According to an internal national defense poll reviewed by Global News, nearly 40 percent of Canadians are not confident that the Canadian armed forces will “appropriately” deal with allegations of sexual misconduct.
And while the Canadian public holds favorable views of its armed forces, a March 2022 report shows those positive sentiments are waning amid ongoing misconduct scandals and concerns about racism within the ranks.
“I think there is really a crisis of trust in the Canadian public with the military, and it is very unusual. The Canadian Forces have been the most trusted public institution for a very long time,” said Simons in International Law and Human Security at Simon Fraser University. Chair Megan McKenzie said.
“But I think that with the years of accusations and scandals, when it comes to recent reports on sexual misconduct (and) racism within the forces and the presence of white supremacism within the forces, I think Canadians… feel… the culture (that) has evolved, and it is also uncertain whether the current leadership is capable of steering the institution in the right direction.”
While the Earnscliffe poll found that the overall effects of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were mostly positive or neutral, “tracking data (over years) shows that the degree of positivity towards the CAF is low.”
In 2020, 43 per cent of the respondents said that their perception of those serving in the CAF was strongly positive. The following year, only 35 percent agreed.
The Canadian Armed Forces has been battling a sexual misconduct crisis since February 2021, when Global News first reported that General Jonathan Vance, the former Defense Staff chief, faced allegations of inappropriate behavior from female subordinates after leaving a top military post.
In the same month Vance was replaced by Adam. Art McDonald resigned from his position after allegations against him surfaced in the media.
The crisis sparked a flurry of accusations against senior officials, questions about how the Liberal government handled allegations they were aware of, and to change the way the military handled cases of alleged sexual misconduct. Made comprehensive recommendations.
And the crisis continues.
On Wednesday, the military police charged the lieutenant general. Steven Whelan has two counts of “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline” relating to his alleged affair with a subordinate. Whelan has been on leave since October 2021, just months after replacing Vice-Adam. Hayden Edmondson, who was himself on leave after a military investigation into the allegations, sexually assaulted a subordinate officer.
The Earnscliffe poll suggested that 81 percent of Canadians paid attention to news coverage of the crisis, and 15 percent paid “a lot” of attention.
“The impact of these allegations on CAF impressions was mixed,” read the report’s summary of the focus group findings.
“Some, and especially men, were more likely to say that while the events they had heard were horrifying, the perpetrators’ behavior did not reflect the entire CAF … some participants (mostly women) argued The CAF’s efforts to ‘hide’ the allegations cast a negative light on the entire army, given what they believed to be.
The focus groups found that women aged 18-34 – the CAF’s target recruitment demographic – were “less confident that the culture of the CAF would change in the future.” While younger women were particularly likely to express that concern, there was “skepticism” in the response to CAFs among all demographic groups interviewed by Earnscliffe.
“Those who believed the CAF would address the allegations argued that media pressure could force the military to change and that failure to do so could hinder future recruitment efforts,” the report said. Is.”
According to preliminary data provided to Global News by the Department of National Defense, the proportion of women enlisting in the Army’s regular officer training program this year is about 18 percent — far lower than the five-year high of 27 percent. set last year.
The program aims to select young men and women to serve as officers in the military in various occupations, with successful applicants attending the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont. or the Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Quebec .
The department cautioned that it is continuing the process of proactive proposals for this program, in which 93 per cent admissions have been completed so far.
According to internal data compiled by the Department of National Defense, the military falls well short of its overall target for recruiting women, visible minorities and indigenous peoples.
As of 2020-21, only 16.3 per cent of CAFs were identified as women – well short of their target of 25 per cent, but still running up from 15.2 per cent in 2016-17. Visible minorities accounted for 9.5 percent of the CAF, while 2.8 percent identified as indigenous – both falling short of the CAF’s targets.
More than half of survey respondents (56 percent) also said they are concerned about systemic racism in the Canadian military.
There are growing concerns about the threat posed by those within the ranks who support white nationalism and other racist views.
An advisory panel report presented to Defense Minister Anita Anand earlier this year found that systemic racism is rampant across Canadian forces, discouraging military enlistments and endangering the country’s national security .
In December, Canada’s national security review body called white supremacy in the CAF an “active counter-intelligence threat” and warned that military officials are “limited” in their ability to address it.
The Earnscliffe report points out that those concerns are shared by Canadians, with the number of respondents who agree that the military does not tolerate racist or hateful behavior, down from 61 percent in 2020 to just 46 percent.
Similarly, Earnscliffe found that “just 32 percent say CAF is doing a good job of addressing hateful, racist or sexist conduct while 46 percent disagree.”
According to internal data compiled by the Department of National Defense, the military falls well short of its target to recruit women, visible minorities and indigenous peoples.
As of 2020-21, only 16.3 per cent of CAFs were identified as women – well short of their target of 25 per cent, but still running up from 15.2 per cent in 2016-17. Visible minorities accounted for 9.5 percent of CAFs, while 2.8 percent identified as indigenous – both well short of the target of 11.8 percent and 3.5 percent of CAFs, respectively.
According to the departmental result report of DND and CAF for 2020-21, the regular force of CAF was 93 per cent of its target of 71,500 personnel. Reserve forces had just 79.8 percent of their 30,000 target. But there were “serious shortfalls” in personnel in more than half of the Army’s occupations, a percentage significantly higher than the force’s target of less than five percent.
As part of the study, Earnscliffe surveyed 1,501 Canadians aged 18 and older last summer, either online or by phone.
The research group also conducted a total of 10 online focus groups, interviewing individuals living within 100 kilometers of the following five cities: Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Moncton.
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.