By Michael J. Goodspeed
THE EXTERNAL REVIEW of the Royal Military College by retired Supreme Court Justice the Hon. Louise Arbour, submitted in May 2022, states that the RMC and its satellite, Collège militaire royale (CMR) “appear as institutions from a different era, with an outdated and problematic leadership model.” The report also states, “To be clear, closing the colleges altogether would be a missed opportunity.” Her recommendation for radical change has created a unique occasion to make substantial improvements to officer professional development and the Forces’ culture.
To some, Judge Arbour’s Report of the Independent External Comprehensive Review implies that the institutions are rotten. This is false. The overwhelming majority from all backgrounds have performed with integrity and professionalism, frequently under demanding and hazardous circumstances that have no ready equivalent in civilian life. Nonetheless, recent events have shown that in terms of providing acceptable leadership as well as adapting to changing societal expectations, key elements of the officer corps have displayed alarming shortcomings.
While reported rates of sexual misconduct at military colleges are similar to those of civilian universities, the consequences of such behaviour in a military context are intolerable.(1)
As the Arbour report correctly states, instigating such change requires intense focus on the early periods of officer development, for it’s here that the values and attitudes of the Forces are nurtured.
In today’s Canadian Armed Forces there are four major programs leading to a commission: (1) the Regular Officer Training Program (ROTP) at a Military College, (2) ROTP Civilian University, (3) Direct Entry Program for those who already have an undergraduate degree, and (4) the much smaller and specialized Commissioning from the Ranks Program.
The first three produce the vast majority of officers. Candidates in these three programs must complete a university degree and pass twelve weeks of common Basic Military Officer Occupation (BMOQ) training at the Leadership and Recruit School. After BMOQ, Civilian University and Direct Entry candidates go on to qualify in their subsequent environmental (Army, Navy, and Air Force) training without further common instruction.
On the other hand, ROTP Military College candidates (full-time cadets), in addition to their environmental training, complete four years of military college which entails more than twice the cost and significantly more training and instruction in basic common leadership than civilian university or direct entry candidates.(2) Despite the disparity in length and intensity, officer candidates from all three streams are granted the same qualification and have historically been considered to be equivalently trained and prepared for future service.
The evident discrepancies in cost, training, and organizational support have never been adequately reconciled with institutional value. It is generally conceded that over the last seven decades, all three streams of officers have produced similar results in terms of leadership — which as the present situation regarding sexual misconduct indicates is not to say that the three current streams of officer development are sufficiently effective or efficient.(3)
Thus the three key streams of Canada’s officer training system vary widely in the resources devoted to each but produce similar leadership outcomes. Given that the Canadian Forces is now being forced to transform its culture, it would be much more constructive if the RMC system, instead of being disbanded, evolved into the institutional driver for cultural change by transforming into an academy dedicated to improving leadership standards in all of the officer candidate streams.
Taking a look abroad, similar, highly respected organizational models for what I am suggesting already exist in Britain’s Royal Military College Sandhurst and Australia’s Royal Military College Duntroon.(4)
A True Military Academy
Our RMC system should be transformed from being tiny, costly, predominantly undergraduate degree granting institutions and revamp itself to focus on the essential military task of training and indoctrinating all officer candidates in the common values, skills, and ethos of a modern military.
Undergraduate officer education can be much more efficiently conducted at any of Canada’s 102 civilian universities.(5)
Currently, the British and Australian models of single stream basic officer training differ markedly from Canada’s, as both are close to a year in length. In this regard, the anaemic BOMQ should be moved to RMC and lengthened from its twelve-week framework to a much longer, more comprehensive syllabus focussed purely on leadership skills and inculcating military ethos. Along with this change, the RMC system should also be tasked with running indoctrination courses for Reserve officers and specialized courses for officers commissioned from the ranks. Much like Sandhurst and the U.S. Navy’s Postgraduate School, the new system should retain a staff of professors for militarily essential courses for officer cadets. These courses would address such topics as the nature of modern war, second language training, military history, administrative studies and communication skills. A number of professors would also be required to oversee essential postgraduate level education at the Staff College in Toronto, as well as to supervise and direct postgraduate study for unique and essential Canadian military requirements.
REROLLING RMC FROM its current function as a small undergraduate university system to a leadership academy will not by itself eliminate the problem of undergraduate sexual misconduct in the Forces. Judge Arbour’s report has not addressed the actual solution to that problem. However, the Forces must now act as pathfinders in bringing about widespread cultural and societal change. What rerolling RMC will do is provide the institutional basis to put in place new programs with enhanced leadership models and more effective reporting and disciplinary processes that will be of long-term value to the entire officer corps.
For those graduates who have a strong emotional attachment to the current RMC model, modernization will be a painful process. This is unfortunate. RMC needs to be transformed, not disbanded. English Canada’s culture is one that too easily denigrates its own history and traditions. RMC, founded by a Liberal government in 1876, should keep the name and effective traditions that have served the country well. But not modernizing and adapting to the realities of the 21st century is no longer an option.
There are numerous advantages to having all officers receive their bachelor’s degrees in civilian universities and conducting their common military training and education at a restructured RMC.
Because of its size and physical deployment, the Forces are presently isolated from much of Canadian society. As a result, few people know about our military or understand its challenges. To a large extent the reverse of this is also true. Attending civilian university will eventually expose all officers to a more extensive range of people, ideas and outlook and their presence on campus could do much to improve the military’s national profile.
Expanded military presence in universities would likely entail the creation of a Canadian Forces Officer Training Corps (OTC.) An OTC could allow for a broader variety of military training, closer integration of the reserve officer corps, periodic weekend exercises as well as events and lectures open to a wider and potentially influential public. A national OTC program should be developed and managed from a cell within a restructured RMC. In this age of networked learning, the scope of this kind of military education and training would only be limited by the imagination of those responsible for officer professional development.
There has been lamentable precedence for this kind of change. The unaddressed behavioral and discipline problems of Somalia led to a universally degreed officer corps and major changes to the Staff College. Recent revelations of sexual misconduct have led anew to a shakeup in officer professional military education. That fundamental change like this should be forced upon the military indicates an unacceptable degree of professional insularity and complacency in the leadership of the officer corps.
The Canadian Forces are vulnerable to these shortcomings because, of necessity, they are a disciplined and intensely hierarchical command organization. One drawback of such systems is that professional disagreement is frequently treated as a form of disloyalty but this is by no means a shortcoming unique to the military. Political caucuses, government agencies and many businesses, to name but a few institutions, regularly display similar dynamics, and for these institutions change is often driven by electoral defeat and economic failure. Yet insularity and complacency are not inevitable in the Forces.
Unlike most civilian institutions, the Forces can take action to address these issues at the profession’s foundation and in doing so foster long-term change in its larger culture. That would be done by transferring the undergraduate element of RMC to civilian universities and transforming the institution into a focussed, professional, standardized leadership academy.
About the Author
Michael Goodspeed served as an officer in the Canadian Army for 33 years. He has degrees in English Literature and History, Business Administration, and Strategic Studies. He is the author of numerous articles and five books: two social histories and three historical novels. This article first appeared in the Autumn 2024 print edition of The Dorchester Review.
Notes
1. Comparing rates of sexual misconduct between civilian universities and RMC is an imprecise task. Without diminishing the seriousness of the military problem, the rates appear to be similar, affecting between 64% and 70% of female undergraduates and suggesting that this is not a uniquely military problem but likely indicative of a wider social problem. “Arbour report recommends rethinking of military colleges,” Globe and Mail, Jun. 1, 2022, cf. “Ontario campus study finds Queen’s University has 2nd highest rate of reported sexual harassment,” Global News, Mar. 3, 2020.
2. Allan English, “After Arbour: ‘Reimagining’ RMC,” Canadian Military Journal 23, 2 (Spring 2023).
3. Any precise comparison would be problematical due to lack of data on relative promotion rates, fluctuations in officer numbers, release rates, and operational effectiveness. That all three streams have been viewed as equivalent is evidenced by the allocation of exactly the same qualification for the last seven decades.
4. A cost comparison of British, Australian, and Canadian officer training systems would be misleading as the institutional populations, relative course lengths, and degree of support differ sufficiently between the three countries to make conclusions meaningless. Nonetheless, cost evaluations between current and proposed Canadian systems would be worthwhile.
5. [One approach could be that while studying, officer candidates could earn their room and board and learn about the qualities and challenges of the Reserve Force, which now constitutes about half the army, by serving part-time with a local Reserve unit. —ed.]
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