Promo video for Royal Military College uses rap song about fellatio

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A new promotional video for the Royal Military College uses a song by Kayne West who raps about fellatio and sexual intercourse and compares himself to sex abusers.

The short video on Instagram and other social media platforms highlighting the military skills team of the college in Kingston is accompanied by the chorus of West’s recent release Carnival.

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As RMC students run through physical fitness, the song’s chorus plays which includes the lyrics, “head so good, she a honor role. She ride the dick like a carnival,” in the background.

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In his chart-topping song, West, who now goes by the name Ye, likens himself to Bill Cosby, convicted of sexual assault, and R. Kelly, convicted on child sex crimes.

A number of readers highlighted the use of the song to this newspaper and complained it illustrates what they called a deep-rooted culture in the Canadian Forces that continues to objectify women.

This newspaper requested comment from Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre but he did not respond.

Shortly after this newspaper asked questions about the video, it was removed from social media.

“The lyrics of the song used in this video are inappropriate and offensive, and do not reflect the values of the Canadian Armed Forces,”  National Defence spokesperson Andrée-Anne Poulin noted in a statement to this newspaper. “The video has been removed from social media, and the team that created the content has conveyed regret for this oversight.”

“Additional training will be taking place immediately, where all parties responsible for managing informal RMC accounts affiliated to the College will be reminded on expectations for posting content in accordance with CAF policies, directives and ethos when representing any component of the CAF,” Poulin added.

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The Canadian Forces has been mired in allegations of sexual assault and harassment over the last decade. Some of that misconduct has been centered at the military’s educational institutions, the Royal Military Colleges in Kingston and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que.

In her May 2022 examination of the military’s ongoing sexual misconduct crisis, former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour called for changes at the colleges. The “continued prevalence of sexual misconduct at the military colleges is well documented,” she said at the time.

In December 2023, Defence Minister Bill Blair announced the names of a panel which will review the military colleges.

A Statistics Canada report found that in 2019, 68 per cent of military college students witnessed or experienced unwanted sexualized behaviours and 40 per cent witnessed or experienced discriminatory behaviour, almost always from other students.

The report also found that 28 per cent of female students were sexually assaulted during their time at military college, much higher than the 15 per cent of female students who reported being sexually assaulted at other post-secondary institutions.

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But defence insiders say there is a sense in some areas of the Canadian Forces that the sexual misconduct scandals are now largely in the past as news media reporting has decreased and a number of high-profile legal cases have either collapsed or ended in senior officers being found not guilty.

This newspaper reported last year that the Canadian military’s senior leadership was advised the sexual misconduct crisis was a battle for public opinion and those who raised concerns were akin to foreign enemies. In a series of documents produced for then-acting defence chief Gen. Eyre and other senior leaders, advisors highlighted the need to push more positive views about how the Canadian Forces were handling the ongoing sexual misconduct crisis.

The documents were obtained by this newspaper using the Access to Information law.

Eyre has said the military culture needs to change to deal with concerns over sexual misconduct. He has also acknowledged that the various allegations and incidents have harmed recruiting efforts. Eyre and the Canadian Forces have introduced a number of initiatives to try to deal with sexual assault and misconduct.

New figures released in December 2023 showed that, during Eyre’s tenure, the number of reported sexual assaults doubled in a one-year period.

(With files from The Canadian Press)

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