key duties, and the CWO decided to leave the Forces a few months later, in 1991.

Fast forward 20 years. Operation HONOUR has been under way for three years. Two important pillars the CAF believes would help culture change move forward are the duty to report (i.e., all servicemembers with knowledge of an incident to report it to a superior) and the junior leadership, who can drive change at the lowest levels of the institution.

But comes November 2019, with a story from the Ottawa Citizen about Casey Brunelle, a reservist in an intelligence unit in Ottawa.

In June 2013, one of his women colleagues approached him and told him she had been sexually assaulted. He went with her to the Military Police, made a statement, and later became a witness of the defence during the accused’s court martial. The court martial found the accused not guilty, and the judge found that Brunelle’s testimony was “not credible and reliable.” As such, when Brunelle came back to Ottawa, he faced a hostile environment.

Based on rumours on what the judge said about his testimony, his unit thought Brunelle had collided with the plaintiff to berate the accused. This without any proof; the court martial transcripts had not been published by then. Brunelle started to face accusations of being unreliable and having improperly used public funds: he was working in New York at the time of the trial, and the CAF flew him and paid for a rental car. But the problem was Brunelle stayed 2 days in Ottawa, instead of flying back immediately. His security clearance was put under review, and his Performance Review Evaluations became negative. 

In 2015, Brunelle submitted a grievance, to no avail. He reached out to then BGen Chris Whitecross, then head of the Strategic Response Team- Sexual Misconduct (responsible to implement Operation Honour), once again without results. Brunelle then decided in 2018 to have the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Vance, decide on his grievance (in accordance to article 29.11 of the National Defence Act). 

Despite recognizing that Brunelle’s leadership had been wrong in questioning his integrity as a servicemember, Vance found the grievance unfounded, and upheld the accusations that Brunelle had misused public funds (meaning that Brunelle can potentially face court martial). 

CWO Boyle, Casey Brunelle. Their stories echo that of Dawn Thomson, Stéphanie Raymond, Lise Gaulthier, in that these men and women were punished when they had reported sexual misconduct. 

Article 19.15 of the Queen’s Regulations and Orders, a legal document that regulates the CAF:

prohibits the taking of reprisals ; or directing that any be taken, against any person who has, in good faith, report to a proper authority any infringement of the pertinent statutes, regulations, rules, order and instructions governing the conduct of any person subject to the Code of Service Discipline, made a disclosure of wrongdoing or cooperated in an investigation carried out in respect of such report or disclosure.

Not only the backlash that both Boyle and Brunelle had faced by reporting sexual misconduct was against the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders, it is also a great impediment to the goals and aspirations of then gender integration and Operation Honour today. 

Whether Brunelle’s allegations are real or not, he perceived the reprisals he faced as associated with him testifying on a sexual misconduct case. This perception impairs his trust in his leadership.

Perceived antagonistic attitudes to members who report unethical conduct or crimes discourages servicemembers to fulfill their duty to report, hence impeding the de-normalization of silence surrounding instances of sexual misconduct. 

It is yet another example of how the Canadian military leadership stands in its own way in the pursuit of culture change.