MILITARY CARDS STEP UP STANCE ON SEX ASSAULT
OTTAWA • The Canadian Forces has distributed 120,000 wallet-size cards to military personnel to remind them that sexual assault is an “inappropriate” behaviour.
The cards are to be carried by military staff on the job, including when they are sent overseas.
But a critic of how the Canadian Forces has been handling its response to what has been labelled a sexual misconduct crisis says such reminder cards are absurd.
“It is disgusting to label sexual assault as simply something that is inappropriate — it is a criminal act and if you don’t understand that then you have real problems,” said Ottawa lawyer Michel Drapeau, who represents a number of the military personnel who were sexually assaulted or harassed. “These cards do nothing except to show how the Canadian Forces’ leadership still are not taking this crisis seriously.”
The distribution of the cards, which has taken months, finished in April, said military spokesman Capt. Jean-François Lambert.
The cards, part of the military’s Op Honour initiative, list “inappropriate behaviours.”
These include sexual assault, sexual interference, sexual exploitation, offensive sexual remarks or unacceptable language or jokes, unwelcome requests of a sexual nature or verbal abuse of a sexual nature, voyeurism, indecent acts and publishing intimate images of a person without their consent.
The cards call on military personnel to “do no harm.” They also have contact information for a sexual misconduct line, military police and other related services.
About 85,000 cards were distributed to English-speaking military personnel and 35,000 to French-speaking personnel.
As many as 50,000 posters with the same theme were also distributed, said Lambert.
The military launched Op Honour in response to a scathing report on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces, prepared last year by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps.
She found that a “hostile sexualized environment” existed in the military. That included everything from swearing and sexual innuendo to “dubious relationships” between low-ranking women and high-ranking men. It also included rape.
The Op Honour initiative has included town hall meetings, improved training, the establishment of a sexual misconduct response centre and a promise by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance of zero tolerance on such misconduct.