Excerpt from the OH&S Canada magazine (October 2016)
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) National Investigation Service has charged a naval officer with sexual assault against a fellow military member – on day after laying charges against a sergeant with the military police operating from the same base.
Master Seaman Daniel Cooper of the Naval Fleet School (Atlantic) of Canadian Forces Base Halifax was charged with one count of sexual assault and another of abuse of subordinates on September 13, 2016. Cooper is accused of assaulting another CAF member aboard the HMCS Athabaskan in November 2015, according to Lt. Blake Patterson, a public-affairs officer with the CAF Provost Marshal and Military Police Group. “They were participating in an exercise called Trident Juncture,” Lt. Patterson says. “It was an international exercise.”
On September 12, 2016, Sergeant Kevin MacIntyre of the Military Police Unit at the Halifax base was charged with sexual assault against a fellow CAF member. A statement from the Department of National Defence (DND) states that this incident had occurred during another international exercise, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland in September, 2015.
“As members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the policing community, we hold military police to a very high standard of professional and personal conduct, in Canada or abroad, on or off military duty,” says commanding officer Lt. Colonel Francis Bolduc of the National Investigation Services. “These charges reflect our ongoing commitment to support victims and defend against sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces.”
Sexual assault and harassment among members have been a priority for Canadian military police this year through a plan known as ‘Operation HONOUR’. A progress report published last month reveals the military had completed investigations of 51 sexual-misconduct complaints submitted since April resulting in 30 members receiving some form of discipline. The report also says that the rate of complaints of misconduct has increased by 22 per cent and that the army has been taking additional disciplinary action against such misconduct.
My opinion
Everyone knows that federal harassment laws do not stand up to those in Ontario, and other provinces.
It is too bad that the testosterone levels in the Canadian military goes unchecked like those in the RCMP. It takes publicity to bring these things to light and hold all members accountable.
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