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Results: 106 - 120 of 242
View Kerry-Lynne Findlay Profile
CPC (BC)
Madam Speaker, I find the reaction on the other side of the floor just extraordinary. I thank my colleague for her passionate comments. This is not just a historical matter. It is a current matter, as is clearly shown by this latest golfing excursion.
The last time I looked, the current government had been in power for almost six years. This minister has had his portfolio and his mandates for that same amount of time. Could the member comment on the fact that this is not just a historical matter, but a current matter?
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
View Raquel Dancho Profile
2021-06-17 13:52 [p.8664]
Madam Speaker, when I was crafting my remarks today I knew that some women and men from the military who had been sexually exploited and abused might be watching. I want to take this opportunity to say how sorry I am for what they are going through. When I was writing my remarks, I was looking to give some advice on what they could do, but the reality is that after six years there is still not a clear line of authority for reporting this kind of misconduct.
We saw that with General Vance three years ago. When the ombudsman came forward and said there was something going on, what did the minister of defence do? He pushed himself away from the desk and said that he could not hear about this. That is what the minister of defence did when he was approached with a sexual misconduct issue. He physically excused himself from that situation, did nothing about it and never followed up.
That is where we are with the current Liberal government. That is really the only hope that the Liberals are offering women in the military today. How disappointing that is, and I wish I could have offered something more—
View Tom Kmiec Profile
CPC (AB)
View Tom Kmiec Profile
2021-06-17 13:53 [p.8664]
Madam Speaker, it is hard to follow a member like the member for Kildonan—St. Paul. She basically made the entire case for this motion. I am not going to repeat what she said because she passionately explained to Canadians and her constituents the exact matter at hand: the minister's dereliction of duty, his failure to take command of the situation, to own responsibility for it and to do the right thing.
This is a motion that calls for the minister's censure. The House of Commons is unsatisfied with the quality of his work. It is not enough to simply keep repeating that he is doing something. I have heard Liberal MPs say this repeatedly. The member for Winnipeg North made the best possible case that could be made in the House, and it is still not enough. I hear from constituents and read in the papers that he is just not doing enough. He has failed. He has not done the job.
The Prime Minister refuses to relieve him of his responsibilities, so we are at a point where we have to censure a member. Earlier today the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman mentioned that 20 years had passed since a member had been censured in the House in this manner for the performance of their duties and responsibilities to Canadians. It has been a very long time.
The issues are the sexual harassment and misconduct allegations in the military, the treatment of Vice-Admiral Norman and the continuing cover-up of what is going on. They include misleading Canadians on the withdrawal of fighter jets in the fight against ISIS. They go on and on. The Canadian Forces are in disarray. The men and women in uniform do not have a leader who is willing to take command. At last count, eight or nine senior officers in the military had either resigned, been fired or been relieved of command duties. That is huge. We have no commander-in-chief and there is no Governor General, either. The minister is supposed to be the one responsible at the moment, and I do not think there is any faith in his ability to deliver on everything that he is supposed to right now, which is why Conservatives are asking for a vote of censure on him.
“The first rule of politics: never believe anything until it's been officially denied.” That is a Sir Humphrey Appleby quote. There will be a Yiddish proverb at some point. I will think of one.
The minister has denied knowing anything, but then there were internal access to information requests that came back saying the minister knew. There was a long chain of information from the Privy Council of what it knew, when it knew it and when it was informed these were #MeToo sexual harassment allegations. Now we have that information and it is unbelievable that we are here, nearing the end of June and still debating who is responsible for the failure to address these systemic problems in the senior ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Brigadier-General Gordon O'Connor served the House very honourably. He was the minister of national defence over a decade ago. He used to say that sexual harassment and misconduct issues in the military were issues of command. There is a command responsibility for senior officers to look after those in the lower ranks, and to make sure they are treated correctly by their commanding officers. Commanding officers who cannot keep control of their troops have failed in their duties of command, in just the way the minister has failed in his responsibilities of command.
The reason I know Gordon O'Connor, a former brigadier-general, former “zipperhead” or tank commander and former minister of national defence in the House, is because I was a junior exempt staffer in his employ. I know exactly what he expected of senior officers in his ranks. That is well over a decade ago now, so I am dating myself. As my staff always remind me, there is a generational divide between them and me.
The Yiddish proverb I am thinking of is, “Words should be weighed, not counted.” The motion has weighty words in it. Conservatives are asking for censure of a minister for his performance and failure in the conduct of his duties. He has a responsibility to the men and women in the armed forces to ensure, first, that their commanding officers do not mistreat them, and second, that he follows through on investigations to make sure they are safe from their own members in their workplace. They expect the enemy on the battlefield to be shooting at them, trying to end their lives and kill them.
What they expect in return is that we have their backs, that the minister has their backs and that when he sends them into harm's way, he sends them with commanding officers who are able to ensure their personal safety from their own. That is a minimum requirement we should expect from the minister and the senior ranks of the military.
I know that the member for Edmonton West will appreciate that I have gone through the minister's departmental plans that he signed off on. After question period I will refer to the departmental plans, but they show that the minister, who signs off on these documents every time they are submitted with the estimates that we have to vote on, and the military have not been taking it seriously.
I read here, “To be determined by 31 March 31 2021”, and then it defers it until 2022 and future years. There are no targets in place. There is no plan in place in their own departmental plans. They have not said anything in about here fixing actual goals for dealing with the problem. They are literally kicking it down the road. They are waiting for future years to take care of this. There is talk publicly, but as for the actual plans for the civil service and what it is supposed to be doing, there is nothing there.
After question period, I will fill members in on the rest.
View Erin O'Toole Profile
CPC (ON)
View Erin O'Toole Profile
2021-06-17 14:19 [p.8669]
Mr. Speaker, let us review. The minister falsified his service record, turfed Admiral Mark Norman, bought used fighter jets, slashed health care for military personnel and covered up sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces after a complaint by a woman in uniform three years ago.
Will the minister finally resign?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I will start with what matters most to me and to our government. No woman should be sexually harassed at work. No woman in the Canadian Armed Forces should be sexually harassed while serving her country. We must change the toxic culture in the Canadian Armed Forces, and we will do just that.
View Erin O'Toole Profile
CPC (ON)
View Erin O'Toole Profile
2021-06-17 14:20 [p.8669]
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will not fire the defence minister. The defence minister will not do the honourable thing and resign. The military has no respect for their minister, and the hard-working people of Vancouver South have lost confidence in him.
Canadians cannot afford more of the same corruption from the defence minister. Therefore, I urge all my Liberal colleagues to vote in favour of censuring him for his conduct, and join the Conservatives in sending a clear message to the women who serve their country that we are demanding better and demanding a change at the top.
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I want to start with what is most important to me and our government, which is that no woman should be sexually harassed in Canada. That is particularly true when it comes to Canada's brave women in uniform. To those women I would like to say directly that there is clearly a toxic culture in our armed forces and that must change. Our government has full confidence in our Minister of National Defence.
View Erin O'Toole Profile
CPC (ON)
View Erin O'Toole Profile
2021-06-17 14:22 [p.8670]
Mr. Speaker, if the Deputy Prime Minister is concerned, she should realize the toxic culture starts with the Prime Minister, the defence minister and the chief of staff. For three years, everyone in the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office knew of these allegations. The Deputy Prime Minister has an office in the same building.
If she is sincere about ending the toxic culture she just talked about, after three years of failing the woman who came forward, how can women in the Canadian Armed Forces possibly have any faith in the defence minister to do his job after he failed them so badly for three years?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, our Minister of National Defence is an inspirational trailblazer and we are proud to have him on our team. I would like to share with the House and Canadians some examples of the minister's work that I saw first-hand as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He defended Canada's national interests during the Trump administration in the face of charges that our steel and aluminum tariffs posed a national security threat. We worked together at NATO to pledge Canada's support for the Baltic states, for Ukraine and to build the training mission in Iraq. This is the track record of our Minister of National Defence.
View Leona Alleslev Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, Canada's military is in crisis on the defence minister's watch. There have been hours of jarring testimony detailing accounts of abuse of power, rape, sexual harassment and discrimination. Numerous generals are under investigation, others complicit through their actions or their silence. However, the defence minister will not accept any responsibility. He will not do the honourable thing, admit he has failed in his duties and resign.
Will the Prime Minister act and fire his defence minister?
View Leona Alleslev Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, the defence minister has consistently misrepresented the facts, refused to answer questions, failed to implement important changes to improve the military's culture and turned a blind eye to serious allegations of misconduct. The Prime Minister directed his ministers to create a “culture of integrity and accountability that allows [them] to earn and keep the trust of Canadians”. The defence minister has been derelict in his duty and has lost that trust.
Will the Prime Minister act and fire the defence minister?
View Erin O'Toole Profile
CPC (ON)
View Erin O'Toole Profile
2021-06-17 15:03 [p.8677]
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has responded to several questions today in the House, but will not respond to my questions and I ask if he would. As someone who has served his country, he knows the military slogan, “Never pass a fault”. That is what he is doing with his failed leadership. He is the only original minister of the Liberal government. He has had six years, three Supreme Court justice reports, two ombuds reports, eight generals who have resigned, the last two chiefs of the defence staff under investigation, and he gives words like, “We need to do better; we need to do more”. We do, but we need a new minister with the confidence of Canadians to do that.
Will he resign?
View Tom Kmiec Profile
CPC (AB)
View Tom Kmiec Profile
2021-06-17 15:44 [p.8682]
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the extra 45 seconds. It is much appreciated. I was worried I would not have time to go through the departmental plans.
Where I left off before question period was that I wanted to get into the departmental plans. This is where the rubber hits the pavement. This is where we see the priorities of the minister. Is he actually taking seriously the sexual misconduct allegations, stories, and individual cases of men and women who have been abused by others in the military? What I discovered is that the government is not taking it seriously, and the minister is not taking it seriously.
Let us go back to the 2018-19 departmental plan. It has “Annual # of reported incidents of Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour in the Defence Team” as one category of priorities, and then under “Target”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”. It has no available indicators of where they were at. Under the field “Number and type of actions taken in response to reported Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour incidents by the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”.
I will move on to the following years, 2019-20. Under “Annual number of reported incidents of Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour in the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”. Again, there are no indicators anywhere, no reported numbers anywhere. Under “Number and type of actions taken in response to reported Harmful and Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour incidents by the Defence Team”, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2021”.
I will move on to the next departmental plan, 2020-21. Under “% of the Canadian Armed Forces...who self-identify as victims of harassment”, the target is “Less than 11.9%”. The minister signed off on every single departmental plan. Less than 12% is one in eight members of the Canadian Armed Forces to suffer being inappropriately harassed in the workplace. The actual results for 2018-19 were 17.7%. This is the first time there are actual numbers being presented here.
Now, in the departmental plan for 2021-22, the fields actually change, which is pretty typical of the government. We have “Annual number of reported incidents of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces”. Members would think that by now the department would have it figured out, but no, it says “To be determined by 31 March 2022”. There are two wonderful little asterisks, and they leave it for well into the future.
If the minister was actually serious, if the words he says in this chamber and outside in nice statements actually meant anything to him, he would have followed through in the departmental plans that he signs off on and ensured that there was follow-up and actual, real targets put forward. This is why the House has come to the moment now of censuring the minister, because he has shown a dereliction of his duties, an irresponsibility of command and, overall, he has led the Canadian Forces into disarray. The situation we find ourselves in is entirely of his own doing.
As was mentioned during question period, this is a minister who served in his post the longest of any member of cabinet. He owns the entire last six years; they are entirely his responsibility. We are making a judgment call here, as members of Parliament, to hold him personally accountable for his own performance, which, as we can see in the departmental plans, does not meet the standards of what a minister should be doing.
As the member for Kildonan—St. Paul said before me, the minister has shown an extreme dereliction of duty and of his own responsibilities as the top member responsible. He is the political head of the department, the political head of the Canadian Armed Forces. It falls to him at the end of the day, and he has fallen far short. We must vote to censure the minister on this matter.
View Kelly McCauley Profile
CPC (AB)
View Kelly McCauley Profile
2021-06-17 15:49 [p.8683]
Mr. Speaker, the departmental plans, as described on the government's website, “describe departmental priorities”. These are priorities presented in the House, signed by the minister himself.
Now, in the departmental plan for this year, there are two notable things. My colleague mentioned several, but there is also “Number of Canadian Armed Forces members who have attended a training session related to sexual misconduct (Operation HONOUR)”. It says the department will set a goal, not this year, but a year from now. So, there is no goal set for this year. This has been an issue for three years, and the department cannot even set a goal until next year. The other one is “Number and type of actions taken in response to reported sexual misconduct incidents by the Defence Team”. What is the department's goal? There is not any this year, but it will set a goal next year.
What does my colleague think when the minister stands and states again and again that this is a priority? Ending this misconduct is a priority, and yet the minister's own form that he signed and presented to the House states that the department will not even look at it this year and maybe a goal will be set next year.
View Tom Kmiec Profile
CPC (AB)
View Tom Kmiec Profile
2021-06-17 15:50 [p.8683]
Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. The member for Edmonton West obviously has read the departmental plans. He is probably one of the few members who have read all of the departmental plans that the government ministers put forward. If anybody wants to follow at home, it is actually page 51 that we are talking about. It is one of the rows below.
He is right. If this was a priority and it was absolutely serious, then in these plans that the minister signed off on he would have given absolute direction to the department, set the target, benchmarked himself against the goal he was trying to reach, and proven to the rest of us that he actually does take this seriously.
We have had three Supreme Court justice reports up to this point. There are more than a half-dozen senior officers in the military who have resigned, stepped down or been relieved of their command. We do not have a Governor General. The Canadian Forces is in disarray, and it is entirely the fault of the defence minister. He has to be censured.
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