Canadian Military to Screen Applicants for Symbols Linked to ‘Problematic Attitudes’

Canadian soldiers wait to meet Minister of Defence Anita Anand in Adazi, Latvia, on Feb. 3, 2022. Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images

To further its cultural transformation, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) seeks to screen individuals before or after recruitment for “problematic attitudes” by using new tools, including a database of symbols built with outside expertise.

“A symbology dataset was created and will be continually updated, in consultation with, or outsourced to, external experts, to increase CAF recruiters’ awareness of extremist, racist, discriminatory, or hateful conduct, or other unacceptable attitudes that are displayed through applicant tattoos and body adornments,” the organization wrote in its December response to Louise Arbour’s report.

This was to specifically address recommendation 22 of the report, which states that the “CAF should put new processes in place to ensure that problematic attitudes on cultural and gender-based issues are both assessed and appropriately dealt with at an early stage, either pre- or post-recruitment.”

The report identified the issues, but said “questions remain about ways to screen for inappropriate or dangerous beliefs, morals, and cultural views.”

Arbour, a former judge of the Supreme Court, had been tasked with conducting a review of the CAF with regards to sexual and other types of misconduct. The report was tabled in May 2022.

Defence Minister Anita Anand said in December her department accepted all of the report’s 48 recommendations and that implementation work had started on 17 of them.

While DND said in its December response the symbology dataset had been created, the department now says it is more in the embryonic phase.

“Work on the symbology dataset is preliminary at this point in time,” spokesperson Derek Abma told The Epoch Times.

DND would not share the work that’s been done so far and could not provide a timeline for when it will enter use to screen applicants and recently accepted members.

“Many details about how it will be developed, including which external experts will be consulted or outsourced, are still to be determined,” said Abma.

Improving screening to detect actual Neo-Nazis or terrorist sympathizers will protect the organization, but the issue can become very political if the frame of reference is built on the government-of-the-day’s list of what is considered acceptable views and what isn’t.

Attempts by the Liberal government to regulate what it considers unsavoury has been met with criticism and has also backfired recently.

Heritage Canada had hired consultant Laith Marouf and his group Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC) to conduct anti-racism workshops.

Marouf was then revealed to be himself a virulent anti-Semite, calling Jews “bags of human feces.”

The federal government also funded an “anti-racism” toolkit for schools that Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis called “shockingly hateful.”

The toolkit says that Canada’s former flag, the Red Ensign, is a “hate-promoting symbol” and that alt-right white nationalists “sometimes attempt to infiltrate mainstream Conservative political parties to influence change.”

“Yes, I have encountered racists in my life. But believe me: racists have no particular party affiliation,” Lewis said.

The federal government provided $268,400 to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) to help with its project.