The matter is still with the lawyers, and it does seem to be moving forward.
The Department of Justice has indicated that the government would like to settle this matter out of court.
The DOJ is no longer objecting to me being the representative plaintiff due to my very public desire to obtain Medical Assistance in Dying at the conclusion of this matter.
The DOJ is even entertaining the inclusion of base brats that may have been abused by Captain McRae and his “agents” on previous posting such as: Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island; Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie in Manitoba; Canadian Forces Base Kingston in Ontario from when McRae was at the Royal Military College at Kingston. And any other base or station that Captain McRae may have been stationed at during his brief career in the Canadian Forces.
The feeling that I get is that the DOJ would like to exclude the children abused by McRae’s “agents” if they can.
“Agents” are the older kids that Captain McRae abused and groomed and in then in turn used these “agents” to bring younger children to visit with Captain McRae.
In my case I can remember five very distinct visits to the rectory at the base chapel. Each visit ended with me being given a tumbler full of what I remembered at the time as being a “sickly sweet grape juice”.
I have no memories of what happened after the “grape juice”.
I don’t even remember how I got back home after the visits.
And no, there would have been no one at home who would have noticed that their 7 – 8 year old charge was shitfaced drunk as both of his guardians were piss-tank alcoholics. My father was rarely home, and my grandmother was usually in the city on the weekends visiting with her husband in the nursing home, at the Rosslyn Inn drinking, at the Canadian Legion drinking, or just pissed drunk in the PMQ.
And yes, it doesn’t matter that I lived on a Canadian Forces Base in housing for military families. Dysfunctional families existed in the military community just as they existed in the civilian world. But unlike in the civilian world, it was very hard for the children of these dysfunctional military families to receive any type of assistance as the military communities on base were the epitome of the “company town”.
For instance, when my family was shuffled off from CFB Namao in the aftermath of the Captain McRae fiasco the teachers at the school for the children of military families ob CFB Griesbach brought my brother and I to the attention of the military social worker.
When our teachers brought us to the attention of the civilian social workers with Alberta Child and Family Services, the military social worker didn’t cooperate. The military social worker ran interference and acted to stymie our civilian social workers.
But back to the matter of “agents”.
The DOJ is trying to argue that the Government of Canada should only have to pay damages to those for whom Captain McRae was charged with molesting and that no damages are owed to the victims of the “agents” or the victims of Captain McRae who were drugged or intoxicated prior to their sexual abuse.
Remember that in my case when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service conducted their investigation into my complaint against Captain McRae’s agent “P.S.” the CFNIS had in their possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 court martial transcripts that indicated:
that the investigation into Captain McRae was commenced as a result of the base military police investigation of Captain McRae’s teenaged “agent” that had been accused by numerous parents on the base of sexually assaulting their pre-pubescent children.
that Captain McRae admitted to the military police in 1980 that he took boys into the rectory of the chapel, gave them beer, wine, and alcohol, and then took them into the bedroom and “messed around with them”.
That during McRae’s court martial, his defence officer tried to use the fact that his “agent” P.S. had molested numerous children on base as a way to discredit the testimony of “P.S.”
That P.S. was in fact receiving treatment for his sexual attraction to children.
And that Captain McRae had confessed during his ecclesiastical trial with the Archdiocese of Edmonton that he had abused children for numerous year.
Yet, during the 2011 Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigation the CFNIS was hellbent on the following:
Portraying me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”
Portraying me as someone who frequently jumped from job to job and was unable to hold down steady employment and therefore I was only doing this for money.
Changed statements that I had given to them such as when I told master corporal Christian Cyr about the five visits to the chapel ending with the “sickly sweet grape juice”, master corporal Cyr entered into his log books that “Mr. Bees remembers going to visits at the chapel, but that nothing sexual ever occurred”
Master corporal Christian Cyr would try to convince me that I was confused and that I didn’t know what I was talking about in relation to the chapel as his insisted during our various telephone calls that the chapel I indicated to him didn’t exist in 1980, and no military chapel on that base ever had a rectory, and that the military chaplain never lived on base. The CFSIU paperwork from 1980 clearly indicates everything that I told him about the chapel was true. So did the blueprints that I obtained of the chapel.
Investigators with the CFNIS tried their utmost to convince me that I was “misremembering things”. For example they tried their damndest to convince me that there was no house fire at PMQ #26 in the summer of 1980 and that I was attributing a fire from a different base to my memories of 1980. It turned out that the CFNIS had the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal’s paperwork for the June 23rd, 1980 house fire that did $56k (1980) dollars in damage to a house worth $75k (1980) dollars and that a construction engineer suffered a fatal heart attack during the fire while trying to shut off the natural gas.
Warrant officer Blair Hart told the Morinville RCMP in July of 2011 that the investigation into my complaint was likely to go nowhere due to a lack of evidence. This was well before the CFNIS had tried to talk to any of the other victims / witnesses.
The CFNIS removed all mention of my grandmother from the investigation, and never questioned my father about his failure to mention my grandmother when I supplied the CFNIS with my social service paperwork in which my father acknowledges that my grandmother was brought into his house to raise my brother and I after our mother “abandoned” us.
The CFNIS had access to the CPIC of P.S. that indicated that he had numerous charges between 1982 and 1999 that were for sexual crimes against children. Even still, on November 4th, 2011 Petty Officer Steve Morris called me and told me that the CFNIS “just couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes that I had accused him of”.
Why would the CFNIS do this? Why would the CFNIS go all out to ridicule and belittle a victim of childhood sexual abuse?
No matter the PR spin that the Canadian Armed Forces like to give the public, the CFNIS are NOT independent of the Chain of Command.
The Minister of National Defence has unfettered command authority over the CFNIS via the military chain of command.
The VCDS is only a step or two away from the Minister of National Defence.
It is extremely concerning that the National Defence Act gives the Vice Chief of Defence Staff the ability to advise and issue instructions to ANY CFNIS investigation.
Yes, the Provost Marshal is supposed to notify the public of this advisement or of the directions, but the VCDS also has the authority to issue “lawful” commands to the Provost Marshal, such as to NOT release this information to the public.
Remember, under the National Defence Act that the penalty for “Insubordination” which is to disobey a “lawful” command from a superior is “Life in prison or a lesser sentence”. The Provost Marshal is subject to this, so is the CFNIS chain of command as are the investigators with the CFNIS.
No civilian police officer in Canada or for that matter anywhere in the western world faces life in prison for disobeying the commands of their superiors.
The only place you find civilian police officers under this type of threat are in third world dictatorships or in goon-thug theocracies.
I mention this for two reasons.
First is that in February of 2016 I met with then Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan at his constituency office on Victoria St. in Vancouver. Mr. Sajjan spared no time in accusing me of “playing games” and of “having an angle” insinuating that I was just trying to milk the Canadian Forces for some easy money.
Second is that the DOJ will rely heavily upon the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service to conduct investigations into the victims of Captain McRae and his various “agents”. I have no doubt that the CFNIS will conduct investigations in such a manner as to minimize the number of victims of Captain McRae and to totally prevent the establishment of a valid connection between Captain McRae, his various agents, and the children abused by those agents..
The Canadian Armed Forces are in a public relations battle with the general public. The CAF have been in a PR battle for a very long time. This is why in 1980 the court martial of Captain McRae was moved in-camera and why the number of charges against McRae were minimized and why the Canadian Forces refused to call the RCMP in to deal with the pedophile babysitter. It was a PR battle then, and it’s a PR battle now.
Can you imagine how the Canadian Public would react if it were to discover that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have been aware for a very long time of the problem of child sexual abuse in the military communities on base and how the chain of command would rather bury the victims instead of punishing the offenders, all for the optics of public relations.
Or for that matter, can you imagine how upset the general public would be to discover that victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse were treated as homosexuals and were given life altering “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces military social workers?
Will it be business as usual or will there be meaningful change?
So Canada now has its second ever female Minister of National Defence.
The first ever female Minister of National Defence was Kim Campbell back in 1993. She wasn’t the Minister of National Defence for long as she went on to become Canada’s first female Prime Minister when Brian Mulroney, facing massive backlash for matters such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, decided to resign from politics.
Canada’s newest Minister of National Defence is Anita Anand. She has an extensive resume as a lawyer and as a law instructor. She was also the Minister of Public Services and Procurement since 2019. So she’s not exactly green behind the ears. And more importantly she has absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
Will she be able to bring change to the Department of National Defence? When I first heard that Harjit Sajjan had been designated as the Minister of National Defence in 2015 after the Liberals won the election I thought for sure that he would be able to bring meaningful change to DND and the CF as he was a soldier that actually had done tours in Afghanistan and he used to be a detective with the Vancouver Police Department. I couldn’t have been more wrong about Sajjan. So I’m not holding my breath with Anand. She is a corporate lawyer, so she might understand the legal threat that examining historical child sexual abuse might prove to be for the Government of Canada.
Minister Anand has two choices.
She can use her legal background for the greater good.
Or she can use her legal background to erect walls and barricades around DND and the CF.
Yesterday I received a phone call from my lawyer who is representing me in my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
The Department of Justice has responded and has agreed to take the matter before a case management judge.
My lawyer expects the judge to agree to allow this matter to proceed as a class action.
This should occur around October.
If everything goes as planned, the real action will start in the spring of 2022.
This case won’t be a slam dunk.
You can bet that the Department of Justice, the Canadian Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the office of the Minister of National Defence will do everything in their power to portray myself and all of the other class members as money hungry liars out to squeeze the poor military for a quick buck.
The Department of Justice will also do everything in their power to keep this matter hushed. My matter only deals with Captain Father Angus McRae who served on four different Canadian Forces Base and Stations from 1973 until 1980. At the time the Canadian Forces had over 60 defence establishments in Canada. Each with its own Catholic chapel. Granted, not all chaplains were sexually attracted to children. But let’s say that 10 to 15 percent of all military chaplains molested children during their service careers between the 1950s and 1998. That’s potentially a lot of sexually abused children. And that’s potentially a lot of other class action lawsuits.
How many members of the Canadian Armed Forces involved with the Catholic Chapels am I aware of that were investigated for sexually abusing children?
Captain Father Angus McRae; Brigadier General Roger Bazin; Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan.
Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan was the member of the Canadian Forces who had been booted out of the military in 1985 for molesting a group of early teens on CFB Gagetown. The problem with Sullivan is that he was being actively investigated in the 1970s for molesting young boys in the Ottawa area when he was involved with the Boy Scouts. How did Sullivan join the military if he had been under investigation? Your guess is as good as mine. Sullivan was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2019 for molesting the kids in the 1970s. The Ontario Crown prosecutor knew nothing about Sullivan’s conviction in a court martial for the molestation of the teens on CFB Gagetown. Sullivan’s convictions in 1984 were removed from his service record by the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada due to technicalities with the case, not because he was innocent.
How many other child molesters joined the Canadian Armed Forces bypassing the military’s obviously lax background checks?
Alexander Kalichuk comes to mind.
Military children whom had been sexually abused on base by either service personal or other military dependents had to depend on a defective “disciplinary ” system for justice. A system that had some very horrific flaws. These children would sometimes end up in the care of the Canadian Forces military social workers much like I did.
In my case it turns out that the Chain of Command on CFB Namao decided to not call in the RCMP because amongst other issues, they believed that my babysitter, P.S., was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born in June of 1965.
And don’t forget, rank very much carries a lot of privilege in an organization such as the Canadian Armed Forces. No private or corporal is going to make allegations against a master warrant officer for molesting their kid. No master corporal or sergeant is going to make allegations against a captain or lieutenant colonel for molesting their kid. No commanding officer is going to allow a “flirtatious or promiscuous” 12 year old to ruin the military career of his outstanding master warrant office. And these were all well documented flaws known to exist prior to major amendments to the National Defence Act which occurred in December of 1998.
How many military parents would have allowed their male children to be involved with any child sexual abuse investigation if it meant that their son or sons were going to be tarred with the brush of “homosexuality”? That’s what the Canadian Armed Forces termed male child sexual abuse to be when the abuser was also a male. “Acts of homosexuality “. It also didn’t help the matter much the the Criminal Code offence of “Buggery” (anal intercourse) was considered to be a victimless offence with both parties equally to blame.
With the military police unwilling to investigate my matter, and with the civilian police unwilling to investigate my matter, and with my care at the hands of the military social worker burnt into my mind, and with my father’s opinions of the abuse burnt into my mind, I kept my mouth shut until 2011.
How many other former military dependents kept quiet over the years? I’d say there’s quite a few. I have spoken personally with some former dependents who are still terrified all these years later of anyone discovering that they had been sexually abused on base. Sadly, all of this silence has worked to the advantage of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence.
When my father was interviewed by the CFNIS in 2011 he gave a statement to the CFNIS that was so devoid of reality that it wasn’t funny. Was he coached or coaxed into giving his statement? Did the Canadian Forces threaten his pension or his medical plan? Did he make a deal with the military back in 1980 that in trade for his silence in the P.S. / McRae matter that he’d receive a favour in kind? Is that why his statement is so easily torn asunder by various legal records? And let’s be clear, he didn’t just make one or two misstatements. He practically gave the CFNIS everything they would’ve asked for.
Fred Cunningham was very concerned in 2011 that I not tell anyone what he had told me. He seemed to be implying that there would be very serious consequences if anyone found out what he had told me.
Almost 42 years ago in October of 1980 my brother my brother and I were sent for psychological review just after we had arrived at our new school on Canadian Forces base Griesbach. This was done after our teachers had noted our “odd behaviour” when we arrived at the new school.
Our father was also interviewed by the psychiatrist.
This is one of the observations of the psychiatrist “Robert sees his environment as being harsh, threatening and fearful, His world seems unstable and is full of aggressive, frightening events. Major concern and anger is directed toward his grandmother who he sees as authoritarian and oppressive. Robert indicated a strong coalition between he and his father directed toward the removal of his grandmother from the household.”
Further the psychiatrist noted “He indicates a feeling of helplessness and frustration as indicated by his comments , “my nerves are disintegrating, my mind tells me I’m going to kill myself, people are grouchy and mean, I’m best when no one is around me, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if granny doesn’t leave our home soon”.
When interviewed by the psychiatrist, my father was found to not be surprised by what my brother and I had said. My father acknowledged and confirmed many of the family problems that my brother and I had indicated. Very little commitment was received from my father, so my family’s file was handed over to Canadian Armed forces officer Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worked from Canadian Forces base Edmonton.
When I saw Terry as a child, I only knew him as Terry. I wouldn’t discover until 2011 that Terry was a captain in the Canadian Forces.
When I was involved with Terry, he was very concerned that I had been caught having sex with another boy (P.S., my then 15 year old babysitter). Terry told me that he had the base military police watching me and that if they ever reported to Terry that I kissed or touched another boy that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for treatment.
Terry had told me that what I had done on CFB Namao indicated that I was a homosexual and that homosexuality was a mental illness.
Looking back on things, I don’t think Terry had ever been concerned with how bonkers things were in the Gill household. Terry must have been absolutely certain that my issues were related to the homosexuality I had exhibited on CFB Namao
This explains why in November of 1981 our teachers at school called in Alberta Social Services to deal with my brother and I. This came as a result of the teachers and principal at Major General Greisbach School becoming frustrated with the inaction of Captain Totzke.
I went for another psychological review. This time I was found to be beyond despair and beyond depression. I was found to be terrified of my father and I was convinced that my father was going to kill me. The psychiatrist conducting the interview wondered if I had ever had a day free from extreme anxiety in my life.
By the spring of 1982 yet another exam had found that I had become sufficiently emotionally disturbed that it was recommended that I be placed into a psychiatric hospital for care.
And in the winter of 1983 just after Alberta Social Services tried to remove me from the home, both my father and Terry promised that I would be institutionalized at the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto.
I was caught between people who legitimately wanted to help me and people who wanted to help the Canadian Armed Forces keep a lid on the 1980 Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse sex scandal that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from October of 1978 until May of 1980.
At this point in time I’ll never know who was calling the shots back then. And at this point I really don’t care. I know that my father was a lowly cog in the wheel, a master corporal that was bound to follow his orders. Captain Terry Totzke would have been superior to my father and my father would have had no option but to obey Captain Totzke’s directives. And in turn Captain Totzke would have been following his orders from somewhere up the chain of command
The Canadian Armed Forces cannot find my records from the time I was involved with Captain Totzke. For comparison I have all of my civilian social service records and all of my hospital records from my childhood. If it wasn’t for my civilian social service records, I would never have known that I had been involved with military social workers on two different Canadian Forces Bases.
What upsets me the most about all of this is that it was known as far back that I was beyond depressed and dealing with severe anxiety.
I’d like to think that I’ve done a decent job of living my life the best I could with the demons of despair, depression, and anxiety living in my head.
Then along came COVID-19.
Where I work, I was put under an extreme amount of stress due to the age of the facility and the neglect of the facility and the need to have the facility cope with the requirements of COVID-19. And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
About a month ago, after a couple of emergency consults with my family doctor I ended up with a prescription of escitaloprám otherwise known as Lexapro or Cipralex. I was started off on 5mg as a test run. I was then bumped up to 10mg. I’ve been on 10mg for a few weeks now. We’ll have to play it by ear, but the the length of time that I’ve had untreated depression and anxiety I’ll probably be on this for the rest of my life.
Escitaloprám is an SSRI. An SSRI is a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor. Basically escitaloprám prevents the neural transmitters in my brain from reabsorbing serotonin. This means that it’s easier for the neural transmitters in my brain to send signals. And somehow this helps with major depression and general anxiety disorders.
What’s it like being on escitaloprám?
Well, I can think clearly for the first time in my life.
I’m not euphoric. I’m not exactly emotionally numb. I don’t have the depression and despair hanging around my neck anymore. But I’m not exactly doing cartwheels down the street either.
For the first time ever in my life I can actually go to bed, sleep through the night, and wake up in the morning before the alarms go off.
I don’t have to take three or four naps through the day.
Dreams. I’m actually having vivid dreams, not horrifying nightmares. The nightmares were typically replays of CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach.
The only thing that I have to watch out for at this point is if my body builds up a tolerance to the SSRIs. Apparently within 2 years, 25% of patients prescribed SSRIs no longer respond to the medications.
And having had a taste of “normal” for the first time in my life, I really don’t want to go back to the way things were.
What caused my depression and anxiety?
The typical belief is that 40% of persons with major depression had it passed to them through their genes. The other 60% received their depression through environmental and other factors.
I’m thinking that some of my depression came down via my father’s genes. He was a severe insomniac. He was also an alcoholic. Research has shown that the same genes that make a person prone to alcoholism will also predispose that person to major depression.
Drinking for me amplified the dark thoughts. I haven’t had a drink since 2011. And even before that I can count the number of times I drank on both hands. Seeing my grandmother drunk and seeing my father drunk and then dealing with the two of them when they were dealing with their hangovers wasn’t pleasant.
Growing up in Richard’s house was anything put peaceful.
Between his drinking, his anger, and his complete indifference.
According to Pat Longmore, when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia, my mother and my brother and I would sometimes take advantage of the “battered wives club” and we’d go stay at friendly safe houses when Richard was dealing with one of his anger outbursts.
My mother left when I was 5. This was a very abrupt departure. When I talked with her in 2013 it seems that she may not have had much say in the matter. It seems that there were very specific rules that applied to civilians living in the PMQs.
When I was 7 in the summer of 1979, my father started dating the woman who would become my stepmother. She was only 13 years older than I was. She was honestly like the older sister I never had and yeah, we could fight like brother and sister at times.
I was sexually abused by both P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae along with an older male that P.S. took me to see in the men’s sauna at the base pool.
After I was caught being sexually abused by P.S. I was frequently beat up by the older kids on CFB Namao. This led to my family being moved to CFB Greisbach.
At CFB Namao I was put in the care of Captain Terry Totzke, whose primary concern seemed to be giving me “conversion” therapy to cure me of the “homosexuality ” that I had exhibited by being sexually abused on CFB Namao.
When my father was forced to move to Ontario to skip out on my apprehension by Alberta Social Services, he used to unload on me for “fucking with his military career”. A lot of the beatings that I took from him on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were no doubt due to his frustration at losing his career as a CH-147 Chinook Mechanic that he had been specially trained for.
As a kid, school was a complete disaster. Richard only had a grade 8 education. To him school was nothing more than a glorified daycare centre.
The there was the sexual abuse at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets.
So yeah, I guess you could say that I’ve had a lot of episodes in my life that would account for my major depression and anxiety disorder.
So, we’ll see where escitaloprám can take me. I’m dealing with one of the side effects. And honestly I can handle this one with all of the peace and quiet that escitaloprám has brought to me. When I tell you that the war war in my mind has reached a cease fire, I mean that the war has stopped. And I’m hoping that the escitaloprám will work for years to come because I’m terrified of going back.
I was going to go after the media in this post, but I’ll save slagging the media for the next post. I’m going to share some information in this post that I was going to keep quiet about until I found a lawyer willing to take on this matter. But after the most recent lawyer I talked to walked away from this matter I figure what the hell, everyone should know what I know now.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released its final report. The report was very interesting in the way that it said that it couldn’t find anything that would substantiate my complaint against the CFNIS.
However, the MPCC did find fault with the CFNIS for leaning far too heavy upon the opinion of the Alberta Crown. It seemed that when the CFNIS told me on November 4th, 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. had molested me and my brother, this wasn’t true. The MPCC said that the initial 2011 investigation had ample evidence to indicate that the sexual assaults had occurred and that even the CFNIS chain of command was of the opinion that P.S. had molested my brother and I. The MPCC further indicated that the 2nd CFNIS investigation which took place from 2015 to 2018 further reinforced the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
The MPCC said that the CFNIS was wrong to have relied on the decision of the Alberta Crown to not prosecute as the Crown has a much higher bar for evidence than what a civil matter would require. A civil matter relies on the probability that a crime occurred. A criminal matter needs hard evidence to show that a crime did occur.
The Alberta Crown also has to take into account that if they did decide to prosecute P.S. for the crimes he committed from 1978 until 1980 that they’d have to pay for his travel expenses. The Crown would also have to pay for my travel expenses. And even if P.S. was found guilty, all they could do is sentence him to reform school as that was all that you could sentence a juvenile delinquent to. And I just can’t picture a 50 something male being sentenced to reform school (if those even exist anymore).
The probability in this matter comes from the fact that P.S. was indicated in the court martial records and the CFSIU investigation paperwork to have been on the radar of the military police in 1980 for having sexually assaulted numerous children on the base.
MPCC 2018-030 “X” is P.S., my babysitter from CFB Namao
What is interesting about the 2nd investigation is according to the Military Police Complaints Commission, it affirms that the Canadian Forces military police in 1980 were aware that P.S. was sexually abusing children on the base. The MPCC labeled Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae as a pedophile. The MPCC further said that it appears that P.S. was committing sexual assaults as a result of being sexually assaulted himself at the hands of Captain Father Angus McRae.
MPCC 2018-030
The MPCC made a recommendation to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal that the Provost Marshal submit more evidence to the Alberta Victims of Crime Tribunal. The Provost Marshal agreed to this.
In February of 2021 the tribunal reviewing the 2018 decision of the Alberta Victims of Crime Board to deny me benefits overturned the decision of the board. The Tribunal indicated that as a result of receiving more information from the Canadian Forces Military Police and after having read my Alberta Social Services foster care records that it was very apparent that I had been a victim of numerous sexual assaults, that these assaults were committed by multiple parties, that I endured numerous penetrations, and that my social service records indicate that I suffered psychological trauma as a result.
Alberta Appeals Office decision letterAlberta Appeals Office decision letter
Why didn’t the CFNIS tell me on November 4th, 2011 that they believed me, and that their investigation indicated that P.S. did assault me and my brother?
I don’t think it’s accidental that the CFNIS leaned too heavily upon the decision of the Alberta Crown.
Even though the Alberta Crown did urge me to file a civil action against P.S., this would have been an impossibility. No lawyer in this country would have taken on this matter if the police investigation didn’t indicate even in the slightest likelihood that a criminal offence occurred.
Was the CFNIS protecting P.S.?
No.
I fully believe that the CFNIS were protecting the Minister of National Defence.
Or more precisely, I believe the office of the Minister of National Defence via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff wanted to ensure that any potential link between P.S. and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was not established via the CFNIS investigation.
As laid out in the 2020 Final Report of the Military Police Complaints Commission, P.S. was abusing children as a direct result of the abuse that P.S. was receiving at the hands of Captain McRae.
P.S. was a juvenile at the time.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time indicated that the adult who contributed to the delinquency of a minor was culpable for the crimes committed by that child.
Angus McRae was a member of the Regular Force at the time of the sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The office of the Minister of National Defence has an obligation to defend not only the Canadian Armed Forces against civil actions, the office of the Minister of National Defence is also expected to defend members of the Canadian Forces.
This means that if I wanted to initiate a civil action against P.S. for the damages I incurred as a result of the abuse I suffered at the hands of P.S., I would actually have to name Captain McRae in the action as Captain McRae was the adult that contributed to the delinquency of P.S.
The abuse occurred on a secure defence establishment, for which the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence had the sole authority to allow or deny access to.
The Canadian Armed Forces also supplied, trained and staffed the law enforcement agency that was responsible for the security and safety of all persons on that secured defence establishment.
Captain McRae was a member of the Regular Force who had been hired and vetted by the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting process.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were aware of the fact that Captain Father Angus McRae was giving alcohol to the children on the base, and was sexually abusing children in the rectory at the base chapel.
For all of these reasons, the Minister of National Defence would have to be named in any civil action.
The Minister of National Defence would be represented by the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
Both the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of National Defence are represented by the Department of Justice.
All three of these agencies have access to unlimited tax payer funds to “defend” the Office of the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces from their responsibilities.
In 2015 I spoke with the lawyer that had represented P.S. in his action against the Minister of National Defence. This lawyer said that he would never take on a matter like this again. The Minister of National Defence and the Department of Justice enjoy access to unlimited funds from taxpayers and they also have a plethora of lawyers and law firms at their disposal.
As P.S. stated in his Notice of Claim, there exists a great power imbalance between the plaintiff (P.S.) and the Defendants (the Archdiocese of Edmonton and the Department of National Defence).
April 12th, 2001 Edmonton Journal page B8
In his civil action against the Minister of National Defence, P.S. was requesting $4.3 million dollars in damages. I don’t have access to the settlement figures, but based on the type of paperwork present in the settlement, P.S. seems to have received less than $250.000.00 from the Minister. There were two other parties, and all three parties agreed to pay equal amounts. So, it would appear that P.S.settled his $4.3 million dollar action for less than $750,000.00.
From the Department of Justice paperwork that I have, it appears that it was the Department of Justice that was doing all of the heavy lifting on behalf of the other two parties.
The Department of Justice was trying to put together an argument that while Angus McRae was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces Regular Force, DND and the CF shouldn’t have been liable as what McRae was doing was illegal and not part of his expected duties. This argument would have been laughed out of court. But DND had strung P.S. and his lawyer along long enough that it appears that they took the much reduced settlement offer in November of 2008 with the realization that DND could play the waiting game for the rest of eternity.
It took 8 years for DND and the DOJ to settle with P.S. even though Captain McRae had been directly convicted of abusing P.S..
Which brings me to the topic of lawyers.
Yes, I have tried everything in my power to get lawyers to look at this matter.
I had even assumed that with the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission and the Alberta Tribunal that things would be so much easier.
Well, they’re not.
It comes down to the fact that any lawyer that I want to hire would have to face off against the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
So no, it’s not for a lack of trying. It’s just the no lawyer in their right mind wants to spend the next 15 to 20 years trying to reach a settlement with an agency that has an unlimited amount of tax payer dollars at its disposal.
P.S. was very lucky that he was named as the sole victim of Captain Father Angus McRae in 1980.
The rest of us would have to fight this lawsuit based on circumstantial evidence and probability.
The Department of Justice would be able to use its infinite resources to drag this matter out so long in court that all of the victims of P.S. and Captain McRae either die off of old age, or the lawyer involved just gives up and walks away.
Lawyers aren’t stupid, and I don’t blame them for walking away from these matters. I just wish that they’d be more upfront about the unlikelihood of this matter succeeding.
And I also understand why lawyers want $20k retainers and all invoices paid on a monthly basis. No one is going to take a matter like this on contingency. You’d have to be insane. Especially when the Government of Canada can throw unlimited tax dollars at this case.
That’s it for now. In the next blog post I’m going to get around to dealing with the media.
Or How the Minister of National Defence Controls ALL aspects of the military Justice System.
It may seem hard to believe, but the Minister of National Defence is probably one of the most powerful ministers in the Canadian Government. And I don’t mean this because the minister controls the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
I say this because the Minister of National Defence has the ability to directly control investigations undertaken by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Canadian Forces Military Police.
And don’t forget, as the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are not legally responsible for the damages suffered by civilians on Defence Establishments, a civilian wishing to receive compensation for the damages suffered at the hands of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces on a Defence Establishment would have to initiate a civil action against the Minister of National Defence.
Yes. That Minister. The very same Minister that can issue commands to ANY member of the Canadian Forces. And that member may have the ability in turn to issue further commands to a subordinate.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act deals with ‘INSUBORDINATION”.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act applies equally to ALL members of the Canadian Forces. There are no exceptions for the Provost Marshal, the commanding officer of the CFNIS, or the division commanding officers of the CFNIS.
And the National Defence Act uses the term “lawful” instead of “legal” for a reason. Not every command a commanding officer gives is legal. And in the exception of outrageously illegal orders i.e. firing on unarmed civilians, the solider receiving the order isn’t expected to weigh the legal merits of the order.
The Chain of Command for the Canadian Armed Forces looks like such: Minister of National Defence –> Chief of Defence Staff –> Vice Chief of Defence Staff –> Provost Marshal –> CFNIS Commanding Officer –> CFNIS detachment commanding officer –> CFNIS investigator.
This more than qualifies as an example of a “conflict of interest scenario”.
Another issue is Section 18.4 and Section 18.5 of the National Defence Act.
Section 18.4
Section 18.4 of the National Defence Act give the Provost Marshal command over any investigation undertaken by any subordinate within the Canadian Forces Military Police Group, the Canadian Forces Military Police, and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
Section 18.4 also gives the Provost Marshal the responsibility for conducting the initial Professional Standards Review that must be undertaken prior to a person making a complaint to the Military Police Complaints Commission. This means that the Minister of National Defence knows exactly what a complaint against the CFNIS is all about.
Section 18.5
Section 18.5 ensures that the Minister of National Defence pretty well has a direct pipeline into any investigation undertaken by the military police. Including not only the investigation of criminal code matters which could subject the minister to civil actions, but also the subsequent Professional Standards Review conducted after the CFNIS completes its investigation.
If the Vice Chief of Defence Staff issued any instructions or guidelines to the Provost Marshal, these instructions or guidelines are supposed to be made public. However, the Provost Marshal can simply decline to issue these instructions or guidelines. And as the Vice Admiral Mark Norman affair indicated, when you go hunting for information like this within the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence, it may not be easy to obtain if the CF or DND have used code names or code words for the file or documents that you are requesting. If I were to submit an ATI to DND requesting copies of any directions or instructions issued by the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff to the Provost Marshal, unless DND used my name in the document or some other identifying information, I wouldn’t be able to request the document.
In my matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao, this is why the CFNIS were hellbent on establishing that I was not sexually abused by P.S.. P.S. was a juvenile at the time. And at the time the Juvenile Delinquents Act held that an adult that contributed to the delinquency of a minor was culpable for the crimes committed by that juvenile. It was established in CFSIU investigation 120-10-80 and court martial CM62 July 18th, 1980, that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was abusing numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao from August of 1978 until May of 1980.
P.S., who had been my baby-sitter on CFB Namao from late 1978 until spring of 1980 had been sexually abusing numerous children on the base, and had been taking some of us to be abused at the base chapel.
If the CFNIS were to have established that P.S. did in fact molest numerous children on the base as a result of the abuse he endured at the hands of Captain McRae as well as instructions given by Captain McRae, the Office of the Minister of National Defence would surely be subject to numerous civil actions.
However, if the CFNIS were unable to substantiate that a person with multiple convictions for child sexual abuse had in fact molested numerous other children on Canadian Forces Base Namao from late 1978 until the spring of 1980, that would pretty well ensure that the Office of the Minister of National Defence would not face the risk of civil actions. After all, you can’t sue for something that didn’t occur.
And isn’t in convenient that the police agency responsible for finding this criminal connection is also under the direct command of the agency that would face litigation in a civil action.
It is readily apparent in the current matter involving both Vance and Sajjan that there is corruption within the Canadian Armed Forces.
And this corruption is nothing new.
This corruption has been allowed to exist because the Canadian Forces have been able to keep control of their own in-house “justice system”. A system that really isn’t concerned about justice but seems to be more concerned about keeping secrets.
So, it turns out that Minister Sajjan not only refused to allow the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to investigate complaints against General Jonathan Vance, but Sajjan also started to avoid communication with the Office of the Ombudsman.
What is really disappointing about this whole sad affair is that it illustrates how much power is concentrated in the hands of the Minister of National Defence.
The Government of Canada often trumpets the “independence” of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman, however it’s becoming readily apparent that the Ombudsman is under the direct control of the Minister of National Defence.
The Ombudsman may be independent of the chain of command and the management within the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, but they are firmly on the leash of the Minister of National Defence.
The Ombudsman acts solely on the Minister’s behalf and reports directly to and is accountable to the Minister of National Defence.
This is the same Minister of National Defence that seems to have an intense desire to hide and bury any type of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Forces. As I said in a previous posting, we’re very lucky that Sajjan wasn’t the Minister of National Defence when Stephanie Raymonde went public with her matter in 2014. I don’t think that Sajjan would have acknowledged the matter nor would Sajjan have called for an Independent Review as was conducted by Madame Marie Deschamps.
How are investigations by the Canadian Forces Ombudsman commenced?
According to Section 4(a), the Minister of National Defence can give a written directive to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. This would be similar to when the former cadets from the grenade incident at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier asked former conservative Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson to look at their issue even though the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence had no legal obligation to these former cadets.
According to Section 4(b), the Ombudsman can undertake an investigation AFTER informing the Minister of National Defence of their intention to do so. And as we’ve heard recently, Minister Sajjan would not allow the former Canadian Forces Ombudsman to look into allegation made against former Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance. Minister Sajjan would also not authorize the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the matters surrounding the 1980 court martial of Canadian Forces officer and serial child molester Captain Father Angus McRae.
What are the difference between Nicholson and Sajjan?
Nicholson was a lawyer before he entered politics. Nicholson had absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and therefore in the matter of the grenade incident Nicholson would have been more inclined to do what was right as opposed to lifting the corner of the carpet and sweeping things under.
Sajjan on the other hand has been involved with the Canadian Forces since back in the early ’90s. He was also a member of the Vancouver Police Department. The VPD were the police department that allowed the Pickton murders to occur due to their absolute lack of concern for the women who were going missing from the downtown east side. I was a victim of a mugging in ’95. The VPD officer that was investigating the matter was sure that I was to blame as I must have been trying to pick a guy up. It’s not far fetched to say that police in general have a very wary eye towards “victims” and treat them as part of the problem.
Sajjan was also a member of the Canadian Forces reserves and did numerous tours overseas in the ’90s and ’00s. He’s a military man through and through. And if there’s one thing that Sajjan is not going to do is he’s not going to shit in the bed that he sleeps in. Men like Sajjan are the reason why the military justice system progressively went off the rails right from the work go back in the ’50s when Canada had it’s first National Defence Act which allowed for the military police and the CFSIU to look after criminal matter “in-house”. It took the murder and subsequent cover up of Shidone Arone in Somalia to expose just how corrupt the military justice system was. It wasn’t that the military justice system was inherently evil. It’s that the military justice system was being administered by men who (a) didn’t want to rock the boat, (b) didn’t want to be the one to piss on the Canadian Forces, and (c) didn’t want questions asked about their leadership abilities.
“That Lonely Section Of Hell” is a book by former VPD detective Lori Shenher. In this book she describes the toxic environment that existed within the Vancouver Police Department during the 1990s and into the 2000’s.
“The Somalia Experience in Strategic Perspective : Implications for the Military in a Free and Democratic Society” and “Independence in the Prosecution of Offences in the Canadian Forces : Military Policing and Prosecutorial Discretion” are two books that are required reading if one wishes to understand just how dysfunctional the military justice system was during the lead up to the Somalia fiasco.
So, who can avail themselves to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman?
Under section 12 (f), I have the right to make a complaint to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. My father was a member of the Regular force at the time of the Captain McRae child sexual abuse fiasco on CFB Namao. We lived in housing on a Defence Establishment which at the time of the fiasco was directly owned and administered by the Department of National Defence. Access to this Defence Establishment was controlled and limited to persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline or their guests. Captain Father Angus McRae was a member of the Regular Force and was also residing on the Defence Establishment in housing provided to him by the Canadian Forces. Security and policing services were also provided by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. And finally the prosecution of Captain McRae was also conducted by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Of course, there are limitations to what the Ombudsman can investigate:
Section 14 (a), section 14(b), and section 14(e) would all seem to indicate that the Ombudsman could not investigate what occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao between May12th, 1980 and July 18th, 1980.
However, I haven’t asked the Ombudsman to redo the investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae that commenced on May 12th 1980 at the request of base security officer Captain David Pilling. Nor have I asked the Ombudsman to reopen the court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae.
We know that the Canadian Forces knew that Captain McRae was molesting numerous children on the base at the rectory and that he was using alcohol to do so. We also know that Captain McRae abused and groomed his altar boy P.S. and was using P.S. to bring younger children over to the chapel for McRae to abuse.
What I have asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to investigate is how the decision to prosecute Captain Father Angus McRae for “acts of homosexuality” may have negatively affected the lives of his victims. I know this fixation on “homosexuality” is why I spent 1-1/2 years receiving “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces social worker that I was placed under the care of when I was 9 years old. I also asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to look at how the sweeping of the victims under the rug would have also affected the lives of the victims. None of these asks would have run afoul of 14(a) and 14(b).
14(e) isn’t a signifiant issue to overcome either. In 2010 Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson asked the CF Ombudsman to review the 1974 CFB Valcartier Grenade incident even though the event occurred 24 years before the date specified in 14(e) and legally the Canadian Armed Forces was not responsible for these children on a Defence Establishment.
So, why doesn’t Harjit Sajjan want the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the 1980 investigation and court martial of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae?
I think that Sajjan doesn’t want the Canadian public to discover that children living on Canadian Forces bases were not safe from child predators wearing the uniform of the Canadian Forces. I also think that Sajjan doesn’t want the Canadian public to discover just how truly horrifically flawed and out of control the military justice system was. Sajjan more than likely doesn’t want the Canadian public to know that male children living on the bases who were sexually abused by members of the Canadian Forces were considered to be “homosexual” and were given counselling by the military. Sajjan probably also doesn’t want the Canadian public to find out that some people committed suicide due to the way the military handled this matter. And more importantly, Sajjan doesn’t want other childhood victims coming forward with their tales of abuse at the hands of Canadian Forces personnel on the various different bases in Canada.
Right now, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have been able to keep a very tight lid on this. However, if the Ombudsman conducts one publicized investigation, I have no doubt that this will lead to far many more complaints. And more complaints leads to civil actions. And this will not do.
Think back to the matter of Donald Jospeh Sullivan who in late 2019 was convicted and sentenced to court for molesting boys in the Ottawa area in the 1970s when he was involved with Scouts Canada. Donald was under investigation by the Ottawa Police Service in the ’70s after the OPS started to receive complaints. Donald disappeared. The OPS couldn’t find him. Turns out that Donald Joseph Sullivan had enlisted into the Canadian Armed Forces. That’s how low the bar was for the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces were hiring people that were the subject of police investigations. Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces more than likely had no idea that they were hiring a child molester. But still, there obviously wasn’t that deep of a back ground check performed. How many other men slipped into the military like Sullivan only to find themselves with easy access to children. Children that moved from base to base frequently. Children that weren’t likely to say anything least they be seen as liars or troublemakers.
Child sexual abuse in th Canadian Armed Forces is a matter that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman should be able to investigate.
The fact that Sajjan won’t allow the Ombudsman to do so speaks volumes about what is already known in the halls of 101 Colonel By Drive.
Okay, so I haven’t been updating this blog as frequently as I used to, and there are reasons for that. We’ll have to wait and see. But this should get interesting this time around.
On to other news.
It looks as if the Canadian Armed Forces have yet another little shit storm brewing on the horizon. It seems that Gary Walbourne, the former Canadian Forces Ombudsman, is testifying before the Standing Committee on National Defence that he told the Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, about the allegations of sexual misconduct that had been brought against former Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance.
It seems that Harjit didn’t want his sensibilities offended by the allegations and ignored the allegations which meant that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman couldn’t review the matter.
And as the Minister of National Defence, Harjit is technically the top cop in the Canadian Forces. By way of the chain of command Harjit has control over the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the Provost Marshal, and the various commanding officers of the CFNIS.
When I first met with Harjit Sajjan back in February of 2016, I thought that the meeting would be an eye opener for Sajjan. After all, he seemed to be the no-nonsense law and order kind. He was a police officer with the Vancouver Police Department before he joined the Canadian Armed Forces.
The meeting though quickly went off the rails. At the start of the meeting he wanted me to understand that he was meeting with me as the Member of Parliament for Vancouver South and not as the Minister of National Defence. At the time I didn’t understand why he was so intent on making this clear to me. But there would have been legal ramifications if he were to have met with me in his role as the Minister of National Defence. This I wouldn’t learn until a few years later.
I discussed the issue of Captain Father Angus McRae and McRae’s altar boy P.S. and the fact that I had received what amounted to be “conversion therapy ” at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. Harjit Sajjan didn’t care. During our 15 minute meeting he interrupted me and asked me what my “angle was” and “what game was I playing”.
Between the meeting on February 6th, 2016 and the current day, I have asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation. Yes, the 1980 CFSIU investigation is well beyond the mandate of the Military Police Complaints Commission, however it is not beyond the mandate of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. The Minister of National Defence just has to ask the Ombudsman to investigate. This would be the same as when then Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman in 2013 to investigate the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident that killed 6 children and injured over 100 more. Yet Harjit Sajjan has refused to request the Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation of Captain Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S..
I have absolutely no doubt in mind that had Harjit Sajjan been the Minister of National Defence in 2013, he would have not allowed the Ombudsman to review the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident.
Harjit is a soldier’s soldier.
Harjit is beholden to the military and to no one else.
Harjit will not allow anything to potentially darken the reputation of the military.
I’m just thankful that the CFB Valcartier grenade incident investigation was undertaken prior to Harjit’s tenure.
I’m also thankful that the Colonel Russell Williams matter occurred prior to Harjit’s tenure.
And I’m also thankful that Madame Marie Deschamps was tasked with conducting her review prior to Harjit’s tenure.
Sadly I don’t think that Harjit is going to lose his ministerial position no matter how badly he deserves to be punished for this appalling coverup.
Justin Trudeau won’t do it. Justin doesn’t have the power or the will to stand up to a person like Harjit.
Tossing Harjit out of his ministerial position would cost the Liberal party of Canada too many votes.
So, we’re stuck with Harjit for the foreseeable future.
And we’re also stuck with a man who places his pride in the military above all else.
We’re stuck with a man who is willing to allow the old military ways of sweeping everything under the rug to become the new way of conducting business.
And this is a shame after so many years of progress.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released their final report of their review of the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754.
Although it was just a review, and although the review had to be conducted as per rules that the Canadian Armed Forces shaped, the MPCC did find that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal did err when it relied upon the decision of the Alberta Crown as meaning that no crime had been committed. The Crown had opined that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. The Crown made no determination on the guilt or innocence or P.S..
The MPCC was of the opinion that there was ample evidence to indicate that a crime had been committed.
Generally, the Crown has a very high bar for determining whether or not to pursue charges in court. This is because the accused stands to lose their personal freedom and suffer penalties and sanctions administered by the courts.
However, just because this bar is set high doesn’t mean that the accused is innocent.
And that was one of the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
There had been crimes committed.
But, for some reason when dealing with the outside civilian agency the CFNIS had chosen to use the opinion of the Alberta Crown and not its own opinion in determining if a crime had been committed.
I think this refusal to go on record and state that crimes had occurred comes down to not wanting to expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions and the resultant public humiliation that the Canadian Forces knew that over 25 children had been sexually abused on a secure defence establishment by an officer of the Regular Forces and instead in 1980 set about to sweep everything under the rug and hide it from the public eye by a very questionable publication ban.
The MPCC recommended that the Provost Marshal supply more documentation from the investigation to the outside civilian agency that was reviewing this matter on my behalf.
Upon receipt of these documents, the outside civilian review agency concluded that I had in fact been the victim of multiple sexual assaults by multiple perpetrators and that these assaults had in fact caused psychological issues as indicated by my Alberta social service Foster Care records. These were the records that were submitted to the CFNIS in August of 2011, but which the CFNIS completely ignored for the most part as they directly conflicted with the statement that my father had given (coerced, coached, or otherwise) to the CFNIS in June of 2011.
Relying on the opinion of the Provincial Crown is apparently nothing new for the Canadian Forces military police.
A former crown prosecutor from New Brunswick who had declined to recommend charges against 5 soldiers from CFB Gagetown who had raped a mentally challenged spouse of a service member remarked that the military police did this as a way of shifting the blame to the Crown for the failure to prosecute.
Why did the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal rely so heavily upon the Alberta Crown report? Was this due to a desire for a “softball” investigation that wouldn’t break any agreement between P.S. and the Minister of National Defence?
That’s beyond the scope of the MPCC. The MPCC cannot, by its enabling legislation, review interference complaints unless the complaints are made by CFNIS investigators directly involved with a particular investigation. As the MPCC indicated in its own submission to the “2nd Independent Review of Amendments Made to the National Defence Act” which was published in 2011, the CFNIS investigators may not even be aware that interference has occurred in their investigation if that interference happens high enough up the chain of command.
And is a superior really interfering with an investigation if they are issuing “lawful commands” that their subordinates are legally bound by the National Defence Act to obey?
CFNIS investigators do not “own” their investigation. They cannot make their own decisions and their own determinations. Everything they do must be approved by the Chain of Command.
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against P.S., even though the Crime Stoppers appeal had generated numerous other tips which resulted in other victims coming forward, the CFNIS chain of command made the decision that each complaint had to stand on its own and that none of the complaints would be used to strengthen the other complaints.
Someone involved with the CFNIS decided that there was far too much risk in presenting a strong case to the Alberta Crown.
In 2020, the CFNIS undertook the investigation into my complaint that P.S. had supplied me for sexual purposes to a man at the base swimming pool in the period of time between having been caught in the bedroom of P.S. and the subsequent house fire at the residence of P.S.. I had made mention of this man previously during the 2011-5754 investigation. Because of paperwork related to the 1980 investigation of Captain McRae released to me under the Access to Information legislation in 2019, I became aware of a very likely possibility of who this man was so I decided to make a formal complaint.
In January I was contacted by the CFNIS investigator handling my case. He said that he was making arrangements with the Vancouver Police Department for me to view police line-up photographs to see if I could identify the man that P.S. had supplied me to. Then suddenly a week ago this investigator contacted me and said that his superiors had decided to scrub the photographs and that they were working on other possible ways for me to identify this man.
I know for sure that the CFNIS are not simply going to pay Mr.P.S. a visit and ask him the name of the man. So I can only wonder how they intend for me to identify this man.
So again, it’s not the CFNIS investigator the runs the investigation, it’s the CFNIS chain of command and the Provost Marshal chain of command that run the investigations.
Under the National Defence Act, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff has the right to issue guidelines and instructions for any investigation undertaken by the CFNIS and that although these instructions are to be made public, these instructions do not have to be made public of the Provost Marshal decides against releasing them.
The Vice Chief of Defence Staff must obey the lawful commands of the Chief of Defence Staff.
The Chief of Defence Staff must obey the Minister of National Defence.
The office of the Minister of National Defence is civilly liable for the actions of any person subject to the Code of Service Discipline while that person is on a Defence Establishment.
This isn’t the first rodeo for the Canadian Armed Forces.
They have a massive legal department.
They also have the benefit of the Department of Justice.
The Canadian Forces have legislation on their side that says that they have very little if any responsibility for civilians injured on Defence Establishment.
About the only thing that would circumvent that implied immunity to civil action would be criminal charges connected directly to a person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
In the case of P.S., that person was Captain Father Angus McRae. Under Canadian law at the time, McRae would have been fully responsible for the delinquency of P.S.
In the case of the man at the base swimming pool, I’m pretty sure that this man was a major in the Canadian Forces at the time. He went on to have his own legal problems involving sexual relations with underage persons.
If the Canadian Forces are unable to find a criminal connection between myself and P.S. or myself and the man at the base swimming pool, the odds on me ever being able to launch a successful civil action against the Minister of National Defence are slim to none.
Minister of National Defence -> Chief of Defence Staff -> Vice Chief of Defence Staff -> Provost Marshal -> Commander of the CFNIS -> Divisional Commander CFNIS -> CFNIS investigator.
In this post I will critique the Military Police Complaints Commission Final Report MPCC 2018-030.
This will be a somewhat long read, but it will be worth it.
I’m not going to critique each and every item in MPCC 2018-030. I’m just going to critique the items that I feel need to be critiqued or expanded upon.
Opening section of MPCC 2018-030
On June 23rd, 2011 the Military Police Complaints Commission made the following submission to the Independant Review Authority that was charged with reviewing the 1998 Amendmentd to the National Defence Act:
One of the issues noted by the Military Police Complaints Commission itself is that civilians, such as myself, do not have access to internal Canadian Forces grievances mechanisms. This means that when a civilian such as myself wishes to make a complaint against a member of the Canadian Forces military police, unlike members of the Canadian Armed Forces, we receive absolutely no assistance from the Canadian Forces nor do we receive assistance from the Military Police Complaints Commission.
Civilians are on their own.
A brief step back to 2011
Because the Military Police Complaints Commission raises the spectre of the previous MPCC review (MPCC 2011-045) I will briefly speak to it.
During my initial complaint in 2011 I had absolutely no access to any of the investigation paperwork.
All I knew is that on November 4th, 2011 Petty Office Steve Morris contacted me via telephone and told me that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence that P.S. was capable of committing the crimes I accused him of.
P.S. was the same person that retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham told me about on November 27th, 2011 as having been investigated by the base military police for having inappropriate interactions with children on the base.
P.S., as I would later discover, had an extensive record for sexual crimes involving children. His attraction to children was in no doubt nurtured by the grooming P.S. received at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
At no time during the initial MPCC investigation (MPCC 2011-045) was any of the CFNIS paperwork shared with me. As such this was literal blind attempt to try to figure out what went so off the rails with the original 2011 CFNIS investigation.
And even if I had tried to obtain the investigation paperwork, the paperwork would have been very heavily redacted. And that’s if the paperwork even shows up within the established time frame for making a complaint. In August of 2018 I filed and ATI request for the paperwork from the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS 2011-5754. It took 20 months for DND to respond to my request and provide the paperwork. The paperwork that I received was redacted to the point of being useless.
It wasn’t until I received the Certified Tribunal Records from the MPCC when I made my application for Judicial Review that I learnt exactly what had transpired during the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
Basically it was my father’s statement to the CFNIS that allowed the CFNIS to write my complaint off as meaningless. My father’s statement fit the narrative that the CFNIS needed. This narrative was that my brother and I never had a babysitter. And that I was obviously only doing this because I wanted easy money.
The only problem with my father’s statement is that even though I had no idea that the CFNIS had contacted my father in June of 2011, I had supplied the CFNIS with a copy of my foster care records from the Alberta Government. The CFNIS ignored the contents of these records. The MPCC wasn’t able to consider these records as they had not been before the CFNIS. And because both agencies ignored these records and didn’t consider these records in their respective reviews, these records were not allowed to be introduced in Federal Court during my application for Judicial Review. My foster care records and other documents such as my father’s statement acknowledging that there was in fact a babysitter in our house were struck as being “new evidence”.
What did these records have to say? My father took no responsibility for his family. My father blamed the problems that my brother and I were having on his mother. My father had invited his mother into the house on base to raise my brother and after our mother had “abandoned us” at CFB Summerside. My father was frequently absent due to military requirements. That my father was so resistant to family counselling that I was to have been removed from the house and placed into foster care or residential care as a means to induce my father into the counselling that he so desperately required.
So why did my father spin such a fanciful and tall tale? Well, he’s been dead since January 2017 so we’ll never find out. But, my foster care records did observe that he often told people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear. My foster care records also indicated that my father often changed his stories from one meeting to the next.
Basically, my father was a pathological liar who would say anything if he thought that it would make him look like the good guy.
How could a man like Richard ever publicly admit that he willingly put his children in a position to be sexually abused because he placed his military career above all else.
For my father to tell the CFNIS in 2011 that he had never heard about a babysitter when he spent every year from 1980 until 1987 when I moved out of the house, blaming me for allowing and encouraging the babysitter to touch my younger brother, was beyond belief.
And yes, when I examined my father for Federal Court in 2013, he admitted that he hadn’t been truthful with the CFNIS in 2011. He admitted that there had in fact been a babysitter in the house. But as usual he blamed his mother for hiring the babysitter. He also basically admitted that he kidnapped my brother and I in 1977 and that our mother hadn’t really abandoned the family.
So, why didn’t I raise these issues with the MPCC in 2012 when I was interviewed?
I had absolutely no idea of what was in the CFNIS investigation paperwork that the Provost Marshal had submitted to the Military Police Complaints Commission. This is by far the biggest flaw with the whole MPCC complaints process. A complainant such as myself is literally playing “pin the tail on the donkey” in a tilt-a-whirl with absolutely no assistance from anyone. No assistance from the MPCC. No assistance from the Provost Marshal. No assistance from the Canadian Forces ombudsman.
The evidence that I collected, it was all considered new evidence, even though most of it had been in the possession of the CFNIS during the original CFNIS investigation.
I can only wonder how the previous 2011 CFNIS investigation has poisoned the Alberta Crown to ever prosecuting P.S.. I can’t see the Alberta Crown coming out and admitting that they got hoodwinked by the CFNIS in 2011.
I know from the Certified Tribunal Records that I received as part of my application for Judicial Review in 2013 that the CFNIS fed the Alberta Crown a rather horrid plate of B.S..
During my interview with the CFNIS on March 31st, 2011 I told CFNIS investigator Robert Jon Hancock that I had twice tried reporting P.S. to the military police. Once in 1984, and once in 1990. For what ever reason, the CFNIS in 2011 made the decision to not pass this information on to the Alberta Crown. This resulted in Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki making the follwoing observation which no doubt figured heavily in his decicision to not prosecute a multi-time convicted child molester.
My younger brother at the time would have been between four and six years of age when the babysitter, P.S. was abusing him. P.S. would have been between the ages of thirteen and fifteen when he was absuing my younger brother. That’s not “childhood curiosity and experimentation”. And is very obvious that Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki is placing very heavy emphasis on “the fact that no complaint was made to any party or a person in authority after P.S. moved away is very significant.”
P.S. was born in June of 1965. He would have been 14 in June of 1979. He would have been just weeks shy of his 15th birthday when he was found buggering me in his bedroom. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act P.S. would have been fully culpable for his crimes. Yes, it’s true that P.S. would have to be charged under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, but he’s already had a lifetime of prosecution for sexual offences involving children. It’s not like he’s going to do any jail time or face any serious consequences other than officially being found guilty.
I know that Chief Alberta Crown Prosecutor Orest Yeriniuk is extremely upset that I was allowed to see this document. I can only wonder if the Crown’s continued reluctance to prosecute P.S. is a function of retaliation.
I know from my complaint to the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board that the CFNIS heavily edited the documents that it submitted to the Alberta Crown in 2011. For example on Tuesday August 9th, 2011 P.S. called CFNIS investigator Mcpl Robert Jon Hancock and stated the following:
However, this is what was submitted to the Alberta Crown:
Notice something missing? As we shall see later on, P.S. did have extensive involvement with the military police for what had transpired on CFB Namao from August of 1978 until May of 1980. Why didn’t the CFNIS want the Alberta Crown to know this? It’s not like the Alberta Crown would have any access to military police records. Surely, if the CFNIS wanted to present a strong case, they would have submitted the military’s records relating to the activities of P.S. from August of 1978 until May of 1980.
And in a way, I can fully understand Orest Yeriniuk’s continued refusal to prosecute. Going against the original decision made by Werbicki in November of 2011 to not prosecute P.S. would be considered improper and a rebuke of Werbicki’s independence as a Crown Prosecutor. This is not something the Crown undertakes lightly.
Also, the Alberta Crown would essentially be admitting that it didn’t perform due diligence in this matter and had the wool pulled over their eyes by a police force with a very questionable record.
Pretty bad when the Minister of National Defence says this.
When I made my first complaint in March of 2011, the case was only 31 years old. Not 40.
I was a pre-pubescent child. My brother a was pre-pubescent child. P.S. was a young adult who had passed through puberty. Not the same category. None of the children that P.S. was abusing was sexually developed. P.S. was fully sexually matured.
Earl Ray Stevens – a 32 year old complaint.
In March of 2017 I made a complaint against Earl Ray Stevens. He was a commissionaire at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets. He had also been a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces. He started sexually abusing me just after the summer of 1985. He took advantage of the fact that he knew my father was in the Canadian Forces and that the Commissionaires had special authority under the National Defence Act that placed them almost at the same level as military police. Basically the threats were that if I ever told anyone about what he was doing, that he’d tell my father. I’d be kicked out of cadets. But even worse than that, my father would find out that I had sex with men. This is not something that any male child living on a Canadian Forces Base at the time wanted anyone to know.
The CFNIS took the investigation as the abuses occured on Canadian Forces military property.
The case was initially investigated by the CFNIS in Borden, ON. CFNIS Borden then handed the case over to the Toronto Police Services. The Toronto Police Service laid six charges against Earl within weeks of taking the case on.
I had provided even less evidence to the CFNIS in the matter of Earl Ray Steven.
And the Ontario Crown was worried that as I was 14 when the abuse started that Earl’s defence lawyer would be able to argue that I had consented to willfully have sexual intercourse with a 42 year old man.
In 2018 I took part in the preliminary hearing. The hearing lasted two days. At the end of the hearing the justice overseeing the matter determined that there was more than sufficient evidence and the case was moved up to Superior Court for trial.
Unfortunately Earl died of bladder cancer before the trial.
But at least he was charged. And at least we were heading to trial.
Why the difference?
Liability.
Earl worked for the Canadian Corp of Commissionaires. The Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence cannot be sued for the actions of an employee of a subcontractor.
P.S. was abused by an employee of the Department of National Defence. P.S. was a juvenile at the time of his offences. The Juvenile Delinquents Act said that the adult who contributed to the delinquency of a minor could be held responsible. This means that just as P.S. sued the Minister of National Defence in 2001, anyone abused by P.S. would be eligible to sue the minister as well…. so long as their was a direct link established by the victim of P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae. Without charges against P.S., there can be no link.
Limited disclosure to outside agencies
I can only wonder who it was that determined which information it was that was released to the Alberta Victim of Crimes board. You have to remember that in a CFNIS investigation, the CFNIS investigators can’t do anything without the expressed permission or instruction of the Chain of Command.
RCAF Station Namao ceased to exist in 1968 with the unification of the Forces. It was CFB Namao when we lived there. CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach formed CFB Edmonton.
I was 7 when the abuse started in the fall of 1978 and 8 when the abuse ended in the spring of 1980.
My younger brother would have been 4 when the abuse started and 6 when the abuse ended.
P.S. would have been 13 when the abuse started and weeks shy of his 15th birthday when the abuse ended in the spring of 1980.
Again, having not seen any of the paperwork from the 2011 CFNIS investigation I was not able to flag any of the obvious flaws with the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
As I stated previously, it was only after I had received the certified tribunal records from the Military Police Complaints Commission that I was able to finally see just how horrific and putrid the 2011 CFNIS investigation actually was.
Any evidence that I submitted in my records to the Federal Court to show that the CFNIS had really bungled the investigation was struck from the hearings as “New Evidence”. New evidence included documents that I had exchanged with the CFNIS in 2011, but which were never submitted to the MPCC during the MPCC 2011-045/054. New evidence was copies of emails between myself and the investigators which were not passed on to the MPCC during the review.
It was after RCMP Akrum Ghadban reviewed the 2011 CFNIS investigation as well as the new information that I had as a result of my telephone calls with both P.S. and his father J.S. that the decision was made to re-open the investigation.
There were four items that Insp Ghadban wanted the CFNIS to concentrate on. 1) Locating the younger brother of P.S. 2) Talking to a potential witness who had possibly seen the beating I took from the older kids when I left P.S.’s house after he was discovered buggering me in his bedroom. 3) Talking to Fred Cunningham 4) Locating records of my 1984 and 1990 complaints. Unlike what the CFNIS had claimed, Insp Ghadban said that he noted that I did in fact mention this to the CFNIS in 2011. And yes, I do have a copy of my video statement to the CFNIS and yes, I do mention these two events.
Locating the younger brother of P.S. was tricky. At first the S. family was claiming that the younger brother lived out on the West Coast and never contacted the family. One family member even suggested that the younger brother was deceased. As it turned out, the younger brother at the time was living in Welland Ontario, just a short distance away from where P.S. and his father J.S. were living in Fort Erie, Ontario. It turns out that the younger brother was actually in frequent contact with the rest of the S. family.
Locating the witness was easy, but sadly the witness was only around 11 at the time and can’t remember anything. He does remember P.S. though.
Fred Cunningham was easy enough for the CFNIS to locate. Even more stunning was the location of the CFSIU paperwork which contrary to what Lt. Col. Gilles Sansterre told me in January of 2011 indicated that Fred Cunningham was a very key player in the investigation of P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae.
Fred Cunningham was such a key player that he was the primary witness for the prosecution during the court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae.
During the 2015 through 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation, Sgt. Tenaschuk would often tell me that he was trying to locate any copies of the records from when I attended the military police shack on CFB Namao in 1984 and 1990 to make my complaints against P.S. but that the record keeping system from then left a lot to be desired. Sgt. Tenaschuk wouldn’t be the first person to find issue with the military’s historical record system. This was brought up in the ’90s during the Somalia hearings.
McRae is officially labeled as a pedophile.
As it turns out, in 1980 they knew that alcohol was being given to the children “hanging around” at his living quarters (the rectory at the chapel).
Examination of Fred Cunningham during the court martial of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae
And yes, they knew what McRae was doing in the Rectory at the chapel:
Examination of Sgt. Ryan during the court martial of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae
It’s nice to finally see Captain McRae called out for what he was. It’s also nice to see that my recollection of P.S. taking me to the chapel is in the official records. I told the CFNIS about these five visits on May 3rd, 2011 when Mcpl Christian Cyr called me to ask me if I remembered anything about the base chaplain, Captain McRae, having been charged with molesting children. I sent Cyr some information that evening. I told Mcpl Cyr that I remembered 5 different visits to the rectory at the chapel. That these visits always ended with P.S. giving me a tumbler with a “sickly sweet grape juice”. I told Cyr that I didn’t remember anything after the grape juice, not even how I got home. I even sent Mcpl Cyr maps and descriptions of the rectory.
This however is not what was recorded in Mcpl Cyr’s occurrence report.
This was:
From MPCC 2011-045 Certified Tribunal Records.
During the 2011 portion of the CFNIS investigation the CFNIS scrubbed any and all mention of Captain McRae from the investigation.
As this information does not show up in the records the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC in 2012, the MPCC was completely unaware of this. The MPCC did not share any information with me during the MPCC review of 2011-5754 as they’re not required to. As such I wasn’t able to raise any concerns about the creative editing and the narrative provided by this creative editing. Because I couldn’t raise these issues during the MPCC review I was unable to enter these into Federal Court as they were now considered “new evidence”.
The more I think about it now, the more I realize that the CFNIS in 2011 knew about the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae. They knew about P.S.’s extensive criminal record for child molestation. And the CFNIS or the relevant chain of command must have concluded that I was just looking for a quick buck, that somehow I must have heard about the settlement between P.S. and the Minister and therefore I decided that I wanted some easy money.
Might explain why my father’s statement was so custom tailored to the wishes of the CFNIS even though his statement was easily proved wrong by the various social service records my family accumulated across Canada.
A brief trip to the Federal Court for Judicial Review.
From T_317_13 Final Judgement
In the written examination of my father he admits that there was a babysitter in the house and he can’t offer an explanation as to why he willingly told the CFNIS in 2011 that there wasn’t.
From T_317_13 Final Judgement
The lawyer representing the Attorney General of Canada went through the roof when I introduced the emails between myself and Master Corporal Christain Cyr as well as the written examinations of both my father and my brother.
From T_317_13 Final Judgement
It’s funny, but the justice that reviewed my matter was basically okay with striking my “new evidence” because it didn’t appear in the CFNIS investigation even though my documents showed that it had been presented to and made known to the CFNIS.
Sure, I know, I know…… “but Bobbie why didn’t you challenge the absurdity of this in the Supreme Court of Canada”.
Supreme court ain’t cheap. And I don’t have $100k plus kicking around to go tilting at windmills.
Sometimes you gotta take the bad judgments and just walk away.
From T_317_13 Final JudgementFrom T_317_13 Final Judgement
This is one of the massive flaws with the courts in this country. The courts do not assist in the location of information that the courts themselves have access to.
It wasn’t until after this hearing that I was able to contact the Edmonton lawyer who represented P.S. in P.S. v. Minister of National Defence. The lawyer in a way confirmed the identity of P.S.. Or more succinctly I should state that this lawyer was unwilling to go on record and state that the P.S. in P.S. v. Minister of National Defence was NOT my babysitter P.S.
This lawyer also gave me a bit of advice. He said that I should think long and hard about going after DND. He said that given the chance, he’d never do this again. I think the point this lawyer was making is that DND and the Department of Justice have extremely deep pockets and can tie anyone up in court long enough that you’ll be happy to take any scrap of a settlement they’re willing to throw your way.
And I know there is some truth to this.
P.S. started his action in March of 2001. The Canadian Forces Director of Civil Liabilities and Claims made the offer to settle in November of 2008. That’s almost 7-1/2 years of court for a matter in which a member of the Canadian Armed Forces admitted to and plead guilty to molesting a military dependent on a military establishment. The liability couldn’t be more clear cut. Yet DND and the absurdly named “Department of Justice” spent 7-1/2 years trying to weasel out of compensating a victim.
In my July 2015 telephone call with P.S., he confirmed that P.S. v. Minister of National Defence was his civil action but that an NDA agreement prevents him from discussing the matter.
To date DND has stonewalled me for any information related to P.S. v Minister of National Defence.
It wasn’t until I got creative and submitted an Access to Information request to the Department of Justice for their records related to their defence of the Minister of National Defence in the matter of P.S. v. Minister of National Defence that I discovered that the Minister settled with P.S. in November of 2008.
But this is all information that is easily available to the courts. These are court records.
It really makes me sick to realize that the courts have all of this power, but willingly play stupid.
So far as liability goes. The Juvenile Delinquents Act is very clear in that the adult responsible for the delinquency is responsible for the consequences.
Yes, I could have appealed this to the Supreme Court, but with court costs and expenses estimated to be over $100,000.00 sometimes it better to just walk away.
P.S. v. Minister of National Defence confirmed.
Here the MPCC is stating something that the Federal Court of Canada was unwilling to state even though the Federal Court had easy access to these records:
MPCC 2018-030 Final Report
Again, Mr. X is P.S.
MPCC 2018-030 Final Report
McRae died three months after the start of the investigation into my complaint against P.S. McRae died 17 days after Mcpl Cyr asked me if I remembered anything about McRae.
You need to bear in mind that when the investigation plan was put into action that Angus McRae was still alive. This posed a very serious dilemma for the CFNIS. Depending on the outcome of their investigation into P.S. they might be able to charge P.S., but due to the fact that Angus McRae was subject to the Code of Service Discipline in 1980 no matter what crimes P.S. implicated McRae in the 3-year time bar would prevent the CFNIS from even charging Angus McRae.
The email that started it all.
MPCC 2018-030 Final Report
The Edmonton Police Service didn’t refer me to anyone. The EPS contacted the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. ASIRT in turn contacted the CFNIS. The CFNIS assumed jurisdiction.
My original message to the Edmonton Police Service:
Edmonton Police Service internal message:
Another internal Edmonton Police Service email:
ASIRT contacting the CFNIS:
Warrant Officer Blair Hart contacting Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger:
Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger stating CFNIS will take jurisdiction and even mentioning that in 1980 jurisdiction would have belinged to the RCMP.
So no, at no time did I contact the CFNIS on my own. If I had known in 2011 that this was going to investigated by the Canadian Forces I would have just walked away.
MPCC 2018-030
Remember, the CFNIS submitted such horrific evidence to the Alberta Crown that the Alberta Crown wondered if anything had happened at all outside of “childhood curiosity and experimentation”.
Also, the first communication I had from the CFNIS indicating that the investigation was over was on November 4th, 2011.
ATIP A-2018-00780 CFNIS Investigation GO 2011-5754
Petty Officer Morris’ words were that “the CFNIS could find no evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of committing the crimes that I had accused him of” and that the investigation was going to be closed.
MPCC 2018-030
Again, bear in mind that during the 2012 MPCC investigation I was not shown any of the documentation that was supplied to the MPCC by the CFNIS and I was therefore unable to question some of the questionable decisions by the CFNIS in 2011. As a result of this, any evidence that I entered into court was struck as being “new evidence” as I didn’t raise this evidence during the MPCC review. Neat how that works, eh?
MPCC 2018-030
I can only wonder if the Alberta Crown’s continued refusal to prosecute a multi-time convicted child molester is an act of retribution against me by the Alberta Crown for the fuss I’ve raised over Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki’s Crown opinion. I was never supposed to have seen that Crown opinion. They’re considered privileged documents.
Request for a Public Interest Hearing.
MPCC 2018-030
The funny thing about the MPCC declining to convene a public interest hearing is that it was the MPCC itself in 2011 that had stated in the “Military Police Complaints Commission Submissions to the Independent Review Authority” that having the Provost Marshal respond to the commands of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff “runs counter to Canadian law and practice regarding the independence of police investigations generally”.
Basically, what is being stated here is that when the police are investigating a criminal matter, the police answer to no one but the law itself. However, this is not possible in the Canadian Armed Forces as members of the CFNIS as well as the chain of command of the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal are members of the Canadian Forces and are bound by the National Defence Act as well as the Queen’s Regulations and Orders and must obey their superiors at all times.
This chain of command means that the investigator investigating my matter is subordinate to the Minister of National Defence. The Minister of National Defence is the very same entity that I would have to sue for civil damages.
This excerpt is from a Supreme Court of Canada matter which the Military Police Complaints Commisison raised within its submissions to the Independent Review Authority on June 23rd, 2011.
The Military Police Complaints Commission was taking issue with ammendments made to the National Defence Act which would allow for the Vice Chief of Defence Staff to direct the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal in any Professional Standards review and and military police investigation. The Surpeme Court of Canada has long recognized that it is improper for a police agency to receive instuction or guideance from any agency that may stand to be subject to civil actions depending on the outcome of the police agency.
The Military Police Complaints Commission itself pointed out that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff is not a Peace Officer unlike the Provost Marshal. The Provost Marshal must obey the lawful commands of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff must obey the lawful commands of the Chief of Defence Staff. And the Chief of Defence Staff must obey the wishes of the Minister of National Defence.
And as illustrated in the matter of P.S. v. Mininster of National Defence, it is the Minister with direct authority over the military police that I would have to initiate a civil action against and that the success of this civil action is solely dependent on the findings of the military police investigation that the minister may issue instructions for.
National Defence Act Revised statutes of Canada 1985, Chapter N-5 Current as of 2019-08-01
Section 18.4 defines the responsibilities of the Provost Marshal.
Section 18.5 gives the Vice Chief of Defence Staff certain responsibilities over the Provost Marshal.
Section 83 and 85 state that EVERY member of the Canadian Forces will without hesitation obey the lawful commands of their superior. There are no exceptions for the military police or the CFNIS or the Provost Marshal, or the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, or the Chief of Defence staff. Each and every one of them must obey the commands of their superior. The ultimate superior in this chain is the Minister of National Defence.
This type of obedience does not exist in any civilian police department to the best of my knowledge.
Interference Complaint
So, why didn’t I file an inference complaint?
Becuase only members of the military police conducting or supervising an investigation may make an interference complaint.
Military Police Complaints Commission Submission to the Independent Review Authority
The last sentence of the excerpt above should be very concerning to anyone who understands what it means. Due to the Chain of Command Influence within the Canadian Armed Forces, if interference in an investigation occurs high enough up the Chain of Command, the military police investigator may be completely unaware of the interference. It’s sad that the MPCC wrote this observation in 2011 but pretends that interference couldn’t have possibly been an issue in my matter which stood to expose the Minister of National Defence to Civil Actions.
Pre-1998 Brick Wall.
MPCC 2018-030
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the MPCC often hide behind this “brick wall” that was errected in December of 1999 with the creation of the Military Police Complaints Commission. The CFNIS and the MPCC both claim that they cannot take anything from the 1980 CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae into account as this happened prior to 1999.
Refusal to hand over documents to the MPCC for review.
MPCC 2018-030
Unlike in 2012, this time around the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal declined to provide the Military Police Complaints Commission a copy of the Crown Brief or the response from the Crown. The decision to not supply the MPCC with these documents more than likely stems from how embarrassing it was for both the Alberta Crown and the CFNIS for me to have obtained the prior Crown Brief and the decision by the Crown.
However, as I have the tribunal records from the Alberta Victims of Crime, I can state for a fact that the CFNIS basically just regurgitated the original 2011 investigation Crown Brief.
MPCC 2018-030
The MPCC did ask me to sign a consent form allowing them to retrieve the a copy of the Crown Brief from the Alberta Victims of Crime seeing as how the Provost Marshal was declining to hand over a copy. As I’ve seen the Crown Brief I know that the CFNIS added sweet bugger all to the original 2011 Crown Brief and basically just resubmitted the original 2011 mess. And then they act surprised when the Crown refuses to prosecute.
Mention of RCMP Inspector Akrum Ghadban
MPCC 2018-030MPCC 2018-030MPCC 2018-030
Okay, so the CPIC check is interesting. But it misses out on some of the details that are in the newspaper article below.
Deep River, Ontario is just north of Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. CFB Petawawa is where P.S.’s family had been transfered to in June of 1980.
The 1984 charge from Manitoba is missing. This one involved an 8 year old boy in Manitoba.
There were TWO charges in 1985. One for molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Namao after his family had been transferred back there in 1985. And one for molesting a 13 year old newspaper boy in Edmonton after the Canadian Forces ordered him out of the military housing and off the base. His father, J.S., rented him an apartment in the west end of Edmonton.
So, that’s a total of four charges involving children prior to 1985. And they’re only listing the crimes he was convicted of. What’s not listed, but what is available in his CPIC file, is the numerous charges that were stayed or dismissed.
So, I hope you understand why I get annoyed when I think back to the phone call I received on November 4th, 2011 from Petty Office Steve Morris stating that the CFNIS couldn’t find anything to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes that I had accused him of.
Warrant Officer Fred R. Cunningham
MPCC 2018-030
This is correct, the CFSIU which after the separation of the intelligence section, went on to become the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. The CFSIU primarily concerned itself with “serious and sensitive” offences committed by service members, much the same as the modern day CFNIS. The base military police then, much as they do today, looked after the smaller menial occurrences.
At the time of the investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae in 1980, Fred Cunningham was Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham of the CFSIU. Fred was a Military Police officer with the base military police but was then transfered over to the CFSIU and became the Acting Section Commander.
When I spoke with Fred on November 27th, 2011, he wouldn’t elaborate what function he did with the military police. He said that he was very familiar with the P.S. and Captain McRae affair.
He said that the base MPs had received numerous complaints about P.S. and that this led to the investigation of P.S. by the base military police. According to Fred, when P.S. was questioned in his father’s house P.S. named Captain Father Angus McRae. Fred stated that the CFSIU had the charges related to three boys ready to go to court martial, but that the brass cut the charges down to only those charges involving P.S.
Fred stated that one of the other boys who had his charges against McRae dismissed by the brass thought that P.S. had stabbed him in the back. Fred Cunningham said that this other boy was named either Fred or Frank and that he was a prolific pyromaniac on the base and had set numerous fires.
As a side note, I was able to determine who this other kids was. His initials are F.A.. His family’s PMQ was involved with fires that F.A. was found to have set. According to one of the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal reports F.A. like to play the “hero” by “discovering” the fire after it had been set. F.A. had a tendency to try to blame his sisters for setting the fires. F.A. had also been to a psychiatric hospital to help him deal with his urges.
And, one of the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal reports indicate that F.A. and P.S. were good friends going so far as playing with fire together.
Just on a side note, on September 11th, 1978 the Canadian Forces Military Police on CFB Namao knew that P.S. was 13.
CF Fire Marshal report 7667-2-E16 ATIP A-2016-00793 MQ #26 – 12 St is where P.S. lived, MQ #21 – 12 Street is where F.A. lived.
I have the Edmonton Telephone Directories from 1978, 1979, and 1980 which confirm the family names of the persons living in these Married Quarters.
When I asked Fred Cunningham is he was insinuating that this Fred boy had anything to to with the fire at the P.S. residence on June 23rd, 1980 which resulted in the death of a civilian contractor, Fred Cunningham responded ” I am not going to speak to that”.
Fred also said that the brass wouldn’t allow the base military police to call in the R.C.M.P. to deal with P.S.
Fred pleaded with me to understand that the military police tried everything to get Captain McRae transferred into the civilian system but that the brass wouldn’t allow for that to happen.
Fred Cunningham was of the opinion that P.S. should never have been allowed to babysit children and that P.S. was having “mental problems” at the time and that he was a very “unsavory character”.
In 2011, after having talked to Fred Cunningham about this, I sent a letter to the Provost Marshal at the time hoping that this would show the Provost Marshal that something bad happened on CFB Namao in 1978 through 1980 and that he should have the CFNIS take a deeper look. In early January of 2012, I received a telephone call from Lt. Col. Gilles Sansterre telling me to not put much faith in what Cunningham had told me, that Cunningham wasn’t involved in the original investigation and was probably telling me second or third hand information.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
The person “x” above is P.S.
P.S. was not the subject of a formal military police investigation because the military police at the time could not investigate P.S..
According to the National Defence Act at the time, the military police could only arrest military dependants who were outside of Canada accompanying their serving parent on Canadian Forces business. That’s actually still the case today.
The military police at the time would have had to call in the R.C.M.P. to deal with P.S.. And according to Fred Cunningham the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were being prevented by the chain of command from calling in the R.C.M.P. to deal with P.S..
If the Canadian Forces had called in RCMP to deal with P.S., the Canadian Forces would have lost the ability to throw a gag-order over the Juvenile Delinquent Court. Yes, the Juvenile Court could easily prevent the naming of P.S., but they wouldn’t be able to prevent the naming of Captain Father Angus McRae and the delinquencies that Captain McRae was being charged with enabling a minor to commit.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
No one believed that P.S. was 12 years old at the time. P.S. was born in June of 1965. Captain McRae arrived at CFB Namao in August of 1978 from Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island. P.S. didn’t start abusing children until after Captain McRae started grooming P.S.. So this would have been in the fall of 1978. P.S. would have been about 13-1/2. P.S. would have turned 14 in June of 1979.
As indicated above, Canadian Forces records indicate that they knew in September of 1978 that P.S. was 13 years old.
In fact, the Canadian Forces NEEDED P.S. to be over the age of 14. According to a Court Martial Appeal Court matter titled Regina v. Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan from 1986 the Canadian Forces only retained the right to conduct a court martial for the crimes of Gross Indecency, and Indecent Assault so long as there was the possibility of consent. No consent meant the case had to be tried in a civilian court. No child under the age of consent can consent to have sexual relations with an adult. The age of consent in Canada at the time was 14.
C.M.A.C. 246 March 4, 1986 Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan v. Her Majesty the Queen (Regina)
As can been seen by the above excerpt, the military had the right to conduct a court martial against Captain McRae in the matter of Gross Indecency so long as there was the possibility that P.S. consented.
I wonder if any of this information from Fred Cunningham was passed on to the Alberta Crown.
If it wasn’t I wonder why?
Fred Cunningham was originally contacted by the CFNIS in early 2016.
For some reason he was very reluctant to sit down for a recorded interview with the CFNIS.
I wonder if Lt. Col. Gilles Sansterre had truly put the fear of god into Fred Cunningham back in December 2011 when I told the Provost Marshal what Fred had told me. After all for some reason Sansterre seemed to really want me to forget and not pay much attention to what Cunningham had told me. I’m still convinced that Sansterre or one of his underlings at the Canadian Forces Military Police group threatened Cunningham with violating the Official Secrets Act / the Security of Information Act for having discussed the matter of Captain McRae’s court martial with me in violation of the in-camera order that was applied to the court martial in July of 1980 by the Western Commander of the Canadian Forces for the sole goal of “protecting the morals” of Canadians.
Protecting the Public Morals of Canadians. ATI A-2019-00017 McRae Court Martial TranscriptRSC 1970, Chapter N-4, National Defence Act
Court Martial hearings are supposed to be open to the public, just as court proceedings are.
Basically the Canadian Forces didn’t want the Canadian public to discover that not only had an OFFICER of the Canadian Armed Forces had homosexual relations on a military base. The Canadian Armed Forces didn’t want the Canadian public learning that an OFFICER of the Canadian Armed Forces had homosexual relationships with children ranging in age from 15 to as young as possibly 4. As long as the Canadian Forces could hide this court martial, the Canadian Forces could portray it as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces having homosexual relations with a person who consented to the sexual activity.
ATI A-2018-00780ATI A-2018-00780MPCC 2018-030 Final Report
For someone who the CFNIS in 2011 couldn’t find any evidence against, P.S. sure keeps being mentioned as someone who liked to touch younger children.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
A lot of things back then seemed to have been dealt with “unofficially” back then if you know what I mean.
The funny thing about this is the MPCC and the CFNIS seem to have both neglected to mention my recording of the telephone call I had with retired Sgt. J.S., the father of P.S.. J.S. directly implicates his son.
Sgt. Tenaschuk called me in September of 2016 to inform me that the CFNIS was about ready to wrap up the investigation. Sgt. Tenaschuk asked me if there was anything else he thought that the CFNIS could do to satisfy me that they had tried everything this time. I suggested that the CFNIS run a Crime Stoppers appeal. Tenaschuk said that he would have to consult with his superiors to see if they would agree to this.
ATIP A-2018-00780 CFNIS Investigation GO 2011-5754
Note that the investigator can’t simply request a Crime Stoppers appeal. The investigator has to appeal to their chain of command. I also find it interesting that for a 40 year old case that lacks evidence that one Crime Stoppers appeal that ran for about two days in the media was garnering tips.
This appeal ran for two days. Better than nothing.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
7 tips for a two day appeal? Not too shabby.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Victim D was James Paluck. James is the one who told me that the sickly sweet grape juice was actually Manischewitz wine. James also told me about P.S.’s convictions in 1985 and both James and P.S.’s younger brother had been riding the bus to M.E. LaZert high school in Edmonton when the other school kids started teasing P.S.’s younger brother about his older brother being a child molester. Unfortunately James passed away. However, before James passed away he did give me the name of one other victim to go looking for.
Victim C is the youngest of three boys. He currently lives on the East Coast. When I spoke to him he was fearful of coming forward as he didn’t want to jeopardize his career. The middle brother was having issues that the younger brother believed was directly attributable to the abuse on CFB Namao at the hands of McRae and P.S.. The eldest brother committed suicide years ago. The younger brother blames the way the military handled the abuse investigation back in the 1980s as being a contributing factor.
On a side note, I recently learnt of another former military dependent from Canadian Forces Base Namao that had been abused by Captain McRae who would later go on to commit suicide. This dependent’s brother recently contacted me.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
I can only wonder what these “painful memories” were. The CFNIS seemed to have scrubbed them from the investigation paperwork.
It should be noted that the interview with Victim C occurred on January 12, 2017.
It was in early February 2017 that Sgt Tenaschuk contacted me and told me about finding the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit case file for the investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae. One of the things that Tenaschuk said has stuck with me. He said that it was very odd that this file still existed. He said that usually the military disposes of paperwork after a certain period. And seeing as how Captain McRae was convicted and subsequently booted out of the military in the early 1980s, this file shouldn’t exist anymore, but here it was.
This got me wondering. Maybe this file only continued to exist because it had been accessed frequently between 1980 and the current day because other victims of Captain McRae and P.S. kept coming forward over the years.
Maybe this is what drove P.S. to attempt suicide in 2000. He knew that he was never going to be free of what happened on CFB Namao.
Sgt. Tenaschuk read to me excerpts from the file. Unlike what J.S. had told me in July of 2015, it wasn’t J.S. that obtained the name of Captain McRae from his son P.S.. It was two base military police officers whom had interrogated P.S. in the kitchen of his family PMQ. Sgt. Tenaschuk said that just about everything else that Fred Cunningham had told me in 2011 was backed up by this paperwork. I asked Sgt. Tenaschuk for the name of this paperwork. He replied that it’s “CFSIU DS 120-10-80”. I filed an ATIP for CFSIU DS- 120-10-80 as soon as I got off the phone with Sgt. Tenaschuk.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
I forget how I was first put in contact with victim A, but if I remember correctly he contacted me via Facebook after having seen one of my postings in one of the Base Brat groups on Facebook. He’s a good guy. I’ve only met him twice face to face. His employment allows his to come out to the West Coast periodically. He has been willing in the past to go on camera so long as he is allowed to sit behind a screen. Being a sexually abused male carries such a bad stigma, especially in the line of work that he’s in that he doesn’t want anyone knowing who he actually is. And this I can totally understand.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Again Mstr [X] refers to P.S..
Bear in mind that no one involved with my investigation had tried to locate this paperwork. It was only when the CFNIS commenced an investigation into the complaint made by Victim A that the CFNIS Western Region tracked down the paperwork.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Remember, Corporal White was investigating the complaint of “Victim A”. No one from my investigation had tried obtaining the court martial records. P.S. was the main prosecution witness against Captain McRae.
In July of 2015 when I spoke with J.S. he told me how when his family was living on CFB Petawawa, the Canadian Forces wanted his son P.S. to fly back to Edmonton by himself to testify against Captain McRae. J.S. said that after much back-and-forth the Canadian Forces agreed to allow J.S. to fly to Edmonton with his son. However, J.S. was barred from entering the court martial. This would have been illegal at the time. Children have a right to have a parent or guardian present during any manner of court proceeding. The fact that the court martial panel didn’t want J.S. to hear his son’s testimony shows how far the Canadian Forces were willing to go to keep the actions of Captain McRae under wraps.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
And here it is ladies and gentlemen, the moment we’ve all been waiting for:
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
There it is in black and white Ladies and Gentlemen, the words that the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces chain of command have been very fucking reluctant to say or even acknowledge. P.S. was sexually abusing younger children on the base and the military police in 1980 WERE aware of the abuse.
Having been investigated by the base military police in 1980 for sexually abusing younger children should have proved that P.S. was capable of committing the crimes that I accused him of. At least the should have allowed me to face P.S. in a court of law out of the hands of the military.
It should be understood that the 2011 ‘remarks’ are from the Crown Brief that was submitted to Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki.
The reason that I had applied for benefits from the Victims of Crime Financial benefits program is that the victim services officer with the Canadian Forces suggested that I approach the Alberta Victims of Crime program for financial assistance to get counselling services.
As I’ve explained elsewhere as I’m not a member of the Canadian Forces I don’t qualify for counselling services from the Canadian Forces.
Alberta and British Columbia have both declined to assist me with counselling. British Columbia stating that the crimes didn’t occur in British Columbia, so it’s not their responsibility to pay.
Alberta first said that as I’m not a resident of Alberta, they’re not going to pay for counselling in another province. Then Alberta further declined stating that the crimes happened on a military reserve, therefore the Canadian Forces should pay.
Basically everyone just passes the buck.
And from what I’ve heard from other former base brats, this is common. Base brats quite often fall through social safety nets as the provinces look for any excuse to not deal with us.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Section 156 of the 1980 Criminal Code was Indecent Assault on Male. This was an indictable offence. The sentence was for up to ten years and to be whipped. As a juvenile, P.S. would have received at most a stint in reform school, if that.
Also, what I find odd about this is Petty Office Steve Morris called me on November 4th, 2011 and told me that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of committing the crimes I had accused him of.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030
I think Mr. Ghadban is being a little over generous here. After all, the CFNIS ‘forgot’ to mention to Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki that I had tried twice previously to report P.S. to the military police. The CFNIS outright ignored the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae. The CFNIS in 2011 could have just as easily obtained the court martial transcripts for Captain McRae as Corporal White did in the 2018 CFNIS investigation into the complaint against P.S. by the other victim.
In 2011 there would have been nothing preventing the CFNIS from changing the scope of the investigation while McRae was alive and changed the status of P.S. from accused to witness and then proceeded after McRae. But again, connecting my sexual abuse to the actions of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae has always been the last thing the Canadian Forces chain of command have wanted.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030
I urge you to search for a Macleans Magazine article from the early 2000s called “The CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy”. I won’t get too much into that other that it was a story about a flawed military police investigation related to the rape of a developmentally challenged woman by four male soldiers at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick. One of the things that was noted is that the military police would often submit laughable cases to the local Crown Prosecutors knowing full well that the Crown would recommend against charges. This way the military could tell the victim that it was the Crown’s fault that charges were being pursued.
This rape and the subsequent investigation occurred prior to the Somalia Inquiry. The Somalia Inquiry found that the Canadian Forces justice system was prone to abuse and manipulation from the Chain of Command, commanding officers could easily interfere with investigations, people with no legal training and no legal back ground could summarily dismiss criminal code charges.
This is why with the passing of Bill C-25 in 1998, the requirement for commanding officers to conduct summary investigations AFTER the military police laid charges was removed. This is also why the 3-year time bar that applied to ALL indictable offences in the Criminal Code of Canada was removed from the National Defence Act.
Still, it looks as if some things never change.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
As long as Orest Yeriniuk views me as a “trouble maker” instead of a victim, there will be no funding for counselling.
Submission of Case to Crown Prosecutor and conclusion
Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030
If I had to hazard a guess, the Alberta Crown is still smarting over the release of the Crown Brief and the subsequent Crown Opinion to me by the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2013. I would have like to have been a fly on the wall when the Alberta Crown, and possibly even the Alberta Solicitor General reamed the CFNIS and possibly the MPCC a new one.
Decisions by the Crown are supposed to not be questioned. That’s one of the major flaws with the justice system in this country. The Crowns operate like their own private little fiefdoms that will dispense justice as they see fit. The Crowns believe that they are above reproach and should never have to justify their decisions to anyone, not even lowly peasants such as myself.
Questionable Crown decisions are how Karla Holmolka is allowed to walk the streets even though as it turned out, she was at least as involved with the murders as Paul Bernardo was.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
This must be a new “standard practice” as the Crown Prosecutor’s opinion was released to the MPCC the last time. I wonder what’s different this time around? This secrecy doesn’t really do anyone too well. In fact, even the MPCC has complained about this in the past.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
The case was 31 year old in 2011 when this started.
I was 7 to 8 when the abuse was occuring
P.S. was between 13-1/2 and 15 when the abuse was occuring.
P.S. had already been investigated by the base military police and had received counselling for his involvement with young children on the base.
It was the involvement of P.S. with the younger children that eventually led to the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
P.S. has a substantial criminal record for child sexual abuse.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
The Alberta Crown in 2011 had determined, based on the original 2011 CFNIS investigation, that it was very significant that I never told anyone of the abuse. Looks like the CFNIS forgot to tell the Alberta Crown about my attempts to report P.S. to the military police in 1984 and in 1990. Also, the case presented to the Alberta Crown made it sound as if I could barely remember the assaults. I clearly remembered the two times that P.S. tried to have anal intercourse with me and the third time he succeeded. I clearly remember the times that P.S. forced me to perform oral sex on him. I clearly remember the threats that P.S. made to me that he would kill me if I ever told the military police about what he had done to me. I also remember quite clearly the threats P.S. made that his father would have my father thrown out of the military if I ever told anyone. However, I don’t think the CFNIS was too interested in passing all of this information on to the Alberta Crown. Otherwise I don’t think the Alberta Crown would have remarked that this was nothing more than “Childhood curiosity and experimentation”.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
The MPCC said itself that Chain of Command interference would be almost impossible to detect.
Military Police Complaints Commission Submission to the Independent Review Authority
The MPCC cannot investigate an interference complaint from me. And as the MPCC state above in its own report, any interference from the chain of command may be undetectable. After all, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can give instructions to the Provost Marshal in respect of any investigation and any Military Police investigation.
Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5
Basically, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, who is not a peace officer, and generally is not required to have any manner of legal training and who is not sworn to uphold the Criminal Code of Canada can supervise the Provost Marshal in criminal code investigations and in professional standard reviews.
Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5
Here’s the really scary part. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff can issue instructions to the Provost Marshal in respect of a particular investigation. Basically the National Defence Act is stating that it’s okay for someone with no peace officer qualifications to direct a law enforcement agency.
Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5
Sound great in theory.
Part II National Defence Act , RSC 1985, Chapter N-5
So, if the Vice Chief of Defence Staff issued instructions to the Provost Marshal to not forward certain information to the Alberta Crown, what do you think the odds are on that I would ever be able to see those instructions?
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
McRae’s court martial was anything but public knowledge. The Canadian Forces threw a “veil of secrecy” around it. The public never knew the true extent of what Captain McRae had done.
Edmonton Journal, July 31, 1980Edmonton Journal July 30 1980Globe and Mail August 1st, 1980
The tone presented in these news articles makes it very clear that the Canadian Forces wasn’t been too transparent with the Captain McRae affair.
If the Canadian public knew that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae had molested well over 25 children ranging in ages from 5 to 15 on a secure defence establishment, the Canadian public would have demanded that heads roll. To be very clear, the court martial wasn’t moved in-camera to protect the identity of P.S..
The court martial was moved in-camera to protect the public image of the Canadian Armed Forces.
25 children, on a secure defence establishment, sexually abused by an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces? This would have been a fucking scandal. There is no way that Minister of National Defence Gilles Lamontagne or Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau would have survived this.
Here is the order requesting that McRae’s court martial be moved in-camera in the “interests of public morals”:
From Court Martial transcripts CM62 July 18, 1980 ATIP A-2019-00017
It wasn’t the identity of P.S. that the Canadian Armed Forces were protecting. It was their own necks and their own careers.
25 children.
1 secure military base
1 military officer.
This was not going to be public at all.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
The Federal Government is compelled to settle this lawsuit. DND is legally liable and responsible for its employees. DND and the Canadian Government aren’t settling out of the kindness of their heart. They’re settling because of legal actions. Legal actions that military dependants or other civilians cannot take against the Canadian Forces or the Department of National Defence.
The class action lawsuit was specifically open to only members of the Canadian Armed Forces and civilian employees of the Department of National Defence. Persons such as myself, who had been given “conversion therapy” through the military social workers are ineligible to join these class action lawsuits as we were never members of the Canadian Forces or civilian employees of the Department of National Defence.
It took almost 40 years for the Canadian Armed Forces to own up to its responsibilities for the cadets who had been killed and injured by a grenade blast in 1974 when a real live grenade was introduced into a classroom full of 12 to 18 year old children. From 1974 until 2011 the Canadian Forces refused to accept liability and to cover the expenses for the dead and injured cadets because cadets are not the legal responsibility of DND or the Canadian Forces.
It took the Minister of National Defence requesting that the Canadian Forces ombudsman review the matter before the Canadian Forces finally responded to the pleas of the former cadets for assistance.
The cadets were not able to receive compensation or assistance at the time of the grenade explosion because they were not members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
As per the above section of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman report on the CFB Valcartier cadet grenade incident the Canadian Armed Forces are only legally liable for its members of the Reserves and Regular Forces as well as its civilian employees and contractors. Cadets, military dependents (spouses and children), and civilians not employed by DND who are on military bases are their at their own risk.
The problem with DND and sexually abused military dependents is that no one knows just how many children were sexually abused on the various bases by members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Actually, the three year time bar flaw was never remedied. It was only removed. Meaning that after December 1998, the 3-year time bar could not be used to prevent the laying of charges under the criminal code against a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
However, what wasn’t fixed was the fact that any crime that occurred prior to 1998 cannot be charged for. What this means is that in my matter, if P.S. had been charged and had in turn implicated Angus McRae. Angus McRae could never be charged due to the 3-year time bar that existed prior to 1998.
I don’t think the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence want this one little flaw known.
I think this flaw is what allows the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence to claim that child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada was non-existent in the old days.
Dan M. was the Base Commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao, and he was also the commanding officer of Captain Father Angus McRae. Col Dan M. would have been the one who conducted the summary investigation against Captain McRae after the military police laid charges. It would have been Col Dan M. that would have determined which charges proceeded and which charges were dismissed. Col Dan M. would have also had the authority to prohibit the CFSIU and the base military police from calling in the RCMP to deal with P.S.
So, it is very clear that the 3-year time bar, even though it was removed by the passing of Bill C-25 in 1998, still affects criminal investigations to this date.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
This is laughable.
The Minister of National Defence settled with P.S.. Of this there is no doubt.
P.S., in his telephone conversation with CFNIS investigator Robert Jon Hancock in August of 2011 has said that the “military has already handled things that he was involved in as a youth”.
When I spoke with P.S. in July of 2015 he claimed that he is bound to silence by an NDA.
The Minister of National Defence by way of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can give instructions on any military police investigation.
The CFNIS conducted an investigation that could have potentially subjected the Minister of national Defence to further civil action.
The CFNIS also submitted to the Alberta Crown a very poorly executed investigation.
The Canadian Forces chain of command knew that by submitting an inferior investigation to the Crown that the Crown would be very highly unlikely to recommend charges.
The Canadian Forces chain of command are also well aware that without a criminal conviction, the chances on any victim of P.S. being successful in a civil action against the Minister would be severely diminished.
And as P.S. was a juvenile at the time, initiating a civil action against a minor would be impossible. However, the Juvenile Delinquents Act held that the adult who had contributed to the delinquency could be held responsible.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
Captain McRae was investigated in 1973 for committing “acts of homosexuality” at the Royal Military College at Canadian Forces Base Kingston in Ontario. “Acts of homosexuality” is also what Captain McRae was charged with committing on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Captain Father Angus McRae was involved with a teenage boy on Canadian Forces Station Holberg just prior to his transfer to Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Brigadier General Roger Bazin was arrested in 2010 for having sexually abused a boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden when he was a catholic chaplain at the military chapel on the base.
The Bazin matter occurred just prior to me bringing my complaint against P.S.
Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan molested numerous children in the 1970s before he joined the Canadian Armed Forces. Once in the Canadian Forces he was court martialed for molesting numerous boys on Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in 1984.
The Canadian Armed Forces removed the rectories from the catholic chapels in the late ’80s.
In 2006, the Canadian Armed Forces changed the way that baptismal records are issued specifically stating that this was due to the amount of civil actions being brought against Catholic Archdiocese in Canada.
Email from June 2011 when I tried to obtain my baptismal records from the Canadian Forces. Operation “cover our asses” has commenced as of November 22nd, 2006.
Due to the way that children were moved from base to base to follow their serving parent’s military career, and due to the way that Canadian Forces service members including military chaplains were also moved from base to base, it is conceivable that there are thousands of children who were touched once or twice on the various bases, but who never said anything.
It’s also conceivable that these children never said anything until years later, possibly outside of the 3-year time bar, that made pressing charges impossible.
This is a problem that the Canadian Armed Forces are more than willing to let fade into history.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
As the MPCC itself has said, the investigators within the CFNIS and the military police may not even be aware of “chain of command” influence.
Why did the CFNIS chain of command determine that the Crown shouldn’t be informed of the entirety of the telephone conversation between P.S. and Robert Jon Hancock.
Who within the CFNIS made the determination that my father was not to be re-interviewed even though my foster care records and his answer to my written examination exposed his statement to the CFNIS as lie upon lie easily disproved by my foster care records.
Richard didn’t die until January of 2017. The CFNIS had over a year and a half to get the silly fucker to “clarify” his original statement to the CFNIS. And even though the CFNIS knew of the errors in Richard’s statement, they did nothing what so ever to make sure that the Alberta Crown understood the issues with Richard’s statement.
Who within the CFNIS made the determination to not inform the Alberta Crown that shortly after the events on CFB Namao that I was made a ward of the province due to the instability in my household.
Who within the CFNIS made the determination to not inform the Alberta Crown that P.S. had been interviewed by the base military police in 1980 and had also been sent for treatment for committing sexual assaults against young children on the base?
Final Report MPCC 2018-030Final Report MPCC 2018-030
As I’ve seen the documents submitted to the Alberta Victims of Crime, I know that it was basically the 2011 Crown Brief with a bit of the 2018 investigation thrown in.
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
It’s generally good police practice to not tip off the family of the suspect that you’re looking for another family member to give a statement against another family member.
The family of P.S. told the CFNIS investigators in the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation that the younger brother lived out on the West Coast, that the younger brother never spoke to the family, that the younger brother hated and despised P.S., and that the younger brother was probably deceased.
After tracking the younger brother down via CPIC, it turns out that the younger brother and P.S. lived about 25 km apart.
P.S. lived at home with his father, J.S. in Fort Erie.
Southern Ontario
J.S. told me in the telephone call that I had with him that he had just had one of his legs amputated and that he needed P.S. at home to look after him.
How much do you wanna bet that when Sgt. Tenaschuk called up J.S. looking for his youngest son that J.S. asked him not to say anything against P.S.?
When I spoke with J.S. in 2015, he blamed himself for what had happened to both P.S. and his younger brother. Apparently they had both been abused by Captain McRae.
Another former base brat, whom I met via the base brat groups, knew D.S, the older sister of P.S.. D.S. said that her father J.S. blamed himself. P.S. was apparently a shy boy and didn’t have many friends, so J.S. forced P.S. to go over to the chapel to be McRae’s altar boy and to assist McRae with duties around the chapel.
D.S. herself is interesting in the sense that she also covers for her brother, P.S..
It’s almost as if that entire family doesn’t hold P.S. responsible for all of the children that he assaulted and molested over he years because they all blame Captain McRae.
And I think they further justify this victimhood by saying that the Canadian Armed Forces never would have settled with P.S. if P.S. wasn’t a victim.
It’s just too bad that the rest of us can’t be victims.
I still can’t believe that my father thought that at 7 years of age that I could force 14 year old P.S. to molest my younger brother. I guess it must be true, after all I wasn’t a victim of anyone, right?
Final Report MPCC 2018-030
As the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal is under no obligation to supply the MPCC with documentation, and as the MPCC does not have the legal authority to subpoena any document from the Provost Marshal, I’m just going to have to say that I would never simply take the verbal word of anyone attached to the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
Having seen the games DND played during the Mark Norman affair I just can’t trust DND at their word.
In February of 2016 the Minister of National Defence called my intentions into question by suggesting that I had impure motives.
He wanted to know “what my game was” and “what angle was I trying to play”
In August of 2011 the CFNIS tried to get my brother to state that I was a societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military.
This has never been about justice.
This has always been about the Canadian Armed Forces ensuring that the dirty secrets of the past stay in the past.
I never wanted a single nickel from the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
All I wanted was for my father to own up to the truth and for him to stop blaming me for having “fucked with his military career” and for having forced P.S. to molest my younger brother.
That was it.
Richard wasn’t the type of man to ever apologize unless he knew that he couldn’t weasel his way out of this with lies and bullshit.
Yeah, I do realize that any apology I would have received from him probably would have been worthless bullshit that he spewed just to try to make himself look good.
But the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service took that possibility away from me.
Keeping the military’s secrets was more paramount than my apology.
The lawyer in P.S.’ claim against the Crown summed it up the best:
As P.S. was a juvenile at the time, these are the entities that anyone abused by P.S. would have to make a claim against:
Court of Queens Bench procedure card Q0103 08346 P.S. v. Minister of National Defence et. al.
The Canadian Armed Forces would be represented by the Department of Justice. The DoJ has unlimited tax payer dollars and an unlimited amount of lawyers. Basically the DoJ can turn night into day if it so wishes. That’s how much power it has.
I received a letter today from the Military Police Complaits Commission dated June 19, 2020.
The letter informs me that the MPCC issued their interim report to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal on June 17th, 2020 and that they are now awaiting the response from the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.
How much hope am I holding out for this investigation?
Not much really.
The process that enables the Military Police Complaints Commission is contained within the National Defence Act.
This is similiar in a way to the school yard bully whose parents also happen to be the Principal and Vice Principal.
Sure, they may not outright vindicate their son, but they’re going to do everything they can to make sure that everyone understands that you were just as guilty as their son when their son beats you up and steals your lunch money.
The MPCC was created in the days of the fallout created by the release of the final report of the Somalia Inquiry.
An MPCC review is nothing more than a feel good exercise in futility. As I’ve mentioned before, during a review the complainant has absolutely no access to the documents placed before the MPCC by the Provost Marshal, so the complainant has no idea of the tale the Provost Marshal is feeding to the MPCC.
During an MPCC review the complainant has no access to the paperwork related to the investigation. The complainant is required to file an access to information request to get these documents.
Also, during a complaint review the MPCC cannot administer oaths, nor can the MPCC demand documents.
In otherwords, the complainant is at a severe disadvantage when making a complaint. This facet isn’t unique to the Military Police Complaints Commission though, most police review boards are designed to be like this.
What is problematic though with the MPCC is that the Department of National Defence is very resistant to Access to Information and Freedom of Information requests. Ottawa Citizen writer David Pugliese is very familiar with the delays one can face when requesting documents from DND and the Canadian Forces.
In my case, it took over 20 months for me to get my hands on the paperwork for the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation 2011-5754.
You have 12 months to request a MPCC review after the conclusion of a CFNIS investigation. 20 months is 8 months after this deadline.
It’s not that easy to request an extension.
And the slap in the face was the documents that the DND Access to Information office released to me were far more censored than the documents the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board released to me.
It was the documents from the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board that allowed me to see that the CFNIS in 2018 basically resubmitted the 2011 investigation to the Alberta Crown.
The CFNIS didn’t submit anything new to the Alberta Crown this time around.
What you really want to have is an MPCC inquiry. Only an inquiry has the ability to give a complainant equal footing with the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal.
Sadly, about the only way the an MPCC Inquiry can be initiated is by way of the Minister of National Defence. And Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan has already told me he considers my complaint regarding the sexual abuse I endured on CFB Namao as being nothing more than a “game”, and an “angle”.
So it’s safe to say that Minister Sajjan will not be requesting that the MPCC conduct an inquiry.
Another stumbling block with an MPCC investigation is that the MPCC only hires retired police officers to conduct the investigations. This alone has been flagged by numerous inquiries and commissions as being a bad move as the retired police investigator often views complainants as “trouble makers” and often views the officer that is the subject of the complaint as being a “brother in arms”.
The Provost Marshal has already let slip that he believes that my complaint is only about Sgt. Tenaschuk refusing to provide to me in writing a letter stating that the investigation was concluded.
This is not what my complaint was about.
My complaint was about the obvious and apparent overall interference in the investigation by the chain of command and that a significant conflict of interest existed by allowing the subordinates of the Minister of National Defence to investigate a matter that has the ability to find the Mininster of National Defence liable for civil damages.
Do I really expect anything different this time around?
Nope.
In fact, this time around the MPCC has already skipped the interview phase and has already tabled their report and is now waiting to see if the Provost Marshal agrees with the findings of the MPCC.
What are the findings of the MPCC?
I don’t know. I haven’t been informed.
Will the MPCC find in my favour?
Not likely. Remember, according to an August 2015 interview with Glenn Stannard, the fomer chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission stated that the MPCC really doesn’t understand the military police or the CFNIS.
How can an organization have the proper ability to investigate a particular agency if it doesn’t fully understand how that agency works?
Dr. Hedy Fry, the member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre has determined that because there are no military bases in Vancouver Centre, that she can’t help people who were sexually abused as children.
A while ago, it was suggested to me that maybe I should try the petition route to get my matter before the House of Commons seeing as how the Department of National Defence has no legal obligations towards military dependants.
I submitted the following petition to the House of Commons petition website on April 12th, 2020. I required five supporters. I was able to get the maximum of ten supporters. The way it works is you select ten people that you know will support your petition. The House of Commons will email these people to verify their eligibility to support the petition. The first five people to reply to the House of Commons become the supporters of your petition.
I was notified by email that Dr. Hedy Fry had declined to authorize the petition. Below is her answer in highlight.
There are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre
“There are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre”, yep, that’s what she said.
I haven’t really had any dealings with Hedy Fry directly. Most of my dealings were filtered through her assistant Steven Bourne. In one of our meetings, Steven brought up the subject of Hedy Fry and her comments about the KKK burning crosses in Prince George, BC and that how even though she was eventually vindicated, that he’d be very cautious about letting Hedy get embarrassed like that again.
I’ve lived in the West End of Vancouver since 1992. That’s coming up on 27 years now. Hedy has been my member of Parliament since then. I have been her constituent. Never have asked anything of her before.
However, it appears that because there are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre, she can’t raise an important issue within the House of Commons.
And this got me to wondering.
How many other former military dependants have gone to their respective Member of Parliament for assistance only to have their MP tell them that they can’t get involved because there “are no military bases” in their riding.
How does this affect people who were sexually abused on bases that no longer exist due to budget cuts and downsizing…….. “sorry, that military base no longer exists, I can’t get involved” .
I have tried enlisting the help of MPs in other ridings previously, but unless you reside in their riding, the MP is not obligated to assist you in any manner.
Are former military dependants expected to move to ridings that have military bases if they want to enlist the help of a Member of Parliament?
Do I really have to quit my job and eat into my savings in order to move to a riding that has a military base?
No wonder the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence don’t seem worried. Between Members of Parliament that don’t want to do anything, and Acts that are so vague they can have 20 different interpretations, there’s no reason for DND and the CF to worry about the ghosts from their past haunting them.
Why would the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service be instructed to conduct such a weak investigation into the criminal actions of P.S. which P.S. committed on CFB Namao between June 20th, 1979 and June of 1980?
It’s not like P.S. would see any serious form of punishment if he were to have been charged in the present day for the crimes he had committed while he was subject to the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. As of June 20th, 1979 P.S. would have been fully culpable for any Criminal Code offence that he had committed. This would have included having had any type of sexual relation with a minor under the age of 12. The fact that he was acting as the babysitter for many of these children would have compounded his problems. The law at the time would not have looked to kindly upon him for having anal and vaginal intercourse with children as young as four years of age or demanding oral sex from those same children.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
The Juvenile Delinquents Act was in force from 1908 until April 2nd, 1984. Prior to the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908, children of any age were treated similar to adults. In Ontario in 1850 a nine year old boy was sentenced to hang for the murder of a four year old girl. Children were often sent to prison for petty crimes. And while awaiting trial, children were often housed in the same cells as adults.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
The goal of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was reformation instead of incarceration. It was thought that the child could become a productive member of society if they simply received the proper manner of reformation. Typically this would have been accomplished by counselling, or in the more serious cases, “reform school” otherwise known as “industrial school”.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act children who reached the day of their 14th birthday could be found guilty of committing Criminal Code offences. Actually, children as young as seven could be found guilty so long as the police and prosecutor could convince the courts that the child ought to have known right from wrong.
The actual age limits of the Juvenile Delinquents Act are set by the Criminal Code of Canada.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada
The above simply means that a 14 year old hasn’t reached 14 years of age until the expiration of their birthday anniversary. A child would be 13 years old until the day of their 14th birthday has been fully completed.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada
The upper age limit of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was set by the Juvenile Delinquents Act itself.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, children as young as 14 could still be executed, but to do so their case would have had to have been moved to adult court. Steven Truscott serves as an example of this. At the age of 14 Steven Truscott had been sentenced to hang for the murder of Lynne Harper. A conviction that was very dubious in nature considering the presence of Royal Canadian Air Force Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk.
However, in the case of P.S., I don’t think that he would have faced any serious sanctions under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
When I spoke with Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011, he stated that during the Captain McRae investigation that the “brass” prevented both the CFSIU and the base military police from calling in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. for the crimes he had committed between June 20th, 1979 and June of 1980.
Who this brass is is anyone’s guess.
According to the findings of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry, base commanders were known to have an undue amount of influence over military police and CFSIU investigations. And in the case of Captain Father Angus McRae, the base commander was Captain McRae’s commanding officer.
Who was the base commander?
According to the Department of National Defence, <retired>Colonel Dan Munro was the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao at the time. The Canadian Armed Forces have also confirmed that <retired>Colonel Dan Munro was Captain McRae’s immediate superior.
What information could <retired>Colonel Dan Munro shed on the events and decisions of 1980? No one knows at this point in time as Sgt Damon Tenaschuk’s legal advisor in Ottawa would not allow Munro to be investigated due to the 3-year time bar that existed prior to 1998.
It must be remembered though that base commanders have to follow the orders of their superiors.
Without speaking to anyone associated with the Canadian Forces senior leadership from back then, I don’t think we will ever know the true reasons as to why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were never called in to deal with P.S..
I have one very damning hypothesis supported by not only the actions of the Canadian Forces moving Captain McRae’s court martial “in-camera”, but also by curious language contained within the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
A summary conviction requires far less evidence for a conviction to be secured than an indictable offence. Captain McRae was charged and convicted for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with P.S.. As P.S. was 14 years of age as of June 20th, 1979, P.S. could have been charged and convicted for committing sexual acts against children between the ages of 4 and 12 had the Royal Canadian Mounted Police been informed of his deviant behaviour. This meant that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae would have more than likely been found guilty upon summary conviction in Juvenile Delinquents Court of having contributed to the delinquency that P.S. was exhibiting when P.S. molested the children for which he would have been convicted had someone not prevented the RCMP from being called in.
Why was this done?
Was this done to protect P.S.?
From what I’ve been told by some of the former brats that lived on the base at the time, due to the number of children that P.S. abused there were plans afoot in the Junior Ranks mess to lynch P.S..
By not handing P.S. over to the RCMP for investigation, did the Canadian Forces chain of command believe that they were diffusing a bad situation.
Or, was there something else afoot in the decision to not call in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
I think this had everything to do with legal liability.
Had P.S. been handed over to the RCMP, and had the RCMP charged P.S. for the sexual acts he had committed with children as young as four years of age, and had the Crown prosecuted P.S. and secured convictions, Captain McRae could have been summarily convicted in Juvenile Delinquents Court for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
By convicting Captain McRae of contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, being the employer of Captain McRae, could have been found liable for the actions of their employee.
In 2011, when I made my complaint to the Edmonton Police Service Angus McRae was alive and well.
The Canadian Forces knew right from the start of the connection between P.S. and Angus McRae.
The Canadian Forces knew that if the CFNIS brought charges against P.S., these charges would have to be brought under the Juvenile Delinquents Act as P.S. had committed these offences while the Juvenile Delinquents Act was in power.
This means that Angus McRae could also be charged under the Juvenile Delinquents Act for contributing to the Delinquency of a minor.
The fact that Angus McRae died over three months after the start of the investigation into my complaint against P.S. is of little concern as Angus McRae plead guilty before a courts martial on July 18th, 1980 to having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with P.S..
In November of 2008 the Canadian Forces Director of Claims and Civil Litigation accepted General Legal Liability for the personal damages P.S. suffered at the hands of Angus McRae while Angus McRae held the rank of Captain and was an employee of the Canadian Forces.
I think what the Canadian Forces have feared all along is the liability.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, the concept of an adult being responsible for the delinquency of a minor was well established.
This one fact alone poses a problem for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. Even though Angus McRae had been mentally incompetent since June of 2007 and obviously couldn’t be prosecuted, DND and the CF had a problem.
McRae already plead guilty of his own free will on July 18th, 1980.
Captain McRae admitted to committing the exact same offences against P.S., that P.S. in turn committed against us much younger children. Acts such as Indecent Assault( sexual touching of the private areas), Gross Indecency(non-penetrating sexual acts between males, i.e. masturbation), and Buggery( anal intercourse).
So as long as P.S. had at least been charged, with or without a conviction, a civil action could have been commenced against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
And considering that Canadian laws at the time provided the ability to hold an adult responsible for the delinquency of a minor, I think that the victims of P.S. and McRae would have had success in obtaining compensation in court.
For further proof of the issue of liability, look no further than the matter of Earl Ray Stevens, the commissioner from my time when I was enrolled with the Sea Cadets at the Denison Armouries in North York, Ontario.
I was first interviewed by the CFNIS on April 11th, 2017 at the Vancouver Police Department Headquarters. By June the CFNIS had handed the case over to a detective with the Toronto Police Service. Through June and July I had some telephone conversations with this detective.
On August 14th, 2017 I was informed by the Toronto Police Service that Earl Ray Stevens had been arrested and charged with 6 counts of Sexual Assault.
On August 21st and 22nd 2018 I participated in the preliminary hearing. During the preliminary hearing the Crown Prosecutor laid out the charges against Earl. Earl’s defence attorney was allowed to examine me and ask me questions. At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing the justice overseeing the preliminary hearing ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.
Unfortunately Earl died of bladder cancer before we could get to trial.
So, why did the Canadian Forces allow me to get Earl and not Peter.
Again, it’s liability.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are not legally responsible for cadets, even if those cadets are participating in a cadet parade night in a building that is owned and operated by the Department of National Defence.
If you want proof of this, look no further than the cadets from CFB Valcartier in 1974.
In 1974 a group of army cadets were at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier for their summer training course. One day the cadets were in one of the barracks receiving safety training for live munitions. This was not so they could handle live munitions, but so that when they were out on the training ranges, they could recognize live munitions and safely stay away from them.
The instructor for the course, a Captain with the regular forces, brought a case of dummy grenades into the class. Amongst the dummy grenades was an actual live grenade. To this day, no one has ever established how the live grenade got into the class. According to witness testimony, one of the boys picked up the real grenade and asked the instructor if the grenade was real, the instructor assured the cadet that the grenade was not real. The cadet then pulled the pin out of the grenade and released the fuse handle while holding on to the grenade. The cadet and 5 other boys between the ages of 13 and 15 were killed immediately when the grenade exploded. 155 other cadets that were in the room suffered various physical and mental injuries.
It wasn’t until March of 2017 that the Department of National Defence agreed to compensate the families of the boys who had been killed by offering each family $100,000.00. The survivors or their families will be eligible for $42,000.00. They will also be allowed to apply for up to an additional $310,000.00 for pain and suffering.
For forty years the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces fought paying the families any manner of compensation even though the deaths and injuries were caused by a military grenade, on a military base, while a bunch of children between the ages of 13 to 18 were under the control of a member of the regular forces.
Under no circumstance would I ever be able to seek compensation from the Department of National Defence for the abuse I endured at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens.
To further insulate the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence from any type of civil action is the fact that Earl Ray Stevens was not an employee of either the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces. Earl Ray Stevens worked for an outside contractor that provided security services at the Denison Armouries.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence could allow me to have Earl Ray Stevens as Earl Ray Stevens presented absolutely no legal risk to either the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces.
P.S. is a problem for the Canadian Armed Forces.
P.S. is a path of direct liability.
In 2008, the Department of National Defence admitted to full legal liability for the personal injuries that P.S. suffered at the hands of Captain McRae.
The Department of National Defence paid P.S. compensation.
On July 18th 1980, in Court Martial CM62, Canadian Armed Forces Officer Captain Father Angus McRae plead guilty to all of the charges that he had been charged with in relation to the crimes he had perpetrated against P.S.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time said that adults could be held directly responsible for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Whether or not Angus McRae is alive or dead is a moot point.
Yes, he cannot be charged criminally.
However, Angus McRae already plead guilty.
The victims of P.S. only needed P.S. to be charged and convicted for the door of civil liability to be flung wide open.
This is something that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were not going to allow.
If the Canadian Forces could be held liable in a civil damages trial for the matter of Captain McRae, how many other victims of sexual assault on the many different bases would also be able to sue?
P.S. isn’t some random guy that I picked out of the phone book. I suffered for over a year at his hands, as did my brother, and four other kids that I know of.
P.S. had his first criminal conviction for child molestation just four years after he had been caught buggering me in his bedroom in May of 1980. In 1984 P.S. was charged and convicted with molesting an eight-year-old boy on a Canadian Forces Base in Manitoba.
In 1985, after his family had been posted back to CFB Edmonton from CFB Petawawa, he was arrested and charged with molesting a nine-year-old boy on CFB Namao. As a result of this the Canadian Forces kicked P.S. off the base. J.S., the father of P.S. rented P.S. an apartment in the west end of Edmonton. P.S. lured a thirteen-year-old newspaper boy into his apartment and molested the boy. In August of 1985 P.S. was convicted on both counts.
According to an RCMP constable who had run a CPIC check on P.S., P.S. had many more charges between 1985 and 2000. Most charges were for sexual assaults, some charges were for assault, and a few charges were for robbery. Most charges ended up with convictions, and some charges were stayed or dismissed.
So, when Petty Officer Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS just couldn’t find anything to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes that I had accused him of, I immediately knew there was something else at play.
That something at play was the desire to avoid liability.
No charges against P.S. = no connection to Captain McRae.
No connection to Captain McRae = No liability for the Canadian Force or DND.
And this is one of the many “conflict of interest” scenarios that should have seen the CFNIS recuse themselves from this matter. The CFNIS, as per Canadian Forces Provost Marshal policy CFMP 2120-4-0, should have offered this matter to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction.
CFPM policy Directive CFPM 2120-4-0
P.S. was at the time of the commissions of his crimes from June 20th, 1979 onward, a civilian with absolutely no connection to the Canadian Forces.
CFPM Directive 2120-4-0 clearly stipulates that these matters are to be offered to the outside civilian agencies first.
The CFNIS didn’t do that for investigation GO 2011-5754.
The CFNIS did however follow this proceedure in the matter of Earl Stevens when they offered the case to the Toronto Police Service and the TPS accepted the case.
Liability is what it all boils down to.
It has nothing to do with protecting P.S.
P.S. would have faced almost nothing in consequences as he would have had to be dealt with under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Any loss of liberty, P.S. has already endured as a result of his convictions from 1984 onward.
The only agency with anything to lose is the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
And it just so happens that the police agency that would have to bring charges against P.S. just also happens to be within the chain of command of the organization that would suffer civil action should charges be brought against P.S.
Not really too much independence from the Canadian Forces chain of command, is there.
The VCDS is the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
The CFPM is the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal
The CO CFNIS is the commanding officer for the entire CFNIS division.
The CFNIS Regional Commanders are the Officers Commanding for the different divisions such as CFNIS Pacific Region, CFNIS Western Region, CFNIS Central Region, etc.
The Vice Chief of the Defence Staff reports directly to the Chief of Defence Staff.
The Chief of Defence Staff in turn reports directly to the Minister of National Defence.
In total the CFNIS investigator is 5 steps removed from the Minister of National Defence.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act states that all subordinates must obey the lawful commands of their superiors.
You can hopefully understand why I think something stinks about this whole matter.
If somebody wanted to initiate a civil action for damages they endured at the hands of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, they’d have to name the Minister of National Defence.
P.S. vs. Minister of National Defence et. al. Alberta Court of Queens Bench action Q0103 08346 claim amount $4.3 million
Here is the request for payment after the Department of National Defence agreed to accept General Legal Liability for the personal damages that P.S. endured.
Shortly after this request being issued the lawyer for P.S. filed a motion for a discontinuance.
Alberta Court of Queens Bench Procedure Card Action Number Q0103 08346The comments P.S. made to Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock of CFNIS WR on August 9th, 2011
I’m still really curious as to what is was that the military “handled” for P.S.. But in the end, I don’t believe that this was the reason the CFNIS in 2011 conducted such a laughable investigation.
I believe that the reason the CFNIS conducted such a soft investigation in 2011 was due to a chain of command desire to prevent further settlement payments to in the matter of P.S. & Captain Father Angus McRae.
I believe that the 2015 restart of the 2011 CFNIS investigation was just a worthless “Dog and Pony show” to try to put a positive spin on what had been a really bad investigation.
And I honestly believe that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence are very well aware of the problems they were having with the Catholic Clergy on the bases in Canada. Hence why in the 1980s they shut down the rectories on all the bases.
And if liability wasn’t a concern, what’s this about then?
If you think that the Canadian Forces made it harder to obtain baptismal records because they want to “respect the Federal Privacy Act and to alleviate identity fraud”, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d like to sell to you. If you can’t prove that you were baptized in the Catholic faith, then it’s even harder for you to prove that you had any legitimate reason to be at the base chapel.
You wanna buy a bridge? Have I got a bridge for you.
I believe that the art of investigative journalism is dead in this country. If it’s not out right dead at this point in time, then it’s pretty well on death’s doorstep.
I believe that “media consolidation” and the move towards infotainment is responsible for the sad state of our media.
Editors now direct their teams based upon a calculation of “eyeballs / dollar”. The more eyeballs a story can bring in, the more advertising dollars the network can enjoy.
The number of investigative journalists is at such an all time low that simple things like an election throw most news room into chaos.
As a result of this chronic under staffing, journalism in this country seems to be able to handle only one thing at a time.
But it never used to be like this.
We used to have a media that asked the though questions and demanded the answers.
Nowadays reporters are afraid to ask questions because it might hurt the feelings of the person they’re asking the question of.
In the matter of child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces, all the news media has to do in this matter is to ask the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence some very simple and straight forward questions.
10 simple little questions.
No direct allegations against anyone.
No accusations of wrongdoing.
Just some simple little questions.
First question: Who investigates child sexual abuse cases in which a child is sexually abused on a Defence Establishment either by a civilian or by a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Second question: Do either the base Military Police or the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service have specially trained sections that deal with victims of child sexual abuse.
Third question: In light of the findings of the External Review conducted by retired Supreme Court justice Madame Marie Deschamps, how can the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence ensure that investigations of childhood sexual abuse didn’t fail due to the very same shortcomings highlighted by the External Review.
Fourth question: What is the unfounded rate for childhood sexual assault investigations within the Canadian Forces Military Police Group.
Fifth question: How many investigations are there undertaken every year that look at the following crimes committed against children: “Indecent assault”; “Gross Indecency”; “Buggery”; “Sexual Interference”; “Invitation to Sexual Touching”; “Sexual Exploitation”; You would have to ask for these very specific Criminal Code offences as DND and the CF have a very sneaky manner of using sleight of hand to substitute “Sexual Assault” for the specific Criminal Code offences listed above. Sexual Assault is a Criminal Code offence all on it’s own and it is separate from the charges listed above.
Sixth question: On July 6th, 2010 Canadian Forces Provost Marshal Colonel Tim Grubb released a report that stated “the DND community has a noticeably and disturbingly higher per capita rate of sexual violations against children, including child pornography, firearms offences and other assaults when compared to the rest of the Canadian population”. Where are the military police investigations that correspond with these “violations against children” and were these matters successfully prosecuted. Were these matters prosecuted in the military justice system or were these matters transferred into the civilian justice system.
Seventh question: Prior to 1998 there existed a flaw in the National Defence Act that placed a three-year-time-bar on all Service Offences. Service offences include “Indecent assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, “Sexual Exploitation”, and “Sexual Assault”. Indictable offences have no statute of limitations in the civilian justice system. How does the Canadian Forces work around this legal hurdle to ensure that persons who were sexually abused on defence establishments as children have the same legal rights as persons who didn’t live on defence establishments as children and who were abused by persons with no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces?
LS-311E describing the effects of the 3-year time bar.The three-year-time-bar still has implications that affect modern day investigations.
Eighth question: Prior to November 1997 the National Defence Act required that a commanding officer conduct a summary investigation AFTER the military police had laid charges against the commanding officer’s subordinate. Prior to November 1997 the commanding officer had the full authority of the National Defence Act to dismiss any charge, military or civilian, that had been brought against their subordinate. The charges that a commanding officer could dismiss included, but were not limited to: “Indecent assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, “Sexual Exploitation”, and “Sexual Assault”. As LS-311E explained, once these charges were dismissed by the commanding officer, these charges or similar charges arising out of the same facts could never be brought against the accused at a later date be either a civilian or military authority. How does the Canadian Armed Forces deal with these matters where a commanding officer may have dismissed the charge prior to 1998, and the victim, now as an adult, desires to press charges unaware that the military has already once dismissed the charges brought against their abuser?
Legislative Summary LS-311E A legal document for Parliament that accompanied Bill C-25 in 1998.
Ninth Question: Are members of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and their superiors exempted from Section 83 of the National Defence Act? How does the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence ensure that Section 83 is not utilized in such a manner by the chain of command to limit and control the scope of a CFNIS investigation.
Current language in the National Defence Act makes it very hard for CFNIS investigators to be independent of the chain of command.
Tenth Question: In 2015, just after General Jonathan Vance became the new Chief of Defence Staff, he told Canadian Armed Forces military personnel that they could call 9-1-1 (civilian police) to report sexual assaults if they didn’t feel confident in the military system. Why wasn’t that same allowance made to civilian victims of military sexual assault? Why do civilian victims still have to deal with the military police and the CFNIS to report the crimes committed against them.
Military Personnel can call 9-1-1. Former base brats are stuck with the base military police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service
These are all simple question. Nothing too hard to ask. These are questions that I can’t ask though as I’m a nobody so far as the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are concerned.
The news media? They have powers that mere members of the public don’t have.
They have access to the eyeballs.
Let’s be honest. Nobody reads my blog. The only time it gets any type of traffic is when I make a post to one of the brat groups. Other than that, there’s no traffic.
As the headline says, today I received the official word from Global News that there is no interest in pursuing our story.
If I had to surmise why this is such a difficult story for the media to cover, I would have to say that it’s the ignorance that is inherent in the media.
The media for the most part are “Book smart and street dumb”.
The current reporter wouldn’t be the first one to state to me that if there had been a problem in the Canadian Forces, they would have heard about it by now.
We know for a fact that the Canadian Forces has had some rather dubious characters in its employ: Colonel Russell Williams; Brigadier General Roger Bazin; Captain Father Angus McRae; Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan; Blackmore; Private Buckland; Private Clabby; Corporal Ryan; 2nd Lt. Sheehy-Tremblay; Seaman Mitchell; Corporal Turner; The gang from Somalia; And many, many more. But these were the ones that weren’t quietly swept out of the military.
We also know from the report released by Colonel Tim Grubb in the aftermath of the Colonel Russell Williams fiasco that the review conducted by the Provost Marshal found a “disturbingly higher” incidence of child sex abuse in the defence community”
I asked the reporter I was most recently involved with if Colonel Tim Grubb’s report, along with the 3-year time bar, and the Summary Investigation flaw caused him to have any concerns. He said that he couldn’t see how these were related to one another.
The reporter that I most recently dealt with says that he recently filed an FOI request with DND asking DND how many members of the Canadian Forces were charged with child abuse.
Child abuse is not a crime. No, really, it’s not. And I don’t mean that it’s legal to abuse children. There is no Criminal Code offence called “Child Abuse”. So of course, DND is going to respond that it could find no records.
I told this reporter many times over that if he wanted to look for criminal convictions that he’d have to look for these charges using very specific terms such as “151 – Sexual Interference, 152 – Invitation to Sexual Touching, 153 – Sexual Exploitation” for crimes that occurred after 1985, and Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery for sexual crimes that occurred prior to 1985.
And even at that, DND didn’t start maintaining a database of offences until the early 2000’s. This means that if you wanted to look for sexual crimes committed against children prior to 1998, you’d have to search through every service member’s file held at the Library and Archives Canada. To do so though, you’d need the permission of either the service member or the service member’s next of kin if the service member has been deceased for less than 20 years.
And I know that DND is very deceitful with the information that it releases. Back in 2018 I filed an ATI with DND ” how many cases of child sexual abuse occurred pre-1998 and were brought to the attention of the CFNIS/MP/CFPM port-1998 and declined prosecution due to the 3-year time bar”. DND fought me on this first arguing that this would require them to create new records which they weren’t obligated to. The Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada became involved and DND finally released the information I requested. Or so it appeared. What clued me off that something was amiss was that CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 was absent from the release of documents. GO 2011-5754 was my complaint against P.S. that I filed in March of 2011.
What I did realize quickly is that DND had released to me a list of “Sexual Assaults”. Sexual Assault is a unique Criminal Code offence that does not include “Indecent Assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, and “Sexual Exploitation”.
This is something that the media in Canada just can’t seem to wrap their heads around. The media seems to equate “no records can be found” with “no crimes were ever committed”.
I suggested to this reporter that if he really wanted to see just how big of a problem sexual crimes committed against children had been back in the days prior to 1998 that Global perhaps run some spots during its nightly news broadcasts asking viewers to call in to Global to report if they were ever the victim of child sexual abuse on a Canadian Forces Base. This doesn’t accuse the Canadian Forces or anyone with the Canadian Forces of having committed anything. It’s just a request for victims to come forward. Once the victims come forward, then you listen to their stories. Once you have their stories, then you pick a common theme. Once you have that common theme, then you start hammering away on DND until DND owns up to the skeletons in their closet.
Sitting around on your arse, waiting for the Minister of National Defence or the Chief of Defence Staff to come forward and say “Hey look, we had a problem, we fucked up”, is going to waste a lot of time.
If you want an organization like DND to respond, you need to crank up the heat and make it uncomfortable for them.
The media also seems to equate the lack of victims willing to go on record as an indication of their honesty. Many former brats that I’ve spoken to, whom came from dysfunctional families on base, are for the most part terrified of saying anything against the Canadian Forces. Then there are the brats who are terrified of saying anything out of fear of some of the members of the base brat groups on Facebook.
I know for a fact that a lot of the Facebook groups for base brats will censor my posts and will remove them. So no, the base brat groups cannot be viewed as being a cross section of typical former brats, as the views espoused in some of these groups are very sanitized.
I’ve been trying to garner media attention since way back in 2011 when I first learnt of the connection between my babysitter, P.S. and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
The media see absolutely no conflict of interest with having a “police” organization such as the CFNIS conduct investigations which may subject their superiors to civil actions. There were 25 children who had been sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Namao by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S.. McRae taught P.S. how to sexually abuse children. McRae encouraged P.S. to abuse children. McRae requested that P.S. escort children over to the chapel to be abused by both Captain McRae and P.S. after administering alcohol to the children.
P.S. sued the Minister of National Defence in March of 2001 and settled out of court in November of 2008 with the Minister of National Defence after the Department of National Defence accepted General Legal Liability for the personal damaged that P.S. endured at the hands of McRae. I can’t say if P.S. settled with the Archdiocese of Edmonton or the estate of Angus McRae, but I can’t see DND absorbing all of the costs when P.S. had named all three parties. If each party shared 1/3 of the liability, this means that P.S. walked away with close to $600,000.00. Not bad for someone who wasn’t as innocent as the Canadian Forces portrayed him to be back in 1980.
Because the Department of National Defence accepted legal liability, the chain of liability has well been established. If P.S. were to admit that (a) he sexually abused the children he was babysitter while he was 14 years of age and older, and (b) that he acted upon Captain McRae’s instructions and brought the children he was babysitting over to the chapel to be sexually abused by both Captain McRae and himself, the victims of both Captain McRae and P.S. would have a very simple time arguing in court that they were entitled to at least the same amount of compensation that the Department of National Defence agreed to compensate P.S.. Now, let’s say that there were in fact 25 children being sexually abused by Captain McRae and P.S.. And lets say that P.S. had been awarded the maximum that the Canadian Forces Director of Civil Claims and Liabilities is authorized to sign for, which is $200,000.00. That’s five million dollars in payouts at a minimum.
Why don’t I just sue the military on my own? Suing the military without a direct connection being established between myself and P.S. would be an extreme exercise in futility, especially seeing as how the 1980 CFSIU investigation established that P.S. was in fact the only victim of sexual abuse and that there were no other victims. This is also why suing P.S. for civil damages would be out of the question as well. Surely if P.S. had been molesting children and assisting Captain McRae with his devious schemes back in 1979 to 1980, the military police and the CFSIU would have handed P.S. over to the RCMP, right?
The media seems to like to think of the members of the CFNIS as being police officers just like civilian police officers. The CFNIS and the Provost Marshal operate completely different than any civilian police force. CFNIS investigators do not run their own investigation. SAPMIS, the record keeping system used by the military police is not secure. The investigator’s superiors running the investigation aren’t necessarily trained in law enforcement and may not even have training in the field of the investigation being undertaken. And more alarmingly, there are no provisions in the National Defence Act which exempt CFNIS investigators from section 83 of the National Defence Act. This means that investigators with the CFNIS are bound by the National Defence Act to obey all lawful commands of their superiors upon threat of life in prison for disobeying the lawful command.
The Chain of Command for the CFNIS looks kinda like this: Minister of National Defence –> Chief of Defence Staff –> Vice Chief of Defence Staff –> Provost Marshal –> CFNIS commanding officer –> CFNIS regional commanding officer –> CFNIS investigator.
You can see why this is a bad arrangement and you can hopefully see why the CFNIS need to be disbanded. The RCMP, as troubled of an agency as they are, are completely outside of the command influence of the Canadian Forces chain of command.
The sad thing is that the media can’t see this conflict of interest.
In the next little while, I’m going to start naming all of the reporters that I’ve dealt with since 2011.
Global has shown no commitment.
CBC has shown no commitment.
CTV has shown no commitment.
And to be honest, media consolidation in this country has probably been the single largest contributing factor which explains the media’s lack of interest.
All I know is that these reporters and these news agencies are helping the Canadian Armed Forces keep their dirty little secrets hidden and buried in the past. I’ll be 49 in a few months. Statsically speaking, I have 20 years or so left to live So if it takes another 10 years to find a news agency willing to get off its high-horse and actually start doing some investigative work, I might be 65 by the time this story hits the headlines.
And that’s all the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have to do is simply wait us out.
Most of the brats that lived on base during the ’50s are starting to pass on.
Next to go will be the brats that lived on the bases in the ’60s.
All DND has to do is wait until 2040 and most of the kids who were in their teens during the ’70s will start passing away.
By 2050 DND won’t have to worry about former sexually abused military dependants making noise.
There’s a reason why DND transferred control of the PMQs to an independent arms length agency in the 1990s
There’s a reason why the number of family PMQs on base are dwindling and why DND and the Canadian Forces are encouraging members to buy homes and live in the civilian world instead of in the PMQ patches on base.
There’s far too much liability and risk in running company towns. Especially when you’re the employer and you provide the security services.
On March 10th, 2020 I was contacted by an investigator with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Western Region office at Edmonton Garrison.
This has to do with a second member of the Canadian Armed Forces that my babysitter, P.S., provided me to for sexual purposes.
Who this man was, I don’t know.
Through paper work supplied to me by various Access to Information requests, I think I have a good idea of just who this person might be.
My grandmother had me involved with all manners of sports while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Namao. I was in hockey, I was in 5 pin bowling, I played basketball, and I was in the Red Cross swimmers program. Most of these programs were heavily subsidized to the point of not costing anything outside of the cost of uniforms or equipment.
I had been at the base pool for one of the youth swim nights. I was by myself. Now, this wasn’t a big deal back in the late ’70s, early ’80s for an eight year old kid living on a military base to be at the base swimming pool alone without adult accompaniment.
Sadly though, I can tell you from personal experience that there were perverts in the military back then.
I had just finished showering, and I was heading to my locker when P.S. came up to me and grabbed me and told me there was someone that wanted to see me in the sauna.
This would have just been a few weeks after he had been caught buggering me in his bedroom. In the time after he had been caught buggering me, he had become very physically aggressive and violent and had resorted to making all sorts of threats against me of harm that would happen if I ever told anyone about what he had done to me.
I know this encounter in the sauna occurred prior to the June 23rd, 1980 house fire on 12th street that destroyed the S. family home.
At the time, my father was still mainly living off base with his then girlfriend Susan. He was rarely home at the time. Richard and Susan didn’t move into the house on CFB Namao until August of 1980. My father relied on his mother to raise both my brother and I. My grandmother was usually drunk most of the time. And my grandmother had numerous emotional issues. So no, there was no telling grandma about what was happening.
Unlike the five times that P.S. took me for visits over to the base chapel to visit with Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, there was no alcohol given to me prior to the sexual acts. So, I remember all of it.
I won’t go into describing the event, but suffice to say, no eight year old should be required to do what I did. And no 15 year old should be facilitating the event. And no Canadian Forces service personal should ever request these types of services from an eight year old child.
I don’t remember too much about this man. I know that he looked like a service member. Sure, he wasn’t wearing anything more than a towel in the sauna, but he had a typical neat and trim appearance. And I doubt that he just wandered onto the base and managed to find the one 15 year old boy that was willing to pimp out other children.
For the longest time, I could never put a name to this man. I honestly had no idea who he was. However, after I received certain documents from DND in 2018, I’m more than certain that I know who this man was, and why he was on the base in that period of time.
So, right now I’m just waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to be lifted. After this I will be interviewed by the CFNIS.
Do I hold out much hope for anything happening?
Not really. This is the Canadian Forces matter.
Back around 2017, I had asked Sgt. Tenaschuk of CFNIS Pacific Region if he could drive on over to Victoria and asked retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Colonel Dan Munro what exactly transpired on Canadian Forces Base Namao after his direct subordinate Captain Father Angus McRae was investigated for molesting numerous children on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980.
Sgt. Tenaschuk checked with his legal advisor, and this is what the legal advisor told him.
Now, what must be remembered is that all I asked for Sgt. Tenaschuk to do is to talk with <ret> Colonel Dan Munro. I hadn’t accused <ret> Colonel Dan Munro of anything illegal.
In 2010, retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Roger Bazin was arrested and charged for molesting a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in the early 1970s when Bazin was a Captain serving as the base chaplain.
In 2010 the charges were dropped just as quickly as they had been brought.
In 1986, the Court Martial Appeal Court found in the matter of Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan, that the Canadian Armed Forces have the right to consider Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery as Service Offences under the National Defence Act. As such the Canadian Armed Forces have the authority to conduct a service tribunal for these service offences, even in the modern day.
The three-year time bar that existed prior to 1998 applied to ALL service offences.
Under the National Defence Act, service members also had the right to request a courts martial to have their charges dealt with.
You see where this is going, right?
And you also hopefully understand why the Canadian Armed Forces have such a squeaky clean record when it comes to child sexual assaults prior to 1998.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the 3-year time bar matter played a significant part in the decision to drop the charges that had been brought against Bazin.
Did Bazin request that his charges be proceed with in a court martial? The National Defence Act allows for the Canadian Forces to charge retired service members with service offences. As the person was subject to the Code of Service Discipline at the time of the offence would this person be able to request a court martial instead of a civilian trial? And if so, then the 3-year time bar automatically comes into play.
Could a retired service member argue in civilian court that because they were subject to the code of service discipline at the time of the offence that they deserved to have the 3-year time bar applied in their matter?
If only the media in this country would start asking these types of questions instead of waiting for DND to bless them with an answer, we might finally see Parliament create legislation that retroactively removes the 3-year time bar from Service Offences that as Criminal Code matters would not have had any type of statute of limitations.
The mucky-mucks at National Defence Head Quarters must be really pleased with how extremely disinterested the media is with the topic of child sexual abuse that occurred on the bases in Canada.
I first had dealings with this reporter back in the summer of 2019. They seemed interested in the story, but they just couldn’t find the time. Other things kept popping up, other issues kept taking precedence.
This reporter, like many before them, laments the lack of people willing to come forward, or if they do come forward, they won’t go on camera and they won’t allow their names to be used.
And to be honest, this isn’t the first reporter that strung me along with a tenuous interest in the story that I had to tell.
For me it’s not that hard to understand why people would be unwilling to come forward and go on camera.
Back in the ’90s and even up to the mid 2000s, if you told me that I had been sexually abused, I probably would have told you to go fuck right off. There was no way on Earth that I was going to admit that I had been abused on CFB Namao and then again on CFB Downsview primarily at the Denison Armouries.
If you were a male military dependant, and you were buggered on base, you kept your damn mouth shut. When I was growing up on base, the general attitude was that only queers, fags, and homos took it up the ass. And yes, by the time my family was posted from Canadian Forces Base Greisbach to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, I fully understood what homosexuality was, and I fully understood from Terry that homosexuality was a mental illness and that I was going to get electroshock treatments at the Alberta Hospital if I kept it up. I was 9 when we moved to CFB Greisbach from CFB Namao. I was 12 when we left CFB Greisbach for CFB Downsview.
Terry was the “counsellor” that I started seeing after my arrival on CFB Greisbach. Terry was helping me to work though my attraction to other boys that I had exhibited when I was caught being buggered by a teen who was almost twice my age. It was August of 2011 when I learnt that “Terry” was actually Captain Terry Totzke, a military social worker with the Canadian Armed Forces. And I have no doubt that what Captain Terry Totzke was doing would in this day and age be called “conversion therapy”.
It was the military after all. It has been written that in the Canadian Forces men were sometimes buggered in an attempt to humiliate them or to “fix” disciplinary issues, or to simply “knock ’em down a peg or two”. After all, it seemed that as long as you were the person doing the buggering, you weren’t seen as being gay. If on the other hand you were the person being buggered, well that just opened up a whole can of worms.
When I had been sexually assaulted by Earl Ray Stevens while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, one of his threats was that if I ever told anyone that I would be kicked out of cadets. Even though I wouldn’t learn about CFAO 19-20 until around 2015 I fully understood that gays and lesbians were not welcome in the Canadian Forces. Somehow Earl knew that my father was in the Canadian Forces, and Earl would remind me that if I ever told anyone, that my father would find out, and that if my father found out there would be dire consequences. And after having lived through those consequences on Canadian Forces Base Greisbach, I didn’t want to live through those consequences again. So, I pleasured Earl whenever he wanted it. It was just easier that way. Besides, as Earl had quipped once or twice, that by giving me money it was a fair trade.
The more I wonder about Earl the more I wonder how many other children he molested on military bases during his career in the Canadian Armed Forces. After all, the first time he assaulted me, he wasn’t at all shy or coy about it. His hand didn’t accidentally brush against my crotch behind closed doors. He grabbed my crotch knowing full well what he was doing. He also knew that by my lack of response, that I was an easy mark.
Homophobia in the military back in the ’60s through ’80s was nothing new. It was just a reflection of the attitudes of society, but it was amplified via the machismo that is typical in military organizations. And unlike general society, the Canadian Forces filter out who gets in and who doesn’t. So after awhile the military becomes nothing but a massive echo chamber of like minded attitudes.
The official policy of the Canadian Forces towards gays and lesbians was dictated by Canadian Forces Administrative Order 19-20 which concluded that homosexuality was a “sexual abnormality” only further reinforced homophobic attitudes in the military and normalized these attitudes.
My father always had a warped sense of humour. But it was typical for the guys he hung out with. When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview he asked me once if I knew what Gay stood for. I looked at him kinda puzzled. He replied with a laugh “Got Aids Yet”. Another time he asked if I knew what AIDS stood for. Again another puzzled look to which he replied “Anally Injected Death Sentence”.
And with homophobia being as wide spread in the Canadian Forces as it was back then, I wasn’t the only military dependant that had to endure it. How many male children on the bases were abused and kept their mouths shut due to the rampant homophobia in the military? We’ll probably never know. How many male children ended up committing suicide due to their abuse on base and the fear of being labelled “gay” or “queer”? Again, we’ll probably never know.
I’ve submitted Access to Information Requests to DND looking for any type of studies that DND may have undertaken to look at the lives of military dependants. There never were any. And this makes sense, after all we were nothing more that DF&E.
Another problem that reporters with the media seem to have understanding is that there is no directory of military dependants. The Canadian Armed Forces keep absolutely no records of us aside from possibly our birth certificates in our serving parent’s file.
There are many groups on Facebook for former military dependants. But these groups seem to be filled with brats who came from functional families and who didn’t encounter any abnormal issues while they lived on base. Myself, I wouldn’t be in any of these groups if it wasn’t for my desire to find other former brats who had problems on base.
Some of the brats that I know are only in one group out of the many groups on Facebook for base brats. And they’re usually only in the one particular group because they were looking for someone very specific.
There is a department manager where I work. This manger runs one of the larger and more important departments at this operation. This manager had Googled my name a few years ago and had discovered my blog. This manger pulled me aside and confided in me that they too had been a military dependant and they too had been sexually abused on base. But this manger asked me to never divulge to anyone that they had been a military dependant. They said that they were ashamed of having been a dependant and that they didn’t want anyone at work to judge them based upon their childhood.
In my professional life, when I’m asked where I’m from and where I grew up, I just say my birth province. It’s far much easier that way.
Until the media step up to the plate and start actively looking for these other sexually abused military dependants, none will come forward.
And I think sadly this is the last reporter that I will ever be able to approach about this topic as the people whom I’ve placed this reporter in contact with have asked for me to stop giving their contact information out as these reporters never want to listen to what they’re being told, and these reporters keep pressing these other former military dependants to allow their names and faces to be used.
One former dependant was all ready to go a couple of years ago, but the reporter running with the story back then reneged on their promise of allowing this other victim to use an alias and to sit behind a screen while the interview was being conducted. This other reporter assured this other military dependant that their face would be pixelated during the post process. However, this meant that there would be a video recording of this dependant’s face.
A lot of former military dependants that I’ve spoken with are literally terrified of the Canadian Forces. Very little, if anything was done for them when they were abused. Some, but not all, came from dysfunctional homes where the father was abusive and the base MPs would often turn a blind eye.
And some, like me, would go on into their adult lives believing what they had been told when they were children living on the various Canadian Forces Bases. That they were responsible for what had happened, that they liked what had happened because they let it go on for so long, and that they had a mental illness because they were having sex with other boys twice their age.
It kept us silent.
The media’s deafness ensures our silence stays in place.
The Military Police Complaints Commission has recently been in contact with me regarding documents and other forms of information that I have in my possession from the 2015 through 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation into the acts of P.S. on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980.
In preparation for sending the pertinent information to the MPCC, I’ve been reviewing the documents. And I realized something. The second investigation was designed to fail from the word go.
In the summer of 2015, after I had spoken to J.S. and then subsequently his son P.S., I wrote a letter to the Chief of Defence Staff and I sent a courtesy copy to Bob Paulson who at the time was the commissioner of the RCMP. Within a few weeks I was contacted by RCMP Major Crimes Investigator Akrum Ghadban. Mr. Ghadban was on secondment to the CFNIS and was responsible for reviewing major cases. Mr. Ghadban said that he had reviewed the 2011 CFNIS investigation and that he had concerns about the investigation and that he was going to instruct the CFNIS on areas that he thought they could improve.
This led to a new interview being conducted between myself, RCMP Inspector Ghadban, and Sgt. Tenaschuk of the CFNIS. This interview took place on September 22nd, 2015 at the RCMP detachment at the University of British Columbia.
Just prior to the interview, Inspector Ghadban met with me. He said that he had concerns about aspects of the 2011 CFNIS investigation. He said that the 2011 investigation was not up to “contemporary policing standards”.
During the interview, Inspector Ghadban said that he was going to instruct the CFNIS to concentrate on four specific areas of the investigation.
First is that Inspector Ghadban wanted the CFNIS to track down and locate P.S.’s younger brother who also has the initials of P.S.. For clarity I will call P.S.’s younger brother P.S.2.
Second is that Inspector Ghadban wanted the CFNIS to track down Doug Schwirtz who in 1980 would have been around 9 years old and lived at PMQ 13 on 12th street and had potentially seen the kids on the front lawn of the S. PMQ attack me when I came out of P.S.’s PMQ after P.S. had been discovered buggering me in his bedroom.
Third is that Inspector Ghadban wanted the CFNIS to talk to retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham to find out what Cunningham knew about the 1980 investigation into Captain McRae. After all, both J.S. and Fred Cunningham indicated that the investigation into Captain McRae was commenced due to the complaints of numerous parents on CFB Namao about the interaction of P.S. with their young children.
Fourth is that Inspector Ghadban wanted the CFNIS to ascertain that I did in fact mention during my initial interview with the CFNIS in March of 2011 that I had tried reporting P.S. to the military police in 1984 and in 1990. This was specifially to counter Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki’s concern that I hadn’t tried reporting these crimes to anyone before.
True to CFNIS form, when Sgt. Tenaschuk tried locating P.S.2 he contacted the family again. The same very protective family that closed ranks around P.S. during the 2011 CFNIS investigation. When Tenaschuk contacted these family members, they all claimed that P.S.2. lived out on the West Coast and that they had lost contact with him years ago and they didn’t know how to get hold of him. As it turns out P.S.2. lives in London, Ontario which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Fort Erie, Ontario where his father J.S. and his older brother P.S. both live.
Tenaschuk tracked down Doug Schwirtz. I have no idea what questions Doug was asked. According to Sgt. Tenaschuk, Doug remembers absolutely nothing from back then.
I have no idea of what Sgt. Tenaschuk did so far as trying to locate records of me having tried to report P.S. to the military police in 1984 and 1990.
Sgt. Tenaschuk then contacted Fred Cunningham. According to Sgt. Tenaschuk he asked Fred Cunningham what he remembered about our telephone call on November 27th, 2011. Fred said that he couldn’t remember anything.
So, here’s what caught my eye. Tenaschuk wasn’t asked to talk to Fred Cunningham about our telephone call on March 27th, 2011. Sgt. Tenaschuk was instructed to talk to Fred Cunningham about the 1980 investigation into Captain McRae.
Sgt. Tenaschuk avoided asking Cunningham about the 1980 investigation, such as why did the base military police interrogate P.S. in his family’s PMQ in May of 1980? Why had Fred Cunningham been tasked with investigating Captain Father Angus McRae?
What did Fred Cunningham remember on November 27th, 2011? Quite a lot. What Fred Cunningham told me that day has been verified by Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit file DS 120-10-80 and by two separate Canadian Forces Fire Marshal reports.
During our brief phone call on November 27th, 2011 Fred identified another boy, younger than P.S. named F.A., as a “prolific pyromaniac”.
And what a pyromaniac he was. The Canadian Forces Fire Marshal identified F.A. as having been responsible for two separate house fires on CFB Namao. One of the Fire Marshal reports even goes on to identify this boy named F.A. as having been friends with P.S. and that P.S. had been at F.A.’s house earlier in the day prior to one of the fires and that both F.A. and P.S. had been playing with fire on the stove in the F.A. household.
The Fire Marshal’s report also indicated that this boy named F.A. wasn’t attending school as he had just recently been released from psychiatric care.
It was also noted in the most recent Fire Marshal report that F.A. seemed to like to play the role of the “hero” by “discovering” the fire and alerting people to the fire.
According to Fred Cunningham, when the charges stemming from F.A.’s complaint against Captain McRae were dropped by the “brass”, the boy named F.A. thought that P.S. had stabbed him in the back. Fred Cunningham said that the boy named F.A. had no idea that it was the “brass” that dropped all of the charges against McRae except for the charges related to P.S..
Fred Cunningham said that there had been a massive falling out between F.A. and P.S.
I asked Fred if this pyromaniac named F.A. had anything to do with the June 23rd, 1980 house fire at P.S.’s family’s PMQ.
Fred Cunningham said is that he wasn’t going to speak to that.
As I have the CF Fire Marshal’s report for the June 23rd, 1980 fire at the S. PQM, I know that Colonel Dan Munro’s signature was the final signature on the Fire Marshal’s investigation report for June 23rd, 1980 fire. In the Fire Marshal’s report, Colonel Dan Munro declines the need for further review of the cause of the fire.
I also learnt that someone did actually die in that fire. An Edmonton area civilian gas fitter employed on base by the Canadian Forces named Sam Stelter died as a result of trying to shut off the gas to prevent a major fire. Sam died of a heart attack in the basement of the S. family PMQ.
The Alberta Fire Marshal ruled that the house fire was due to a defective brass gas line behind the stove. I’ve often wondered since November 27th, 2011 just how hard it would have been for someone to have given that already defective gas line a simple tug. Someone with a grudge against a resident of the house. Another opportunity for someone to play the hero maybe?
Pure speculation I know.
Colonel Dan Munro was also Captain Father Angus McRae’s commanding officer.
Was Colonel Dan Munro the “brass” that dropped all of the charges against Captain McRae except for those relating to P.S.? Or was it someone higher up the chain of command?
In 2018, Sgt. Tenaschuk said that he wouldn’t be able to talk to Colonel Munro due to the 3-year time bar that existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998.
It should be noted that the term “brass”never referes to a non-commissioned officer. If you were in the military, you would never call a Master Warrant Officer “the brass”. And you would almost certainly not call a junior rank officer “the brass”. It’s generally not until you get into the senior officer ranks that you start referring to officers as “the brass”. Colonel is the highest rank senior officer.
Above Colonel are the General / Flag officers. These you can call “the brass” as well.
Tenaschuk spooks the S. clan by contacting them and asking them for contact information for P.S.2 becuase he wants to talk to P.S.2 about what P.S. did in 1980. That family is extremely protective of P.S.. They view P.S. as the sole victim of Captain McRae. They obviously view the children that P.S. was abusing as being of no consequence. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the S. clan blame all the children that P.S. abused on CFB Namao as being the driving force behind P.S. attempting suicide in January of 2000. See, we’re not victims, we’re ruthless cold hearted killers who won’t leave poor misunderstood P.S. alone.
During the 2015 through 2018 CFNIS investigation, I provided the CFNIS with the names of other victims of P.S.. The CFNIS took their statements, and kept them separate from my investigation. According to Tenaschuk, this was a decision by his superiors.
The Crime Stoppers appeal that was run in November of 2016 provided “numerous” tips with others coming forward with complaints about P.S.. None of this information was forwarded to the Alberta Crown in 2018.
Sure, my father died in January of 2017, but the CFNIS had a whole year and a bit to interview him again. The statement that he gave to the CFNIS in 2011 does not reflect the reality of my family as it was back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. More specifically my father’s statement to the CFNIS is 100% at odds with the answers he gave me when I examined him for Federal Court in 2013. I provided Sgt. Tenaschuk with the pertinent sections of my foster care / Alberta Social Service records as well as a copy of my father’s answers to my written examination. From what I’ve seen that was provided to the Alberta Crown in 2018, Sgt. Tenaschuk made no mention at all that he had any concerns about the validity of my father’s statement to the CFNIS in 2011. My father’s statement would have had a very negative effect on the Crown’s decision.
In 2018, in the same letter that Sgt. Tenaschuk informs me that he can’t talk to Colonel Dan Munro due to the 3-year time bar, Tenaschuk informs me that the P.S. “investigation is still with the Crown Prosecutor” and that he viwed this as a “positive note”.
Weeks later the 2015 through 2018 investigation goes down in flames.
Sgt. Tenaschuk informed me in 2018 that the Alberta Crown was declining to recommend charges as it wasn’t in the public interest.
In late 2018 an agency of the Alberta government reviews the 2015 through 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation and can’t find any evidence that any type of criminal code offence occured.
From the documents that I’ve seen from another agency of the Alberta government, Sgt. Tenaschuk basically resubmitted Sgt. Hancock’s 2011 Crown Briefing.
I don’t think that it was Sgt. Tenaschuk’s decision. Someone within the chain of command within the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal ensured that the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS GO 2011-5754 stayed concerned only with the four exact concerns that RCMP Inspector Akrum Ghadban had raised. This meant that the CFNIS excluded just about anything else that had been brought to their attention. Other victims, potential witnesses, details about the 1980 investigation, these were all excluded from the 2015 – 2018 investigation.
This explains why the Sgt. Tenaschuk bascially re-submitted Sgt. Hancock’s investigation to the Alberta Crown. Excluding all of the new evidence ensured that the Alberta Crown was just going to give the same answer they gave to the flawed 2011 investigation.
This means that the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 was just yet another dog and pony show that was never meant to wake up long dead ghosts.
It will be very interesting to see where the current MPCC review goes. It’s abundantly clear that the Canadian Forces do not want to revisit anything from 1980. And considering how narrow and restricted the review process is, I have no doubt that the MPCC will have absolutely no choice but to find in favour of the CFNIS just like the last time.
And unless the powers of the MPCC have been improved since my last go round, the Provost Marshal holds all of the cards.
It should be no secret that I’ve already filed a complaint with the Military Police Complaints Commission, which I’ll refer to as the MPCC from here on in. This complaint is for the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754.
From a job posting located at buyandsell.gc.ca buyandsell.gc.ca is a Government of Canada website run by Public Works and Government Services Canada
Yes, the MPCC is supposed to be an “arm’s length” agency, but bear in mind that all employees of the MPCC are government employees who may wish to move upwards in the governmental hierarchy, and who will more often than not act in such a manner as to not jeopardize their ascension up the ranks.
The Military Police Complaints Commission is charged with reviewing military police investigations. Generally the MPCC may conduct two styles of investigation. The MPCC may conduct a “Review” or the MPCC may conduct a “Public Interest Hearing”. For now I’ll talk about a “review” and in a subsequent posting I’ll talk about a “Public Interest Hearing”
An MPCC REVIEW
The first style of investigation the MPCC may conduct is a “Review”.
Due to the design of the review process, findings against the military police are very rare.
During a “Review” the MPCC can only review the documents supplied to it by the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.
During a review, the MPCC cannot administer oaths. There is no risk of penalty for uttering false statements to the MPCC.
During a review, the MPCC cannot subpoena documents or witnesses. This means that during a review, the MPCC can only take what the Provost Marshal has decided to give to the MPCC. Also, because witnesses cannot be forced to talk to the MPCC during a review the MPCC may find itself unable to interview key personnel.
During a review, the complainant cannot cross examine the witnesses.
During a “Review”, the MPCC does not “test” the evidence to see if it was possible to come to a different conclusion, thereby calling into question the investigative ability of the investigator or the supervisory ability of the investigator’s chain of command. All the MPCC does during a review is a basic check list.
Did Mr. Bees make a complaint?
Was the complaint investigated?
Did the investigator reach a conclusion that was within a range of resonable conclusions?
The Provost Marshal knows exactly what your complaint is about as you have to first submit your complaint to the Provost Marshal.
It can be seen then that the Provost Marshal can submit favourable documents to the MPCC that paint the CFNIS in a very favourable light. You as the complainant will have absolutely no access to any of these documents until AFTER the MPCC have rendered their final decision.
The biggest flaw with this is that any evidence that you intend to introduce at the Federal Court level in an application for Judicial Review is considered “New Evidence” and will be struck from the Judicial Review.
It’s almost as if the Canadian Forces created the MPCC and the review process to be defective by design.
Yes, Parliament would have crafted the legislation which created the MPCC, however, the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Forces, the Provost Marshal, and the Judge Advocate General would have had their input into the design of the MPCC. There would have been no representation from parties from which complaints could be expected to be received.
In the summer of 2015, MPCC chairman Glenn Stannard told the Globe and Mail during an interview that the MPCC has never been given the documents required to truly understand how the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service operate. Mr. Stannard said during this interview that without those documents, the MPCC doesn’t even know what it should be requesting from the Provost Marshal.
From the Globe and Mail March 27th, 2015 by Gloria Galloway
Not very reassuring, now is it?
Yeah, and about the findings of the MPCC. The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal can still tell the MPCC to go piss up a rope if it doesn’t like the findings of a review. Reviews are non-binding and have no legal weight.
During a review, the MPCC cannot subpoena witnesses, the MPCC cannot subpoena documents, and the MPCC cannot administer oaths. The fact that statements given to the MPCC are not taken under oath means that there is no threat of consequences for perjury.
During an MPCC review, participation is voluntary.
Access to Investigation Paperwork
It would seem that it would make common sense for a complainant to have access to the paperwork from their investigation. This is apparently not how it works in Canada. Very few police review boards require that the complainant have access to documents that would be critical for the success of a complaint.
During an MPCC review, the complainant is not given access to the investigation documents, nor is the complainant given access to copies of the documents that the Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC.
Yes, one could submit an Access to Information Request for copies of the documents and files related to a CFNIS investigation. I did. I submitted an ATI back in July of 2018.
As of today December 29th, 2019 this request has not been fulfilled.Still awaiting an investigator. apparently there is a considerable backlog at the Office of the Information Commissioner
Why is access to the CFNIS investigation documents necessary?
It allows the complainant to counter statements in the CFNIS investigation and prove errors committed during the investigation.
Did Sgt. Cyr fly down to Victoria, BC and meet with me personally to discuss this investigation as he told the MPCC investigators? No he didn’t.
Did “some lady from across the street” keep an eye on my brother and I from time to time? No.
Was I expelled from school in the spring of 1983 or was I kept at home to avoid being apprehended by Alberta Social Services for my father’s non-compliance with the family counselling program? It was the latter, which was all contained in the social service documents.
Did Sgt. Cyr properly record into his occurrence reports the details of our conversation on May 3rd, 2011. No he did not. Me telling him that I can remember P.S. taking me on 5 different visits to the chapel but that I can’t remember anything after being given “sickly sweet grape juice” is definitely not that same as “Mr. Bees stated that he remembered going to the church with P.S. but that nothing ever happened”. In fact being given the part about the “sickly sweet grape juice” isn’t in his occurrence report.
When Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock submitted his case summary to the Alberta Crown, why did Sgt. Hancock see fit to remove “anything he had been involved in as a youth has already been handled by the military” from the record of P.S.’s phone call to Sgt. Hancock in August of 2011. Why didn’t the MPCC pick up on this detail?
All of these issues I could have easily raised with the MPCC during my interview had I been given access to the CFNIS investigation paperwork. But I wasn’t. And as such when I went before the Federal Court with my application for judicial review, all of the copies of telephone bills and copies of emails between myself and Sgt. Cyr were struck from the proceedings as being “new evidence”.
The MPCC Investigators
The investigators conducting the MPCC review are retired police officers, which means that there is a serious bias from the get go. The thin blue line is not an urban legend. It’s a well known phenomenon that exists within police culture.
In my teens I worked for three Metropolitan Toronto Police officers that owned a amusement machine company as a side business. From dealing with these three I learnt quickly that police see themselves as being different from the civilians they protect. It’s bound to happen in organizations like the police.
Out here in Vancouver during the late ’90s we had a serial killer that was preying on women from the Downtown East Side. The serial killer was Robert Pickton.
As Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal concluded, the police didn’t really put any effort into protecting the women of the DTES because the police, both the RCMP and the VPD, viewed these women as “throwaways – unstable, unreliable.”
Wally Oppal was never a police officer. Wally Oppal had been a judge for most of his life. He then became the Attorney General for the province of BC. He was never tainted by the thin blue line. Which explains why he had no qualms about letting both the VPD and the RCMP wear the shame of the Pickton fiasco.
A few year ago, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP looked at the desirability of police investigating police.
I was interviewed by the MPCC on July 19th, 2012. I left the interview stunned and nauseated. I was so stunned in fact that I went for a walk and just kept walking. I didn’t stop walking until just after midnight. The two investigators didn’t really listen to what I had to say, they already had their mind made up that the CFNIS investigators had gone above and beyond their requirements and conducted a stellar investigation.
Even back in 2012, I was still able to amass sufficient documentation to show that the 2011 CFNIS investigation left a lot to be desired.
The investigators with the MPCC referred to my documents as if they were trivial in nature and of dubious quality. The investigators with the MPCC even outright ignored the Social Service observations of my father.
Take for example where the MPCC investigators noted that my father told the CFNIS investigators that my grandmother only looked after my brother and I until her husband died. The CFNIS recorded my father’s statement in such a manner that it made it sound as if my grandmother only looked after my brother and I for a very brief point in time on CFB Namao and that “some lady from across the street would keep an eye on my brother and I from time to time”. My grandmother raised my brother and I from the spring of 1977 until about the spring of 1981. Her husband, Andy Anderson, didn’t die until sometime around 1985. Except for a very brief period of time in the spring of 1978 our grandmother was our primary care giver and raised my brother and I for just over four years.
In 2006, when I talked to my father about what had happened on CFB Namao, my father named the babysitter himself. I didn’t have to tell my father the babysitter’s name. My father blamed my grandmother for hiring the babysitter even going so far as saying that he warned my grandmother not to hire him. He also said that I should have told someone what the babysitter was doing and that it was partially my fault that it went on for so long and that I had no business allowing the babysitter to mess with my younger brother.
During my interview with the MPCC investigators, I made sure that the MPCC investigators understood the significance of my family’s social service records, especially the part where the psychologist hired by the Canadian Forces to interview my father determined that my father accepted no responsibility for his family, blamed others for problems with his family, expected others to solve the problems with his family. In turn the MPCC only recorded in their findings that my social service records indicated that I was depressed as a child.
There were other records that indicated that grandma was still living with us in 1981 and there were records that indicated that my father blamed grandma for issues that my brother and I were having.
Alberta Social Services indicate two key findings about my father. First, my father often told conflicting stories from one meeting to the next. Second, my father was found to tell people that he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
When I introduced my family’s social service records into Federal Court to dispute the observation of the CFNIS, this evidence was struck because it was “new evidence” that had not been before the MPCC during the review.
I believe that the inability of the two investigators assigned to the previous MPCC review to listen to what was being said was due to their police culture bias.
In my next blog entry I will discuss the “Public Interest Hearing” and how the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS are at a complete disadvantage.