The Army Ethics Programme (AEP)

AEP encompasses all professional Development Training which supports the Army ethos as first articulated in CFP 300 Canada’s Army and later amplified within a Canadian Forces context in Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada.

AEP believes that the soldier ethos remains a living spirit — one that finds full expression through the essential unity and ethical certainty of values, beliefs, expectations, and conduct.

A healthy ethical climate is fundamental to the military ethos. It provides the Canadian soldier with the inherent ability to ‘know what right looks like’ and Army leadership, at all levels, to accept the individual and command responsibility to distinguish between right and wrong and to display the moral courage and leadership to act.

AEP is an embedded, unit-level Professional Development (PD) training commitment by which the Army renews, refreshes, and revitalizes our values. A healthy ethical climate is a precondition to operational effectiveness.

The nexus of the Army’s values-based AEP training philosophy is the inextricable links between leadership and authority, and responsibility and accountability.

AEP supports the existing chain of command and is a command and leadership responsibility. Commanders are to “use their imagination and to constantly seek opportunities to make ethics awareness and dialogue an integral part of all activities.”

The Army's ethics community consists of designated Area Ethics Coordinators (AEC) and Unit Ethics Coordinators (UEC) who remain the key players in

• administering ethics training,
• reporting on ethics awareness and dialogue, and
• ensuring, on behalf of commanders, that Land Force personnel possess the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to perform their duties to the highest ethical standards.

LFCO 21-18

This order specifies the nature, requirements, and performance measurement inherent in the AEP and identifies tasks and responsibilities in support of the Army Ethics Plan. More specifically, it provides the following conceptual, developmental, recognition and reward, and implementation framework elements, which constitutes the CLS broad front strategy to Army ethics training within LFC.