By Scott Taylor
Last week the burgeoning military sexual misconduct scandal was highlighted by the appearance of former Canadian Forces Ombudsman Gary Walbourne before a parliamentary committee. In his testimony Walbourne claimed that in 2018 he had notified Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan of an allegation of sexual impropriety purportedly perpetrated by the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance.
According to Walbourne, when he offered to show Sajjan physical evidence of the allegation in question the MND jumped back from the table like a scalded cat while muttering “no.”
Walbourne told the committee that he had gone to Sajjan to seek advice as to how to proceed with this difficult situation.
The origins of the complaint stemmed from a 2012 email sent from the Canadian Forces account of then MGen Vance to a female corporal. Allegedly the corporal had met Vance unofficially and asked him for some career advice. The email response from Vance’s account is alleged to have included an invitation for the corporal to join him on a clothing optional beach vacation.
Six years later, the corporal brought Vance’s email to the attention of Walbourne’s office. Apparently she did not want to bring a formal complaint against Vance – who was by now CDS – and for privacy reasons she did not want her identity revealed.
One can easily understand Walbourne’s dilemma. The office of the Ombudsman has no authority to investigate such matters - there was no formal complaint launched and the victim of the alleged impropriety wished to remain anonymous.
In his testimony Walbourne told the committee that by bringing this to the attention of Sajjan he expected the minister to “do his job,” not to “do nothing.”
However by Walbourne’s own admission, Sajjan did take almost immediate action by notifying Privy Council Office that the Ombudsman had some potentially damaging information about the CDS.
The next day Walbourne was called to the PCO and asked about the allegations against General Vance.
In order to protect the victim’s identity, as promised, Walbourne refused to provide details to PCO and they subsequently let the matter drop.
Sajjan also seems to have been content with having kicked the issue upstairs to PCO and deliberately not having seen any evil with his own eyes, considered the case closed.
And so it was until Feb. 2, 2021 when Global News reporter Mercedes Stephenson unleashed her double-barreled blast of sexual impropriety allegations against Vance.
At that juncture, it was just two weeks since Vance had handed over the CDS post to his successor Admiral Art McDonald. He was however still serving out his retirement leave and still a four star general.
Since he was first appointed as CDS in 2015, Vance had been the leading figure in what the Canadian military dubbed Operation Honour, the Force’s wide effort to combat sexual misconduct.
In December 2020, Vance had renamed this initiative The Pathway to Dignity and Respect, and he was once again the figure head in the anti sexual misconduct campaign.
Thus the Global News revelations were still shocking even after Vance had stepped down.
In her Feb. 2 story Stephenson reported that Vance allegedly committed two separate transgressions. The first was that Vance had been involved in an affair with a junior officer which began in 2000 and continued through his tenure as CDS.
The second allegation revealed by Stephenson was the email invitation to the clothing optional beach vacation.
The whole affair took a political turn once it was revealed that the Ombudsman had given Sajjan a head’s up about the email back in 2018.
In the knee-jerk response of partisan politics, it was soon revealed that Vance had been investigated by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (NIS) in 2014 for an alleged extra-marital affair with a U.S. servicemember while they were both posted to NATO Headquarters in Naples, Italy.
The Conservatives accused the Liberals of knowing that Vance was a potential liability and doing nothing to remove him. While the Liberals in return say the Conservatives were aware of his alleged failings when they made him CDS.
For his part, Vance has to date denied committing any sexual impropriety.
