Where is the Buy-In? Where is the Accountability?

By LCdr (Ret’d) Rosemary Park 

Over the 1970-1999 period, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) openly sought legal exemptions and openly used specific organizational tools to preserve a marginal and marginalizing use and employment of military women. 

Both official strategies are evident in the nine-year delay to implement the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women Report recommendation to open Canadian military colleges to women; in the use of a 1979-1985 Service Women in Non-Traditional Environments (SWINTER) Trials evaluation of defensible arguments to continue bona fide employment and deployment restrictions for servicewomen ( i.e., exemption from the 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act); in the Department of National Defence’s (DND) response to enactment of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms’Section 15 on Equality Rights; in the CAF’s defence at the 1985-89 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) hearings, and the selection of organizational tools over the 1989-99 period given/ordered by the 1989 CHRT order to institute successful gender integration. 

What is less well-known about 1970-1999 is the CAF had multi-measure, multi-method longitudinal research, a defensible operational definition for gender integration, and CAF organizational effectiveness analyses starting in 1981 that showed how the CAF could understand and undertake managed systems change to institute effective gender integration at all individual, unit, organizational and institutional levels. 

I know this as the author and principal military researcher for the Canadian Forces' 1979-1985 SWINTER Trials evaluation, subpoenaed witness at the 1989 CHRT hearings, and as a DND consultant hired in 1996-1998 to examine CF arguments showing compliance with the 1989 CHRT Order.  

The repeated decision by the CAF not to acknowledge this evidence, officially define gender integration, include/undertake purposeful organizational change solutions to implement effective gender integration is striking. 

It left servicewomen largely on their own to counter prejudice, to defend their commitment to serve Canada, their service, and themselves. The $900M sexual misconduct class action judgement announced on November 25, 2019 partially recognizes the 1970-1999 period in the grievous personal injury and harm caused to servicewomen during their military service from Apr 17, 1985 onward. The $145 million LGBT Purge class action judgement on November 17, 2017 covers June 27, 1969 onward.

If Servicewomen’s Salute 16 Days Campaign Blog assist understanding what occurred from 1970-1999, what is the CAF explanation for the past twenty years when theCAF changed its position of official resistance to official acceptance of full military service and equality for women and men? 

There remains no official CAF operational definition and no official organizational strategy including accountability for effective gender integration contributing to organizational and operational effectiveness. After 50 years, why is this? Meanwhile, unchanged sexual misconduct, harassment and gender discrimination for servicewomen and servicemen continue.