TORONTO -- A new survey suggests Canadians aren't very confident in the Canadian military's ability to change its workplace culture following reports of sexual misconduct and discrimination within the forces.

According to the latest survey from Nanos Research, just 13 per cent of Canadians are confident the Canadian Armed Forces can “change its workplace to be welcoming to everyone,” while 29 per cent are “somewhat confident” and 56 per cent are either not confident or somewhat not confident.

Additionally, 61.3 per cent of women involved in the survey were either not confident or somewhat not confident in the military’s ability to change its culture.

Canadians are also not very impressed with the Canadian government’s investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and discrimination in the military, with 54 per cent of respondents indicating their perception of the investigations is either poor or very poor, while just one per cent of Canadians indicated they thought the government’s investigation had been “very good.”

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This comes a week after Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, acting chief of the defence staff, promised to create a safer environment within the military following allegations of sexual misconduct.

"We have to learn why previous approaches did not work and learn from that and incorporate those into our plan going forward," Eyre said during testimony before the House of Commons Status of Women Committee on March 23.

  • Eyre said he intends to implement a new set of guidelines for how to quickly respond to sexual misconduct allegations. He is also looking at overhauling the military’s current sexual misconduct awareness program.

Former chief of the defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance began the current program -- Operation Honour -- in 2015. Vance is under investigation for allegations of sexual misconduct that CTV News has not independently verified.

With files from CTVNews.ca Producer Sarah Turnbull

METHODOLOGY

Nanos conducted a hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,007 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between March 27 and 30, as part of an omnibus survey. Participants were randomly recruited by telephone using live agents and administered a survey online. The sample included both land- and cell-lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted by age and gender using the latest Census information and the sample is geographically stratified to be representative of Canada. The margin of error for this survey is ±3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. This study was commissioned by CTV News and the Globe and Mail and the research was conducted by Nanos Research.