What you need to know about military sexual misconduct scandal
RELATIONSHIP WITH SUBORDINATE NOW REACHES DEEP INTO PM’S INNER CIRCLE
YES, I DID MEET WITH MINISTER SAJJAN ON MARCH 1, 2018, YES, I DID DIRECTLY TELL HIM ABOUT AN ALLEGATION OF INAPPROPRIATE SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR MADE AGAINST THE CHIEF OF DEFENCE.
— FORMER MILITARY OMBUDSMAN GARY WALBOURNE TESTIFIED TO THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE ON MARCH 3.
THE VANCE AFFAIR
Senior members of the Liberal government have become ensnared by allegations that they hushed up or ignored 2018 revelations that Canada’s top soldier was facing a sexual misconduct accusation.
It’s just the latest development in a scandal centring on Gen. Jonathan Vance, the former chief of defence staff who once vowed to root out sexual misconduct in the Canadian military — but was allegedly simultaneously carrying on a clandestine affair with a subordinate.
Below, what you need to know about the sexual misconduct scandal that has rocked the Canadian military and is now spurring calls from Parliament Hill for a top-down scouring of the armed forces.
VANCE’S TOP ACCUSER SAYS SHE BORE TWO OF HIS CHILDREN
Maj. Kellie Brennan, an infantry officer in the Canadian Armed Forces since 1991, has been at the centre of the Vance misconduct allegations. In a February interview with Global News, Brennan first went public to say that she had been in a sexual relationship with the general since 2001, back when he had been a battalion commander at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
The pair’s first meeting occurred at a Legion on Remembrance Day. Brennan was acting as her commander’s staff officer when she said Vance approached them. “He presented himself to my commander and looked at me ... and my commander took a step backwards and he took a step forwards, and then he pursued me afterwards,” she told Global. Although the pair initially dated openly while at Gagetown, their relationship would allegedly eventually evolve into 20 years of clandestine sexual meetings, what Brennan says Vance called “ships in the night that clink their lights when they see each other and they know that they’re not alone.” Brennan alleged that their affair continued even after Vance was married and she had sex with him the night before he was sworn in as chief of the defence staff in July 2015, when he sought her advice on his speech.
Fears over a defamation lawsuit dissuaded Global from initially reporting what Brennan would tell the Status of Women Committee on April 22, that Vance had fathered two of her eight children. “On a personal note, he fathered two children with me. He’s not responsible to pay or to have those children under his responsibility,” she said.
Vance has denied that the pair had a relationship after Gagetown.
OTHER MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS HAVE SWIRLED AROUND THE GENERAL
Vance is also accused of sending a 2012 email to a soldier he significantly outranked, inviting her to join him on a vacation to a nudist resort. At the time, Vance was a major general, the third-highest rank in the Canadian Armed Forces, and the soldier was a corporal, the third-lowest rank. The soldier had reportedly solicited Vance for career advice, and the email was turned over to Canadian Forces ombudsman Gary Walbourne in 2018, after Vance was already chief of defence staff.
Vance’s current marriage also began as a relationship with a subordinate, although she wasn’t in his immediate chain of command. Kerry Wheelehan, now Vance’s wife, was a U.S. officer when Vance met her at a NATO posting in Naples, Italy. From 2013 to 2014, Vance served as Deputy Commander, Allied Joint Force Command Naples. Vance would face allegations of inappropriate behaviour during the posting that would spark a 2015 probe by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. The nature of the allegations have never been made public, only that the CFNIS found no grounds to lay charges.
Following Brennan’s allegations, the CFNIS opened up a file on the general’s conduct. In her committee testimony, Brennan said that military police with CFNIS questioned her for 12 hours over two days about her relationship with Vance. She said the investigators refused to answer when she asked if they could properly investigate the former chief of the defence staff.
“As (Vance) told me, he was untouchable,” Brennan testified. “He owned the CFNIS. I feel there will not be justice for me.”
Last month, Global News published screenshots from a private Facebook forum for Canadian Military Police that appeared to be mocking the Brennan testimony. “If you sleep with a senior rank you get good postings and promotion … if the senior rank is a general then one should know better and you get nothing,” read one.
Key to Brennan’s April testimony was her allegation that, as a subordinate, she didn’t feel able to reject his sexual advances while he was her superior. “I was not to mention certain things about our relationship, about our personal lives,” she said. “I didn’t have the ability to say no. They were orders.”
VANCE BECAME CHIEF OF DEFENCE STAFF WITH A PLEDGE TO FIGHT SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN THE MILITARY
Vance became chief of defence staff only weeks after the results were released of a comprehensive external probe into sexual misconduct within the Canadian military. The report, which drew on testimony from 700 service members, outlined what it called a “sexualized culture” that is ignored or even encouraged by upper ranks.
In particular, the probe highlighted how the strict power dynamics of the chain of command can muddy the concept of consent. “In the all-encompassing power structure of the CAF … a complainant may feel even greater pressure to go along with sexual conduct than an employee in a civilian employment context,” it read.
“I do not like the idea that anybody — even a single person — would have to come to work anywhere in the Armed Forces (with) that sick feeling in their stomach that they’re going to be attacked, degraded, or have their dignity stripped from them,” said Vance after his swearing-in in 2015, after which he launched Operation Honour, a program to address sexual misconduct within the military.
In Brennan’s February interview with Global News, she said that Operation Honour was well underway when she approached Vance with her own stories of sexual harassment and even rape within the Armed Forces — only to have them ignored by the general. “He couldn’t defend me — then people would know about us,” she said.
CURRENT MINISTER OF DEFENCE HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF IGNORING THE VANCE ALLEGATIONS
Vance was appointed chief of defence staff in 2015 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, when the general was already subject to rumours that he had been carrying on an affair with a subordinate.
Just days before his swearing-in, the PMO became aware of the rumours surrounding Vance and Brennan, which were forwarded by the office of then-veterans affairs minister Erin O’toole, himself a military veteran who is now Conservative leader.
Nevertheless, the claims fizzled out amid a lack of any formal allegations and Vance’s explanation that his only relationship with Brennan was their brief time dating while both were stationed at Gagetown. Vance also said that Brennan had not been under his command at the time. “He denied improperly acting to further her career,” was how former Harper chief of staff Ray Novak described the encounter in March testimony to the National Defence Committee.
In her interview with Global, however, Brennan said that not only did Vance transfer her under his command “to have me close,” but actively held back her chances for advancement. “He said ‘I can’t recommend you,’ even though I had, at the time, the qualifications for the next rank,” she said.
But it was the 2018 reveal of Vance’s email exchange with a subordinate that has now thrown scrutiny at the current minister of defence, Harjit Sajjan. As military ombudsman Walbourne told the National Defence Committee on March 3, Sajjan physically recoiled when presented with evidence of possible sexual misconduct from the general — which Global would later confirm was the 2012 email in which Vance solicited a corporal to join him at a nudist retreat.
“I did tell the minister what the allegation was. I reached into my pocket to show him the evidence I was holding. He pushed back from the table and said, ‘No,’ ” said Walbourne. In his own testimony to the National Defence Committee, Sajjan would say that he was deliberately trying not to hear details of the allegation in order to avoid getting involved in any misconduct investigation. “I very purposely respected the investigative process to ensure that it remained independent,” he said. Nevertheless, in subsequent interviews Sajjan has refused to say whether he knew that the nature of the complaint was sexual.
The defence committee also heard that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff knew about the 2018 allegation. Elder Marques, a former senior adviser to Trudeau in the Prime Minister’s Office, told the committee that he discussed with Katie Telford on a number of occasions the situation with Vance. It was either Telford or her assistant who originally asked Marques to get involved after Walbourne brought forth the allegation. Marques told the committee that he took the matter to the Privy Council Office.
On Friday, Telford told the defence committee that she didn’t learn the content of the complaint against Vance until it was reported publicly. However, she confirmed that she knew “there was a possibility that it could be that, that it could be a sexual allegation, and so that’s why we were taking it so seriously at the beginning.” Conservative defence critic James Bezan and other MPS repeatedly pressed Telford on whether she purposely kept Trudeau in the dark about the allegation, and who decided not to tell him. She didn’t directly answer.
THE GENERAL IS ACCUSED OF USING HIS POSITION TO COVER IT UP AN AFFAIR WITH A SUBORDINATE