Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan has been appointed as Canada’s chief of defence, making her the first woman to serve as the top commander of the Canadian military.
Since April 2021, Carignan has been the military’s chief of professional conduct and culture. In the role, which was created by the federal government, Carignan was tasked with solving the issue of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces and changing the military’s culture, which had been criticised for being hostile towards women and monitories.
According to CBC News and Radio-Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to formally announce Carignan’s appointment tomorrow (July 2) ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit next week.
Carignan will succeed Gen. Wayne Eyre as leader of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who announced his plans to retire earlier this year. Since 1964, Canada has had over twenty full-time defence chiefs — all of them men.
Carignan has had a long and illustrious career in the military for over three decades, beginning in 1986 when she enlisted in the Royal Military College of Canada — six years after the college first began admitting female candidates.
In 2009, she was the Commanding Officer of the Task Force Kandahar Engineer Regiment, leading a task force of engineers during the Taliban insurgency in the restive Afghan province.
In 2016, she was promoted to Brigadier-General, becoming the world’s first female combat arms general and the first woman from a combat arms trade to rise to such ranks.
She took on the role of Chief of Staff and Army Operations, providing strategic staff support to the Commander of the Canadian Army. In her various roles, she was deployed overseas including to the Golan Heights, Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Carignan takes on her new role as the Canadian Armed Forces continues to grapple with accusations of a toxic culture of sexual misconduct.
In 2021, former Supreme Court Justice, Madame Louise Arbour conducted a review of the policies and culture within the CAF in a response to allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct within its organisation.
In her report, Arbour linked the problem of sexual misconduct specifically to the incomplete and troubled integration of women into the military’s historically male-dominated and masculine institution.
Arbour saw the military’s “toxic and sexist culture” as the “root cause” of sexual misconduct and identified sexual misconduct as one of the main reasons for the military’s continued failure to significantly increase the number of women recruits.
She included a list of 48 recommendations, many of them highlighting the need to address women’s underrepresentation in the military.
In May 2023, Carignan responded to allegations of widespread sexual misconduct, misogyny, and racism within CAF, saying that a wholistic approach was being deployed to identify the root causes of the misconducts.
“Our culture is informed by four pillars,” she said, including leadership, team work, service and identity. “What we found was that nothing is bad everywhere all the time. It is cyclical.”
“We really want to improve character development [in our leaders] ” she said. “We are working towards developing inclusive behaviours…and evaluating our leaders on inclusive behaviours.”
According to CBC News, Carignan will be officially promoted to the top job on July 18 during a change-of-command ceremony.