Our Navy Today - Volume 6 Issue 1

The East Coast kicked off the New Year with a flurry of activity, as His Majesty’s Canadian Ships (HMCS) Moncton and Glace Bay departed Halifax in early January for Operation Projection West Africa. While deployed, Moncton and Glace Bay will train with partner nations in the region to promote peace, security and stability.

Later in January, HMCS Fredericton will cross the Atlantic Ocean, headed for Op Reassurance, joining Standing NATO Maritime Group Two to contribute to NATO assurance and deterrence measures in Europe.

In March, HMCS Montréal will be the first East Coast frigate to deploy under the new Indo-Pacific Strategy on Op Projection Indo-Pacific. The ship will also participate in Op Artemis, our maritime security and counter-terrorism operation in the Arabian Sea.

To ensure that the Navy has what it needs – equipment, personnel and technology – in the years to come, planning and implementation has already begun.

The Director General Future Ship Capability team in Ottawa is focussed exactly on this mission. One clear priority for the team is managing crews and sailors on both coasts, especially in an era of personnel shortages. The team is preparing for a summit, tentatively scheduled for late this winter or early spring, that will discuss this very topic.

To support the RCN during this period of shortages, the team is building a list of prioritized naval positions that must be staffed. For sailors in the fleet, the end goal of this work will be to provide a better work-life balance by building a more sustainable sailing schedule and operational tempo.

The team is also building options for the future structure of the Navy. However, prior to this step, the team is first learning more about what the RCN will look like in five to 10 years and in 10 to 30 years, so they know what needs to change to support the future Navy.

HMCS Venture is the RCN’s centre of leadership excellence in 2023. Venture will instill healthy, respectful culture into all ranks, including the core concepts of the divisional system, which form the foundation of our culture. The basis of this approach will be the Leadership, Respect and Honour program, which uses active training and education to instill positive cultural change and increase our operational effectiveness. Concepts taught in the program, which has been in use since 2018, empower personnel in every part of the RCN to be better team players and to care for their peers and subordinates. The approach, which is continually evolving, will be included in all stages of career coursing immediately following basic training.

Professional development sessions with approved military sexual trauma survivor groups will be conducted for varying levels of leadership. The goal is to listen and learn from people with lived experiences.

A wide-ranging, comprehensive list of inclusive naval terminology has already been developed through extensive consultation with several organizations and advisory groups. While many of the terms are already in common use throughout the RCN, it is understood that updating the list will be a continuous process.

The RCN is currently conducting Gender Based Analysis (GBA) (Plus) reviews on its new classes of ships to identify ways to make these workspaces – our homes away from home – more inclusive for our sailors. GBA(Plus) involves taking a gender and diversity-sensitive approach to our work.  

The “plus” in GBA(Plus) acknowledges that it is not just about differences between the biological (sexes) and the socio-cultural (genders). We all have multiple characteristics that contribute to who we are. GBA(Plus) considers many other identity factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability, and how the interaction between these factors influences the way we might experience government policies and initiatives.