RCN Officer Told to Choose between her Child or Career

By: Murray Brewster, CBC News 

CBC EXCLUSIVE

Acting Sub-Lt. Laura Nash is on her way out of the military after being given what she says is an utterly impossible, unfair choice.

The single mother says she was called into a meeting with two superior officers, both of them women, in late 2013 and claims she was told she had too many "family issues."

She faced a training deadline to go to sea and was given six weeks to decide between her child and her career as a warship navigator.

"The decision broke me," Nash, 33, told CBC News in an interview. "I couldn't make the decision. It was a catch-22. I didn't want to live without my child, but I needed a means of supporting him and so I didn't want to lose my job."

Last week, the Liberal government released its defence policy which set goals of increasing the representation of women in uniform, more respectful treatment and greater career flexibility.
More soldiers, ships and planes for military in Liberal defence plan

Nash's case is a demonstration of how far the defence department and the military have to go in order to achieve those lofty goals.

There is little institutional support and, more importantly, empathy for single moms in uniform, said Nash.

She was, at the time of her dressing down, at the navy's principal West Coast fleet base in Esquimalt, B.C. for her chosen occupation as a maritime surface and sub-surface operator — something that requires frequent deployments and long stints at sea.
No options, no backup

Nash never expected to be in such a difficult position. A former champion kayaker, she joined in 2010 and was in a relationship when she became pregnant. Nash was comfortable with the notion her child's father could take care of him while she was at sea.

But her relationship dissolved in 2012 and, in order to keep up with the demands of training and military life, she was forced — frequently — to send her boy, Ronin, who is now six, to her parents in Belleville, Ont. where they cared for him.
'I can't just leave a child on a beach.'— Acting Sub-Lt. Laura Nash

It was, however, only a temporary arrangement, one that would be difficult to carry on once she had been fully qualified and posted to a warship, at which point, even when in port, she would be required to stand 24-hour duties.

Her parents both worked full time. Child-care options through the military family resource centre were limited, particularly in light of the waiting list for spaces which has — at times — stretched to two years.

She had no one.
'Everybody's valuable in the armed forces.'— Gen. Jonathan Vance

"I can't just leave a child on a beach while I sail away," said Nash, using the navy slang that refers to relatives left behind in port.

"It's stupid. So, I tried to make the decision the best I could, and there was no answer. The only thing I could think of was going for help to mental health because it was causing me to suffer and causing anguish to think about giving him away."

And that was where her journey out of the military began in early 2014.

Nash, who reached the rank of acting sub-lieutenant, is being given a medical release at the end of July. (Mike O'Shaughnessy/CBC)

Nash says she sought help for depression, one so deep she — briefly — contemplated suicide. But she pulled out of it and was determined to fight.

By that time, Nash had been placed at a Joint Personnel Support Unit, which is supposed to help ill and injured military members rehabilitate or get ready for release to civilian life.

Nash says she repeatedly asked for a transfer to another occupation, such as logistics, which would not require her to be away from home as often.

ANALYSIS | Trudeau suggests defence review will invest more in troops than weaponry

She was initially given permission to switch, but the paperwork got sidetracked within the system.

By the time Nash found out, it was too late.

She was posted ashore and her transfer request was effectively denied when a base doctor refused to sign off.

Nash is being given a medical release at the end of July.

She says she has spent the better part of the last two years doing nothing and has not even been given a medical re-evaluation.
Grievances, harassment complaints

In the meantime, she has filed grievances and harassment complaints within the military related to her treatment.

Also, there is a complaint still formally pending before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, in which Nash claims some policies at National Defence, notably travel policies, discriminate against single mothers.

Her lawyer, Natalie MacDonald, said Nash was penalized for being a woman, having a child and seeking mental health care, something the military says it has taken great pains to de-stigmatize.

"Laura Nash was clearly reaching out and needed help from the Armed Forces and they didn't provide it," MacDonald said in an interview.
Ex-soldier and cancer survivor evicted during wait for military pension

Throughout her ordeal, some suggested to Nash she should have never chosen a career in the navy if she wanted a family, something MacDonald finds outrageous particularly given her client asked to be transferred to another occupation.

"That's ridiculous," she said. "That's absolutely unfair. It's discriminatory and I would hope in 2017 that kind of attitude would be banished from society."

"Quite frankly, a woman is able to choose whatever career she wants to but, when she has family status issues, which is exactly what Laura Nash was experiencing on the basis of her sex, the employer — and even the Canadian Armed Forces — needs to accommodate that request for accommodation."
More career flexibility promised

National Defence was reluctant to talk about Nash's case specifically, citing matters of privacy but there was last week a sweeping acknowledgment in the Liberal government's defence policy that the military needs to be more flexible.

Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of the defence staff, said the military wants to move beyond the notion of career "accommodation" because it has a "grudging sound to it."

Specifically, he is looking at case-by-case exemptions for ill and injured, who are on track to be medically released, and a more nimble system that will allow full-time members to move to the reserves and back again as circumstances allow.

As much as anything else it is a dollars-and-cents calculation, given the investment the military puts into training someone.

"What we want to do is alter — somewhat — how we look at people," says Vance, speaking to CBC News about the policy and not individual cases.

"Everybody's valuable in the armed forces."

Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance has talked about encouraging women to serve in the military. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Much has been written about misogyny, assault and bullying against women by men in the military, but Nash says her experience has been that women in uniform can be more harsh and judgmental.

"Women just treat other women terribly," she said, adding that she knows of at least three women who gave up their children — in one capacity or another — because of their military careers.

Nash said she went looking for empathy from one career officer who told her she too had "personal issues" around deployments because she had to find a place to store her car and change cell phone plans.

"That's the way that some of the women in the military look at children," said Nash. "They're just another piece of administration to deal with. They're not humans. They're not something that needs to be taken care of and raised and loved and something to be with their moms."

CAF studies extending life of Snowbird aircraft 20 years past retirement

By: Kathleen Haris, CBC News

The military's aging fleet of Tutor jets flown by the Snowbirds demonstration team could remain in flight until 2030 — two decades past the scheduled retirement date.

Documents obtained by CBC News under an Access to Information request show the Department of National Defence is studying the feasibility of keeping the Canadian-built CT-114 Tutors in operation until 2025 and 2030, despite some "significant concerns" about the aircraft.

The aerobatic show team thrills spectators by swirling the skies in precise formations, demonstrating the superior skills of pilots commanding the planes. But there have also been serious safety incidents in the past, ranging from seatbelt malfunctions to fiery fatal crashes.

The 1960s-era jets were set to retire in 2010, but that date was extended 10 years, despite an internal 2003 report that warned of escalating technical, safety and financial risks and urged the fleet be replaced "immediately."
Little progress in replacement

More than 13 years later, there has been little progress in procuring new planes.

A report from the fall of 2014 cleared the fleet as "technically airworthy," but noted "significant" concerns, including some caused by financial restraints.

"Repairs have been reduced to bare bones (one year support) necessitating to put main items in repairable reserves and depleting our stock levels to nothing," it reads, adding this has the effect of creating "more robbing actions and additional maintenance costs."

It also noted a "lag in data analysis/reporting" was causing the Snowbirds 431 Squadron to continue flying aircraft "with an unknown condition."

A briefing note for the air force, also released under Access to Information, said the department is carrying out a robust life-expectancy extension study to "validate" the option of using the Tutors beyond 2020 to ensure an "uninterrupted" capacity.

"Maintaining a military air demonstration team is considered to be a government-mandated requirement," said the memo, written when the Conservatives were in office.

Pushing the retirement planes to 2030 would make some of them roughly 67 years old at that point.

The life-extension study is expected to be complete by the end of 2016, but the most recent Defence Acquisition Guide, a public listing of anticipated procurements, suggests the contract award and replacement delivery could be between 2026 and 2036.
Tutor 'extremely reliable'

Retired lieutenant-colonel Dan Dempsey, a former Snowbird pilot who has written a book about Canada's military air show history, said the Tutors have proven extremely reliable over the years. The planes, used as training aircraft until 2000, are tested by technical experts who leave "no stones unturned" to ensure structural integrity, he said.

While Dempsey would have liked to see earlier steps to replace the fleet — and have it in place for Canada's 150th birthday next year — he suggested 2025 is a "reasonable limit" as budget cuts pushed the procurement behind other operational priorities.

"I'm not surprised this has happened. It's a little disappointing, but I think the main thing is that everybody recognizes the importance of the Snowbirds to the country, to the Canadian Forces, to the RCAF," he said. "And therefore the desire is to keep these flying as long as necessary until a new aircraft can be purchased, and I think that's a very positive thing."

Kim Nossal, a professor with the Queen's University Centre for International and Defence Policy, sees no problem with extending the lifespan, since most accidents involving Tutors have resulted from risky manoeuvres or pilot error, not aging parts.

"As long as the aircraft has updates and refits, you can extend the life of an airframe however long you like," he said. "The real risk for the demonstration team is what they end up doing — the kind of performances they put on."

Retired colonel Paul Maillet, a former RCAF planner, says the concern is less about safety than value for money.

He doesn't believe the demonstration team adds to the operational capacity of the military other than to entertain and help recruit — functions other military planes could fulfil, he said.
Scrap Snowbirds?

At a time of tight budgets, he questions if the Snowbirds should remain a funding priority.

"You start to cut non-essential things to fund essential things," he said. "Basically, it's recruiting, it's public relations stuff.… and does the taxpayer want to pay for that?"

According to figures provided by National Defence, hourly operational costs are $14,350 and the total annual cost to run the squadron is $4.3 million.

Retired lieutenant-general Lloyd Campbell, former chief of the air staff, said the fleet is relatively economical and he believes Canadians would be disappointed if the Snowbirds were grounded.

"They're a tremendously unifying national organization that Canadians find appealing," he said. "They're a great recruiting tool, but the whole question of should we keep them, can we afford them … that is really less military in nature and more political and national in scope. Is this something Canadians want? If so, how do we make it affordable, how do we make it safe?"

A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said the Liberal government remains committed to the Snowbirds, noting the life-expectancy study will help guide the decision-making process for a replacement fleet.

"We have full confidence in the RCAF's ability to ensure aircraft reliability going forward, while our government will continue to build Canada's defence capabilities to ensure our men and women in uniform have safe, reliable equipment," said Renée Filiatrault.
'Safe and effective' aircraft

A RCAF spokesman said the number of aircraft grounded due to safety or maintenance concerns varies from day to day and is managed by maintenance crews to meet airworthiness standards.

"The CT-114 is a safe and effective aircraft," Maj. Scott Spurr said in an email. "DND is dedicated to ensuring that the fleet will remain effective until the fleet is retired. The Snowbirds, and the entire RCAF, maintains a robust flight safety and airworthiness program to ensure the safety of the public, as well as our personnel and aircraft."

CBC Exclusive: CF-18 commander describes 'having to take lives' in ISIS bombing mission

Originally Published on CBC News: Exclusive Interview

In a wide-ranging interview with CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge, a CF-18 commander who flew airstrike missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria provides a detailed account about being in that arena, some of his bombing missions, and "having to take lives."

"What we're doing is a very very unnatural thing for us. We're going out there and we're destroying, we're destroying things sometimes, sometimes we're having to take lives," said Lt.-Col. David Moar.

"It's an unnatural — it's important that we communicate about that, we talk about that as a unit and that we're firm in our resolve about what we're doing."

During the interview, Moar, the CF-18 detachment commander, reviews video of some of those airstrikes, including one attack against an artillery piece that had been "harassing the Iraqi Security Forces."

"They just hooked it up to a vehicle and started moving it down a road and at that point we elected to destroy it," Moar said.

"And there's no doubt here that somebody died, because somebody was driving that vehicle," Mansbridge said.

Moar said, "One thing I have noticed that you can never, until you see the full picture afterwards, you can never really know what is happening under that smoke."

"And are you around long enough to know?" asked Mansbridge

"It's our responsibility to stick around long enough to know," Moar said.

Senior CAF officer being investigated for 2009 helicopter crash in Afghanistan

CBC Exclusive Report: By Brett Ruskin

1 British and 2 Canadian soldiers died in flaming wreckage

At least one senior Royal Canadian Air Force officer is under investigation by the military police unit that probes major crimes for alleged negligence relating to a deadly helicopter crash six years ago in Afghanistan.

CBC News has confirmed that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service is looking into allegations of negligence related to an incident on July 6, 2009, when a CH-146 Griffon crashed with six people on board.

All survived the impact, but three soldiers — including two Canadians, Master Cpl. Patrice Audet, 38, and Cpl. Martin Joannette, 25, and British Capt. Ben Babington-Browne, 27 — died after being unable to escape the flaming wreckage.

"This investigation is ongoing and no further information can be provided at this time," a military police spokesperson said in an email.
Heavily redacted report

Initially the crash was blamed on "pilot technique" and sandy ground conditions.

Those conclusions were based on a heavily redacted board of inquiry report released two years after the crash.

CBC News has since obtained a less-redacted version, along with the flight safety investigation report.

According to both reports, there are at least two underlying issues — the flight crew had too little training and the helicopter carried too much weight.

The crash involved a CH-146 Griffon helicopter. (Canadian Forces)

On July 6, 2009, the Griffon took off from a sandy area. The down force of the spinning blades created a "dust ball," which reduced the pilot's visibility.

Dust ball training is mandatory for all flight crews, who usually did exercises before and during their deployment to Afghanistan.

However, "the vast majority of the [Canada Helicopter Force, Afghanistan] aircrew only received the theory portion of the dust ball training," the board of inquiry report said.

Some pilots only got to watch the manoeuvre, not attempt it.

In this specific case, prior to his deployment "the [pilot] only observed a demonstration of the landing technique rather than practised dust ball landings himself," the flight safety report said. "Additionally, the [pilot] did not observe or complete any dust ball takeoff techniques."

Put simply, the pilot blamed for crashing the helicopter was allegedly sent to Afghanistan lacking the training to take off and land in sand.
Griffon weight limits modified

The original weight limit for the Griffon helicopter in Afghanistan was between 10,300 and 10,700 pounds.

But senior officials thought the weight cap would limit operations.

The weight cap "would significantly impair the ability of the unit to fulfil the entire spectrum of operations in support of the Joint Task Force," the board of inquiry report heard from military commanders.

So they changed the flight manual.

"The modified operating limitations in Section 1 of the flight manual restricted the Griffon to between 11,750 and 11,900 lb.," the board of inquiry report said.
Weight limit 'unknowingly' tested

Helicopter payload calculations are complex.

If a helicopter is close to the ground, it needs less power. The air its rotor forces downward bounces off the ground and creates a type of cushion.

To rise above that cushion and maintain altitude, more power is needed. A helicopter loaded to its maximum weight might be able to take off, but would have difficulty climbing above a certain height.

These two height zones are called "in ground effect" or "out of ground effect."

That height as well as the weight and power calculations change with air temperature and altitude above sea level.

Investigators compared the Griffon's payload to all possible weight limits.

The board of inquiry report found it exceeded those limits "by between 1,020 lb. to 1,320 lb." The flight safety report found it may have been as much as 1,720 lb. overweight.

"The Griffon flight [crew] was unknowingly flight testing the performance information found in the flight manual," the board of inquiry report found.

"The crew attempted to conduct a takeoff not knowing that the aircraft had an insufficient margin to remain within engine limitations," the flight safety found.
New allegations prompt investigation

These report observations went largely unnoticed for years.

But recently, a former Royal Canadian Air Force flight instructor began raising concerns about the incident.

"As a former helicopter pilot, I was stunned by what I read," said retired captain Anthony Snieder.

Snieder said he began looking into the crash after noticing safety violations in Moose Jaw in 2012. He was stationed at 15 Wing Moose Jaw teaching air force pilots.

He looked back at previous incidents and found issues with the Griffon crash.

Retired Capt. Anthony Snieder (Facebook) in a CT-114 Tutor

"We have limitations for how to operate the aircraft, and they were intentionally violating aircraft limitations," he said.

As a result of voicing his concerns, Snieder said, he was reassigned to an office position and publicly discredited. He filed a harassment claim with the military, but it was dismissed. At that time Snieder asked to be released from the military.

Snieder has since applied to Federal Court for a judicial review of the dismissal of his harassment claim.

Amid his court battle, Snieder contacted the military police.

"If you do any act that could likely cause the destruction of an aircraft, it's against the law and you go to jail for it," Snieder said.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service is a unit with the military police that independently investigates serious and sensitive matters. Their jurisdiction covers Department of National Defence (DND) property, DND employees and Canadian Forces personnel serving around the world.

An official tells CBC News that "in all cases, investigations are conducted to determine the facts, analyze the evidence, and if warranted, lay appropriate charges."

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Brett Ruskin is a reporter and video-journalist covering everything from local breaking news to national issues. He's based in Halifax.