Lt.-Gen. Jennie Carignan to become first woman to lead Canadian Armed Forces

Lt.-Gen. Jennie Carignan will be named Canada’s new Chief of the Defence Staff, CTV News has learned, making her the first woman to lead the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).

A change of command ceremony has been set for July 18. Gen. Wayne Eyre was named to the post in 2021 and announced his retirement in January after a 40-year career.

Carignan became a military engineer in 1990 and has since commanded two combat engineer regiments and spearheaded crisis operations during spring 2019 flood relief efforts in Quebec. Carignan also led NATO’s mission in Iraq from November 2019 to November 2020 and has participated in expeditionary operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Golan Heights and Afghanistan.

Carignan was promoted to her current rank in 2021 and appointed as the military’s new chief of professional conduct and culture. She has four children, two of whom serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.

That role placed her in charge of cultural reform in the CAF amid ongoing sexual misconduct investigations. At the time of her appointment, she said her team was committed to achieving concrete results within five years.

“In my 35 years of service I have never seen such engagement and commitment to the issue of culture change as it is right now,” she said during a military technical briefing in 2021.

However, Statistics Canada last December reported a “significant increase” in rates of sexual misconduct in the Armed Forces over the preceding year. In an interview with CTV News Channel’s Power Play host Vassy Kapelos on Dec. 5, Carignan said the CAF was “very concerned with the results of the survey” but that it was “determined not to detract from our target, which is (to) eradicate those behaviours within our organization.”

On Thursday, the CAF released a joint report with the Department of National Defence that outlined how it would implement 194 recommendations from four external reports on cultural reforms needed within the departments.

With files from CTV News’ Stephanie Ha, former CTVNews.ca producer Sarah Turnbull and The Canadian Press