In announcing the release of a final report on Canadian military sexual misconduct, former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour said the military should abolish the structures and performance-based promotion systems that nurture sexualized culture.
In a press conference on May 30, Louise Arbour announced the results of over a year’s work with 48 recommendations to change military culture and approach to sexual misconduct. She recommends, among others, the need to place military sexual offences under exclusive jurisdiction of civilian criminal courts, as had been the case before the military was given jurisdiction to investigate its own sexual assault cases in 1998.
“Military justice rests on the need to … enhance efficiency, discipline, and morale in the armed forces,” Arbour said. “The handling of sexual offences by military court in the past 20 years has done very little to improve efficiency, discipline, and morale—if anything, it has served to erode it. Therefore, I see no basis for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to retain any jurisdiction over sexual offences. And that jurisdiction should be vested exclusively with civilian authorities as long as concurrent jurisdiction remains.”…