The Canadian Forces and Hateful Conduct

This week, there has been some media attention on the Canadian Forces' new 'hateful conduct policy' in light of some embarrassing reports over the past months regarding the participation of some CF personnel in 'hate groups'.

As I describe in this linked Blog article, we should be cautious about exaggerating what the CF has actually done. The so-called 'new policy' appears simply to be the insertion of a definition of 'hateful conduct' in a pre-existing policy directive, Defence Administrative order and Directive (DAOD) 5019-0. And the new definition covers terrain that is already captured by the Code of Service Discipline and DAOD 5012-0 Harassment Prevention and Resolution.

While this new definition might assist CF leadership in addressing membership of CF personnel in 'hate groups', it does not actually represent a meaningful policy development.

Frankly, the principal objective of this announcement appears to be an opportunity for CF leaders to assert: "Look at what we are doing about this!". It is a fair bit of sound and fury representing fairly little.