The Canadian Armed Forces: battling between Operation HONOUR and Operation Hop on Her

ABSTRACT

In the last few years, much attention has been focused on women in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). In 2014, a Maclean’s magazine report on sexual misconduct was published; in 2015, former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps conducted an External Review Authority (ERA) investigation that detailed sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in the CAF; and in 2016, Statistics Canada published a report on sexual harassment and sexual assault in the CAF. The results of these reports indicated that the sexualized culture of the CAF, combined with problematic policies and insufficient training, as well as a lack of action by the leadership, resulted in the sexual harassment and sexual assault of many members within its ranks, mainly women but also men. The CAF launched Operation HONOUR in order to address these concerns, which was nicknamed Operation Hop on Her by some members, demonstrating resistance to cultural change. In this article, I describe CAF culture and how it relates to women and gender; outline the history of women in the CAF, particularly as relates to sexual harassment and sexual assault; examine concerns with the content and implementation of related policies; and conclude with a discussion of the intersection of culture, policies, training, and leadership. The article ends on a note of hope, with the possibility that the CAF has now begun to seriously address the organization’s sexualized culture, and discusses the tensions inherent in analysing an institution that both constructs and impedes organization change.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• gender
• military
• sexual harassment
• sexual assault
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The organization’s name has changed back and forth from Canadian Forces (CF) to Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). As the current name is CAF, I use that term throughout for consistency, unless it is in a quotation from another source which used ‘CF’.

2. See Taber (in press) for a discussion of how CAF military men who do not perform expected forms of masculinity are marginalized.

3. In this article, I focus on gender as the bulk of the literature on the CAF does not focus on race, ability, indigeneity, culture, or religion. This is a gap that should be addressed in future research.

4. Men in subordinated forms of masculinity benefit less from this patriarchal dividend (see Taber in press).

5. The survey questions were not included in the report but the purpose was outlined as: ‘Familiarity with the policy and program, Propensity to use ADR, Satisfaction; Possible improvements to the policy and program’ (E-1). Some of my points here are inferred from the purpose and from the results.

6. In an information briefing (1 May 2017), held under Chatham House Rules, on the third progress report on sexual misconduct in the CAF (28 April 2017), there was an indication that the implementation of some of these recommendations may be forthcoming in associated policies and procedures.

7. All MPCC cases retrieved from Case Summaries in MPCC (2017).

8. As defined in the news release, ‘Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) is an analytical competency that will help the CAF consider and account for numerous factors such as age, education, language and culture, among others, in addition to gender into its operational planning and analysis’ (National Defence News Release 2016, para. 8). The Canadian federal government adopted this analytical tool for decision-making in relation to policies and budgets.

9. As I was preparing the final version of this article, CBC’s The Current (2017) aired a story about Sgt. Vicki-Lynn Cox, who, in 2015 (after Operation HONOUR was implemented), reported her own sexual assaults. She explained ‘the military has not helped her navigate the process for pursing her grievances … despite the encouraging tone from the top’ (para. 11). However, in the same time period, The Toronto Star reported that 29 service members were released in 2017 for sexual misconduct.

10. The existence of Basic Diversity Training courses for all new military members is also noted in a 2016 CAF Backgrounder on Women in the Canadian Armed Forces.