Just as the Somalia mission has raised the need to examine the relationship between the military and the civil authority, so too has it afforded an occasion to review the relationship between the military and the larger Canadian society. Such a review is important, given the impact of the Somalia expedition on the reputation of the Canadian Forces (CF) and on the esteem in which Canadians have traditionally held the military. This chapter reviews the place of the military in Canadian society; assesses the degree to which the military, as a culture within that society, reflects and represents the characteristics and values of the larger society and the degree to which members of the military may be expected to differ from society; and suggests remedies aimed at returning the military to the position of confidence and trust it has customarily held in Canada.

We take as a given that Canada, as a sovereign nation, will continue to need a professional armed force to ensure its security.

Some readers may view the CF as a monolithic organization. It is not. The CF comprises an army, navy, and air force. Its members are diverse, including both men and women and representatives of the Canadian ethnic mosaic.¹ This chapter concentrates primarily on the army, the combat army in particular. This is a logical consequence of the subject matter of the Inquiry, given its focus on the Canadian Airborne Regiment.

The military in Canada has been shaped by Canada's unique culture, history, and political ideology. Canadians' support for their armed forces varies over time, often in relation to the degree of perceived military threat. Historically, the general population has held the military in high esteem and celebrated its achievements. Also, many communities have had special connections with particular military units.² The strength of these ties continues to affect the degree to which people see the CF as an honourable and worthy part of Canadian culture.

On the other hand, a community )s trust in, and support of, the military can be ruptured, sometimes dramatically.

There is a popular perception of the military and its place in society. The strength of that perception depends on the level of public awareness, which in turn is affected by the role played by the media. Military leadership must be sensitive to this public perception and work continually to stay abreast of changing attitudes in society. Whenever military leaders ignore their relation to the larger society, they put the relationship between the armed forces and society at risk.

Canadians have had a tradition of valuing peace, order, and good government. However, few Canadians today consider Canada threatened in the traditional military sense. There is no enemy at the gate and little support for those who point to distant and potential opponents. The assumption that Canada is inherently secure yields a certain indifference to questions of military efficiency and readiness. This natural sense of security tempts Canadians to divorce themselves from the details of national defence policy and to treat the strategic direction and the control of the CF as a less pressing concern. ³

It has been said that Canadians see themselves as an "unmilitary people" who, in the past, have armed themselves reluctantly and only for good causes.⁴ This self-image was reinforced when Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for proposing that the United Nations deploy peacekeeping units between the belligerents in the 1956 Suez crisis.

Since that time, peacekeeping has come to be regarded as a national vocation. Peacekeeping, seen as a neutral, non-violent activity focused essentially on soldiers as mediators, has some considerable allure, since the missions involved generally have some chance of success, do not involve the CF in war-like operations, and present little risk to members of the CF.⁵

Regrettably, in recent times little interest has been shown in our armed forces, and national discussions about defence policy or the operations of the CF have been rare. This relative indifference has been interrupted only occasionally when some significant event captures headlines or when insecurity grips the nation, as it did, for instance, during the FLQ crisis in 1970 and the events at Oka in 1990.

Overall, the military tends to make a faint imprint on the consciousness of many Canadians. There is a risk of this increasing as the size of the CF shrinks and as the Department of National Defence continues to withdraw its bases and stations from urban centres across the country. The CF is increasingly out of the public mind. More and more, Canadians know less and less about their military, despite the fact that the CF has earned an enviable reputation for its work, and Canadians took justifiable pride in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to United Nations peacekeepers in 1990.

Members of the CF are often frustrated by the lack of attention paid to the actual circumstances of the armed forces by society's leaders, the media and the public. They are also irritated by the excited response a perceived (crisis' garners when some event brings a new reality before the public eye. The military, we have been told, feels that, if the media better appreciated the needs and the often stressful and difficult situations facing the CF, there would be a greater public understanding of the actions and responses of the CF at home and abroad.

A number of features of the Canadian Forces make it different from the rest of society. Indeed, the military's penchant for introspection is perhaps a good place to start.

The military is generally held to be a closed society, a unique culture within the larger Canadian community, made so by the special nature of its calling, and by its special ethos and values, which are peculiar to the tasks it faces. Canada's professional soldiers, like those of any liberal democracy during protracted periods of peace, inexorably have come to regard the values to which they must subscribe and the purposes they must pursue as necessary for the effective conduct of operations in the modern world, as being in some sense different from those of society.

Canada's military understandably seeks to conserve values proven on the battlefield by its predecessors. This is in part attributable to the fact that, in general, the values held by the military find their most severe test in combat and, more particularly, because the CF has not been in serious and prolonged combat since the Korean conflict in the early 1950s.

While many institutions tend to be conservative by nature, the military is particularly so. Attempts to preserve values tested decades ago, even as the pace of change in society accelerates, reflect this conservatism. The degree to which society fails to be sensitive to the military's felt need to preserve values that may seem quaint, idealistic, and outdated to the average citizen is troubling for those within the institution. CF members, we are told, harbour an apprehension that only members of the profession of arms understand the nature of their calling or truly appreciate their contribution to the nation.

If this is an accurate portrayal, it can only lead members of the military to harbour feelings of alienation from the larger society of which they are a part. Such feelings can breed a kind of insularity as members seek, from within, an affirmation of the worthiness of the group's endeavours. Another face of alienation may also occur when members limit their commitment to the military by treating their calling as just another job.⁶

Insularity and isolation can produce a resistance to open dealings by members of the military in their relationship with the rest of society. It is not surprising, against this backdrop, to find that military leaders who encounter a critical or flawed incident tend to put the incident in the best possible light, if only to protect their beleaguered profession.

Sustained criticism, such as the CF has experienced as a result of the Somalia mission, arguably has led the military to adopt a siege mentality, to admit to no failures, to countenance no deserters, and to accept no truce.

In our view, one of the profoundly troubling features of the Somalia experience was the failure of leaders to admit, openly and frankly, that problems had developed and that things had gone wrong. The decision to pretend that all was well, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, led to a series of events that seemed to spiral downward, increasingly out of control, until what started as an attempt to control information became 'spin-doctoring', manipulation and, in the end, a cover-up. The casualty in all of this was one of the most cherished of military values - integrity.

Gen (ret) Gerry Theriault, Chief of the Defence Staff between 1983 and 1986, in an address to the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies in November 1996, made some important observations on the relationship between the military and the media:

In a democracy, the fourth estate plays an essential role. Media relations represent the Forces' principal channel of communication with the broader public and are difficult only if one believes that they can and must be managed, in the sense that public information and the press can be manipulated.⁷

There is little doubt that the CF should change its approach to public affairs. The Somalia operation has underscored the urgent need for openness and transparency on the part of DND in its dealings with the public. Raising public awareness about the distinct nature and role of the military in Canadian society is, therefore, one of the principal challenges for the future.

There are, we believe, a number of modest but important ways to keep the armed forces more involved with the mainstream of public life. Some of these are new, while others have proven effective in the past.

The reserve force, particularly the militia, traditionally have formed a bridge between the military and the public. Reservists spread across the country bring to their local communities a perspective shaped by military values and the military way of life. The reduction of the reserves, which again is under active consideration, may serve, unintentionally we believe, to weaken that bridge. Any final decision about the future role, size, and importance of the reserve force component should be made with this consideration in mind.⁸

Similarly the cadet movement could have a greater impact on the public consciousness than is currently the case. It is an under-appreciated resource. The cadet movement continues to offer pride in citizenship, self-discipline, and love of country. It prepares thousands of young Canadians for responsible adulthood every year. Unfortunately, the movement is attracting fewer than 60,000 young people at present. An enhanced public commitment to this program is warranted, given the great dividends it can generate for the Canadian public and the military as a whole.

Maintaining strong public awareness of the armed forces reality is a difficult task but, here too, there are a number of groups, associations, and programs whose assistance and effectiveness would be markedly enhanced with a relatively small infusion of funding. The Conference of Defence Associations and its information branch, the Defence Associations Network, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre are three examples from among many that possess considerable potential for contributing to public awareness.9

Nevertheless, the principal source of greater public awareness of the armed forces remains the media. The Canadian Forces is badly in need of an improved media relations or public affairs policy, one founded on a real commitment to openness and transparency, particularly at times of crisis. Such a policy is unlikely to succeed, however, unless there is an accompanying attitudinal change within the upper reaches of both the CF and DND. As part of this transformation, the free exchange of views between CF officers and the public must be actively encouraged. The beneficiaries of a bona fide policy of this kind will include not only the military but the public and the media as well.

An enhanced public understanding of the military and military matters begins with a firm grasp of the purpose of armed forces. An appreciation must be developed that, in the end, it is the nation's citizens who are responsible for its national defence. The basic purpose in having an armed force is to provide, when required, for the controlled application of force in pursuit of the national interest. The military may be employed in a range of missions, many requiring no application of force at all, but at its most basic, the military must be ready to defend, with force of arms if necessary, the nation, its values, and its way of life.

The military must constantly resist the temptation to overemphasize the pre-eminence of war fighting. While war is acknowledged as the most elementary basis on which to affirm the core values of the military, it is the requirements of peacekeeping and peace enforcement - roles at the 'lower end' of the spectrum - that the military must learn to accommodate better within its self-image. These roles contribute to peace and stability and, in their application, call for an approach with more nuance and adaptability. This can be achieved only if the necessary tools are imparted in the education and development of personnel through their military training.

As our chapter on training makes clear, greater emphasis must be placed on the application of military skills in specifically considered and developed scenarios or situations (see Volume 2, Chapter 21). Far greater attention must be paid to the attitudes of troops to the complex tasks they are being asked to perform around the globe. It is in this respect that we have called for enhanced training in the laws of war and in international humanitarian law. It is also in this respect that we have recommended that the CF promote greater sensitivity to the cultural, ethnic and social differences that soldiers might be expected to face in each prospective mission. As Berel Rodal states in a study we commissioned,

... the involvement of armed forces in peace operations in support of human rights and law and in which the maintenance of legitimacy is important places a premium on the democratic character and commitment of forces, without diminishing the role of proper military virtues. Soldiers must themselves be conscious of these values, and experience them, if they are to be expected to protect them and foster them abroad..¹⁰

We regard the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its fundamental declaration of national values, as the firm base on which a soldier's development should proceed. The values Canadians expect their soldiers to demonstrate in their actions and conduct abroad as makers and keepers of peace may be gleaned from the Charter. These values include fairness, decency, respect for human rights, compassion, and a strong sense of justice. We believe that the characteristics and values of the CF - founded on the traditional core values as reinforced through great sacrifice in waging war and securing peace - can and must be adapted to accommodate the evolving character of Canadian society.

To apply force effectively, soldiers must be well trained and fit, but first and foremost they must be highly disciplined. They must be confident of their abilities and aggressive in their application of force, when force is required and justified. Their lives, the lives of their comrades, and the success of their operations depend on it. Aggressivity is analyzed in Volume 2, Chapter 18 (Discipline), where we conclude that controlled aggressivity, applied by disciplined troops under good leadership, is a necessary feature of effective soldiering.

It is discipline that controls aggressivity and, indeed, the most important defining characteristic of the contemporary military can be said to be discipline.

Members of the CF are Canadian citizens and, save for what they voluntarily relinquish as a condition of entry into the service, they have the same rights and obligations as every other citizen. For military men and women, respect for the law, an obligation they share with all Canadians, also includes subjection to military law. Military law provides the foundations of the discipline necessary for operations.¹¹

The requirement to observe military law in addition to civilian law thus imposes obligations and demands on soldiers that go beyond those experienced by their civilian counterparts. Soldiers also have a special responsibility under the law that arises by virtue of the authority entrusted to them to use deadly force in the national interest.

A soldier knowingly and willingly forgoes certain rights and obligations on joining the CF. These include certain limitations on freedom of speech in the area of public dissent, on freedom of association, and on the right to engage in certain political activities." Such limitations are regarded as necessary in support of the group and in the interests of good order and discipline.

Military life stresses the obligation to subordinate individual interests, concerns, and fears to the needs of the group. Military history is replete with examples showing that the unit is capable of prevailing against great odds, provided all members act as a cohesive whole. Together, individuals in a unit can endure grave danger in demanding and difficult circumstances. Apart, they would be doomed to defeat.

Nothing distinguishes the soldier from the civilian more strikingly than the acceptance that one of the basic rights that may have to be forgone in the national interest is the right to life. This requirement to give up one's life for one's country is spoken of in the military literature as the clause of "unlimited liability".¹³ This is the essential defining or differentiating characteristic separating soldiers from fellow citizens.

This remarkable quality depends for its existence on two conditions. The first is discipline, which begins with the example of self-discipline that leaders impart. Leaders must be the first, in terms of readiness, to sacrifice themselves for their troops. In response, soldiers undertake to do their duty willingly, offering their lives if need be. The second is respect for the military ethos, with its emphasis on the core values of integrity, courage, loyalty, selflessness, and self-discipline. Every military operation from Vimy to Dieppe, Ortona to Caen, Kapyong to the former Yugoslavia has reaffirmed the need for such an ethos.

Some contend that there is a danger that the ethos of the CF is weakening. Recent trends toward more civilian and business-oriented practices, although of assistance in the management of DND, are seen by some within the military as affecting the CF negatively. Their belief is that, as military members attempt to accommodate not only the practices but also the characteristics and values that underlie those practices, essential military values are being put at risk.

In light of the Somalia experience, it may not be enough simply to articulate an ethos and exhort soldiers to follow it. It would seem that a more fundamental need exists for a kind of confirmatory and probative exercise to demonstrate that all soldiers, but particularly the senior leadership, live by the military ethos and personify its core values.¹⁴ The military, led by its senior officers, needs to reclaim the ethical high ground.

We urge senior leaders of the CF to redefine the characteristics and values of the Canadian military and to establish the capability to monitor the CF on an ongoing basis. In that process it will be critical to confirm those core values without which the health of the military profession in Canada cannot be restored. In the process of this re-assessment, the CF leadership should be guided by the imperative that they must be prepared to conduct operations in peace and war in accordance with Canadian standards, values, laws, and ethics.

Soldiers wear the official uniform of Canada. They display the Canadian flag on those uniforms when on missions out-of-country. Society's expectations of the nation's flag bearers are indeed higher than for the average citizen. Those expectations include the notion that soldiers serve as a symbol of all that is best in the national character.

General Sir John Hackett has attested that the military profession plays a special role in the nation as "the repository of the nation's values".¹⁵ We believe that the military profession in Canada does indeed regard itself as occupying the role General Hackett describes.

Canadians likely have differing perceptions of their military and its values, but an increased public awareness of the special nature of the military culture and its values can overcome this obstacle. An enlightened public, we believe, will accept that its modern military, even when striving to be sensitive to changes in society, cannot shift away from its core values. A failure of military values lies at the heart of the Somalia experience. It is to be hoped that the public, the politicians and the media will support the military in its endeavour to occupy a special position in the public imagination as the repository of the nation's values.

1. The CF, like many other parts of Canadian society, including business, politics and other professions, does not yet reflect all parts of the ethnic mosaic, at least in numerical terms. As amplified in Volume 2, Chapter 20, Personnel Selection and Screening, a CF employment equity project was introduced in 1992 in recognition of the need for the CF to reflect Canada's cultural diversity.
2. Indeed they resist attempts to change them. Examples include the Brockville Rifles, The Royal Canadian Regiment and London, Ontario, the Military Engineers and Chilliwack, British Columbia, and the Navy and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
3. J.S. Finan and S.B. Fleming, "Public Attitudes Towards Defence and Security in Canada", in Canada's International Security Policy, ed. D.B. Dewitt and D. Leyton-Brown (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc., 1994), p. 298.
4. Desmond Morton, Canada and War, A Military and Political History (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981), p. 1.
5. Finan and Fleming, "Public Attitudes Towards Defence and Security in Canada", pp.304-308.
6. Maj C.A. Cotton, "Military Attitudes and Values of the Army in Canada", Research Report 79-5 (Willowdale, Ont.: Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit, 1979).
7. Gen (ret) Gerry Theriault, "Democratic Civil-Military Relations: A Canadian View", address to the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, in The Canadian Strategic Forecast 1996: The Military in Democratic Society, p. 12.
8. Special Commission on the Restructuring of the Reserves (Dickson report), October 30, 1995.
9. Others, such as the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, the new Defence Management Studies Program at Queen's University and Universit6 Laval, and the chairs of strategic and defence studies at Canadian universities, all have the potential to raise public awareness of defence issues.
10. Berel Rodal, Defending Democracy: The Military in a Free and Democratic Society at the Turn of the Century, study prepared for the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services, 1997), p. 90.
11. On operations, soldiers are also subject to international law and the law of armed conflict.
12. We make recommendations to broaden the ability of soldiers to speak out on issues of concern and enhance their rights of free expression in Volume 2, Chapter 16.
13. General Sir John Hackett, The Profession of Arms (London: Times Publishing Company Ltd., 1962), p. 63.
14. It is instructive to note, in Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael V. Harper, Hope Is Not a Method (New York: Random House, 1996), pp. 9-10, that the U.S. Army is receiving similar advice:

    As we talked about the vision [of the U.S. Army], we emphasized that hope is not a method: talking about what we stand for and what we could become would not be enough. The Army's transformation would have to be grounded in action - positive, aggressive action guided by the vision and consistent with our values, action that people could see and understand. Leaders would have to think and act purposefully, to make good things happen, and to keep bad things from happening. We would have to demonstrate the future so that people would understand it and stick with us as we helped them build it.

15. Hackett, The Profession of Arms, p. 58.