One racist in the Canadian Armed Forces is too many

“We will find you and we will get rid of you.” One might assume that sentence was a tough guy quip from a Hollywood action film, but that was the exact threat levelled by Harjit Sajjan, Canada's Minister of National Defence, at racists who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.

The occasion was a Dec. 17 news briefing wherein Sajjan announced the creation of a panel to root out hatemongers and bigots within the ranks. The official mandate for this new watchdog committee will be open-ended and the scope of its investigations will include probing allegations of systemic discrimination, unconscious bias and white supremacist affiliations.

Admittedly this panel was stood up by the DND in response to a recent series of incidents involving CAF members with links to various hate groups. However, from the composition and experience of the individuals selected, it would appear that Sajjan intends to prove that his tough talk is not just a hollow threat.

Those four panel members include: retired U.S. Marine Corps sergeant Derek Montour, a Mohawk who originally served in the Canadian military but left after the divisive 1990 Oka Crisis in Quebec; retired major-general Ed Fitch, who holds the distinction of being only the second Jewish member of the Canadian Armed Forces to achieve the rank of major-general; retired major Sandra Perron, who struggled through abuse and discrimination to become one of Canada's first female infantry officers in the 1990s and retired captain D.L. (Door) Gibson, of Victoria.

Of that group the only individual upon whom I feel I can personally assess would be Sandra Perron. From my experience I would say that Perron is a dedicated dynamo who, despite many of her own adverse experiences in breaking into the hitherto maleonly bastion of the combat arms trade, still has a genuine love for those who wear the uniform and the institution itself.

In response to Sajjan's announcement, Canadian human rights groups welcomed the creation of the panel but they're withholding any actual applause until they start seeing results.

The Canadian Anti-hate Network was very specific in stating the new panel's first move should be to start booting already outed extremists from the ranks of the CAF. One individual that they cited was Calgary-based Leading Sailor Boris Mihajlovic, who was allowed to rejoin the Royal Canadian Navy after CBC reported his past association with the far-right hate group Atom-waffen. To this day Mihajlovic continues to wear the uniform.

“They need to kick out at least a single member of a hate group in a high-profile way to send a message,” Evan Balgord of the Anti-hate Network told the CBC. “Second, they need to bring in outside experts to create tool kits and training modules to help officers identify the telltale signs of hate ideologies.”

While it is understandable that human rights groups would want to see immediate results it needs to be pointed out that Sajjan's new approach is diametrically opposite to what the CAF public affairs branch originally had proposed.

Just a few months ago media reports in the Ottawa Citizen revealed how public affairs officers intended to ‘manage' the issue of potential white supremacists within the ranks of the CAF. Their plan included the creation of dossiers on select journalists who would be most likely to report on such incidents.

That list included Lee Berthiaume of the Canadian Press, Gloria Galloway of the Globe and Mail and Murray Brewster of the CBC.

Of those three, it was Brewster's dossier that received most of the military's attention: “He's familiar with the defence system, and his reporting, while factual, often emphasizes the mistakes and shortcomings of DND and the CAF.”

Given that these dossiers were specific to the subject of white supremacists in the ranks of the CAF, how could Brewster possibly not portray this in a negative fashion? The very existence of people with racist beliefs serving in uniform cannot in any way reflect well upon the military.

The CAF public affairs' main strategy was to mobilize friendly academics and retired military officers to denounce allegations of white supremacists in the ranks as being an ‘extreme rarity' or merely a ‘fraction of a fraction.' But the steady stream of haterelated incidents involving uniformed personnel over the past several months, many first reported by the CBC'S Brewster, have thwarted the CAF'S planned PR offensive.

At his news conference announcing the new panel, Sajjan told reporters, “The incidents we have seen inside the Canadian Armed Forces are disturbing. It's easy to say, to try to defend it, [that] it's a small percentage, point-something of a per cent. I always look at it as one is too many.”

Amen. May I wish Godspeed and happy hunting to this new panel.