OTTAWA (Dispatches) – The number of white supremacists and other violent extremists within Canada’s military is growing at an “alarming rate” and commanders are not doing enough to root it out, a report said Monday.
The report by a four-member government advisory panel also found widespread anti-Indigenous and Black racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, as well as gender bias within military ranks.
A failure to address these issues, it concluded, “negatively impacts operational capabilities, undermines the well-being of (military) members, and puts the security of Canada in peril.”
“The reality is that systemic racism exists in our institution and we need to root it out and eliminate it,” Defense Minister Anita Anand told a news conference.
The report found that “in addition to sexual misconduct and domestic violence, hate crimes, extremist behaviors and affiliations to white supremacy groups are growing at an alarming rate.”
It noted that members of extremist groups are becoming better at hiding their activities and affiliations, for example using encryption and Darknet, while the military’s efforts to detect extremist pockets or individuals are “still very much siloed and inefficient.”
And despite a zero tolerance for hateful behavior, when it is found out, the consequences for such conduct or affiliation with hate groups “is not standardized,” it said.
Advisory panel member Ed Fitch said military leaders “still don’t know enough about these groups, who they are, where they are” and that a concerted effort is needed “to completely clean out this nasty area.”
Over the past 20 years, some 258 recommendations stemming from dozens of inquiries were made to address diversity, inclusion, respect and professional conduct in the military.
But when the panel tried to identify progress on those recommendations, it found that many of them were “poorly implemented, shelved or even discarded,” noted Sandra Perron, another panel member.
The advisory panel made 13 of its own recommendations.
Chief of the Defense Staff, General Wayne Eyre, said the top challenge is that “once the spotlight goes on (these groups), they change their names, they change their symbology.”
Atrocities against indigenous people in Canada are not a new phenomenon. In the past two centuries, the Church ran Indigenous Residential Schools in Canada with the aim of assimilating the Indigenous children into society.
About 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and taken to prison-like schools where they were subjected to abuse, rape and malnutrition. Many children died and were buried in unmarked graves.