Trouble piles up for US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy

Brett Bachman, Salon
October 23, 2021

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (Photo: Screen capture)

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy faced over a dozen conflicts of interest during his tenure due to his refusal to divest family stakes in companies tied to the policies of his own agency.

According to documents newly obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) via a Freedom of Information Act, Dejoy reportedly recused himself from agency decisions that might have affected the performance of his former freight transportation company XPO Logistics. However, the postmaster general opted out of divesting from the firm altogether, opening him up to a blatant conflict of interest.

Back in August, CNN reported that, despite his role in heading the USPS, DeJoy's stake in XPO fell between $30 million and $75 million – an apparent conflict that came as a complete "shock" to many outside experts.

"If you have a $30 million interest in a company, of course it's going to impact you," Stuart Gilman, a former assistant director at the Office of Government Ethics, said. "I would assumethat there is a problem here. It certainly doesn't pass the smell test."

XPO routinely carries out contracts with both the USPS and other government agencies, like the Defense Department. During the first two months of his tenure last year, XPO signed onto at least two new contracts with the USPS.

"There was a period of time where the head of the Postal Service was making decisions when there could have been a conflict, and he could have been thinking about his own financial interest, rather than the interest of the Postal Service and the country," said Noah Bookbinder, the president of CREW. "That's significant."

Last year, by October, DeJoy had announced that he would formally divest from XPO in order to preclude any conflicts of interest from arising. At the time, CREW suggested that the nature of the divestment might be a "sham," largely because DeJoy transferred his assets to his adult children, who could then return those assets to their father after he leaves government.

Also under scrutiny are a series of trades made by DeJoy last June, just a month after he joined the administration. The postmaster general specifically bought $50,000 and $100,000 in stock options for Amazon.

"It's another conflict. He's got the option to buy. That means he's gambling that Amazon's value is going to go up," Marcus Owens, a former top IRS official, told CNN. "Why is he investing in a competitor to the enterprise that he's supposed to be managing? This is a classic case for investigation by an inspector general."

The USPS's Office of Inspector has reportedly reviewed DeJoy finances and concluded he has complied with the necessary ethical requirements. Still, CREW noted, the review did not take into account a full picture of the postmaster general's finances.

Over the two years, DeJoy has also come under fire for his gross mismangement of the agency, which last year entailed a series of "cost-cutting" measures, such as the removal of mail sorting machines, that would drastically slow transit times. The move earned the Trump-appointee accusations of attempting to sabotage the election in Trump's favor by undermining the mail-in-ballot process. Many Democrats have called for his resignation.

This month, DeJoy again announced a set of policies that would "result in serious delays and the degradation of service for millions," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. The agency is expected to apply steep price hikes on commercial and domestic retail packages, as well as slow first-class mail transit by 30%.

Labor takes Biden fight to homes of congressional leaders
Joe Maniscalco, DC Report @ Raw Story
October 23, 2021


Housing rights advocates and climate crisis activists are desperately urging lawmakers to hold the line against noisy efforts to gut key provisions in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better human infrastructure bill.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, just got more money than it knows what to do with.

Earlier in the week, the Pentagon gleefully sprinkled an extra $10 billion on top of its annual $725.8 billion military budget without a peep from Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona or Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, all Democrats who seem more concerned with reining in federal spending than supporting Biden's signature policy initiative.

"I really don't understand why these people are in public office if all they care about is the donations they get from industries and not the people that they work for. I honestly think it's pretty psychopathic to hear what the science is saying [about climate catastrophe] and then go ahead and ignore it." Anna Jolliffe, tech worker

"Housing is not something that can just be cut from the budget to save on costs," Abigail Ng, policy and communications coordinator for New York City's Tenants & Neighbors group, told me on Wednesday. Extra money for war rather than people, "shows where their priorities are — where our representatives put our tax money — that shows what they value.

"Clearly, because we have to fight for it, it shows they don't value housng as much."

Tenants & Neighbors is a grassroot organization dedicated to affordable housing. About 10 New York City-based advocacy groups agitating for transformative action on climate justice and housing rights rallied along with Ng's group outside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's posh Prospect Park West apartment in the borough of Brooklyn on Oct. 20.

"This is people's futures we're talking about, people's livelihoods — and it's not worth negotiating [away]," Ng added.

Anna Jolliffe, 27, a tech industry worker, decried the rubber-stamping of vast military expenditures while overwhelming social needs circle the drain because a few Democrats aren't backing their party's leader.

"Obviously, there's no future without a healthy climate," Jolliffe said. "I think it's ridiculous. I think it's a complete failure. I really don't understand why these people are in public office if all they care about is the donations they get from industries and not the people that they work for. I honestly think it's pretty psychopathic to hear what the science is saying [about climate catastrophe] and then go ahead and ignore it. It's infuriating."

Pentagon Top Polluter

The U.S. military machine is, a nd has been for a long while, the largest polluter on the planet. It consumes more oil and emits more carbon dioxide [C02] than any other single entity.

At the same time, the lack of affordable housing, poverty, low wages and unemployment have thrust more than half a million people into homelessness across the United States. According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, that trend has only grown over the last four years. This is expected to worsen since the federal pandemic pause on evictions has ended, though some states like New York have their own eviction limits.

Still, advocates for housing rights and other measures contained inside the Build Back Better reconciliation are being told that items meant to uplift working-class people must be subjected to the chopping block in the name of "fiscal sanity."

However, no such caution is expressed when it comes to spending $66 billion in preparation for some speculative future war with China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Brooklyn Protests

Demonstrators outside Schumer's residence reserved a good dose of their anger for the longtime Democratic Party powerbroker himself and fellow New York congressional delegation member Hakeem Jeffries for not doing enough to confront the climate crisis being too cozy with the fossil fuel industry.

"It is incredible to see how they think they can play with our lives and the dignified living that we deserve — and they do it right in front of us by lying to us, and not taking the stands that they had promised to be taking," Estefania Galvis, workers development Director at NICE – New Immigrant Community Empowerment — told me.

NICE is a non-profit organization advocating for vulnerable immigrants — many of them from the perilous building and construction industry — especially deadly jobs to Latino workers.

Latino workers make up roughly 10-percent of New York State's workforce but represented 20.5-percent of worker fatalities in 2019.

Across the United States, Latino worker fatalities in all industries have increased nearly 18% over the last six years.

"People's lives are on the line, right now, especially undocumented people," Galvis continued. "We saw it with the storm that happened [in New York City] a couple of weeks ago; we have seen it on the border; we have seen it in the [detention center] camps — immigrants that are undocumented don't have any human rights in this country — and neither do working-class people."
MSM Favors Infighting Over Substance

Jolliffe also aimed the mainstream corporate media outlets for focusing on all of the in-fighting and politics surrounding the Build Back Better plan instead of "what's actually in the bill."

"I just think there are failures happening all around," she said. "The climate component is most important to me personally. I'm a person who comes from a place privilege, but there's also lots of other things in there that will help people living paycheck-to-paycheck."

One of the things the Build Back Better plan seeks to do is extend existing child tax credits for another three years. The child tax credit, expanded last March, provides pandemic-stricken American families with limited financial relief — up to $300 per child.

However, Joe Manchin is attempting to undermine the entire relief effort by insisting families be subjected to a work requirement and a $60,000 income cap to qualify for monthly aid.

Congress approved the $725.8 billion military budget earlier this week without any muss or fuss. The Defense Department will get $29 billion, 4% more than was allocated last year.

"Give us citizenship, and give us the tools to be able to have dignified lives. That's what we need right now," Galvis added. "Stop funding wars, and stop funding the rich, and stop funding [big] tech. Stop giving away our money to the billionaires — tax the rich and give us a dignified living. We want what we need, and we want it right now. This is the time to do it."

Editorial: Bannon’s subpoena defiance is illegal, yet the ‘law and order’ party defends it

Steve Bannon speaks with reporters in New York on Aug. 20, 2020. A lawyer for President Donald Trump's former chief strategist says Bannon won’t comply with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol because Trump is asserting executive privilege.
(AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)Associated Press

By the Editorial Board

For anyone who still needs it, most Republican House members last week provided more evidence that the GOP — once the “law-and-order” party — is now the party that coddles criminals. By overwhelmingly voting against holding Donald Trump crony Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for his refusal to testify in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, this shameful roster (including all six of Missouri’s GOP House members) is once again running interference for a lawless ex-president who tried to overthrow a valid election.

This certainly isn’t the first time congressional Republicans have sided with criminality lately. Not once but twice, most of them voted against holding Trump accountable for clearly impeachable acts (extorting a foreign ally for political support, and inciting the Capitol riot). They defended or silently tolerated Trump’s outrageous string of self-serving, swampy pardons for criminally charged or convicted supporters like Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Bannon himself. They’re currently defending wealthy tax cheats by blocking Democratic efforts to strengthen Internal Revenue Service collection powers.

The crime that Bannon committed to merit Thursday’s House vote to hold him in contempt is, like so much of the lawbreaking the GOP tries to ignore these days, pretty clear-cut: When Congress issues a subpoena, the subject of that subpoena is legally required to provide the information being sought — in this case, testimony about Bannon’s conversations with Trump before the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon’s excuse for refusing is that Trump is claiming executive privilege, which legal scholars say is nonsense because Trump is no longer president.

The strategy for protecting Bannon included a pathetic diversionary tactic by Republican Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, who prattled on, flush with fake outrage, about “serious security vulnerabilities that have not been addressed by this House in 11 months after Jan. 6.” As if security lapses excuse what Trump and his violent minions did that day. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of just nine Republicans who voted to hold Bannon accountable for thumbing his nose at a legally issued congressional subpoena, saw right through Davis’ act, saying: “Don’t let my side use the security structure as the straw man.”

Republicans also argued Bannon should be out of the reach of the investigation because he is just a private citizen. Bannon’s own argument that he’s shielded by Trump’s (nonexistent) executive privilege would seem to suggest otherwise.

This really isn’t that complicated: A congressional probe to establish exactly who did what in advance of a mob attack on the seat of America’s government is not only justified but required. Congress has the legal authority to subpoena relevant witnesses for that probe. Those who defy such subpoenas are breaking the law.

And the party that tries to shield those lawbreakers should stop pretending it cherishes law and order.

Editorial: Bannon’s subpoena defiance is illegal, yet the ‘law and order’ party defends it | Editorial | stltoday.com

FOOD IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Is there a constitutional right to food? Mainers to decide

By PATRICK WHITTLE

1 of 6

Phil Retberg feeds his hogs at the Quill's End Farm, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021, in Penobscot, Maine. A ballot question in will give Maine voters a chance to decide on a first-in-the-nation "right to food amendment."

AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty


PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Depending on whom you ask, Maine’s proposed “right to food” constitutional amendment would simply put people in charge of how and what they eat — or would endanger animals and food supplies, and turn urban neighborhoods into cattle pastures.

For supporters, the language is short and to the point, ensuring the right to grow vegetables and raise livestock in an era when corporatization threatens local ownership of the food supply, a constitutional experiment that has never been tried in any state.

For opponents and skeptics, it’s deceptively vague, representing a threat to food safety and animal welfare, and could embolden residents to raise cows in their backyards in cities like Portland and Bangor.

In the Nov. 2 election, voters will be asked if they favor an amendment to the Maine Constitution “to declare that all individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being.”

The proposal is essentially “the 2nd Amendment of food,” said Republican Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, who proposed the amendment, likening it to the U.S. constitutional amendment that assures the right to bear arms.

He says it’s a common-sense amendment that would make sure the government can’t stop people from doing things like saving and exchanging seeds, as long as they don’t violate public or property rights.

“There’s a lot of disturbing trends in the food category, with the power and control that corporations are taking over our food,” said Faulkingham, who is also a commercial lobster fisherman. “We want to protect people’s ability to grow gardens, grow and raise their own food.”

Faulkingham and others said the amendment is a response to growing corporate ownership of the food supply. They see the amendment as a way to wrest control of food from big landowners and giant retailers.

But Julie Ann Smith, executive director of the Maine Farm Bureau, the largest farmers advocacy organization in the state, argued the language of the amendment is so broad that it could make the food supply less safe.

That’s a problem in a state where potatoes, blueberries, maple syrup and dairy products are all key pieces of the economy, she said. The amendment could empower residents to buy and consume food that isn’t subject to inspections, proper refrigeration and other safety checks, Smith worried.

“We think it’s very dangerous to have the words ‘to consume the food of your own choosing.’ That is so broad and dangerous,” Smith said. “It has the potential to cause serious problems in food safety, animal welfare.”

Smith said the farm bureau is also concerned that the amendment could override local ordinances that prevent residents from raising livestock anywhere they choose.

Supporters of the proposal, including Faulkingham, said that local rules would still be enforced, and that the amendment would not mean you could do things like raise chickens anywhere you want or fish commercially without a license.

The amendment proposal is an outgrowth of the right-to-food movement, sometimes called the food sovereignty movement, which has expanded in recent years in Maine and states around the U.S. and Canada.

The movement comprises a patchwork of small farmers, raw milk enthusiasts, libertarians, back-to-the-land advocates, anti-corporatists and others who want to ensure local control of food systems.

Maine enacted a food sovereignty law, the nation’s first of its kind, in 2017. The law allows local governments to OK small food producers selling directly to customers on site. The law was especially popular with sellers of raw milk, which can be legally sold in Maine but is more restricted in many other states.

The nationwide food sovereignty movement has yielded similar laws in states including Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota, and pushes for the same elsewhere.

The amendment is likely to find support among Maine’s self-sufficient, practical Yankee set, said Mark Brewer, a political scientist with the University of Maine.

However, Brewer agreed with criticism that the amendment is so vague that it’s unclear what it would actually do.

“I’d be more interested in how it could play out in the courts,” Brewer said. “If you want to raise cattle within the city limits when city laws say you can’t, but the Constitution says you can. Then what happens?”

For Heather Retberg, a farmer in the small town of Penobscot, the concerns about cows turning up in cities are a silly distraction from the real goal of the proposal.

Retberg, who has a 100-acre farm with cows, pigs, chicken and goats, said the proposal is “an antidote to corporate control of our food supply” and a chance for rural communities to become self-sufficient when it comes to what food they grow and eat.

It’s also a chance to tackle the problem of the state’s “food deserts,” where residents don’t have enough access to healthy food, Retberg said.

“This shifts the power to the individuals in a rights framework, instead of the corporations,” Retberg said. “It gives us more voice in how we want our food systems to be, and how we want our communities to look.”

Wuhan Coronavirus Research Coverup Allegations Prompt NIH to Give EcoHealth an Ultimatum

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given U.S. research group EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) until Monday to release all of its NIH-funded coronavirus research data, after it failed to reveal that an engineered coronavirus was found to be more infectious in mice than other forms. Republicans have subsequently accused the group of lying to NIH.

© Niphon Khiawprommas/Getty A stock photo shows a laboratory worker looking down a microscope. EcoHealth Alliance's past coronavirus research has sparked controversy throughout the pandemic.

Both organizations have been thrust into the spotlight by the fact the agency funded EHA research into coronaviruses in Wuhan—the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases were reported—over the past several years.

The work, funded by a multi-year grant awarded in 2014 and done in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), involved engineering coronaviruses to see how they affected mice. Critics say this was risky and could potentially have led to human infections or even the COVID pandemic.

The NIH has repeatedly denied that this was possible. On Wednesday, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins said in a statement that the NIH-funded virus research "could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic."

His statement came the same day the health agency demanded that the EHA hand over any unpublished data related to the studies after it failed to immediately report back to the NIH when a coronavirus experiment produced the significant finding that the mice became sicker.

On Wednesday, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak outlined the NIH's demands to EHA in a letter to Republican Representative James Comer.

In the experiment, the mice infected with the coronaviruses had been bioengineered to have a protein on their cells, called ACE2, to which the viruses could attach. Humans also have this protein, with the idea being that the experiments could more accurately illustrate the risk that these viruses pose to us despite only mice being involved.

According to Tabak's letter, the experiments showed that "laboratory mice infected with the SHC014 WIV1 bat coronavirus became sicker than those infected with the WIV1 bat coronavirus."

Tabak described this as an "unexpected result" that the researchers had not deliberately set out to produce, but that they nonetheless should have reported it in case new biosafety measures were needed.

At the same time, Tabak said that bat coronaviruses studied under the EHA grant "could not have been the source of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic" since they were too genetically different.

As far as the NIH is concerned, this is a breach of the terms of the grant that the agency had awarded to EHA. EHA was required to tell the NIH if any of the experiments revealed what is known as a one log viral growth increase (a factor of ten).

He wrote: "EcoHealth failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant," Tabak wrote. "EcoHealth is being notified that they have five days from today [October 20] to submit to NIH any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted under this award."

EHA disputed the NIH's allegation that it breached the terms of the grant. In a statement to Newsweek, EHA said there had been a "misconception" about the grant's terms and said that they did publish the research findings "as soon as we were made aware" in April 2018.

"NIH reviewed those data and did not indicate that secondary review of our research was required, in fact year 5 funding was allowed to progress without delay," EHA said.

Republicans in the House Oversight Committee said this EHA blunder was proof that NIH "were lied to" about controversial gain of function research.


🚨🚨🚨

July 28th NIH says “no NIAID funding was approved for Gain of Function research at the WIV.”

Obviously, they were lied to.

NIH confirmed today EcoHealth and the WIV conducted GOF research on bat coronaviruses.

@PeterDaszak with EcoHealth hid it from the USG. pic.twitter.com/Ou3ZLKto0L— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) October 20, 2021

The development comes after scientists called for Peter Daszak, the president of EHA to quit, accusing him of concealing conflicts of interest, withholding critical information, and misleading public opinion during the COVID pandemic.

Newsweek has previously reported on how an activist sleuth group named DRASTIC, standing for "Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19," uncovered details of WIV research in China, as well as on Daszak's collaboration with WIV director and bat virologist Shi Zhengli, and the scrutiny surrounding the EcoHealth Alliance.

Daszak has co-authored nearly a dozen papers with Shi Zhengli, and funnelled at least $600,000 of U.S. government funding to her research.

A Freedom of Information Act request from earlier this year showed that Daszak orchestrated a letter to squelch talk of a COVID lab leak. He drafted it, reached out to fellow scientists to sign it, and worked behind the scenes to make it seem that the letter represented the views of a broad range of experts.

"This statement will not have the EcoHealth Alliance logo on it and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person," he wrote in his pitch to the co-signatories. Scientists whose work had overlapped with the WIV agreed not to sign it so they could "put it out in a way that doesn't link it back to our collaboration."

Related Articles
Scientists React As NIH Head Francis Collins Calls Wuhan Lab Leak Theories 'Misinformation'

January 6 insurrection and Facebook: Internal docs paint a damning picture

Just days after insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6th, Facebook's Chief Operational Officer Sheryl Sandberg downplayed her company's role in what had happened  

.

© CNN Illustration/Getty Images

By Donie O'Sullivan, Tara Subramaniam and Clare Duffy, 

CNN Bsiness OCT 23,2021

"We know this was organized online. We know that," she said in an interview with Reuters. "We... took down QAnon, Proud Boys, Stop the Steal, anything that was talking about possible violence last week. Our enforcement's never perfect so I'm sure there were still things on Facebook. I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate and don't have our standards and don't have our transparency."

But internal Facebook documents reviewed by CNN suggest otherwise. The documents, including an internal post-mortem and one document showing in real time countermeasures Facebook employees were belatedly implementing, paint a picture of a company that was in fact fundamentally unprepared for how the Stop the Steal movement used its platform to organize, and that only truly swung into action after the movement, which played a pivotal role in the insurrection, had turned violent.

Asked by CNN about Sandberg's quote and whether she stood by it, a Facebook spokesperson pointed to the greater context around Sandberg's quote. She had been noting that Jan. 6 organization happened largely online, including but not limited to on Facebook's platforms, the spokesperson said.

The documents were provided by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen as evidence to support disclosures she made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen's legal counsel. The redacted versions were obtained by a consortium of 17 US news organizations, including CNN.

One of Haugen's central allegations about the company focuses on the attack on the Capitol. In a SEC disclosure she alleges, "Facebook misled investors and the public about its role perpetuating misinformation and violent extremism relating to the 2020 election and January 6th insurrection."

Facebook denies the premise of Haugen's conclusions and says Haugen has cherry-picked documents to present an unfair portrayal of the company.

"The responsibility for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them. We took steps to limit content that sought to delegitimize the election, including labeling candidates' posts with the latest vote count after Mr. Trump prematurely declared victory, pausing new political advertising and removing the original #StopTheSteal Group in November," Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told CNN Friday.

"After the violence at the Capitol erupted and as we saw continued attempts to organize events to dispute the outcome of the presidential election, we removed content with the phrase 'stop the steal' under our Coordinating Harm policy and suspended Trump from our platform."

Facebook also on Friday night published a blog post by its vice president of Integrity, Guy Rosen, about its efforts around the 2020 election.

"Our enforcement was piecemeal"

Among the tens of thousands of pages of documents Haugen provided is an internal analysis of how the Stop the Steal and Patriot Party movements spread on Facebook, first reported by BuzzFeed News earlier this year.

"Hindsight is 20:20," the author or authors of the analysis, who are not identifiable from what was provided, write. "[A]t the time it was very difficult to know whether what we were seeing was a coordinated effort to delegitimize the election, or whether it was protected free expression by users who were afraid and confused and deserved our empathy. But hindsight being 20:20 makes it all the more important to look back to learn what we can about the growth of the election delegitimatizing movements that grew, spread conspiracy, and helped incite the Capitol insurrection."

The analysis found that the policies and procedures Facebook had in place were simply not up to the task of slowing, much less halting, the "meteoric" growth of Stop the Steal. For instance, those behind the analysis noted that Facebook treated each piece of content and person or group within Stop the Steal individually, rather than as part of a whole, with dire results.

"Almost all of the fastest growing FB Groups were Stop the Steal during their peak growth," the analysis says. "Because we were looking at each entity individually, rather than as a cohesive movement, we were only able to take down individual Groups and Pages once they exceeded a violation threshold. We were not able to act on simple objects like posts and comments because they individually tended not to violate, even if they were surrounded by hate, violence, and misinformation."

This approach did eventually change, according to the analysis -- after it was too late.

"After the Capitol insurrection and a wave of Storm the Capitol events across the country, we realized that the individual delegitimizing Groups, Pages, and slogans did constitute a cohesive movement," the analysis says.

Video: Messages show what employees were saying about Facebook's role in the insurrection (CNN)

This was not the only way in which Facebook had failed to anticipate something like Stop the Steal, or in which its response was lacking.

Facebook has for some time now had a policy banning "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on its platforms. This ban allows it to take action against, for instance, the Russian troll army that worked to interfere with the 2016 US election through accounts and pages set up to look as if they were American But, the analysis notes with emphasis, the company had "little policy around coordinated authentic harm" -- that is, little to stop people organizing under their real names and not hiding their intention to get the country to reject the results of the election.

Stop the Steal and Patriot Party groups "were not directly mobilizing offline harm, nor were they directly promoting militarization," the analysis says. "Instead, they were amplifying and normalizing misinformation and violent hate in a way that delegitimized a free and fair democratic election. The harm existed at the network level: an individual's speech is protected, but as a movement, it normalized delegitimization and hate in a way that resulted in offline harm and harm to the norms underpinning democracy."

The analysis does note, however, that once Facebook saw the results of Stop the Steal on January 6th and took action, it was able to deploy measures that stymied the growth of both Stop the Steal and Patriot Party groups.

Facebook's Stone told CNN, "Facebook has taken extraordinary steps to address harmful content and we'll continue to do our part. We also closely worked with law enforcement, both before January 6th and in the days and weeks since, with the goal of ensuring that information linking the people responsible for January 6th to their crimes is available."


Pulling levers

Haugen began gathering evidence about the company before she eventually left the tech giant last May. To reduce the chance of getting caught taking screenshots of internal Facebook systems, she used her phone to take photographs of her computer screen.

As the insurrection was underway in Washington and Facebook was trying to get a handle on the situation, Haugen was snapping pictures, documenting the company's response.

One of the documents she captured, titled "Capitol Protest BTG [Break the Glass] Response," was a chart of measures Facebook could take in response to the January 6th attack. The chart appears to have been prepared beforehand; at the time Haugen photographed it, a little less than two hours after the Capitol was first breached, the company had instituted some of those measures while others were still under consideration. Among the potential actions listed in the chart were demoting "content deemed likely to violate our community standards in the areas of hate speech, graphic violence, and violence and incitement."

The page labeled these as "US2020 Levers, previously rolled back."

Those "levers," as Facebook refers to them, are measures -- guardrails -- that the company put in place before last year's Presidential election in an attempt to slow the spread of hate and misinformation on the platform. Facebook has not been clear in its public statements about what measures it did roll back after the election and why it did so at a time of tumult when the sitting president was calling the results of the vote into question.

But according to the "Capitol Protest BTG response" document, the guardrails Facebook reimplemented on January 6th included reducing the visibility of posts likely to be reported and freezing "commenting on posts in Groups that start to have a high rate of hate speech and violence & incitement comments," among others.

In the SEC disclosure, Haugen alleges that these levers were reinstated "only after the insurrection flared up."

Asked about the decisions to dial the levers back and then push them out again, Stone said, "In phasing in and then adjusting additional measures before, during and after the election, we took into account specific on-platforms signals and information from our ongoing, regular engagement with law enforcement. When those signals changed, so did the measures."


A through line

When Facebook executives posted messages publicly and internally condemning the riot, some employees pushed back, even suggesting Facebook might have had some culpability.

"There were dozens of Stop the Steal groups active up until yesterday, and I doubt they minced words about their intentions," one employee wrote in response to a post from Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer.3

Another wrote, "All due respect, but haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence? We've been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn't be surprised it's now out of control."

Other Facebook employees went further, claiming decisions by company leadership over the years had helped create the conditions that paved the way for an attack on the US Capitol.

Responding to Schroepfer's post, one staffer wrote that, "leadership overrides research based policy decisions to better serve people like the groups inciting violence today. Rank and file workers have done their part to identify changes to improve our platforms but have been actively held back."

Another staffer, referencing years of controversial and questionable decision-making by Facebook leadership around political speech concluded, "history will not judge us kindly."

A new whistleblower reportedly claimed Facebook exempted right-wing outlet Breitbart from certain rules because it didn't want to 'start a fight with Steve Bannon'

Katie Canales
Fri, October 22, 2021

Then-President Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. Getty

Facebook "whitelisted" Breitbart to avoid angering Republicans, a new whistleblower told The Washington Post.

When an employee questioned the move, an exec reportedly said "do you want to start a fight with Steve Bannon?"

Facebook has long been ensnared in a political war over how it moderates users and content.

Another whistleblower has come forward with claims against Facebook, according to The Washington Post.

The anonymous former employee told the outlet that Facebook's Public Policy team - helmed by the company's now-vice president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan - defended "whitelisting" the right-wing news outlet Breitbart, run at the time by former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon.

"Whitelisting" refers to exempting certain elite, high-profile figures online from rules that apply to ordinary users. When Facebook defended "whitelisting" Brietbart, an employee questioned the move, the whistleblower told The Post.

Kaplan answered, "Do you want to start a fight with Steve Bannon?" according to the whistleblower, as The Post reported.

The whistleblower is also behind an anonymous affidavit to the Securities Exchange Commission, though their name is redacted, the Post reported. The move is similar to the actions of Frances Haugen, who earlier this year shared documents with the Wall Street Journal and testified before a Congressional committee.

The affidavit alleges Facebook officials regularly deprioritized stamping out misinformation, hate speech, and other content to stay in favor of former President Donald Trump and his supporters, the Post reported. Another reason cited was concern that Facebook's user growth could take a hit.

A Facebook spokesperson denied the firm ever exempted any publisher from its rules and criticized the Washington Post's reporting.

"This is beneath the Washington Post, which during the last five years would only report stories after deep reporting with corroborating sources," they said. "There has never been a whitelist that exempts publishers, including Breitbart, from Facebook's rules against misinformation."

A system known internally as XCheck, acknowledged by the company last month, allows hundreds of thousands of politicians, celebrities, and other individuals who are "newsworthy," "influential," or "PR risky" to be exempt from certain rules, the Journal reported in September. Facebook has said it's trying to eliminate the system.

Many conservatives have condemned Facebook and other platforms for censoring them and favoring liberal views, even as right-wing content flourishes online. The company is aware of scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, but especially from the right.

The company tweaked its algorithm in 2017 but found that the change could slam right-wing publishers, a feat that could have angered Republicans in power during Trump's presidency. To offset the dip, Facebook crushed traffic to progressive news sites like Mother Jones, the publication reported in October 2020.

Alberta government says jobs, economy, COVID to be focus of fall legislature sitting

EDMONTON — The Alberta government plans a busy fall legislature sitting aimed at adding jobs and diversifying the economy while focusing on tamping down the renewed surge of COVID-19.

Government house leader Jason Nixon says this will include proposed legislation on recognizing professional credentials to address labour shortages. The bill will be introduced by Premier Jason Kenney.

“Our focus will be on Alberta’s workforce, a couple of bills around diversifying the economy, a big focus on building infrastructure for our future, (and) growing our resources, particularly on the energy side,” Nixon said in an interview Friday.

There will also be new initiatives on environmental protection and conservation.

Nixon said there will be 18 to 20 bills for the sitting, which begins Monday and is scheduled to run to the first week of December.

“It’s a very robust fall agenda,” he said.

Nixon said the government will continue to take steps to reduce COVID-19 cases, which have severely stressed the health system.

No COVID-19-specific bills are planned, he said, noting they were passed in previous sittings.

“There’s certainly other stuff to be done to manage the pandemic … but we’ll stand ready if Alberta Health needs us to pass any legislation to deal with the pandemic."

He said debate in the chamber is expected to return to some semblance of normalcy.

In the spring sitting, both the United Conservative government and the Opposition NDP reduced their numbers in the chamber to prevent the spread of the virus.

This time, with all NDP members and all but one on the UCP side vaccinated, all will be allowed back in for debate.

The lone UCP member has a medical exemption and will be tested regularly, said Nixon.

He said there are still masking rules and members will try to maintain distancing where possible.

The NDP said it plans to hold the government accountable for what went disastrously wrong on COVID-19.

“This fall sitting of the legislature will be laser-focused on getting answers from the UCP on why they’ve failed Albertans so miserably in managing the devastating fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Christina Gray, the NDP house leader.

“Since July 15, more than 85,000 additional Albertans have been infected with the virus and 700 have died.”

Gray said the NDP will call for an all-party inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic with the power to compel documents and testimony.

Nixon said the government will not agree to such a motion. He said it would be wrong to redeploy vital health resources right now and that Kenney has promised an eventual review of how the province handled the pandemic.

Kenney has also promised to bring forward a motion to ratify and act on the results of Monday's provincewide referendum on Canada’s equalization program.

Final results aren’t in from Edmonton, but figures from Calgary and other cities suggest the referendum will pass with about 60 per cent in support of urging the federal government to remove the principle of equalization from the Constitution.

Kenney has said the issue is not about removing equalization, something no province can do unilaterally, but about getting leverage to negotiate other issues surrounding federal transfers to attain a better deal with Ottawa.

Political scientist Jared Wesley said Kenney will likely continue to focus on initiatives such as the equalization referendum, if only to change the narrative on his low popularity ratings.

“The premier will be spending most of his time, if he has anything to say about it, outside the province, stumping for this fair deal,” said Wesley, with the University of Alberta.

COVID-19 numbers have been trending down in recent weeks. But Kenney and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province's chief medical officer of health, say the situation remains precarious.

On Friday, there were just over 10,000 active COVID-19 cases in Alberta. And there were 191 COVID-19 patients in intensive care.

Alberta’s fourth wave troubles began after Kenney lifted almost all COVID-19 related health restrictions as of July 1, boasting that the pandemic had moved to the “endemic” phase and there was no need to plan for a renewed case surge.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

With more humpback whales in B.C. waters, entanglements are on the rise, too

Roshini Nair 

CBC

© Submitted by Sydney Dixon A mother humpback whale — dubbed Pinky — is a common visitor to Barkley Sound near Ucluelet, B.C., between April and late October.

It takes a village to disentangle a humpback whale — or, in the case of a mother and her calf off the coast of Vancouver Island last week, a community of whale watchers, researchers, Mounties, Parks Canada staff and a team of highly skilled professionals from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO).

These operations are becoming much more common in B.C. waters as the numbers of humpbacks — and people on the water spotting whales in distress — increase.

"There are so many eyes and ears out there," said Paul Cottrell with marine mammal rescue at DFO and a global expert on whale disentanglement.


The whale and her calf were first spotted entangled in fishing gear on Oct. 7 near Barkley Sound off Ucluelet by Sydney Dixon, research director for the Tofino-based Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society.

"This is a female humpback whale that is really well known and beloved in Barkley Sound," said Dixon, who is also a Zodiac skipper for Jamie's Whaling Station, a tour operator on the west coast of the Island.

The whale, known as Pinky to locals, has migrated to the waters off Barkley Sound fairly consistently since the early 2000s, says Dixon.

"She's brought several babies back to our area to our area as well," she said.

Dixon said she was conducting a whale-watching tour when she noticed floats from what appeared to be a crab or prawn trap following behind the pair.

"I realized that either she or her calf were entangled in some fishing gear," she said.
An increasing problem

Entanglements have become more common over the past decade, says Cottrell.

"In the last five years, we've seen an uptick from three to 10 confirmed entanglements to ...10 to 25 animals a year entangled," he said.

Part of the reason, he says, is because there are a lot more humpback whales in inshore waters. For example, the humpback whale population off northeastern Vancouver Island reached 86 in 2018, up from just seven in 2004.

"Getting these animals back is a great news story, but there are more entanglements because we do have [fishing] gear in the water," he said.

The effects of entanglement on whales depends on how much and what type of gear is involved, and where on the body it is.

Some whales might carry gear for years, migrating across the ocean without great effect. But if it interferes with their feeding or if it digs into a whale's skin and causes infection, entanglement can be fatal.

The type of gear found on Pinky and her calf, Cottrell said, was a polysteel rope — a particularly abrasive type that can cut into the skin and tighten up and cause significant harm.

Cottrell said there is significant work going on to reduce entanglements through gear modifications, ropeless technology and ridding the ocean of abandoned gear.

"It will never stop all of them," he said. "Any vertical or horizontal rope line in the water is a potential entanglement. We've had anchor lines, gillnets, all sorts of fishing gear rope … it really is a lot of different things these animals get caught up in."
Highly skilled, dangerous work

Cottrell is a part of a small group of professionals who are specially trained in whale disentanglement. Cottrell is part of the International Whaling Commission's Global Whale Entanglement Response Network that is working to create training and best practices for whale disentanglement.

"There are not a lot of us around the world that do this. There's probably under 25 folks," he said.

 Submitted by Paul Cottrell The Fisheries and Oceans Canada team pose with the gear they were able to remove from the mother and calf humpback pair on Oct. 13.

The work is highly skilled and dangerous. Cottrell's team deals with some of the largest animals on the planet — many of whom are extremely agitated and distressed by their circumstances. In 2017, a volunteer whale rescuer died in New Brunswick after being struck by the right whale he was disentangling.

"[In my experience], these animals are not aware at all that we're helping. They're trying to get away from us, they're agitated, they definitely do not assist us at all," said Cottrell, who has done this work for the past 15 years.

A mother and a calf present an additional challenge.

"You never know how the mom is going to react when you're working with the calf," he said. "We've had animals where the moms act aggressive and other moms that don't but are usually right there touching the calf while we're rescuing the calf and cutting the gear off."

Gear free and bound for Hawaii

In the case of Pinky and her calf, it wasn't even clear which one had been entangled.

Dixon alerted Fisheries and Oceans authorities through the mammal marine hotline and kept in sight of the pair until help arrived.

But — as whales are wont to do — the pair submerged into the ocean's depths and left her would-be rescuers scrambling to find them.

"It's really important to keep eyes on an entangled whale if you are able to, so that you don't lose them. Because if you do lose them, the chances of them being refound and disentangled goes down dramatically," Dixon said.

It took days of searching by RCMP, researchers, fisheries officers and whale-watching teams before the pair was spotted again and tagged with a satellite tracker. Then, a rescue attempt was made.

On Oct. 13, Cottrell's team were able to free the whales by attaching a drag on the trailing gear which started to pull it loose as the animals travelled.

The mother and calf will now migrate to their wintering grounds in Hawaii.

"The good news is they're gear free and the injuries they have look minor overall in terms of what the damage could have been," he said.

This disentanglement was the 15th occurrence this year, Cottrell says, and one of three that were reported last week along Vancouver Island.

While the work of disentangling itself is specialized, Cottrell's team has been training different groups on how to attach a satellite tracker to whales to save time and allow a specialized team to follow up.

It's part of the collaborative efforts to protect these giant mammals, which can live up to 80 years.

"I feel so lucky to do what I do," Cottrell said. "It really takes a team to do that."

SVABODA

Defence Department vows to examine extremism in Canadian-trained foreign troops


OTTAWA — The Defence Department has vowed to review how the military screens for extremist views in the foreign troops it works withafter a report found that far-right radicals in the Ukrainian army boasted on social media that they received training from the Canadian Armed Forces.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The study this month out of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., found that members of Centuria have accessed training from Canada, among other NATO countries, and taken part in joint military exercises.

Centuria is a group that holds ties to far-right movements, venerates Nazi figures and aims to protect what it calls Europe's "ethnic identity,"according to the report from the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

In response to the study, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center this week called for an investigation by the Defence Department.

"I think they have to reassess the program, because these are the last people on earth whom you want to train," Efraim Zuroff, director of the centre's Israel office, said in a phone interview from Jerusalem.

"In other words, these are people who might turn those weapons later, not against the Russians but against people among their own population who they don't like or they don't agree with and God knows what," said Zuroff, who also carries the title of the centre's chief Nazi hunter.

The Defence Department says Canada currently relies on the Ukrainian government to vet its security forces.

"If Canadian soldiers suspect that their Ukrainian counterparts or trainees hold racist views, they are removed immediately. There is no burden of proof on the CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) to demonstrate this beyond a reasonable doubt," the department said in an email.

Nonetheless, the study's findings prompted the department to conduct a "thorough review of this report, including whether current policies and procedures in place are sufficiently stringent to flag and prevent the CAF from unwittingly aiding those whose views it fundamentally opposes."

None of the Western governments contacted in the study, including Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, vet Ukrainian training recipients for extremist views and ties, the report said.

"The upshot of this report is that between these two sides, nobody is actually doing their job," Tarik Cyril Amar, a professor at Columbia University and expert on Ukraine, said in a virtual interview from Istanbul.

"If you're a state or a military who makes your trainers, your facilities, your weapons available for helping somebody how to learn to kill, you are responsible," he said.

Far-right militias played a prominent role in the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that kicked off in 2014 following the Maidan protests and revolution in Kiev.

Extremist vigilantes associated with the ultranationalist Azov movement and other "volunteer battalions" helped Ukraine's regular army defend its territory against separatist proxies backed by Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region and supported separatists in the Donbas area.

Since then, Ukraine's armed forces have integrated Azov into their ranks and said that extremist elements have been weeded out, but observers remain skeptical.

"Evidence uncovered in this paper suggests that since 2018, the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy (NAA), Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for Western military assistance to the country, has been home to Centuria," the report says.

"The group, led by individuals with ties to Ukraine’s internationally active far-right Azov movement, has attracted multiple members, including current and former officer cadets of the NAA now serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Apparent members have appeared in photos giving Nazi salutes and made seemingly extremist statements online."

As recently as April 2021, Centuria claimed that members participated in joint military exercises with France, the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany and Poland, the study says.

"Currently, per the NAA, dedicated permanent advisers from Germany, Canada and Denmark, as well as experts of NATO’s Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP), are involved in shaping the curriculum the Academy teaches to its students," the report states.

"In 2018, for example, the NAA unveiled a high-tech 'Delta Classroom' sponsored by Canada."

Ivan Katchanovski, a specialist on Ukrainian politics and history at the University of Ottawa, says Canadian policy turns a “blind eye” to ultranationalist extremism and human rights violations in parts of the country.

“This silence basically is used by the far right in Ukraine and by the Ukrainian government as immunity, as a sign of support, as a green light,” he said.

This would not be the first time western governments have backed security forces abroad while looking the other way on extremist ideologies.

“During the Cold War, in Central America in particular, there were similar kinds of policies ignoring the far-right movements and human rights abuses,” Katchanovski said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2021.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

PURGE, NEW WOMEN LEADERSHIP ONLY, FLATTEN THE DND 
Taxpayers spent up to $720K on salaries for military leaders sidelined by sexual misconduct crisis

Ashley Burke CBC

© Murray Brewster/The Canadian Press 

Multiple senior military leaders have been placed on temporary leave or permanently moved out of their roles in connection with the sexual misconduct crisis.

Taxpayers have spent an estimated $639,000 to $720,900 on salaries for high-ranking military officers who have been moved out of their jobs in connection with the military's sexual misconduct crisis, according to a CBC News analysis.

CBC News analyzed the pay ranges for eight military leaders and the amount of time that has passed since they were shuffled out of their jobs. Some of them are on leave with pay, some are transitioning out of the military and some have been placed in other positions within the Canadian Forces.

While it's difficult to pinpoint a figure given the information publicly available, the analysis indicates the federal government has spent roughly $639,000 to $720,000 on salaries for these individuals since they were moved out of their leadership roles.

The Department of National Defence says all military members have the right to due process and are entitled to their pay during military police investigations. DND says Canadian law ensures that a workplace cannot punish employees unless they've been proven guilty.

CBC's analysis does not include individuals who retired, were removed from their roles and placed in other staff positions, or used vacation time to cover the entirety of theirtemporary leave.

The former chief of the defence staff, retired general Jonathan Vance, is collecting his pension and awaiting his criminal trial on one count of obstruction of justice. Vance's salary before he retired in July 2020 was $260,600 to $306,500, according to an order-in-council.

The salary figure, and the number of officers under investigation, reflect the scale of the misconduct crisis and its effects on the Canadian military, said Megan MacKenzie of Simon Fraser University.

"This figure is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cost, both financial and emotional and reputational, for the defence forces," said MacKenzie, the Simons Chair in International Law and Human Rights Security.

"I think it's signaling that we really need leadership on this issue. We need civilian leaders. We need the prime minister and the minister of defence to come to help to solve this issue."

MacKenzie said the true cost of the sexual misconduct crisis goes beyond the salary figure. She said service members are taking medical leave or exiting the military altogether, while the military struggles with the effects on recruitment and the risk of lawsuits.

Eleven high-ranking military officers have been temporarily or permanently removed from their leadership roles since February in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct, or in response to how they handled sexual misconduct claims.

CBC News has a full list of the cases here.

'Case after case'

MacKenzie said she can't think of another defence force in the world that has seen so many senior leaders face sexual misconduct allegations or be placed on leave at the same time. She's been researching military culture for a decade and is leading an international study into military sexual misconduct in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

In other countries, she said, high-profile scandals erupt and then die down after official reviews or policy changes.

"But what's happened in Canada is that you have case after case, multiple cases at the same time," she said. "There is no recovery. There's no moment between scandals and you have this sort of growing groundswell of calls for serious action."

MacKenzie said it's not unusual to place military members on paid leave while they're under investigation. The problem, she said, is that some of the investigations are taking "a very long time," with service members stuck at home while they wait to learn the outcome.

She said it's been a common tactic for militaries to try to wait out public anger by placing members on paid leave.

"There are so many individuals under investigation, so these investigations have to be handled quickly," she said.

Throughout the crisis, the military has maintained its police are conducting thorough investigations. DND said in a media statement that, as an institution based on the rule of law, the Canadian Armed Forces "must ensure all members are afforded their fundamental rights of due process, procedural fairness."

Admiral McDonald's case unresolved after almost 8 months

Admiral Art McDonald has been paid the most to date while on leave for almost eight months. He was removed from his job as the chief of defence staff in February in connection with a sexual misconduct allegation.

CBC News estimates McDonald has been paid between $149,000 and $176,00 since being suspended.

MacKenzie said she's surprised that the government hasn't been in more of a hurry to resolve McDonald's case, given the fact that he's still being paid while his old job is being done by Acting Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre. McDonald's annual salary is $232,700 to $273,700, according to an order-in-council.

The position of chief of the defence staff is a governor-in-council appointment, meaning the prime minister can dismiss the chief at any time. McDonald's lawyers revealed in August that the military police investigation had wrapped up without charging him with anything. More than two months later, the federal government hasn't decided if it will reinstate McDonald.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented yesterday on McDonald's recent public attempts to get his old job back. Trudeau said McDonald's comments were not in line with the government's focus on putting victims first and will be "taken into account as we make a final determination on the permanent post of chief of defence staff."

The Prime Minister's Office said it would not comment further when asked why it hasn't reached a decision yet on McDonald's future, or whether it's waiting until the public's focus on the misconduct crisis eases.

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's lawyers, meanwhile, say he's stuck at home collecting a salary with no work to do. Quebec prosecutors charged Fortin in August with one count of sexual assault; his criminal case is now working its way through the civilian court system.

Fortin denies the allegation. He launched a federal court battle to regain his former position as head of the vaccine rollout, arguing the federal government meddled politically in the decision to sideline him.

He was assigned a new job but his lawyers say he's been sitting at home without any assignments. CBC estimates he's collected between $81,000 and $95,000 since leaving his role with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In March, the military also placed Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson on indefinite paid leave from his role as commander of military personnel following a CBC News report on an alleged sexual assault. A military police investigation is underway into a claim he raped a 19-year-old steward on a Canadian navy ship in 1991 while docked in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

Edmundson denies the allegation and has been posted since May as a supported member at the Transition Centre in Ottawa. Since leaving his position in charge of military personnel, he's been paid an estimated $137,000 to $148,000, according to the CBC News analysis.

Edmundson's successor, Lt.-Gen. Steven Whelan, stepped aside from his role last week in response to an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations. The military also postponed last week the appointment of Lt.-Gen. Trevor Cadieu as the next commander of the army over sexual misconduct claims.

Both Whelan and Cadieu are now on leave and their individual monthly pay is estimated to be between $20,683 and $22,392, according to the military's publicly disclosed pay rates.

DND says it has full confidence in broader leadership

CBC News asked DND what it's doing in response to the number of senior leaders currently on leave from their roles. The department said that military leaders are trained to fill in for their superiors.

"As the justice system continues to dutifully proceed, we have full confidence in our broader leadership team to continue to tend to the business of defending Canada," said DND spokesperson Daniel Le Bouthillier.

Retired captain Annalise Schamuhn, who was sexually assaulted by another soldier, said she sees the number of sexual misconduct allegations being reported as an encouraging sign. Schamuhn shared her story publicly, hoping it would help lead to institutional change in the Canadian Armed Forces.

"I think the more stories and cases come out, the more it seems like things are getting worse," said Schamuhn. "But I take it as a sign that things are getting better.

"The fact that people feel comfortable coming forward, I think, is a sign of progress."