A Department of National Defence report has found that the Canadian military still tolerates too many off-colour jokes and microaggressions, despite a decade-long culture change campaign. Tamara Ugolini and Lise Merle covered the Blacklock’s Reporter story on Tuesday’s Rebel Roundup.
“The military tolerates too many off-colour jokes despite a decade-long campaign of culture change,” Ugolini read from the report. “Sexualized jokes and microaggressions are often overlooked.” The report found that “subtle forms of inappropriate behavior, microaggressions, exclusionary comments, and informal grey-zone behavior continue to undermine psychological safety,” and concluded that “inclusion is not yet embedded” and that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts “are often seen as performative.”
Both hosts were incredulous.
“This is the state of the Canadian military, ladies and gentlemen,” Ugolini said. She traced the term “microaggression” back to around 2011, when it first entered public discourse. “Now here we are where this is the biggest concern of our military — the same military that can’t recruit or retain anybody.” Merle added, before bluntly stating it’s “What happens when you put weak people at the head of the military. This is what happens to a military inside of 11 years after a whole bunch of lily-livered, hand-wringing, weak-wristed liberal aristocrats take over.”
The broader context makes the report’s priorities look even more disconnected from reality. Recruitment and retention are at all-time lows. The military has opened its ranks to foreign nationals because it cannot attract enough Canadians. And in the name of expanding access, the military has also broadened eligibility to include recruits with anxiety disorders and other conditions.
“You want to talk about psychological safety?” Ugolini said. “You’ve just expanded recruitment to include people who are inherently psychologically unsafe because they suffer from anxiety. I don’t want someone who is going to be cowering in the corner at the slightest threat to be at the front lines.”
Merle summed it up: “We could be invaded and they could take us over by lunchtime.”
Ugolini also raised the question of cost — how much public money has been spent over the course of a decade on DEI reports, evaluations, culture change campaigns, and the bureaucratic machinery behind them, while the fundamental metrics of military readiness have gotten worse. “The priorities here are just so absolutely absurd.”
The department’s culture change campaign, the report notes, began in 2015 with efforts to weed out what it called “problematic behavior.” Eleven years and apparently no shortage of reports later, the main finding is that soldiers are still telling jokes the DEI office doesn’t like.
