Building a Defence Team culture where all members feel safe, respected, and empowered to bring their best selves to service is the top priority for the organization.
Since 2021, unprecedented efforts have been deployed to achieve a meaningful and sustainable evolution of Defence Team culture. While these efforts are occurring throughout the organization, they are led and coordinated through the Chief, Professional Conduct and Culture (CPCC) under the leadership of Lieutenant-General (LGen) Jennie Carignan and Ms. Marie Doyle.
Since its inception, CPCC has delivered important and impactful results, including the development and implementation of foundational initiatives aimed at strengthening leadership, creating a strong and inclusive sense of identity, improving the service experience, and building more cohesive teams.
Looking forward, CPCC is leading the development of a Comprehensive Implementation Plan to prioritize and sequence implementation of external report recommendations, including those stemming from the Independent External Comprehensive Review (IECR) led by Justice Louise Arbour.
Context
Established as a Level One (L1) organization in April 2021, CPCC works to unify and integrate all culture evolution activities across the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). As an important first step, between October 2021 and March 2022, we engaged with over 9,000 Defence Team members. Following these consultations and additional analysis, CPCC is finalizing a Culture Evolution Strategy that will unify the evolution of the Defence Team culture under four central themes: Leadership, Teamwork, Service, and Identity.
Budget 2022 allocated a total of $100.5M toward culture evolution initiatives, including to strengthen leadership in the CAF, modernize the military justice system, bring into force the Declaration of Victims Rights as set out in the National Defence Act, undertake engagement and consultations on culture evolution, and enhance restorative services (e.g., dispute resolution and coaching services). The Defence Team has been delivering important results in these areas.
In May 2022, National Defence received the report of the IECR. The report provides 48 recommendations that fall within 11 areas of focus, including definitions of sexual misconduct and harassment, the military justice system, military colleges, and the role of the Sexual Misconduct Support and Response Centre.
On October 24, 2022, Madame Jocelyne Therrien was appointed as External Monitor to provide advice to the Minister of National Defence in the oversight of the implementation of the recommendations of the IECR (Recommendation 48). The External Monitor released her first progress report on May 2, 2023. The report concluded that, while there has been a lot of work accomplished and some cross-referencing among implementation of external recommendations, there is no overall framework that sets out how DND/CAF will move from one phase of culture evolution to the next.
CPCC acknowledges that there is still a substantial amount of work ahead and a strategic plan is required to ensure the sequencing of actions is aligned across the department.
Next Steps
Going forward, to ensure efforts are prioritized in an efficient and comprehensive way, CPCC is developing an integrated plan of action for culture evolution initiatives and activities. The Comprehensive Implementation Plan will take a phased approach to the implementation of remaining external recommendations and will include priority program and policy initiatives required to build a safe and inclusive environment.
In addition to the development of this plan, CPCC’s top priorities in the months ahead are the release of the Culture Evolution Strategy, continued work on anti-racism initiatives, the transformation of the complaints and grievances systems, and the launch of a Conduct and Culture Data and Resource Hub to offer greater transparency and accountability.
