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Monday, April 30, 2001
The Halifax Herald Limited
Still shooting the messenger
Military under Baril not as open as reputation would have it
By Scott Taylor ON TARGET
AS CHIEF OF DEFENCE Staff Maurice Baril packs up his desk ornaments and prepares for imminent retirement, a legion of public affairs specialists is already trying desperately to spin the general's legacy.
If these PR flacks were to be believed, then Gen. Baril is the guiding light that brought the Canadian Forces out of the dark days of Somalia into a new kinder, gentler, more open and transparent era.
If only it were true.
Four years ago, the military hierarchy was admittedly in a state of demoralized chaos. Having been exposed almost daily during the televised hearings of the Somalia inquiry the Top Brass had badly tarnished their own reputation, causing the commissioners to admonish them for fostering a culture of coverup.
Some strong recommendations were tabled in the Somalia inquiry's final report which, if implemented, could have established the checks and balances necessary to rein in the heretofore absolute power which existed in the upper echelons of DND.
Unfortunately for the Forces, the Liberal government had already made it known that they would not rock the brass's boat when they prematurely scuppered the Somalia Inquiry.
With their egos badly bruised, but their powers intact, the senior commanders wasted no time in paring down any of the proposed reforms. For instance, the Somalia commissioners' recommendation of an inspector general - with sweeping, independent powers of investigation - was quickly discarded in favour of a relatively impotent ombudsman (whose arms-length authority has yet to be fully approved, three years after his office was established.)
But I digress.
Rather than address the real systemic problems which had been revealed, the perpetrators themselves were thus left to pass their own judgment and administer their own rehabilitation. Unrepentant, the brass seemingly still believe that covering up sensitive issues is their prerogative. It was simply the failure to control information and contain whistle-blowers which had proven their undoing, so drastic steps have been taken to rectify the situation.
In 1996, four top-level civilian public relations experts were recruited to reform DND's communications and, virtually overnight, image has replaced all substance in military press statements. Increasingly, more military lawyers and personnel have been assigned to the processing (sanitizing) of Access to Information requests, and each item released to the media is now timed by the defence minister's office so as to minimize any potential political impact.
As all of this transpired behind the scenes, Gen. Baril has been making public pronouncements about his new open and transparent communication policy. In particular, Gen. Baril was lauded by the press for his bold directive which now allows service members to speak freely to the media.
What the reporters failed to grasp, but which soldiers haven't missed, is that the Queen's Regulation and Order (1936) remains unchanged. As long as this order is in place, military personnel still cannot make public comment which is considered to be either derogatory or contrary to policy, without threat of punishment.
So it is that would-be whistle-blowers in Gen. Baril's open new world continue to forward disclosures via brown envelopes for fear of retaliation. For example, in recent weeks there have been a number of embarrassing significant incident reports leaked to the press.
One concerned a military police investigation into cadets at the Royal Military College who had been making secret porn films with an unsuspecting young female. Although the investigation was virtually complete and all the details had been provided in the one-month-old incident report, no charges had been laid prior to the scandal being reported in the media.
It is revealing of DND's priorities that no such lengthy delay occurred in the hunt for the individual who leaked the report (The commandant of the military college ordered an immediate probe by the National Investigation Service.)
Just weeks later this same team of elite military police were ordered to find the culprit(s) who leaked yet another pair of significant incident reports. These two particular messages had been secretly forwarded to the mother of Cpl. Christian McEachern. Now known nationally as the broken soldier, McEachern is the peacekeeping veteran who last month attempted to commit suicide by ramming his SUV through an office complex at CFB Edmonton. Since that incident, McEachern's mother, Paula Richmond, has been pleading for clemency for her son, citing "he needs treatment not punishment."
Richmond's claims that her son is "not alone in his suffering" were amply supported by the two leaked reports (both detailing similar suicide attempts by other "stress casualties.") When Richmond released the reports to the media, teams of National Investigation Service detectives were on the hunt for the leak in Edmonton, Petawawa and Ottawa within hours. By contrast, it took these same military authorities more than five days to provide McEachern with a psychiatrist following his suicide attempt.
Recently retired Brig.-Gen. Joe Sharpe has been quick to support the "broken soldiers" and to publicly chastize the department's misguided priorities.
In a statement to the National Post, Sharpe said: "If we were putting half the energy into taking care of these people, the soldiers, that we seem to put into defending the senior officers and the system, then we would be taking damn good care of our people. I am frustrated by an organization that spends more time defending its (officers) than we do about the soldiers who have been so badly treated here."
This candid assessment is Gen. Baril's real legacy and it poses a tough challenge for his eventual successor.
Scott Taylor is publisher of the military magazine Esprit de Corps. E-mail at espritdecorp@idirect.com
The Halifax Herald Limited
Still shooting the messenger
Military under Baril not as open as reputation would have it
By Scott Taylor ON TARGET
AS CHIEF OF DEFENCE Staff Maurice Baril packs up his desk ornaments and prepares for imminent retirement, a legion of public affairs specialists is already trying desperately to spin the general's legacy.
If these PR flacks were to be believed, then Gen. Baril is the guiding light that brought the Canadian Forces out of the dark days of Somalia into a new kinder, gentler, more open and transparent era.
If only it were true.
Four years ago, the military hierarchy was admittedly in a state of demoralized chaos. Having been exposed almost daily during the televised hearings of the Somalia inquiry the Top Brass had badly tarnished their own reputation, causing the commissioners to admonish them for fostering a culture of coverup.
Some strong recommendations were tabled in the Somalia inquiry's final report which, if implemented, could have established the checks and balances necessary to rein in the heretofore absolute power which existed in the upper echelons of DND.
Unfortunately for the Forces, the Liberal government had already made it known that they would not rock the brass's boat when they prematurely scuppered the Somalia Inquiry.
With their egos badly bruised, but their powers intact, the senior commanders wasted no time in paring down any of the proposed reforms. For instance, the Somalia commissioners' recommendation of an inspector general - with sweeping, independent powers of investigation - was quickly discarded in favour of a relatively impotent ombudsman (whose arms-length authority has yet to be fully approved, three years after his office was established.)
But I digress.
Rather than address the real systemic problems which had been revealed, the perpetrators themselves were thus left to pass their own judgment and administer their own rehabilitation. Unrepentant, the brass seemingly still believe that covering up sensitive issues is their prerogative. It was simply the failure to control information and contain whistle-blowers which had proven their undoing, so drastic steps have been taken to rectify the situation.
In 1996, four top-level civilian public relations experts were recruited to reform DND's communications and, virtually overnight, image has replaced all substance in military press statements. Increasingly, more military lawyers and personnel have been assigned to the processing (sanitizing) of Access to Information requests, and each item released to the media is now timed by the defence minister's office so as to minimize any potential political impact.
As all of this transpired behind the scenes, Gen. Baril has been making public pronouncements about his new open and transparent communication policy. In particular, Gen. Baril was lauded by the press for his bold directive which now allows service members to speak freely to the media.
What the reporters failed to grasp, but which soldiers haven't missed, is that the Queen's Regulation and Order (1936) remains unchanged. As long as this order is in place, military personnel still cannot make public comment which is considered to be either derogatory or contrary to policy, without threat of punishment.
So it is that would-be whistle-blowers in Gen. Baril's open new world continue to forward disclosures via brown envelopes for fear of retaliation. For example, in recent weeks there have been a number of embarrassing significant incident reports leaked to the press.
One concerned a military police investigation into cadets at the Royal Military College who had been making secret porn films with an unsuspecting young female. Although the investigation was virtually complete and all the details had been provided in the one-month-old incident report, no charges had been laid prior to the scandal being reported in the media.
It is revealing of DND's priorities that no such lengthy delay occurred in the hunt for the individual who leaked the report (The commandant of the military college ordered an immediate probe by the National Investigation Service.)
Just weeks later this same team of elite military police were ordered to find the culprit(s) who leaked yet another pair of significant incident reports. These two particular messages had been secretly forwarded to the mother of Cpl. Christian McEachern. Now known nationally as the broken soldier, McEachern is the peacekeeping veteran who last month attempted to commit suicide by ramming his SUV through an office complex at CFB Edmonton. Since that incident, McEachern's mother, Paula Richmond, has been pleading for clemency for her son, citing "he needs treatment not punishment."
Richmond's claims that her son is "not alone in his suffering" were amply supported by the two leaked reports (both detailing similar suicide attempts by other "stress casualties.") When Richmond released the reports to the media, teams of National Investigation Service detectives were on the hunt for the leak in Edmonton, Petawawa and Ottawa within hours. By contrast, it took these same military authorities more than five days to provide McEachern with a psychiatrist following his suicide attempt.
Recently retired Brig.-Gen. Joe Sharpe has been quick to support the "broken soldiers" and to publicly chastize the department's misguided priorities.
In a statement to the National Post, Sharpe said: "If we were putting half the energy into taking care of these people, the soldiers, that we seem to put into defending the senior officers and the system, then we would be taking damn good care of our people. I am frustrated by an organization that spends more time defending its (officers) than we do about the soldiers who have been so badly treated here."
This candid assessment is Gen. Baril's real legacy and it poses a tough challenge for his eventual successor.
Scott Taylor is publisher of the military magazine Esprit de Corps. E-mail at espritdecorp@idirect.com
