The year 1998 was a turning point for Canada’s military. Maclean’s magazine blew the lid off sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces with four cover stories following a nine-month investigation. Inexplicably, it was also the year that a bizarre amendment to the National Defence Act was passed, allowing the military, for the first time, to try sexual assault by an internal service tribunal, as opposed to a civilian criminal court. Until then, military disciplinary courts were barred from prosecuting sexual assault charges, along with murder, manslaughter and kidnapping.

Former Federal Court of Appeal and Court Martial Appeal justice Gilles Letourneau, who also headed the Somalia public inquiry in 1995, told me last week that smart public policy would suggest that sexual assault cases be left to civilian courts due to their seriousness and the much-greater expertise of civilian prosecutors. I agree, especially given Maclean’s exposé of covered-up rampant sex abuse in the military. In response to that, then-chief of defence staff Maurice Baril admonished military officers in an open letter that “Canadians demand a higher standard of behaviour from members in uniform, and so do I.”

Why then treat sexual assaults more like a disciplinary thing, rather than a criminal one?

In the almost two decades since Baril’s finger-wagging exercise, it looked as though nothing really had changed. Last year, former chief of defence staff Tom Lawson explained away sexual assault in the military as happening because people were “biologically wired in a certain way.” Another way of saying “boys will be boys.” He later apologized for his comment.

The same year, former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps conducted a 12-month probe concluding that the military presented a “hostile sexualized environment” with a “deep distrust that the chain of command will take such complaints seriously.”

But suddenly the military claims to be on top of the problem. Upon his appointment as CDS shortly after Lawson’s gaffe, Gen. Jon Vance announced an initiative to clean up the military’s sexual misconduct practices, called Operation Honour — or Op Honour. Vance’s operation was quickly and widely ridiculed in military circles by a play on words as “Hop On Her.” Thumbs up for creativity, thumps down for evolution.

This last Tuesday, Vance called a news conference. And there was plenty of Kool-Aid going around. His message was self-congratulatory – in a matter of mere months as CDS, he’s been successful at cleaning up the military of sexual misfits while admitting it’s very much a work in progress and that he expects more bad news when a survey of military staff comes out this fall.

Vance’s news conference raised eyebrows in Ottawa. What was the point of it? Was it an attempt to neuter the results of a survey he clearly expects to be negative? Or was he trying to please his boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made it clear he won’t tolerate sexual misdeeds?

Colonel-Maître Michel Drapeau, who runs a law firm in Ottawa catering to a military clientèle, thinks that if Vance believes the problem is under control, then he should open it up to scrutiny of an outside third party: “Vance should not use the power of his office and simply say ‘trust me.’ He should put money where his mouth is and bring back Deschamps or another outsider for a follow-up.”

He worries that the military faces a “nuclear reaction” when the survey’s results come out. Furthermore, he points out that the public needs better reassurances on the eve of a likely peacekeeping deployment to Africa. Drapeau added: “We will need a disciplined force that is respectful towards the vulnerable local population.” In other words, we don’t need another Somalia scandal.

Another important fix that needs to take place is to recognize the importance attached to victims of military service offences by amending the Conservatives’ highly touted Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, which currently has a huge loophole. Under that legislation, offences investigated and prosecuted as “service offences” are excluded. So if a military member commits a sexual assault that is treated as a service offence (and that happens more often than I’d like to think) instead of a criminal offence, the victim, whether civilian or military, has no recourse under the Bill of Rights, such as getting a restitution order from the offender. In other words, victims of crime in the military context are treated like second-class citizens.

Once the military backs up their glowing self-reviews with action, I’ll happily start drinking the CDS’s Kool-Aid about the “new-and-improved” military.

Cleaning-up sex in the military city

•sex offenders should be tried in civilian criminal court, not internally before a disciplinary tribunal;

•an impartial, independent third party should review the military’s progress in dealing with sexual misconduct. We shouldn’t have to rely on the “trust us” party line given the historic failure of the military to deal with this problem;

•amend the Victims Bill of Rights so that victims of military offenders are treated the same as civilian victims.