Today’s report only amplifies what many people of colour, women, 2SLGBTQI+ and Indigenous people within the military have been saying for decades: systemic racism and discrimination is rampant in our armed forces, and real action to address this is long overdue.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives have failed to make systemic changes as numerous stories of discrimination and rising extremism within the military have gone unchecked. In the past 20 years, 41 panels and 258 recommendations alerted the government on the gravity of the situation, but just like reports of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces, these calls for help were largely ignored. Service members and employees at the Department of Defence should not have to continue to wait for concrete steps to be taken to address systemic racism within the army ranks.
If the two-time former central bank governor had hopes that would be the beginning of a trend, however, the past three months would have made short work of any such unbridled — or even bridled — optimism.
Leaving aside the supply bills required to authorize pre-approved spending, since the House of Commons reopened for business on Sept. 16, the only government-initiated legislation to make it through a third reading vote was its bid to rejig the rules for recognizing the citizenship of the children of Canadians born abroad, which was introduced in response to a 2023 Ontario court ruling that found the current law to be unconstitutional with a court-imposed deadline of Nov. 21 to be in place before the offending sections would be automatically declared null and void.
Even that, it’s worth noting, wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the New Democrats — particularly B.C. MP Jenny Kwan, who, despite her party’s lack of official status, was nevertheless able to work with the government to reverse a series of changes made at committee by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, which cleared the way for the bill to proceed to a third reading vote — and, ultimately, through the Senate. It was signed into law on Nov. 20, just one day before the existing law was set to expire, although by that point, the court had extended the deadline to Jan. 20, 2026, to allow for an orderly transition.
