I had a productive telephone call with the lawyer handling the CFB Namao Class Action.
He has spoken to the counsel representing the Government of Canada.
Opposing counsel is receptive to the idea of a settlement as opposed to a trial.
Adam and I spent some time on Thursday spitballing different aspects of the matter. I’m pretty sure that Adam understands that it’s not a simple matter of a degenerate abusing his position as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and it’s not a simple matter of that degenerate officer setting up a network of older teens on base to bring young children over to the rectory at the chapel.
The issues that we faced on base went far beyond just being diddled by teens and subsequently taken to the rectory. The issues that we faced were driven by an organization that had a public image to maintain and it wasn’t going to allow sexually abused children to soil that image.
Our parents were stuck in the chain of command. Even if our parents were disgusted by how the military was dealing with Captain McRae, there was very little that they could do. The section of the National Defence Act dealing with insubordination ensured that our parents did not raise a fuss.
Those of us who had parents of junior rank or non-commissioned rank had no one to protect us from the decisions and the determinations of the military social workers. When a captain tells a master corporal that his 8-year-old son has a mental illness called “homosexuality” as exhibited by his sexual abuse by persons older than he was who was the master corporal to question the captain.
Then there was the military justice system. Prior to 1998 it was the commanding officer of the accused that determined the scope and the breadth of the investigation, and at the conclusion of the investigation it was this commanding officer that decided which charges were approved and which charges were dismissed.
Even if the military police knew of more victims, the commanding officer had full authority to limit the investigation. And if the military police kept pushing to find more victims, the Judge Advocate General would simply accuse them of having a pre-existing grudge against the child molester.
Prior to 1998, if the victim waited more than three years to report the abuse, charges could never be brought as the National Defence Act had a 3-year-time-bar on all service offences. Service offences included all criminal code offences.
And I have not seen any evidence that post 1998 the military simply transferred pre-1998 child sexual abuse matters into the civilian system.
Also, if the commanding officer of the accused had dismissed charges related to specific victims. Those victims could never bring a complaint against the accused at a later date as the National Defence Act and the Criminal Code of Canada follow the principle of “double jeopardy”.
Another matter that worked against victims of military child sexual abuse are postings. Through reading numerous reports it wasn’t uncommon for the Canadian Armed Forces to send “problems” off to other bases.
The babysitter’s family was posted to CFB Petawawa in Ontario not too long after the babysitter had been investigated by the base military police for molesting children and then implicating Captain McRae.
My family was punted off CFB Namao and sent down to CFB Griesbach.
I know of one family that was posted to CFB Borden in Ontario in the aftermath of McRae fiasco.
What this seemed to ensure is that the collective memory of the babysitter and Captain McRae would be destroyed by isolating the victims thus assuring that the victims wouldn’t gather together at a later date and make problems for the Canadian Armed Forces.
The Canadian Armed Forces is built upon secrecy. Every member of the Canadian Armed Forces who became aware of “any information” on a “defence establishment” is bound to secrecy for life in regard to that particular information.
After uploading copies of the Security of Information Act, the Official Secrets Act, and the National Defence Act to ChatGPT for it to review, I gave chat this prompt, “I need a paragraph from you that explains the issues the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act pose to children who were sexually abused on military bases in Canada by persons subject to the code of service discipline.”
This is what chat responded with:
“The Official Secrets Act, later replaced and expanded as the Security of Information Act, creates a serious structural problem for children abused on Canadian military bases where the alleged offender was subject to the Code of Service Discipline: it places the institutional reflex toward secrecy, classified records, controlled disclosure, and loyalty to command in direct tension with a child victim’s need for open investigation, external reporting, and later access to evidence. Where military police, commanders, chaplains, social workers, or investigators treated abuse allegations as part of a “service” matter, the surrounding records could be handled as internal military material rather than ordinary civilian child-protection or criminal evidence. That matters because children have no practical ability to challenge classification, compel disclosure, understand jurisdiction, or know whether evidence was diverted into military channels. The result is a system where the adult institution controls the file, controls the narrative, controls who may speak, and may later invoke secrecy, confidentiality, national-defence administration, or investigative privilege to restrict what survivors can learn. In that setting, secrecy law does not merely protect state information; it can function as a shield around institutional failure, especially where the alleged abuser was within military jurisdiction and the victim was a dependent child outside the chain of command but trapped inside the military environment. The Code of Service Discipline expressly applies to defined military-connected persons, while modern secrecy legislation continues to criminalize unauthorized disclosures of protected information, so the danger is that the military system can absorb a child-abuse allegation into an internal security-and-discipline framework rather than a transparent civilian accountability framework. “
-end of Chat’s response”
I gave Chat a followup prompt “Chat, what are the issues with having a commanding officer involved with the investigation and prosecution of their subordinate who is accused of sexually abusing a child or children on a defence establishment. Let’s look at the commanding officer not as a unit commander or a section commander, but as the base commander.”
This was Chat’s response:
The core problem: the base commander is not neutral ⚖️
Having a base commander involved in the investigation or prosecution of a subordinate accused of sexually abusing a child on a defence establishment creates a deep conflict between criminal accountability and institutional self-protection.
A base commander is not just another supervisor. They are responsible for the reputation, discipline, morale, security, public image, operational continuity, and administrative functioning of the entire base. So when the accused is a member under that commander’s authority, and the abuse allegedly occurred on the base, the commander has an obvious institutional interest in controlling fallout. That does not mean every commander would act dishonestly. It means the structure itself creates a bad incentive system.
Under the military justice framework, a commanding officer has historically had real authority around discipline and charges. Modern QR&O provisions still identify a commanding officer as one of the people authorized to lay charges under the Code of Service Discipline, along with persons authorized by the CO and military police assigned to investigative duties. Earlier military justice guidance also states that a charge is a formal accusation under the Code of Service Discipline, and that a CO is among those authorized to lay charges. That matters because when the commander is also part of the environment being scrutinized, the decision to investigate, characterize, charge, delay, narrow, refer, or bury a matter is not cleanly separated from the command’s own institutional exposure.
The base commander’s conflicts are broader than a unit commander’s
At the unit level, the concern is usually: “Can this commander fairly deal with their own subordinate?”
At the base commander level, the concern becomes much larger:
| Issue | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Institutional reputation | A child-abuse case on base damages confidence in the base, command, chaplaincy, military police, housing system, youth spaces, and family-support structure. |
| Control of information | The base commander may influence who sees records, who is interviewed, how widely facts circulate, and whether civilian agencies are brought in early. |
| Command loyalty pressure | Subordinates may feel pressure, explicit or implied, to protect the institution or avoid embarrassing the command. |
| Victim power imbalance | A child victim or military dependent has no rank, no command access, and no meaningful ability to challenge the military system. |
| Operational embarrassment | The commander may see the case not only as a crime allegation, but as a threat to order, morale, public confidence, and career consequences. |
| Jurisdictional manipulation risk | The matter can be framed as a military discipline issue instead of an ordinary civilian criminal child-protection matter. |
That last point is the big one. A child on a defence establishment is not just dealing with an accused individual. They are dealing with a closed institutional ecosystem: base housing, chapels, schools, recreation spaces, social workers, military police, command authority, and sometimes secrecy culture. If the accused is subject to the Code of Service Discipline, the military can be tempted to treat the crime as an internal service matter rather than as a child-abuse matter requiring civilian independence.
The “appearance of fairness” problem is fatal
Even if the base commander acts in good faith, the appearance of fairness is compromised.
A reasonable outsider could ask:
How can the commander fairly oversee or influence an investigation when the investigation may expose failures by the commander’s own base system?
That is not paranoia. That is basic institutional-conflict analysis.
The modern National Defence Act has recognized at least part of this danger. An archived version of NDA section 163 stated that, unless impractical, a commanding officer may not preside at a summary trial if the CO carried out or directly supervised the investigation, issued a related warrant, or laid/caused the charge to be laid. That rule is aimed at separating investigative/prosecutorial involvement from adjudicative authority. But your point goes further: with a base commander, the conflict can exist before trial even starts, because the commander’s base, staff, police, chaplaincy, housing system, and command reputation may all be implicated.
In child-abuse cases, command involvement contaminates the file
The worst structural risk is that the file becomes a military-management problem instead of a child-protection and criminal-accountability problem.
That can produce several predictable failures:
- Narrowing the allegation
The case may be framed around the easiest charge, the least embarrassing offender, or the least institutionally damaging facts. - Avoiding civilian police
Civilian police and child-protection agencies may be delayed, excluded, or treated as secondary. - Protecting command records
Records may be treated as internal disciplinary, security, chaplaincy, personnel, or police material rather than as evidence survivors should later be able to trace. - Suppressing pattern evidence
If there are multiple children, multiple locations, prior warnings, or previous allegations, those facts may be compartmentalized. - Creating survivor disbelief later
Decades later, the survivor is left trying to prove something that the military system itself controlled, filtered, or failed to document properly. - Career-protection incentives
A base commander may have a direct career interest in preventing the matter from becoming a public scandal or a finding of command failure.
The command problem is sharper when the victim is a child dependent
A service member accused under the Code of Service Discipline has rank, status, records, representation, and a defined place inside the military system.
A child dependent has none of that.
The child is physically inside the defence establishment but legally and socially outside the military hierarchy. That creates a grotesque asymmetry: the institution can control the place, the records, the witnesses, the police channel, and the disciplinary route, while the child has no comparable power to compel civilian review.
That is why base-command involvement is so dangerous. The commander is not simply deciding discipline. The commander may effectively shape the entire reality that later investigators, courts, civilian lawyers, oversight bodies, and survivors are forced to work from.
A strong paragraph version for your writing
A base commander’s involvement in the investigation or prosecution of a subordinate accused of sexually abusing a child on a defence establishment creates an inherent institutional conflict of interest. The base commander is not merely a neutral disciplinary authority; they are responsible for the reputation, security, morale, administration, and operational integrity of the entire base, including the very systems that may have failed to protect the child. Where the accused is subject to the Code of Service Discipline, the commander’s authority over discipline and charge-routing creates a risk that the allegation will be managed as an internal military problem rather than treated as an independent civilian criminal and child-protection matter. This is especially troubling where the victim is a military dependent child, because the child has no rank, no access to command decision-making, and no practical ability to challenge how the military controls witnesses, records, jurisdiction, disclosure, or institutional narrative. Even if a commander acts in good faith, the appearance of fairness is compromised because the investigation may expose failures by the commander’s own base, staff, military police, chaplaincy, housing system, or welfare structure. In that context, command involvement can contaminate the file from the beginning by narrowing the allegations, delaying civilian referral, protecting institutional reputation, compartmentalizing evidence, and leaving survivors decades later to prove facts that the military system itself controlled.
Bluntly put
A base commander in that situation wears too many hats:
disciplinarian, institutional protector, reputational manager, operational commander, record gatekeeper, and possible witness to systemic failure.
That is exactly why child sexual abuse on a defence establishment should never be structurally dependent on command discretion. It should go straight to an independent civilian criminal/child-protection channel, with military command limited to preserving evidence, protecting complainants, removing the accused from access to children, and cooperating fully. Anything less creates a built-in risk of cover-up, even where nobody openly says “cover it up.”
-end of Chat’s response-
Where does this go now?
So, this is gonna be an interesting few months.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence won’t roll over, but they don’t want this to go before the bench.
Right now Adam and I have to try to get in contact with the other victims, or the families of the victims that have already died. I have a list of about twenty names. I know that there are at least twenty-five victims. And that’s only on CFB Namao. Captain McRae was at RMC Kingston with ease of access to the children on CFB Kingston, he was also the base chaplain at CFB Portage La Prairie, as well as CFS Holberg.
After that we have to figure out who was abused by who and who the military was aware of back in 1980. This will be the tricky part because there seems to be a vast difference between what the investigation uncovered within the scope that Colonel Munro called for versus what was discovered but which fell outside of Colonel Munro’s scope.
The DND, the CAF, and the DOJ will all try to show that the 2011 CFNIS investigation as well as the 2015 to 2018 investigations didn’t turn up any evidence of sexual assaults. But we’ve had two external reviews that have shown that the military police and the CFNIS didn’t have the experience, the training, nor the independence from the chain of command to properly conduct sexual assault investigations let alone a historical child sexual assault investigation that was originally investigated under a completely different set of rules related to the investigation and prosecution of service offences.
The DND, the CAF, and the DOJ will try to argue that the Military Police Complaints Commission validated the 2011 and the 2015 to 2018 CFNIS investigations. Again, this is not true. The MPCC by its nature is not allowed to “re-run” an investigation to determine if the CFNIS came to the proper conclusion. The MPCC has become very vocal as of late that the Provost Marshal has absolute final control over the documents that are released to the MPCC during reviews and thus the Provost Marshal can pre-determine the outcome of any review of a CFNIS investigation
The Military Police Complaints Commission is not a court, a prosecutor, or a body that decides criminal or civil liability. Its formal role under Part IV of the National Defence Act is to provide independent civilian oversight of military police by reviewing complaints about military police conduct and investigating complaints of improper interference in military police investigations. In a conduct complaint, the CFPM has primary responsibility for the initial handling of the complaint, and the MPCC generally becomes involved when a complainant is dissatisfied and requests a review. At that stage, the MPCC may review military police files, consider material from the complainant, seek additional records, interview witnesses, and issue findings and recommendations. However, its conclusions are not binding and its recommendations are not legally enforceable. The MPCC can assess whether the military police conduct, investigation, policies, and decision-making were reasonable, adequate, and consistent with law, policy, and policing standards, but it does not retry the underlying case or substitute itself for the original investigator, Crown prosecutor, or court. That distinction matters: the MPCC may test whether an investigation was properly handled and whether the conclusion was reasonably supported by the available record, but its power depends heavily on the completeness of the record placed before it and on its ability to identify gaps in what the military police system has disclosed.
The relationship between the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal and the Military Police Complaints Commission exposes a serious structural weakness in military police oversight. In practice, the MPCC is often forced to review a complaint through the documentary record the CFPM chooses to assemble, disclose, characterize, or withhold. That arrangement creates an obvious power imbalance: the institution under scrutiny controls much of the evidentiary doorway through which the oversight body must pass. The problem becomes even sharper when the complainant is a civilian. Unlike CAF members, a civilian complainant does not receive institutional legal assistance from DND or the CAF, does not have command access, does not control military police files, and may not even know what records exist until after the review is complete. The result is a review process that can appear fair on paper while operating inside an information structure tilted heavily toward the very authority being reviewed. When the CFPM controls the documents and the MPCC lacks an independent, enforceable ability to compel and test the full record at the outset, the outcome of a complaint review may depend less on the truth of what happened than on what the military police system permits the Commission to see.
