Another diversity report for the DND shredder

TL/DR: Things are bad everywhere, you can't argue back, so we'll beat on you. Again.

Canadian soldier rests in a trench during an exercise in 2015. A new report suggests this trench should include a “safe space for breastfeeding.” PHOTO: CF Combat Camera

A new advisory panel report on “Systemic Racism and Discrimination” in Canada’s “Defence Team” should be read by every senior officer, before it’s fed into the nearest shredder. It offers nothing of value to today’s military leaders on how to better achieve their mission.

The report is broken into thirds, the first of which is dedicated to relating the story of hatred in Canada since the mid 1400’s. Although it completely omits the prehistoric history of internecine hatred and tribal warfare between first peoples of this land long before Europeans showed their pale faces on this continent, this report effectively lays centuries of “intersectional hate-ism” at the feet of currently serving Canadian soldiers.

Before 1497, before the arrival of Europeans, the northern part of Turtle Island, known today as Canada, was home to First Nations Peoples. The colonization of Canada began with the arrival of the first Europeans from Britain and France in the early 1600s…

As an exercise in blaming all the world’s evils on a group of Canadians who liberals love to hate, this report is a brilliant success. As a tome grounded in the reality of today’s world, it’s purely fantasy. As a guidebook to help leaders improve anything, anywhere, ever, it’s an outright failure.

The report also lambastes Canada’s military leadership for failing to adopt any of the recommendations in “dozens” of previous similar reports. A quick read of this report tells you why: there are no actionable recommendations.

Tits on a bull would be more helpful.

The authors take great pains to list every way systemic intersectionalism exists in Canadian society at large and proposes that all these issues also exist within the Canadian military. To prove this, they interviewed 75 people.

There are approximately 100,000 uniformed members of the Canadian Forces regular and reserve, plus 5,200 Canadian Rangers who patrol the northern reaches of our country. The “defence team” also includes about 24,000 civilian employees of the Department of National Defence. So, 75 interviewees represent about 0.06 percent of the population being assessed. Even worse, all 75 likely self-identified to participate in the process. Hardly a representative sample.

I am not arguing the issues of concern in this report do not exist in the Canadian military. Of course they do. The military is drawn from broader Canadian society and, therefore, represents its strengths and flaws.

Beyond doubt there are some bad people in the military. Are there racists? Yes. Are some of them white supremacists? Probably. Are there men who prey on women? Yes. Are there thieves? Yes. Are there bullies? Yes.

You can say the same of any subgroup of Canadian society: There are abusers in the Church, in banking, in policing, in politics, in healthcare, in your industry and your workplace. The question is not “are they there?” The question is “How many?”

This report offers no answer to that question. There is no quantitative analysis in this report beyond a demographic analysis showing there are fewer indigenous gay women in the military than exist in the general Canadian population. One can say the same thing about the House of Commons, our medical schools, our bricklaying schools and any bank in the country.

Nothing in the way of practical solutions

Even worse, the report offers no practical solutions to improve the situation. Even where it tries, its suggestions fail because the authors of the report demonstrate zero comprehension of what its like to live and work as warriors. Although many of the panelists have prior service in the military – none of them appears to have combat experience, and none of the peacetime experience they have is current.

By failing to understand the purpose of a military, the report fails to put its observations and recommendations into a practical context. As a result, recommendations are based on the erroneous expectation that the purpose of the military is to reflect the society it is drawn from. That is patently false.

Canada’s demographics should be proportionally represented at all levels of the Defence Team with regards to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. And yet, inequality in representation persists in every corner of the Defence Team.

As an example, the report focuses on ideas to improve the “defence team workplace.” The “workplace” is a civilian construct that, no doubt, reflects the peacetime military experience of the panelists where work starts at 8:00 am and ends at 4:00 pm most days. I recognize that assumption, because it reflects much of the Cold War experience of many former warriors.

But, that’s not the workplace a military is designed for. To understand what the workplace is actually like for a military at work, imagine being in the Ukrainian army right now. That’s the workplace our military must be prepared for.

As a result of this misdirection, much of the report’s commentary and many of its recommendations are laughable.

Combat breastfeeding spaces? The report calls for “safe breastfeeding spaces” in all “Defence Team workspaces.” So, presumably, every trench, every fighter jet, every tank and submarine, must now be outfitted with a safe space for breast-feeding while actively engaged in combat operations against an enemy. Newsflash for the authors: the entire point of a military is to be functional in spaces that are not safe – in fact, spaces that are entirely, by design, quite lethal.

Perhaps, the Defence Team of the not-so-distant future will be one where… Nursing mothers can pump their milk in a safe, comfortable place and are offered an appropriate place to store their milk.

No more Catholic or Jewish Chaplains? The report takes issue with military chaplains, pointing out that some faiths have dogmatic approaches to diverse populations that are “not aligned” with Canadian values. Therefore, the military should choose its chaplains from different religions, recommends the “Defence Team:

6.1 Do not consider for employment as spiritual guides or multi-faith representatives Chaplaincy applicants affiliated with religious groups whose values are not aligned with those of the Defence Team. The Defence Team’s message, otherwise, is inconsistent.

So, we need a much, much, much larger military? Some of the report’s recommendations suggest the Canadian Forces’ “universality of service” principle needs to change. This principle is borne of the fact Canada’s military is very, very small – too small for a nation of our size, with the world’s longest frontier, and global interests to project our values worldwide. Our military is simply too small to carry anyone who can’t fight today, if needed. Other militaries have often accommodated those wounded in combat; the US Army in Afghanistan frequently had pilots and even infantrymen serving in combat despite using modern prosthetics after losing one or both legs in previous tours. But the US Army is big enough to make this possible. Canada’s army is not. We will need a much, much bigger military if we want to adopt this recommendation:

7.1 Reconsider the CAF’s universality of service policy to identify ways of valuing the contributions of members who have been injured or maimed in service to their country.

Likewise, if we are going to mandate (not just permit) all members of our military to take their full entitlement of parental leave, regardless of their operational status, then that means having a significant percentage of the fighting force on parental leave at any one moment. Unlike other, larger armies populated with much younger soldiers, Canada’s military is populated by career-focused men and women who are in their peak parenting years. Being on parental leave means being undeployable. We would need to double or triple the size of our fighting force if we wanted to adopt this panel recommendation:

11.2 Ensure that ALL Canadian Armed Forces fathers take (parental) leave. It is the Advisory Panel's opinion that the participation of men in childcare is a contributing factor to improving workplace gender equality. As such, it must be normalized, first artificially, then naturally.

Diversity is not the goal. It’s a tactic.

The report suggests the military’s core purpose is to be a representative reflection of Canadian society. That’s a nice ideal. But it fails on two accounts. First, it ignores the purpose of a military. Second, it aspires to an ideal that has never existed anywhere at any time.

Throughout its work, the Advisory Panel has been guided by a vision for a truly diverse and equitable Defence Team.

All Canadians benefit when our national organizations are safe, healthy and inclusive environments in which all citizens have an equal chance to contribute. Consequently, Canada’s demographics should be proportionally represented at all levels of the Defence Team with regards to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

The purpose of the military is to destroy our enemies. All Canadians benefit when we can field a combat force strong enough to, ideally, deter our enemies from attacking our citizens, sovereign lands and values or, if necessary, physically prevent them from doing so by killing those who try.

To do this, our military must be trained, staffed and equipped to bring down lethal violence on the heads of those who seek to harm Canadians, Canada and Canadian values at home and around the world. That is their purpose. That is the goal. Everything else is secondary to this objective.

This means hiring Canadians who aspire to be the world’s best warriors despite the difficulty, discomfort and danger that implies. And, to hire enough of them to field a meaningful combat-capable force on any battlefield, anywhere at any time – and to replace them when they’re exhausted. This is where diversity is important.

To field and sustain a military the size Canada requires (which is much larger than what Canada has provided funding for) our military must be able to attract warrior recruits from across the Canadian panoply. There simply aren’t enough white anglo saxon sons to do the job.

Warriors are a small percentage of the population. To attract enough of them to meet our needs, we must be able to attract warriors from every corner of Canada. We need warriors who are white, black, brown and mixed, warriors who are straight and gay, male and female, immigrant and native-born, religious, agnostic and atheist.

Diversity is not important to Canada’s military because the military should represent the Canadian mosaic. Diversity is important to the Canadian military because it needs to tap every conceivable well to develop enough warriors to defend our land. To do this, our military must be a place where brown, gay immigrants and white, native-born women who want to be warriors, feel welcomed. Only then will Canada be able to field the military it needs to kill and deter our enemies.

Diversity is not the goal. Diversity is a tactic to achieve the goal.

The idea our military should be a posterized representation of the Canadian mosaic is laughable. It’s a goal that has never been achieved anywhere, by any nation, at any time in history, that fielded a military capable of winning in battle. Canada will not be the first to achieve this.

But, the Canadian military must be better able to attract, train and retain warriors of every description in our fighting force. It can do this. Unfortunately, this report to the minister, like all those that preceded it, offers little help in achieving this.

Worse, this report will create bureaucratic busy work that will take crucial time and energy away from rebuilding Canada’s combat capability – at a time we need it more than ever in the past 30 years.