Addressing Backlash

and supporting colleagues

Context: Earlier this month, significant backlash aimed at the Summer Issue of the Canadian Military Journal and its authors has popped up in the media. There has been no challenge of these opinions that misrepresent the work of the authors. I wanted to write a response in a slow and composed fashion, but Steve Saideman’s latest Semi-Spew made me realize that slow means I may miss the train and reignite a controversy that should not have existed in the first place.

So here I am.

Disclosures are in order:

1. I have cordial relationships with most of the authors. I consider all of them scholars and leaders, and I am continuously learning from them.

2. My book is reviewed by Meaghan Shoemaker in this issue.

I often struggle on how to respond to backlash, as I am not too keen on giving those who attack me unfairly fuel to their fire. I know I am the one losing that game if I engage. Also, it is mostly unfamiliar to me, as I am one of the lucky ones. Since 2021, I can count the pushback I received on one hand. I have been yelled at by a stranger once and attacked by the counsel of one of the generals accused (who did not disclose that he was at the time his counsel). Funnily enough, most of the criticism I received came from the same side in which I found myself – although this has been the strongest pushback I have received to date, it is only one person, and they’ve kept their poor opinion of me private-ish. Going back to the point, though, every time I have tried to address backlash with the facts available or with my own perspective, it has worked with mitigated results (and in the first instance, more yelling – but oh well, I wasn't told anything new about myself).

With this field, pushback is expected. We’re dealing with and confronts perceptions. As Edgar Schein points out in the most recent edition of Organizational Culture and Leadership, culture creates a sense of identity and involves some of the most ingrained assumptions and beliefs about oneself, the group and what makes them and their actions preferable to others. Therefore, unweaving these beliefs and assumptions for the sake of changing them can be “anxiety provoking”.

DO NOT GET ME WRONG: I do not excuse the unfair and outright dangerous pushback (which I will address more substantially) against the authors of the issue of CMJ. We simply need to understand that there is a psychological process at play when someone’s deepest assumptions and their sense of self are being questioned.

So long as we [see this as the communal “we”] see issues as black and white, determining people as good or evil based on their actions, we will not get anywhere. Instead, we will get irrevocable pushback and will not be able to have the conversation we want, need, and in fact, deserve.

The communal ‘we’ here does not refer to the authors of the Canadian Military Journal issue, let me be clear about this.

So let’s deconstruct the backlash, shall we?

Three headlines have caught my eyes on the matter,

1. “Military full of white supremacy, patriarchy, official Canadian Armed Forces journal says” (True North, 8 Jan 2024)

2. “The Canadian military’s all-in embrace of far-left ‘anti-oppression’ dogma” (National Post, 10 Jan 2024)

3. “Canada’s military leaders and politicians have lost the plot” (Ottawa Sun, 9 Jan 2024).

I could write an entire book about the factual inaccuracies in these articles. But one thing needs to be made clear: although an official journal of the Canadian military, the Canadian Military Journal remains an academic journal, meant to publish research and expose ideas. None of the articles represent official military policy.

The journal includes this disclaimer, which includes: “Opinions expressed or implied in this publication are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, Canadian Military Journal, or any agency of the Government of Canada.”

On that front, I think there is all that there is to say.

In terms of what we call “professional military education,” the goal of publications like CMJ, the Canadian Army Journal, and other peer-reviewed journals in the CAF are not to inculcate or indoctrinate service members. As a result of the Somalia Affair – when members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment stood quiet as they heard the screams of a Somali teenager being tortured to death by two of their comrades – there was a move towards developing the education of officers, and further the development of a “soldier scholar.” A service member who reads extensively, who is curious about ideas, and who reflects deeply about issues. An example of this vision is the Chief of the Defence Staff’s reading list; my book is on the same list as Henry Kissinger’s World Order and C. Turner Joy’s How Communists Negotiate. If you look at the list, you can see it is quite an eclectic mix on different topics. General Eyre reading or even recommending my book does not mean that he subscribes to the ideas I present; he gets to make his own opinion, develop his own insights, and analyses based on the facts he reads.

You can also look a bit further and hear what General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to say about reading widely, and critical race theory:

Calling the authors of the CMJ issue propagandists is not only an undue insult to academics whose work has been peer-reviewed, but it is also an insult to service members who read that issue. The professional military educational system is meant to develop their capacity to think critically – to assume that they will not and get “brain washed” by a series of articles is removing them their agency.

Additionally, it has been proven for decades now that publishing about misconduct in the military has not really changed the culture as substantively as the authors of those three news pieces would like to argue. For longer than my life time, women and men of the Canadian military have been assaulted and mistreated. Decades of proof have been published – most notably the 1998 Maclean’s reports on rape in the military:

• May 1998: https://archive.org/details/Macleans-Magazine-1998-05-25

• June 1998: https://archive.org/details/Macleans-Magazine-1998-06-01

• July 1998: https://archive.org/details/Macleans-Magazine-1998-07-13

• December 1998: https://archive.org/details/Macleans-Magazine-1998-12-14

Over several pages, Maclean’s outline the abuses experienced by service members over the course of their time in the military. Despite the majority of survivors coming forward are women, men had to face abuse, too.

Year after year after year, scandals of sexual violence would come to the front. Reports by retired Justices (Madame Deschamps in 2015 and Madame Arbour in 2022) have been published on the matter as well. In 2019, the government of Canada agreed to pay $900 million dollars to members of the Defence Team (Department of National Defence civilians and members of the Canadian Armed Forces). About 19,000 people have received compensation of the sexual violence they face. While women constituted the majority of claimants, 40% of claimants were men.

Here were the classification of the harms that would entitle someone to receive compensation:

Source: https://www.caf-dndsexualmisconductclassaction.ca/en/faq#4

I know a number of people that have received compensation – from the lowest level to the highest one. And it is not just a woman’s issue. Or a racialized people’s issue. It includes men as well. One of the representatives for the class action lawsuit is Larry Beattie, a retired sailor who was sexually assaulted while in service.

Sexual misconduct is clearly on the rise in the Canadian military. The most recent survey from Statistics Canada shows that the rate of sexual violence in the ranks has more than double since 2018, while reporting rates remain the same. Whether or not part of that increase in survey responses entails an increased awareness, we do not know. The fact remains that while the CAF reports higher numbers of sexual misconduct-related complaints, the latest survey shows that victims are not more likely to report than they were four years ago. In the fiscal year 2022-23, 1,431 cases of sexual misconduct were opened by the military; 50% of those who reported were men. Statistics Canada found that 21% of service members report their assault during the period of late 2021 and early 2023.

Data shows intra-military violence continues to happen – despite publications arguing for radical change in the military's culture, the problem remains ever present.

In my book, I show that there is a strong correlation between sexual violence and other forms of violence within the CAF. The Somalia Affair happened in the same organizational context as the folks who talked to Maclean’s in 1998. We cannot isolate these forms of violence from one another. Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras, looking at other forms of misconduct in the U.S. Army (not related at all to violence in the ranks), also concur with the assessment that misconduct begets misconduct.¹

So interrogating the cause of these forms of violence is warranted. And it is important to note that Dr. Vanessa Brown, Dr. Maya Eichler, Dr. Tammy George, Dr. Okros, Dr. Leigh Spanner, and Dr. Nancy Taber base their research on empirical data, including based on interviews with service members and veterans. Dr. Okros served in the military for decades, worked on military personnel research in the CAF, and was at the helm of the drafting of the leadership doctrine: Leadership in the Canadian Forces. Dr. Taber served in the military for decades as well; Dr. Karen Davis was one of the first women to serve on a Royal Canadian Navy ship. Their research are rooted in fact – whether they use critical race theory, anti-oppression frameworks, or trauma-informed approaches to research (which are valid and recognized forms of methodologies and theories).

For those concerned about whether the military is prioritizing culture change over other priorities such as recruitment, retention, and major capital projects, let’s look at the money. According to budget expert David Perry, by fiscal year 2026/2027, culture change would receive $245 million on an accrual basis of the $8 billion of additional defence spending allocated in Budget 2022. In contrast, “Reinforcing our Defence Priorities” would receive $6.1 billion and enhancing cyber defence would receive $875 million over the same period. (NOTE: this portion might change, as I am a newbie to the money world, and David Perry might very kindly – as usual – point my errors. I will rectify accordingly as soon as I can, and I will openly disclose what I got wrong).²

To spin a notorious Ben Shapiro (yes, I am doing this) quote: feelings do care about facts. However uncomfortable it is to do so, and even might trigger some strong reactions, the facts remain that service members are being harmed while serving in ways that have nothing to do with operations. Service members not only deserve to serve in proper conditions, but they are legally entitled to do so. The concept of duty of care under the National Defence Act is particularly important in light of unlimited liability (when they join, a service member consents to be sent into harm’s way, even if it means it could lead to their deaths). Letting gender- and racial-based violence happen in the military contravenes this legal obligation leaders have for their subordinates.

We have the right to disagree on the causes of intra-military violence in the Canadian Armed Forces. But ad hominem attacks doubled with false statement of the authors’ intent (like them “propagandists” that want to “re-educate” the military) is unacceptable. Let’s not create a culture war when there is none.

1. Leonard Wong & Stephen Gerras, Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession (US Army War College Press, 2015), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/466/

2. Hi boss! David Perry, “The Defence Budget,” 123, in Defence Policy in Theory and Practice, vol. 2, eds. Thomas Juneau and Philippe Lagassé (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Note that this is not the entire picture of the defence budget, and more particularly the culture change related budget. Dr. Perry’s chapter also shows that in Budget 2021, the government allocated $236 million on an accrual basis to addressing sexual violence by fiscal year 2025-2025. However, but over the same time period, the government decreased spending on already existing sexual misconduct measures by $159 million.