The Conservatives claim that when they were in power in 2015, they ensured two rumours about misconduct by Jonathan Vance were investigated before he was sworn in as Canada’s chief of the defence staff.
The person who they say was asked to do one of those investigations, however, says he has no recollection of it, the Star has learned.
The Conservatives have accused the Liberal government of a coverup, saying it failed to properly handle a later allegation against Vance, who is now retired. They argue that unlike the Liberals, they ensured that allegations were thoroughly investigated.
But former national security adviser Richard Fadden, who is identified by the Conservatives as having been asked to carry out an investigation into a rumour about Vance in 2015, told the Star this week he has no memory of such an investigation ever happening.
What it all points to is a long-standing inability by governments of all stripes to tackle the systemic problem of sexual misconduct in the military, experts say.
“I think that’s the problem with politicizing this issue. It’s not a Liberal or a Conservative problem. It’s both. No one handled it well,” said Megan MacKenzie, an expert on sexual misconduct in the military at Simon Fraser University.
Ray Novak, the former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, told a parliamentary committee in March that he asked Fadden to look into a rumour about an inappropriate relationship involving Vance during his time at CFB Gagetown.
That rumour had been passed along to the Prime Minister’s Office by the office of then-veterans affairs minister and now Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole, Novak said.
In direct contradiction of Novak’s testimony, Fadden told the Star Friday he did not remember receiving a complaint about Vance related to Gagetown.
“I do not recall receiving or acting on the complaint originating in Mr. O’Toole’s office,” Fadden said.
Retired general Tom Lawson, the outgoing chief of the defence staff at the time, said in an interview Friday his memory is “crystal clear” — that no allegation related to misconduct by Vance at Gagetown was ever brought forward to him, either when he was Vance’s boss, or during the selection period when Lawson assisted the Conservatives in looking for candidates as his possible successor.
“I remember this very clearly,” Lawson said in an interview. “And would have absolutely remembered any allegations from earlier in someone else’s career about any of the candidates. My mind isn’t fuzzy. This would have been front and centre and (we) would have looked into it immediately and with the individual in question.”
Prior to Vance’s change of command ceremony in July 2015, Lawson said Fadden did not bring forward to him any rumour or complaint related to Vance at Gagetown, but Fadden did flag that an anonymous complaint had again arisen about a relationship Vance had at NATO — one the military police’s investigative arm looked at and deemed not to have broken any rules.
That said, Novak stands by his testimony about how the Harper PMO handled the Gagetown matter. He told the Star Friday he can “reconfirm without hesitation that I raised this matter directly with the (national security adviser), as outlined in my committee testimony.”
To ensure his version of events was accurate, Novak said he sent his testimony to Fadden prior to his March 22 appearance at the standing committee on national defence, to which Fadden replied “your notes look entirely correct.”
In response, Fadden told the Star that “I have absolutely no reason to doubt Mr. Novak’s summary of the event. I can only repeat I do not remember dealing with the matter.”
O’Toole’s office maintained Friday that an investigation was conducted under the previous government.
“In this specific case, the former prime minister and his office undertook an investigation, unlike Justin Trudeau,” said O’Toole’s director of communications, Chelsea Tucker, in an email.
“Regarding the investigation surrounding rumours of an inappropriate relationship, these are questions for the former national security adviser as Mr. O’Toole was not a part of this process in any way.”
Questions had already been raised about the Conservatives’ handling of allegations after Global News reported last month that military police recommended an end to the probe into the anonymous complaint about Vance’s time at NATO on July 17, 2015, the very day he was sworn in as chief of the defence staff.
“Former prime minister Stephen Harper and Mr. O’Toole were both aware of allegations against Gen. Vance — who was under investigation until the very day of his change of command ceremony into the role of chief of the defence staff — and appointed him anyway. Our women and men in uniform deserve better than that,” said Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence, in an email.
The new information and criticism of the Conservatives’ handling of the file comes as the Liberal government is under fire for how it dealt with an unrelated allegation against Vance in 2018.
A probe of that allegation — which Global News reported pertains to a sexual comment Vance allegedly made in an email to a junior officer in 2012 — immediately hit an impasse and went no further.
The current Liberal government is adamant it didn’t know at the time the nature of the allegation, despite emails and other sources confirming it was related to sexual misconduct.
Now retired, Vance is the subject of a military police investigation, sparked by reporting this year by Global News that he allegedly had an ongoing relationship with a woman he significantly outranked, and that he allegedly made a sexual comment to a second, much younger, soldier in 2012, before he was appointed to the top job.
He has denied to Global News any wrongdoing, but has not spoken publicly.
Much of what is known about the handling of allegations in 2015 by the Conservative government has come from Novak’s testimony in March before the House of Commons standing committee on national defence.
Novak said there were essentially two probes in July of 2015, after Vance’s appointment had been announced but prior to his July 17 swearing-in. If either had yielded any new information, the government was prepared to delay the swearing-in ceremony, Novak said.
The Gagetown rumour
Novak said one of the probes related to a rumour that Vance had an “inappropriate relationship and/or improperly sought to further an officer’s career” at CFB Gagetown around 2001 — a rumour passed on to Novak by O’Toole via his chief of staff when O’Toole was veterans affairs minister.
O’Toole, a vocal critic of the Liberal government’s handling of an allegation against Vance in 2018, has not said when and how he came to know of the rumour, and his office did not respond to those questions Friday from the Star. The revelation that O’Toole even knew about the rumour came from Novak’s testimony.
“There were no allegations,” O’Toole told reporters last month. “I wanted an inappropriate relationship that I heard a rumour about investigated, and it was.”
Novak said that in 2015, he asked national security adviser Fadden to look into it. According to Novak, Fadden checked DND’s files and found no record of a complaint or of a former or current investigation.
According to Novak, Fadden also spoke to Vance, “who responded that he had been in a public relationship with the named individual at the time and that this person did not report to him. He denied improperly acting to further her career.”
No further action was taken in regards to the rumour.
Yet Fadden says he has no recollection of looking into the matter. When asked about the Vance appointment earlier this month at the special committee on Canada-China relations, Fadden said he “did a bit of an inquiry” into Vance’s relationship with a junior U.S. officer who later became his wife during a NATO deployment in Italy.
“That was the extent of the involvement,” Fadden testified. He did not mention the Gagetown rumour.
In her statement to the Star, Vandenbeld pointed to Fadden’s testimony contradicting Novak’s.
“This is in contradiction to assertions from Conservative MPs on the defence committee that the previous government adequately investigated troubling allegations of misconduct prior to Gen. Vance’s appointment as chief of the defence staff,” Vandenbeld said.
Maj. Kellie Brennan shared her story with Global News this year about being in a relationship with Vance that began at Gagetown in 2001 and continued off and on over the next decade, including after Vance became chief of the defence staff in 2015. She also alleges that he fathered two of her children, which Vance denies.
(It wasn’t confirmed at the defence committee that Brennan was at the centre of the Gagetown rumour. Novak said a name had been conveyed with the rumour, but he couldn’t recall “with certainty” what it was.)
Brennan was interviewed this year as part of the military police’s investigation into Vance.
When asked by Global if the relationship was consensual, as she was subordinate to Vance in the chain of command, Brennan said: “On a personal level, ‘consensual’ meaning was I participating in it? Yes. Could I say no to him? No,” she said.
The NATO email
Novak testified that in July 2015, Fadden told the Prime Minister’s Office that an anonymous email had been received by the defence department alleging Vance had an “inappropriate relationship” during his time at NATO, but “contained no new information.”
Harper had already been made aware by Fadden earlier in the year, prior to confirming Vance’s appointment, that Vance had been in a relationship during a NATO deployment in Italy with a U.S. officer subordinate to him, but not in his chain of command, and that she had later become his fiancée.
Fadden has publicly confirmed that he looked into this.
The Prime Minister’s Office was told there had been no open investigation or reprimand against Vance or the other officer, either by the Canadian or U.S. military, Novak testified.
At a meeting that spring, Harper asked Vance whether there was anything else he should know, and Vance replied he was relieved the matter had been reviewed and was behind him, Novak testified.
Gen. Tom Lawson told the Star that Fadden advised him of the anonymous NATO complaint that arose a few weeks prior to the change of command ceremony. Lawson said he first learned of any complaint about Vance earlier in the spring during the search for Lawson’s replacement. His vice-chief flagged a concern that Vance had been in a relationship during a NATO deployment in Italy.
Lawson said senior military officials examined it to see whether it broke any Canadian rules of conduct, or the more stricter American rules that bar adulterous affairs.
Lawson said shortly after learning of it, he called Vance in and “we talked about this. He made it clear his relationship had begun after the separation with his current wife and that everything was totally clear. So I said ‘that’s good to hear,’ considered it, spoke to the Judge Advocate General and made sure it was fine, and that was forwarded, all the information we gathered was forwarded” to the selection committee, led by then-defence minister Jason Kenney.
However the later anonymous email prompted an investigation by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, investigative arm of the military police, which “found nothing further with respect to the general’s time at NATO” and the file was closed, Novak said.
Vance was selected as Lawson’s replacement in April, but the command handover was scheduled for later in July.
Global News reported this year that the military police recommended ending the Vance probe on July 17, 2015, the very same day that he was sworn in as chief of the defence staff, and it was officially closed four days later.
Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tondamacc
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