CANADA ANNOUNCES FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD MILITARY
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The G7 and NATO member nations’s first female military chief, Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan, was appointed, as the prime minister of Canada revealed on Wednesday.
At a ceremony on July 18, Carignan—a highly decorated soldier and mother of four children, two of whom are in the Canadian Armed Forces—will be elevated to the rank of general and succeed retiring General Wayne Eyre as head of the Defense Staff.
“I am confident that, as Canada’s new chief of the Defence Staff, she will help Canada be stronger, more secure, and ready to tackle global security challenges,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
At a press conference in Montreal, he added that Carignan takes over the leadership of the military at a pivotal moment marked by “complicated geopolitics and increased threats.”
In addition, a devastating external assessment from 2022 stated that the Canadian Armed Forces’ toxic culture is “hostile to women… (and) conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault.”
Carignan was given the responsibility of changing this culture over the course of the last three years to be more inclusive and respectful in the wake of hundreds of allegations of sexual misconduct, some of which included high-ranking officials.
Government data indicates that 16 percent of Canadian military personnel are women.
Carignan, the daughter of a police officer and a teacher, was raised in the mining town of Asbestos, Quebec.
In 1986, she enlisted in the military, three years before Canada permitted women to serve in combat capacities.
Training as a combat engineer — a role in which soldiers clear bombs and erect and destroy battlefield structures — she rose quickly through the ranks, shattering preconceptions about women warriors.
She went on to become the first woman to lead a Canadian combat unit, deploying to Afghanistan where she narrowly avoided a suicide bomber as well as an improvised explosive device that mangled a vehicle in her convoy.
Carignan has also served in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Syria, led NATO’s training mission in Iraq from 2019 to 2020, and commanded the 2nd Canadian Division — the military’s largest regiment with more than 10,000 troops.
AFP
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