Tag: depression

The CFNIS Conclusion That Makes No Sense

One of the most difficult parts of the CFB Namao matter to accept is the conclusion reached years later by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service: that there was supposedly not enough evidence to arrest, charge, or even further question the former babysitter whose abuse of children in 1980 led directly to the discovery of Captain Father Angus McRae.

That conclusion is not just disappointing. It is almost impossible to square with the known history of the file.

The McRae scandal did not appear out of thin air. It was not discovered because the military randomly decided to inspect the chapel. It was not uncovered through some broad institutional child-protection initiative. It came to light because various parents complained about a teenage babysitter abusing children on the base. Military police investigated those complaints. That investigation led from the babysitter, my babysitter, to McRae.

In plain language: the babysitter was not a side issue. He was the doorway into the entire McRae matter.

Even in 2020 the MPCC remarked that the actions of the babysitter were well documented in the CFSIU paperwork and the Courts Martial transcripts. The MPCC noted that in 1980 McRae’s defending officer tried to discredit the babysitter’s testimony against McRae by insinuating that the babysitter was testifying against McRae to shift the eyes away from what he had done.

That is what makes the later CFNIS position so difficult to understand. If the babysitter’s conduct was serious enough in 1980 to trigger the investigation that exposed a military chaplain abusing children, how could CFNIS later conclude that there was not enough evidence even to arrest him or bring him in for further questioning?

That is not a small contradiction. That is the central contradiction.

The original military police investigation did not begin with McRae. It began with complaints about the babysitter. Multiple parents were concerned enough to come forward. Children were involved. The babysitter was allegedly connected to more than one victim. His conduct appears to have been the investigative thread that led military police to the chaplain’s residence, the chapel, and ultimately to the in-camera court martial of McRae.

So the question is simple: what exactly did CFNIS think happened in 1980?

Did the military police invent the babysitter issue? Obviously not.

Did the complaints from parents mean nothing? That seems absurd.

Did the discovery of McRae happen independently of the babysitter? That does not match the known narrative.

Did the babysitter somehow provide the investigative bridge to McRae while also leaving behind no usable evidence of his own conduct? That is theoretically possible, but it strains belief.

The more reasonable concern is that CFNIS treated the babysitter file as too old, too uncomfortable, too procedurally messy, or too institutionally inconvenient to reopen in any meaningful way. But that is different from saying there was no evidence.

There is a major difference between “we cannot prove this beyond a reasonable doubt in a modern criminal prosecution” and “there is not enough evidence to arrest or question the person further.” Those are not the same thing. A criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. An arrest, an interview, a renewed investigation, or a serious evidentiary review does not require the same final standard.

That distinction matters.

By the time CFNIS reviewed the matter, decades had passed. Records may have been missing. Witnesses may have died. Memories may have faded. The military may have lost, sealed, withheld, or failed to preserve critical material. All of that may make a prosecution harder. But none of that changes the basic historical fact that the babysitter was central to how the McRae matter was discovered in the first place.

If the military’s own 1980 process identified the babysitter as part of the chain of events that exposed McRae, then CFNIS had a duty to take that seriously. Not dismissively. Not mechanically. Not as though the file began in 2011 or 2018 with whatever fragments happened to remain available.

The proper question was not merely: “Can we lay charges today?”

The proper questions should also have included:

Why was this not properly prosecuted in 1980?

What did the original military police know?

What did the Base Commander know?

What did CFSIU know?

What did the Judge Advocate General’s branch know?

What happened to the evidence?

Why were the charges against McRae narrowed?

Why were the children other than the babysitter apparently left out of the court martial process?

Why was the babysitter not treated as an accused person in his own right?

And why did the later CFNIS review appear to accept the institutional wreckage of the original process as though that wreckage were proof that nothing more could be done?

That last point is important. A failed investigation should not become the reason the institution avoids accountability. Missing records should not become a shield. A flawed court martial should not become a historical blindfold. The fact that the military controlled the investigation, the accused chaplain, the witnesses, the documents, the court martial process, and the institutional narrative makes the later “not enough evidence” conclusion even more troubling, not less.

The babysitter’s alleged abuse was not peripheral to this story. It was the spark. It was the thing that brought McRae into view. Without that part of the story, the McRae fiasco may never have been exposed at all.

That is why the CFNIS conclusion feels so disconnected from reality.

It asks us to believe that the same conduct which was serious enough to uncover a predatory military chaplain was somehow not serious enough, decades later, to justify arresting or even further questioning the babysitter himself.

That is a very hard conclusion to accept.

It may be dressed up in investigative language. It may be softened with references to evidentiary thresholds, faded memories, or prosecutorial discretion. But underneath all of that is a basic common-sense problem: CFNIS appears to have looked at the person whose conduct opened the door to the McRae scandal and concluded there was not enough there to seriously proceed.

For the children involved, that conclusion is not merely unsatisfying.

It looks like another institutional failure layered on top of the first one.

This conclusion becomes even harder to understand when considering what the babysitter reportedly told CFNIS in 2011. He did not simply say, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” He reportedly took the position that anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military, and that if charges were brought, a lawyer would deal with it. That is a remarkable response. It does not read like a categorical denial that anything occurred. It reads more like reliance on the fact that the military had already dealt with the matter internally. If that was his position, then CFNIS had even more reason to ask a very obvious question: handled by whom, handled how, under what authority, and where are the records?

A document detailing an investigative activity report, dated August 9, 2011, discussing a phone call to MCpl Hancock regarding an interview about an allegation, including the subject's refusal to participate and mention of legal representation.

In other words, the babysitter’s reported response to CFNIS was not “nothing happened.” It was closer to “whatever happened was already handled by the military.” That should have set off every alarm bell in the building. Because if the military had already “handled” allegations involving child abuse by a teenage babysitter on a defence establishment, then CFNIS should have been asking who handled it, what was done, what records existed, whether charges were ever considered, and whether the military process improperly buried the matter. Instead, the later conclusion appears to treat the absence of a clean modern prosecution file as though it were the same thing as absence of evidence.

The contradiction becomes even sharper when looking at CFNIS’s own conduct in 2011. On May 3, 2011, Master Corporal Christian Cyr asked me whether I remembered anything about the base chaplain being arrested for molesting children during the same general time frame in which I had accused the babysitter of abusing my brother and me. That question mattered. It showed that CFNIS already saw, or at least suspected, a connection between the babysitter allegations and the McRae matter.

During the 2012 MPCC investigation, Cyr claimed that I was the person who brought up McRae. But the MPCC found, after reviewing Cyr’s own paperwork, that the question originated with Cyr, not with me. That is not a minor detail. It means the McRae connection was not something I injected into the investigation after the fact. It was something CFNIS raised with me.

That point became even more important during the MPCC’s later review of the 2015 to 2018 CFNIS investigation into the babysitter. In that review, the MPCC discovered that CFNIS had the 1980 CFSIU investigation file, DS 120-10-80, relating to Captain Father Angus McRae. That file included the investigation of the babysitter. In other words, CFNIS was not dealing with a vague rumour, a distant childhood memory, or an unsupported historical complaint. CFNIS had access to the original military investigation material connecting the babysitter matter to the McRae scandal.

That makes the later conclusion even harder to accept. CFNIS knew enough in 2011 for Cyr to ask me about McRae. The MPCC later found that the McRae question originated with CFNIS. And the MPCC later confirmed that CFNIS possessed the 1980 CFSIU paperwork that included both McRae and the babysitter investigation. Against that background, the claim that there was not enough evidence to arrest, charge, or even seriously re-question the babysitter does not look like a neutral investigative conclusion. It looks like an institution stepping around the very evidence that tied the whole story together.

The problem was not that CFNIS had no trail to follow. The problem was that the trail led straight back into the military’s own handling of the 1980 investigation.

There Should At Least Be an Honest Record

One thing that became very apparent to me is how completely the Senate ignored people such as myself and Claire Elyse Brosseau.

The Senate seemed far more comfortable listening to people who believe suffering can always be managed, reframed, treated, or talked away than listening to people who have lived for decades with damage that did not heal.

They may have thought that by putting their fingers in their ears and refusing to listen to people asking for a dignified death, they could make us disappear.

But ignoring us does not make us disappear.

It only ensures that our suffering remains private, unmanaged, and invisible until it becomes someone else’s problem.

This is not a problem that can be solved by sending me back to another professional to talk about what happened. I have done that. The issue is not that I never tried. The issue is that the damage was created, ignored, and then left for me to carry.

What Military Family Trauma Actually Looked Like

A person sitting in a dimly lit, empty room, looking contemplative. The room has a large window with natural light and a disorganized stack of papers on a desk.
The isolation of being a mentally ill military dependent living within the military community.

As I’ve said before in other blog posts, I suffered immensely as a kid.

Growing up in a dysfunctional military family destroys a kid.

When you’re living in a dysfunctional military household, the other serving parents are well aware of the issues in your PMQ, and they don’t want their kids playing with you.

When you grow up in a dysfunctional military household, your parent’s untreated illness does not stay inside them. It becomes the weather system of the entire home.

Everyone talks about the suicides of members of the Canadian Armed Forces; no one ever talks about the suicides of military dependents. And just as the suicides of military dependents are of no concern to anyone, especially not the Canadian Armed Forces, the mental trauma endured by military dependents living on base in dysfunctional households is also of no interest to the Canadian Armed Forces.

I was a frequent flyer at the IWK children’s hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia while my father was stationed at CFB Shearwater. My medical records indicated that my father had been returned to port early due to “emotional issues.”

I was kept in the IWK for close to a month as a boarder due to issues with my parents.

Just before my father was posted to CFB Summerside, there were notes in my medical records in which the doctors were wondering if my frequent visits to the hospital were due to social issues in my home and whether they should get social services involved.

Even at CFB Namao, home life was anything but peaceful.

My grandmother was living with us on base in our PMQ, raising my brother and me, as our mother had left in 1977 and my father was frequently absent from the home due to training exercises.

My grandmother had her own demons. She had been through Holy Angels Indian Residential School. She was authoritarian, often angry, and severely alcoholic. None of that made her evil. It simply meant the damage in our home had already been passed down before it reached my brother and me. Her issues were no doubt the reason behind my father having piss-poor parenting skills himself.

In fact, it was my grandmother’s alcoholism that led to my brother and me requiring the babysitter in the first place.

What Happened After CFB Namao

Growing up on base as a sexually abused male child was not an easy task. The isolation was strict. On CFB Namao it was the beatings and the teasing from the other kids that was the driving factor behind my family being moved from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980.

CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach both comprised CFB Edmonton, and they were only about 10 kilometres apart from each other.

After 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse at the hands of Captain Father Angus McRae’s altar boy, as well as the various visits to the chapel to visit with the Father where alcohol was given to me, the behaviours of my brother and me were of great concern to our teachers at Major General Griesbach School.

Major General Griesbach School was the school operated by the Department of National Defence for the children of military families. It was our teachers at that school who called in a man named Terry.

From reading my social service records, it became apparent that my mental health at that point in my life was failing.

It was so bad that by the spring of 1982 I was supposed to have been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility for children. Unfortunately, it would appear from reading my social service reports that other things were afoot, and that my mental health and well-being were down the list of priorities for the “brass” on CFB Edmonton.

In October of 1980, I was diagnosed as having major depression, severe anxiety, an intense fear of men, a fear that my father wanted to kill me, and a fear of being touched. In fact, the depression was so bad that the psychologist had noted that she wondered if I had gone past depression and was well into despair.

I wouldn’t discover until the summer of 2011 who Terry was, but suffice to say I wasn’t surprised when I read my social service paperwork and discovered that Terry was Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke.

This explains why my father, Master Corporal Richard Gill, would follow Totzke’s instructions to a “t” and why he wouldn’t question Totzke.

The Help I Never Received

The sad thing is that I never received meaningful help for the trauma caused by the abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

Nor did I receive meaningful help for what was happening inside my father’s household.

Some people may ask why the Canadian Armed Forces would have had any responsibility for either issue.

The answer is simple.

Captain Father Angus McRae, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Gill were all members of the Regular Force. I lived in housing provided by the Canadian Armed Forces, on Defence Establishment property, inside a military community where the institution controlled the housing, the schools, the police, the social relationships, and much of the information flow.

This was not some private family matter that happened far away from the military.

It happened inside the world the military built and controlled.

Instead, the explanation placed on me was that I was suffering from a supposed mental illness called “homosexuality.”

That was supposedly why “I had sex” with the babysitter for 1-1/2 years, as if I seduced the babysitter and initiated the sex. That was supposedly why I didn’t report the abuse. That was supposedly why I stood by and allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

Totzke’s helpful hints for my father were to pull my bedroom door off its hinges so that I couldn’t sneak boys into my bedroom, and that I shouldn’t be allowed to play hockey or go swimming as there might be other naked boys in the change room.

And yes, my father used that on me once when he declined to allow me to go on a swimming trip.

Totzke’s advice to me was that he had the military police watching me, and that if I ever tried to kiss or touch another boy, the MPs would tell him and then I’d be sent off to the Alberta Hospital.

Alberta Social Services became involved with my family in November of 1981 when our teachers called them in to deal with me and my brother, as Captain Totzke wasn’t having much success.

Whenever my brother, my father, and I would go to counselling sessions, Terry would always remind me to watch what I said to Pat and Wayne, as they’d twist my words and make it sound as if I had said something that I didn’t mean to say.

There were also the warnings from my father to keep my mouth shut.

Without wasting too much time, I never did get help with the trauma I was carrying from the 1-1/2 years of abuse on CFB Namao.

Even when my father was posted from CFB Griesbach to CFB Downsview in Ontario, both he and Captain Totzke promised Alberta Social Services that I would be placed in a psychiatric program at the SickKids hospital in Toronto.

When I filed an ATI with SickKids in Toronto, they hadn’t heard of me or my father.

In fact, my paperwork from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto showed that the Canadian Armed Forces were less than helpful with trying to connect with my father. When asked about the problems with my brother and me, my father told CAST that our involvement with Alberta Social Services was both unwarranted and unhelpful.

It would be another couple of months before our teachers and principal at Sheppard Public School started raising concerns about my brother and me.

But by then it was too late.

Another couple of years and I would be out of the house and living on my own just after my sixteenth birthday, trying to make my way in a world with my untreated mental illnesses.

My younger years were spent jumping from job to job and collecting welfare in three different provinces before I was 25.

I’d go to the doctor periodically with complaints about constant tiredness, no desire to live, overwhelming feelings of failure, and panic attacks. Most of these walk-in doctors would diagnose me as just not getting enough sleep and prescribe melatonin.

The Canadian Armed Forces Knew More Than They Wanted To Admit

And then throw on top of this the pleasure of dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces in 2011, and then again from 2015 to 2018.

It wasn’t so much that charges weren’t brought against the babysitter.

It was the fact that the CFNIS in 2011, and again from 2015 through 2018, knew the full fucking truth about how big the child sexual abuse scandal was on Canadian Forces Base Namao, and yet they seemed hellbent and determined to portray me as the “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military.”

And it’s not like I haven’t tried therapy.

I had therapy from 2011 onwards. Mostly just talk. I had to be very careful about what I said, because shit like that can end employment opportunities.

I even went to counselling for male victims of sexual assault, but a lot of my mental health issues aren’t from the sexual abuse itself.

I’ve always said that what I considered more damaging was the abuse that I endured at the hands of my father and Terry in the aftermath of CFB Namao.

The Senate Did Not Listen

So here I am at 55.

The Senate of Canada appears to believe that all I have to do is think happy thoughts and everything will be better.

I am so fucking tired and burnt out.

I have the babysitter, my father, Captain Totzke, my grandmother, and a host of others living inside of my skull, reminding me of just exactly how much of a failure I am.

There is no happy ending.

Right now my lawyer has made a settlement offer to Canada’s lawyer.

I want to stay long enough to see myself, and the other children from CFB Namao who were swept up in the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal, receive some measure of recognition for what was done to us and what was ignored afterward.

I do not know what comes after that.

I only know that I am tired of carrying damage that other people created, other people minimized, and other people walked away from.

There will be no happy ending here.

But there should at least be an honest record.

What is something that I wish that I could tell my 20-year-old self?

A digital writing prompt asking, 'What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?'

If I could go back in time and tell myself something, I don’t think that I could be limited to telling myself just one thing with everything that I now know.

I would probably tell myself to get a copy of my social service records from Alberta and Ontario. That way I would have learnt from an early age that my father had some very serious mental health issues.

How exactly that would have helped me is kinda up for debate, but at least I would have probably written Richard off much earlier in life.

I would have paid a lot more attention to the documented failures of the military justice system. This may not have helped me, but at least I wouldn’t have naively believed in 2011 that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service was remotely competent to conduct a sexual assault investigation, let alone an investigation looking at child sexual abuse.

Maybe learning the truth about how the Canadian Armed Forces willingly sacrificed my mental health to put a lid on the Captain McRae matter would have got me on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers sooner which would have made things appear externally calm. But I don’t think that these meds would have helped “fix” anything.

Next step, a settlement offer.

The CFB Namao Class Action may be moving toward settlement, but the deeper issue remains: how military secrecy, command authority, postings, weak oversight, and the pre-1998 military justice system helped isolate child victims and protect the institution.

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:

IssueWhy it matters
Institutional reputationA child-abuse case on base damages confidence in the base, command, chaplaincy, military police, housing system, youth spaces, and family-support structure.
Control of informationThe base commander may influence who sees records, who is interviewed, how widely facts circulate, and whether civilian agencies are brought in early.
Command loyalty pressureSubordinates may feel pressure, explicit or implied, to protect the institution or avoid embarrassing the command.
Victim power imbalanceA child victim or military dependent has no rank, no command access, and no meaningful ability to challenge the military system.
Operational embarrassmentThe 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 riskThe 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:

  1. Narrowing the allegation
    The case may be framed around the easiest charge, the least embarrassing offender, or the least institutionally damaging facts.
  2. Avoiding civilian police
    Civilian police and child-protection agencies may be delayed, excluded, or treated as secondary.
  3. 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.
  4. Suppressing pattern evidence
    If there are multiple children, multiple locations, prior warnings, or previous allegations, those facts may be compartmentalized.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

Let there be light……

Back around 2019, I had a little project at work where I had to clean up non-stop communication errors between our generator control panel and two sets of remote monitoring devices..

The original communication system for the breakers in the Burrard breaker room was Modbus over RS-485 using twisted pair. The original communication system for the power monitors in the south distribution room was also Modbus over RS-485 using twisted pair.

The system had two IP-to-Modbus gateways in the generator control panel.

One gateway communicated with the breakers through about 120 metres of cable, and the other gateway communicated with the meters through about 220 metres of cable.

As I said before, both networks were throwing up non-stop errors and alarms. Mainly checksum errors, but also plenty of timed out errors and outright communication failed errors.

There are two common types of cable that can be used with an RS-485 network.

Twisted pair with shield, or twisted pair with common and shield.

Twisted pair with shield is fine for networks where all of the devices on share either the same power supply or the same common ground reference.

Twisted pair with common is used where the devices do not share the same common power supply or the same common reference to ground. This is the kind of situation you can run ito with VFDs, or devices that are located a fair distance away from the main system and only share a common bond through the safety ground.

All three locations were powered from separate power sources. Yes, all three buildings share a common bonded ground, but that bonding is for electrical safety. It is not there to provide a clean common reference for RS-485 transceivers.

The shield for the RS-485 wiring was installed properly. It was earth grounded at one end only and isolated at the other. So, there shouldn’t have been any current flow on the shield due to differences in ground potential in the two buildings.

The power meter network used cable with a common wire, but that network was having just as many problems as the breaker network that did not have the common wire.

A cable tester did not find any faults with the either cable.

So that left me with a head-scratcher.

Do I pull out all of the RS-485 cable and replace it, or do I get fancy and put the lino on fibre and never have to worry about ground loops, common references, electrical noise, or other weirdness that could pop up later?

I went with full-duplex fibre.

I had our network contractor pull 130 metres of six-strand fibre, install a fibre termination box at both ends, and dress and terminate two of the strands.

Then I installed a Moxa IP-to-Fibre media converter at each end of the fibre.

Close-up of an industrial media converter with power and connection indicators, surrounded by wired connections and components in an industrial control panel.
Full duplex with a 100 Mb / sec link
Close-up view of a control panel displaying various electrical components, including relays, controllers, and wiring in an organized layout.
Looks right at home in the generator control panel

The other end of the fibre, in the Burrard switchgear room, is where I had to get a little fancy.

I had to install an IP-to-Fibre media converter, a five port switch, and two MOXA MB 3180 IP-to-RS-485 Modbus gateways. The MOXA gateways were assigned the same IP addresses as the original gateways they replaced in the generator control panel.

The reason the two gateways work at the end of a single IP-to-Fibre connection is that the switches used inside the generator control panel are unmanaged and unrouted. When either of the two PLCs or HMIs wants to poll devices on the network, it sends the traffic for the intended IP address and only the device with the matching IP responds.

I had Gerryl whip up a box with a power supply and some terminal blocks, then mount it using Unistrut extensions. Then I jammed the networking equipment into the box.

A close-up view of an open electrical control panel featuring various components, including connectors, circuit boards, and multiple wires, all organized within a gray metal casing.
Box by Gerryl

The nice thing is that most of the devices in this box are parts I already carry in stock in the Power Engineer’s workshop. The MOXA MB3180s are gateways I have used in various other Modbus projects at work. The five-port Ethernet switches are something that I already use for other projects. And the Mean Well power supplies are also devices that I use elsewhere. The DIN rail blocks are something that I keep in stock. The only new devices that I had to order were the MOXA IP-to-fibre converters.

The breakers in this the Burrard switchgear room form one node and go into one MOXA MB3180. The power monitors in the other electrical room, located about another 100 metres away, form the other node and go into the other MOXA MB3180.

I re-used the original RS-485 wiring from the breakers the Burrard switchgear room to this box, and I reused the original RS-485 wiring from the power monitors to this box.

Sure, it probably could have looked much prettier, but I’m a Power Engineer running an occupied facility, Jim! I’m not a miracle worker.

My job was to stop the non-stop barrage of alarms that were being sent to the Shift Engineer’s pager.

The alarms stopped, and we get proper readings, so my job is done.

And in a couple of year, this will all be long gone, like it never even existed in the first place.

Uncovering Family Secrets: Insight into My Father’s Past

I recently came across an interesting item related to my father.

I have some FOIs to file, and hopefully the records do verify that this was my father and not someone else with the same name that my father went by and with an age that could easily be his.

It also occured in the same province that he lived in during the exact same time frame as the incident.

But it sure would explain a lot about my father and why he was more akin to align with the rule breakers as opposed to those too terrified to break the rules.

Court Upholds Class Action Against Canadian Government

Just got news today from my lawyer.

The Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed Canada’s appeal from the certification of my class action against the Crown.

2026abca0163v2Download

This decision creates several practical problems for Canada.:

  1. Certification survives.
    The appeal is dismissed except for aggregate general damages, and the class action remains certified. That is the big result. The Court confirms certification of the claim as a class action.  
  2. Canada lost on the “secondary victim” framing.
    Canada tried to split victims into “direct victims” of McRae and people who were directly abused by P.S. rather than McRae himself. The Court rejected that framing, saying it wrongly assumes victims of P.S. could not also be victims of McRae.  
  3. The Court accepted multiple legal pathways.
    The Court said the pleadings can support liability for torts other than direct sexual abuse by McRae himself, including assault through threats or intimidating conduct, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and possible joint tortfeasor liability where McRae facilitated abuse by others.  
  4. The direct negligence issue is legally interesting.
    This is probably Canada’s best SCC angle. The Court openly notes uncertainty about whether the federal Crown can be directly liable in negligence under s. 3 of the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act, then says it is not plain and obvious the claim cannot succeed.  
  5. Punitive damages remain alive as a common issue.
    That matters. The Court says punitive damages focus on the defendant’s conduct, not each individual class member’s damages, and finds “some basis in fact” for the claim that military officials had knowledge of abuse and failed to prevent it.  

At the end of the day I fully expect the Crown to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

This case is far too institutionally dangerous for the Government of Canada to let it move forward without fighting at every available stage.

The Crown will try to argue that they should not be held responsible due to language in the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act. The problem with this, though, is that the circumstances around the abuse on the base were not typical.

  • Captain McRae was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who was recruited, vetted, hired, and trained by the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • Colonel Daniel Edward Munro was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who was recruited, vetted, hired, and trained by the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • Colonel Daniel Edward Munro had full command over all members of the Canadian Armed Forces working and residing on Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. Captain Father Angus McRae was his direct subordinate.
  • Due to the structure of the Chain of Command pre-1998, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro had full command authority over the personnel of the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit detachment at CFB Edmonton.
  • Due to Colonel Daniel Edward Munro’s position as Captain McRae’s commanding officer, Munro not only influenced the scope of the investigation brought against McRae, but also exercised command authority within the pre-1998 military justice structure, including authority affecting which service charges proceeded and which did not.
  • Captain Terry Totzke, my military social worker, was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who was recruited, vetted, hired, and trained by the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • My father, Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill, was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who was recruited, vetted, hired, and trained by the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • My father, being of a junior rank, was subordinate to all of the command structure involved with the investigation of Captain McRae.
  • My father, again being of a junior rank, was not in a position to question Captain Terry Totzke’s treatment of me or his opinion of me.
  • It is unclear who decided not to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with the actions of the babysitter, but whoever made that decision would likely have been operating within the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
  • The PMQs and all parts of the base were part of a defence establishment, and the base military police and the CFSIU were responsible for security and law enforcement on the base.
  • Civilians living on defence establishments at the time were subject to the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations. This would include P.S. Dependants living on a defence establishment were also subject to military-controlled authority, including arrest or removal in circumstances governed by those regulations.
  • Under the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations, the Crown, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Department of National Defence had authority to remove a civilian suspected of committing a Criminal Code offence from the defence establishment, including the PMQs.
  • The Canadian Armed Forces had legal authority under the National Defence Act to deal with many Criminal Code offences, with the exception of murder, manslaughter, and rape, through their own “separate but parallel” justice system. Because of that authority, the Canadian Armed Forces also had an innate responsibility to ensure that victims of criminal offences committed on defence establishments were protected, especially when those offences were committed by their own members.
  • The three-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998, along with the military’s assertion of primary jurisdiction for Criminal Code offences committed on defence establishments by members subject to the Code of Service Discipline, could interfere with a former military dependant’s ability to seek justice.
  • The summary investigation flaw that existed prior to 1998 may make it legally impossible to bring charges against a former service member who committed sexual assaults against children if that person’s commanding officer had in fact dismissed those charges prior to 1998.
  • The Canadian Armed Forces had a very parochial view of male-on-male sexual abuse and treated this abuse as “acts of homosexuality.”
  • The legal structure was one problem. The culture sitting on top of that structure was another.
  • The Canadian Armed Forces had a very derogatory opinion of homosexuals and viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, even though the civilian world had already begun moving away from these small-minded and prejudicial opinions.
  • Because of these views, there may have been a very real drive within the Canadian Armed Forces for commanding officers to minimize instances of homosexuality on their bases, and for parents of sexually abused children to minimize or downplay instances of male-on-male sexual assault, lest other members of the Canadian Armed Forces question their parenting skills or their own sexuality.

No matter how determined the Government of Canada is to compare the sexual abuse of children on Canadian Armed Forces bases to children being sexually abused in many civilian organizations, the company town that existed within the perimeter fences offered very little in the way for children to seek justice independent of the wishes of the chain of command.

There was another layer to this that ordinary civilian institutions did not have. The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence operated inside a federal secrecy culture shaped by the former Official Secrets Act, now the Security of Information Act. Civilian organizations can hide behind bureaucracy, settlements, reputation management, and poor recordkeeping. But military institutions also had classification practices, command discipline, national-defence language, and secrecy obligations that could make historical events much harder for victims, families, journalists, and even later investigators to reconstruct.

A civilian church, school, or youth organization could try to bury a scandal. A military institution could bury a scandal inside a command structure, a security classification system, a military police file, and a culture where speaking outside the institution could be treated as disloyalty or worse.

Back in August 2011, during a telephone conversation with Master Corporal Robert Jon Hancock, P.S. stated that “anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military.”

That statement begs an obvious question: if the military was willing to “handle things” for someone who had multiple convictions for child sexual abuse before his nineteenth birthday, why was the military not equally willing to handle things for the victims of McRae and P.S.?

Yes, I understand that P.S. was also a victim of McRae. But P.S. was not only a victim. He also inflicted sexual, mental, and physical abuse upon us. He also took us to the rectory at the chapel, where Captain Father Angus McRae was present, and where we were given wine or some other sickly-sweet drink which was no doubt to ensure that we’d never have memories of the abuse.

That is not a minor detail. If the military treated P.S.’s conduct as something that had already been “handled,” then the question becomes: handled for whom? Handled for P.S.? Handled for McRae? Handled for the chain of command? Or handled for the children who were actually harmed?

It is important to remember that this was not the RCMP, the Edmonton Police Service, or the Vancouver Police Department conducting an outside investigation into a closed military world. This was the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service — a military police organization operating inside the same institution whose historical conduct was at issue.

CFNIS investigators may perform policing functions, but they are also members of the Canadian Armed Forces. They operate within a military structure, a military culture, and a military chain of command. That matters when the investigation concerns abuse on a defence establishment, historical military police knowledge, military chaplaincy, military housing, military social work, military command decisions, and potential Crown liability.

So when P.S. stated that anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been “handled by the military,” the obvious question is not simply what he meant. The obvious question is whether CFNIS, in 2011, was truly investigating something new — or whether it was walking back into an old institutional containment system.

When “Direction” Isn’t Direction: My 2022 CFNIS Complaint and the MPCC’s 2024 Transfer Collapse

How a historical sexual abuse file exposed the gap between public promises, military police discretion, and civilian oversight

In February 2022, I wrote to Canada’s Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand, asking a simple question:

Why was the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service refusing to transfer my historical sexual assault complaint to civilian authorities?

At the time, Canadians had been told that sexual misconduct investigations in the Canadian Armed Forces were being moved out of the military justice system and into the civilian justice system. That public message mattered. It was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to represent a change in direction after years of reports, scandals, reviews, and institutional failures.

But in my case, the message I received was very different.

I had been informed by CFNIS Victim Services that my complaint of sexual assault against retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Roger Bazin would not be handed over to civilian authorities. I had not been given a proper explanation by Sgt. David Winship of CFNIS Western Region. So I wrote to the Minister directly and asked why CFNIS was holding onto a historical matter involving alleged sexual assault of a civilian minor.  

Two years later, the Military Police Complaints Commission would open a public interest investigation into a broader version of the same issue: whether the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal had failed to implement ministerial direction to transfer sexual offence investigations to civilian police.

Then the whole thing collapsed.

Not because the issue was unimportant.

Not because the concern was imaginary.

Not because the MPCC found that the military police policy made sense.

It collapsed because the Minister of National Defence later told the MPCC that neither he nor his predecessor had actually issued such direction to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.  

That distinction matters.

Because if there was no actual direction, then what exactly had Canadians been told?

And if there was no actual direction, what exactly were victims supposed to rely on?

The Arbour recommendation was clear

Madame Louise Arbour’s recommendation was not complicated.

Sexual assaults and other criminal offences of a sexual nature, including historical sexual offences alleged to have been committed by current or former CAF members, should be referred to civilian authorities. Investigations already underway by CFNIS should be transferred to civilian police unless they were near completion. Charges, in all cases, should proceed in civilian court.

That was the idea.

Remove these cases from the military system.

Remove the conflict.

Remove the appearance that the institution was still controlling investigations that could expose the institution itself.

But my experience showed something different.

I had been interviewed by CFNIS at Vancouver Police Department headquarters on July 30, 2020, in relation to what I described in my own calendar record as the “sauna man” matter.  

A few days later, on August 10, 2020, I sent Sgt. Winship and MCpl Brady examples of decades-old sexual assault cases that had still resulted in civilian criminal charges. I wanted CFNIS to understand that “forty years” did not automatically mean impossible. I also specifically flagged the concern that the pre-1998 National Defence Act three-year time bar could become an obstacle. Sgt. Winship replied that they would “take a look at those.”  

So this was not a concern I invented after the file stalled.

CFNIS was alerted to the limitation issue from the beginning.

The pre-1998 National Defence Act problem

The problem I raised with Minister Anand was not simply that CFNIS had failed to update me.

The problem was deeper.

Before Bill C-25 amended the National Defence Act in 1998, the Code of Service Discipline contained a three-year limitation period for trying service offences, subject to certain exceptions. That mattered because Criminal Code offences could be incorporated into the military justice system as service offences.

In my February 11, 2022 letter, I pointed directly to Legislative Summary LS-311E and the Bill C-25 amendment that removed the three-year limitation period for service offences, replacing it with the applicable Criminal Code limitation periods for civilian criminal offences.  

The problem, as I framed it, was that Bill C-25 did not appear to retroactively undo the damage caused by the old three-year time bar.

That left a brutal question:

What happened to civilian children on Canadian Forces bases who were abused by people subject to the Code of Service Discipline before 1998?

If the military system claimed jurisdiction back then, and if the military system’s limitation period expired, did those children lose practical access to justice through no fault of their own?

That was the question I put before the Minister.

And it was not theoretical.

I specifically asked Minister Anand to speak to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff and the Provost Marshal to determine why my case — involving the alleged sexual assault of a civilian minor — had not been handed over to civilian authorities like other sexual assault matters within the military justice system.  

My MPCC complaint came first

On February 8, 2022, I filed a Military Police Complaints Commission conduct complaint concerning Sgt. David Winship.

In that complaint, I stated that I had been contacted by CFNIS Victim Services in November 2021 and told that, due to recent decisions by Minister Anand, my case was more than likely being handed over to civilian authorities. I then stated that on January 19, 2022, I was contacted again and informed that, for some unknown reason, my case was not going to be handed over to civilian authorities.  

That is the key.

This was February 2022.

The broader MPCC public interest investigation into the transfer issue would not happen until 2024.

So when MPCC 2023-084 later examined whether sexual offence files had been properly transferred to civilian police, my case-specific complaint had already raised the same practical problem two years earlier.

The MPCC acknowledged receipt of my complaint on February 14, 2022 and assigned it file number MPCC 2022-006 (Bees). But the MPCC did not investigate it directly at that stage. Under subsection 250.26(1) of the National Defence Act, conduct complaints are dealt with by the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal in the first instance. So my complaint was forwarded to the CFPM.  

In plain English:

A complaint about CFNIS handling was sent first to the military police leadership structure.

That may have followed the statute.

But it also demonstrates the structural problem.

The same system whose decisions were being challenged got first control over the response.

The informal resolution route

In April 2022, Canadian Forces Military Police Group Professional Standards wrote to me advising that Sgt. Winship had agreed to an Informal Resolution. The letter stated that if informal resolution succeeded, the details had to be set out in writing and agreed to by both the complainant and the subject of the complaint. If it did not resolve the matter, the file would proceed to a Professional Standards Investigation.  

That letter matters because it confirms the complaint was not merely theoretical. It entered the formal military police complaint process.

But again, the structural issue remains.

The central issue was not simply whether Sgt. Winship had been polite enough, responsive enough, or communicative enough.

The central issue was this:

Why was CFNIS retaining a historical sexual assault-related file that appeared to fall within the very category of cases the public had been told were moving to civilian police?

And if CFNIS was retaining it because the old National Defence Act created a military justice limitation problem, then that was not merely an individual complaint.

That was a systemic problem.

Then came MPCC 2023-084

In January 2024, the MPCC decided to conduct a public interest investigation into a complaint alleging that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal had failed to implement ministerial direction to transfer sexual misconduct investigations to the civilian justice system.

The MPCC cited several reasons why the matter was serious.

The issue involved the head of the military police. It raised systemic concerns. It involved public reporting. It raised questions about civilian control of military policing. And it involved the broader question of what “victim-centric” meant when deciding whether sexual offence files should be transferred to civilian police.  

The MPCC had good reason to take the issue seriously.

The public record appeared to suggest that direction had been given.

Minister Anand had publicly said she accepted Arbour’s recommendations. The December 2022 report to Parliament said Military Police were directed to review ongoing files and transfer them where possible. Minister Blair later said the government had not intended for half the files to remain with military investigators.  

But then, on January 23, 2024, the MPCC received new information from the Minister of National Defence.

The Minister stated that neither he nor his predecessor had issued direction to the CFPM regarding the transfer of files involving criminal offences of a sexual nature.  

That changed everything.

On February 6, 2024, the MPCC terminated the public interest investigation. The Commission concluded that without confirmed ministerial direction, there was no basis to find that the CFPM had failed to comply with such direction.  

That is where the bureaucratic trap door opened.

The public message versus the legal reality

The MPCC’s 2024 decision exposes a serious gap between public messaging and enforceable direction.

Publicly, Canadians were told that the Arbour recommendation had been accepted.

Publicly, Canadians were told sexual misconduct investigations were being moved to the civilian system.

Publicly, victims could reasonably believe that the military police were no longer supposed to be holding onto these files.

But legally, when the MPCC tried to investigate whether the CFPM had failed to follow ministerial direction, the Minister said there had been no such direction.

That is not a small technicality.

That is the whole issue.

Because if public statements are not operational direction, then public statements do not protect victims.

If reports to Parliament do not amount to binding instruction, then reports to Parliament do not control CFNIS conduct.

If a Minister says a recommendation has been accepted, but no enforceable direction is issued to the Provost Marshal, then the military police may still retain practical control over the very cases the public thought were being removed from military control.

That is not transparency.

That is fog.

The MPCC still criticized the policy

The MPCC did not say the CFPM’s policy was fine.

Quite the opposite.

Even after terminating the investigation, the MPCC Chairperson stated that it was difficult to reconcile Madame Arbour’s recommendations with the CFPM’s decision not to transfer every file involving criminal offences of a sexual nature to civilian police. The Chairperson also found it puzzling that the CFPM referenced Arbour’s recommendation while implementing directions that contradicted it.  

The MPCC also criticized the policy’s use of the term “victim-centric, trauma-informed,” stating that it was insufficient to simply use that language without written considerations explaining why and how the approach was victim-centred and trauma-informed. The Chairperson concluded that, in its current form, the policy did not meet that threshold and placed an unfair burden on victims.  

That part is important.

The MPCC could not continue the investigation because the legal hook disappeared.

But the Commission still recognized the policy problem.

In other words:

The oversight body could see the smoke.

It just no longer had the jurisdictional fire alarm it needed.

Why my 2022 complaint matters now

My February 2022 complaint and letter to Minister Anand matter because they show the problem was not abstract.

I was not writing in 2024 after reading media coverage.

I was not reacting after the MPCC public interest investigation became public.

I was raising the issue in real time, in early 2022, after being told that my own historical sexual-assault-related file would not be transferred to civilian authorities.

My case showed the practical problem before the MPCC’s broader 2024 decision exposed the legal one.

The sequence matters:

First, a victim is told his file will not be transferred.

Then he asks CFNIS and the Minister why.

Then his MPCC complaint is routed back to the CFPM for first-instance handling.

Then, two years later, the MPCC tries to investigate the broader transfer issue.

Then the Minister says there was never an actual direction.

That is not a clean accountability system.

That is a system where every piece can point to another piece.

CFNIS can say it is following policy.

The CFPM can say transfer depends on process.

The Minister can say no direction was issued.

The MPCC can say it cannot investigate failure to comply with a direction that did not exist.

And the victim is left standing there, holding the file.

The real question

The real question is not whether the words “victim-centric” appear in a policy.

The real question is whether the system actually removes institutional conflict from sexual offence investigations.

In historical cases involving Canadian Forces bases, military dependants, and persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline, the conflict is obvious.

The Canadian Forces may have been the employer.

The Canadian Forces may have controlled the base.

The Canadian Forces may have controlled the historical records.

The Canadian Forces may have controlled the military police.

The Canadian Forces may have controlled the military justice process.

And decades later, CFNIS may still be the body deciding what happens to the complaint.

That is not independence in any meaningful sense.

That is institutional self-navigation.

Conclusion: direction should mean direction

If the Government of Canada tells the public that sexual misconduct investigations are being moved to civilian police, then that commitment should exist as more than a press statement, a tweet, or a line in a report.

It should exist as actual direction.

It should be written.

It should be traceable.

It should be enforceable.

And oversight bodies should not be left trying to determine whether public political commitments were ever converted into operational reality.

My 2022 complaint shows what happens in the gap between promise and direction.

A historical sexual assault-related file stays with CFNIS.

The complainant asks why.

The complaint goes back through the CFPM structure.

The policy language says “victim-centric.”

But the actual process leaves the victim carrying the burden of figuring out what the system is doing, why it is doing it, and whether anyone outside that system has the power to intervene.

That is not victim-centred.

That is bureaucracy wearing a trauma-informed nametag.

And it is exactly why these files should never have been left in military hands in the first place.

Historical Child Sexual Offences and Military Justice: A Critical Look

With Louise Arbour now appointed as Canada’s next Governor General, one of her most important recommendations on military sexual misconduct has returned to the centre of Canadian public life. Through Bill C-11, the Liberal government is moving to remove the Canadian Armed Forces’ authority to investigate and prosecute Criminal Code sexual offences committed in Canada, transferring that responsibility to the civilian justice system.

I am waiting to hear whether “Criminal Code sexual offences” will include historical child sexual offences that were never called sexual assault.

If you have followed my blog for any length of time you know the National Defence Act and the Criminal Code of Canada both contain language so vague that the snowbirds could fly wing-tip to wing-tip through the gaps.

This is not theoretical. On November 4, 2021, then-Minister of National Defence Anita Anand accepted Louise Arbour’s interim recommendation that sexual assaults and other Criminal Code offences of a sexual nature should be referred to civilian authorities. At the time, CFNIS had an active investigation into my complaint against retired Brigadier-General Roger Bazin. CFNIS refused to transfer the matter to civilian police on the basis that the possible 1980-era offences were not “sexual assault.” Their position was that sexual assault did not exist as a charge in 1980, while offences such as indecent assault and gross indecency did. Therefore, they treated the matter as outside Minister Anand’s transfer direction.

From 1950 until the 1985 Criminal Code transition, the National Defence Act excluded murder, manslaughter, and rape from trial by service tribunal when committed in Canada. And if you thought that “Rape” covered all sexual assaults against anyone, you’d be sadly mistaken.

Rape didn’t cover the following criminal code offences:

  • s. 146(1) Sexual Intercourse with female under 14
  • s. 146(2) Sexual Intercourse with female of previously chaste character age 14 to 16
  • s. 147 Attempted Sexual Intercourse with female under 14
  • s. 148 Sexual intercourse with “feeble-minded”
  • s. 149 Indecent Assault on female
  • s. 153 Sexual Intercourse with stepdaughter or female ward.
  • s. 155 Buggery
  • s. 156 Indecent Assault on male (often interpreted through a “homosexuality” lens by police, military, and social-work culture of the period)
  • s. 157 Gross Indecency (often interpreted through a “homosexuality” lens by police, military, and social-work culture of the period)

In the legal culture of the 1970s and early 1980s, Criminal Code ss. 155, 156, and 157 were not formally the offence of “homosexuality,” but they were commonly associated with male homosexual conduct, male sexual deviance, and “morals” policing. In institutional practice, that meant allegations involving male victims or male-male sexual conduct could be misread through a homosexuality lens rather than a child-protection or sexual-assault lens.

From 1985 until 1998, the National Defence Act excluded s. 271 sexual assault from trial by service tribunal when committed in Canada.

s. 271 Sexual Assault didn’t cover the following criminal code offences:

  • s. 151 Sexual interference under the age threshold
  • s. 152 Invitation to Sexual Touching
  • s. 153 Sexual Exploitation
  • s. 155 Incest
  • s. 160 Bestiality involving a child.
  • s. 170 Parent or Guardian procuring sexual activity
  • s. 171 Householder permitting prohibited sexual activity
  • s. 172 Corrupting children
  • s. 173(2) Exposure to person under age threshold

I asked ChatGPT what the key distinctions were between s. 271 and s. 151 – s. 173 were. This is what ChatGPT replied with.

The key distinction is this: sexual assault was the broad assault-based offence. Child-specific offences worked differently. Some required touching. Some required only invitation. Some targeted adults who procured, permitted, enabled, or exposed children to sexual activity. If the CAF only transfers files labelled “sexual assault,” then entire categories of child sexual offending can disappear into a jurisdictional crack.

Back on November 4th, 2021 then Minister of National Defence Anita Anand instructed all current sexual assault investigations and prosecutions to be handed over to the civilian justice system.

The CFNIS at the time had an active investigation into my complaint against retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin to ascertain if he was the man in the sauna that the babysitter took me to meet in order to pleasure the man in the sauna.

The CFNIS refused to hand this matter over to the civilian police citing that the offences that Bazin could potentially be charged with didn’t meet the definition of “Sexual Assault” as sexual assault didn’t exist in 1980, but that Indecent Assault and Gross Indecency were criminal code offences at the time of the alleged offence and therefore this matter was outside of Minister Anand’s instructions.

I asked ChatGPT the following question:

The Liberal Government of Canada just announced that they will formally remove ALL responsibility for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault from the Canadian Armed Forces and mandate that all sexual assault involving the Canadian Armed Forces be handled by civilian police.

As you know, the Canadian Armed Forces often investigated and prosecuted child sexual assault because rape typically wasn’t a crime that applied to children, nor did post 1983 sexual assault.

Do you believe that the Canadian Armed Forces will willingly hand over crimes involving children, especially pre-1998 crimes to the civilian system?

ChatGPT analyzed the question and came back with this response:

My honest read: not willingly, not cleanly, and not without pressure

Based on the current Bill C-11 material and the MPCC’s own concern about past transfer failures, I would not assume the CAF/CFNIS will naturally and generously hand over every file involving children — especially old, pre-1998 files — unless the statute, ministerial direction, civilian police demand, disclosure rules, and outside oversight make the transfer unavoidable.

That does not mean every individual investigator will act in bad faith. It means the institutional incentive structure still favours control. 🧱

What the new reform appears to do

Bill C-11 is aimed at removing CAF investigative and prosecutorial jurisdiction over Criminal Code sexual offences committed in Canada and giving civilian authorities exclusive jurisdiction for those offences. DND’s own Bill C-11 material says this implements part of Arbour’s recommendation that Criminal Code sexual offences should be removed from CAF jurisdiction and prosecuted exclusively in civilian criminal courts, with civilian police investigating in Canada “at the earliest opportunity.”  

DND’s Arbour-response report is even broader in wording. It says all sexual assaults and other criminal offences of a sexual nature under the Criminal Code, including historical sexual offences, alleged to have been perpetrated by a current or former CAF member, should be referred to civilian authorities. It also says civilian authorities should exercise investigative and prosecutorial jurisdiction over all sexual offences by CAF members.  

That wording matters because it does not just say “modern sexual assault under s. 271.” It says:

sexual assaults and other criminal offences of a sexual nature under the Criminal Code, including historical sexual offences

That should include child-specific sexual offences, at least in principle.

But here’s the trap: “sexual assault” is too narrow

You are right to flag the category problem.

Historically, especially before and around the 1983 reforms, many child sexual offences were not labelled “sexual assault.” They could be framed as:

EraPossible legal label
Pre-1983 / 1970 Codeindecent assault on female, indecent assault on male, buggery, gross indecency, sexual intercourse with female under 14, sexual intercourse with stepdaughter/ward, parent/guardian procuring defilement, householder permitting defilement
Post-1983 / 1985 Codesexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation, incest, parent/guardian procuring sexual activity, householder permitting prohibited sexual activity, corrupting children, exposure

So if the transfer rule is interpreted as only “sexual assault”, then old child sexual abuse files can fall into a crack.

But if it is interpreted as “Criminal Code sexual offences” or “criminal offences of a sexual nature”, then the net is much wider. Bill C-11/DND materials use the wider language in key places.  

Why I would not trust voluntary handover

The MPCC has already identified the exact kind of institutional problem you are worried about.

In a 2023 public-interest-investigation decision, the MPCC described a complaint alleging that a ministerial direction to transfer sexual misconduct investigations from military police to civilian police was not implemented by the CFPM. The MPCC noted a disparity between Minister Anand’s 2021 direction, Minister Blair’s later statement that it was not intended that half of sexual assault files remain with military investigators, and the CFPM approach of involving victims in transfer decisions. The MPCC said this raised questions about civilian control of military policing.  

That is the smoke coming out of the second-storey window.

It shows the problem is not theoretical. There has already been a fight over whether the military police actually implemented the transfer direction fully.

The especially difficult category: historic pre-1998 child cases

Pre-1998 matters are the most vulnerable to institutional slipperiness because they can be argued into several boxes:

Possible CAF/CFNIS argumentWhy it matters
“This is historical and evidentiary.”Civilian police may be reluctant unless records are complete.
“This was handled under military justice at the time.”CAF may try to treat old records as military justice history, not fresh civilian criminal evidence.
“The suspect was subject to the Code of Service Discipline.”They may frame it as a service-tribunal legacy issue.
“The offence label was not sexual assault.”Child-specific or old sexual offences could be miscategorized.
“Civilian police declined / lack jurisdiction / lack records.”CAF can keep practical control if the handoff is incomplete.
“Records are archived, classified, privileged, or subject to privacy limits.”Disclosure becomes the bottleneck.

That last point is the big one. Jurisdiction on paper is one thing. Possession of records is another.

If CFNIS/DND still controls the old investigative files, notebooks, witness lists, Crown briefs, command correspondence, charge-screening records, and court martial material, then civilian jurisdiction can be starved at the source.

So would they hand over child files willingly?

My answer: only the files they are forced to define as transferable

I would expect easier handover where the case is:

  • recent,
  • clearly labelled sexual assault,
  • committed in Canada,
  • involving a CAF member,
  • already known to civilian authorities,
  • not embarrassing to historical command structures,
  • not tied to old military justice decisions.

I would expect more resistance, confusion, or narrowing where the case is:

  • pre-1998,
  • child-specific,
  • labelled under old offences,
  • tied to military dependants,
  • tied to PMQs/base institutions,
  • tied to chaplains, social workers, MPs, or command decisions,
  • connected to previous CFNIS/MPCC failures,
  • dependent on old CFSIU/CFNIS files.

That is not me being dramatic. That is how bureaucracies defend themselves: not usually by saying “no” loudly, but by defining the problem narrowly enough that the awkward parts fall outside the box.

The key phrase to watch

The reform must not be allowed to mean only:

“sexual assault.”

The phrase that matters is:

“all Criminal Code offences of a sexual nature, including historical child sexual offences, regardless of whether the historical charge label was rape, indecent assault, gross indecency, buggery, sexual interference, sexual exploitation, procuring, permitting, or another child-specific sexual offence.”

That is the language that closes the loophole.

Bottom line

Do I believe the CAF will willingly hand over historic child sexual offence files, especially pre-1998 ones?

No. Not as a matter of institutional instinct.

I believe they will hand over what the law, civilian police, courts, ministers, journalists, survivors, and oversight bodies make impossible to keep.

The reform is important. But without explicit language covering historical child sexual offences and mandatory disclosure of related military records, the CAF can still hide behind classification, offence labels, jurisdictional history, and “that was not technically sexual assault” nonsense.

That is the loophole. And that is where I would keep hammering.

Roger is dead.

Well, it looks like Roger Bazin will never have to own up to anything he may have done in the past. And sadly, that probably was not because of any great cunning or scheming on his part. Some of it likely had to do with the flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act. But some of it also appears to have had to do with the incompetence of the CFNIS.

Roger Bazin died on May 2nd, 2026

A portrait of Msgr. Roger Bazin, smiling, wearing glasses and a black suit jacket over a white clerical shirt, with dates of birth and death listed below.

Roger however had some skeletons from his military days. In June of 2009 the CFNIS launched an investigation into Bazin.

Newspaper article headline about a former military chief chaplain charged with sexual assault and historical details regarding the incident.
Article discussing allegations of sexual assault against retired brigadier-general Roger Bazin, a former military chaplain, highlighting the military's response and the implications for chaplain candidates.

And the complaint made against Bazin in June of 2009 wasn’t the only allegation that had ever been made against Bazin. In the early 2000’s a $24,000.00 payment was made to the family of a teen that had made allegations against Bazin.

Article discussing allegations against a military chaplain not reported to police, detailing statements from church officials and the affected family.

Remember that all of this was before the reviews of the military justice system by Madame Marie Deschamps and Madame Louise Arbour, both of whom found the military police and the CFNIS incapable of conducting proper sexual assault investigations.

I had made my own complaint against Roger Bazin in 2020.

This had to do with Roger Bazin having been dispatched from Ottawa to assist Captain Father Angus McRae with his affairs during the investigation and subsequent courts martial.

During the same period of time that Roger Bazin was on Canadian Forces Base Namao, the babysitter intercepted me in the change room at the base swimming pool and took me into the men’s sauna. Inside the sauna was an adult man I did not know. What happened there became part of the complaint I later made to CFNIS

I then performed oral on the guy until he was just about to ejaculate.

I never saw the man after that.

The CFNIS investigator who took my statement later interviewed Bazin. According to what I was told, Bazin denied being the adult man from the sauna incident. But he also apparently told the investigator that there were other matters he had been worried about being investigated for..

And no, the CFNIS made absolutely no attempt to talk to the babysitter to see if the babysitter would identify who that man was that he provided me to in 1980.

Roger Bazin died without ever having to fully answer, in public, for the allegations that followed him out of his military career and into old age. That is not proof that every allegation against him could have resulted in a conviction. But it is proof of something much uglier: when military institutions delay, deflect, minimize, or mishandle sexual abuse complaints, time becomes the accomplice. Witnesses die. Records disappear. Jurisdiction becomes a fog machine. And by the time anyone finally admits that the system failed, the person who should have had to answer the questions is already gone. Bazin did not need to defeat the system. The system appears to have defeated accountability for him.