National Defence Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thanks, Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses who are with us today for the incredible work that they've done, their service, or the work they continue to do for families in the military and for spouses.

Can you reflect on your own experiences and the experiences of people you've spoken to or have served with to tell us if there are any gaps in what our committee has taken a look at?

So far we have studied housing, health care and child care. I heard education today. I've heard a couple of other things that may be important to take a deeper dive into. Can you give us some ideas on issues that definitely experience gaps and that we don't have a lot of research on that could help us improve the situation for members and their families?

It's a question for everybody, so I guess we'll start with Christopher Banks and then Shannon and Alyssa.

[Christopher Banks]

I spent most of my military training on CFB Petawawa and in training centre Meaford. When I got to Meaford in 2000, there were two buildings—shacks—and a few bigger rooms, but they were only transient as well.

It was promised to us then that there would be new buildings coming. Twenty-three years later, there's still nothing.

When I was serving in Petawawa and training for Afghanistan, 12 of us were put in a room meant for four people. They pulled out the single beds, put in bunk beds and then told us to go find cots for the other four.

This is a problem that didn't change much in the entire time I was in the military. It just keeps getting worse, because the buildings are falling apart.

What I heard from the last committee meeting was that they're only building triple-digit at best for four-digit demand. It's going to be 70 years before the problem is fixed, and that's not including any new units that go down in that time frame. This problem is not going to be fixed in my lifetime at this rate.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

Shannon, is there anything you'd like us to focus on, to take a deeper look into, going forward?

[Shannon Hill]

Thank you so much for that question.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, certainly it would be looking at the educational experiences of children and youth who live in military families. That's a very under-represented area in research in Canada and, as I mentioned, decision-makers have had to rely heavily on American research, which has made up the bulk of the evidence base to date.

In terms of areas for educational research, I think it would be great to look at how the different military lifestyle factors—frequent relocations, regular absence or risk of injury, illness and/or death—can influence the educational experiences. As well would be looking at the educational experiences of children and youth who live and relocate within Canada versus outside of Canada. In particular it would be interesting to look at the educational experiences of children and youth who attend the Canadian Armed Forces schools that are overseas, and finally the educational experiences of children and youth who have special needs in military families. That's a subpopulation we know even less about.

Those are some general directions that future research would benefit from.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Alyssa, if you don't mind, go for it, and I will have one more question afterwards.

[Alyssa Truong]

Sure. I did highlight some of the inequities, such as spouses not having the right to live on base when intimate partner violence happens. It is a passion of mine to ensure that not just the military member but also the family is cared for. I think that would be a prudent area to look into, given that I know from personal anecdotal experience that many women, especially, hesitate to leave abusive situations because they are afraid of being homeless.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

A couple of you spoke a lot about education and about some kids being worse off than others, especially those who have special needs. Moving around frequently can definitely have a major impact on their lives and on their educational journeys.

Could anybody here tell me what the procedure is for choosing which families are going to be moving around, and whether, for some families who do have these additional challenges to deal with within their own families, there's any way of exempting them from moving as many times? Is there any way to improve that by taking the needs of certain members into account when making these kinds of decisions?

[Christopher Banks]

It's my understanding that these decisions are usually made person by person by the career managers. I'm not too sure whether it's a broad policy solution or more of a personnel management solution.

I would also say that, to your last question, when Shannon brought up the special needs, I was reminded of a point that I wanted to make about the families who get separated because of their family needs. When I was working in Brampton, there was a gentleman posted to my unit who couldn't bring his family with him because he had two children who had special needs. He ended up separating from his family and seeing them only on the weekends.

That's actually pretty common—families that are separated, with the parent living on base during the week and then maybe having a chance to go home on weekends.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Lambropoulos.

Welcome to the committee, Mr. Champoux. You have six minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the three witnesses for being with us today.

Sergeant Banks, thank you for your service to the country. It's a pleasure to meet you.

In your opening remarks and afterwards, you talked about the fact that facilities were in poor repair and that the services available to serving members of the armed forces were outdated and unattractive. Clearly, a career in the Canadian Armed Forces, or CAF, is not an appealing prospect. Most of these issues are known and, the vast majority of the time, have been reported to the committee by former and inactive members of the armed forces. They are people like you, people I've met in my riding who had careers in the armed forces and have talked about these issues. We seem to have a harder time when we want to consult with serving members of the CAF. I think members are more reluctant to speak openly because of the duty of loyalty.

Does the CAF have some sort of process whereby members are able to raise concerns and provide input on decisions that will have a significant impact not only on their careers, but also on their home lives and children?

Are they able to speak out, or are they stuck venting their frustrations anonymously on social media, say?

Do you think the CAF has a sound mechanism for communication?

[Christopher Banks]

Could you rephrase that question, please? I'm just trying to put it into words.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Of course.

I was wondering whether serving members have access to some sort of mechanism to share their dissatisfaction, problems they're having or changes they want to see in how they are treated during postings, for instance.

Can they speak freely within the armed forces and raise problems they are having?

[Christopher Banks]

To say that they can freely express themselves...no. We're pretty regulated in that fashion. There are policies that are supposed to ensure that career managers and leadership have open door policies so they can have these kinds of discussions at the lowest level, but that's entirely subject to the personalities who are in those leadership positions, because, unfortunately, not every person who gets into a leadership position is fit to be a leader. That's just the reality of it.

There's also the grievance system within the military that can be utilized, but there are also a lot of trust issues that the military community has about the grievance system. A lot of allegations of those same poor leaders, who will take a grievance, throw it in the garbage, rip it up or use it to smear someone's campaign.

While those mechanisms exist, there's not a whole lot of trust in them.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I take it, then, that there is still resistance to hearing what members have to say. I imagine that change isn't smooth, that communication is non-existent and that people are reluctant to report problems they're having. That is why people like you, Sergeant Banks, appear before the committee.

Ms. Hill, you talked about the impact on military families of being relocated here, there and everywhere. Their lives are uprooted no matter where they are being relocated. Everyone has to adapt, especially school-age children.

In your research, did you examine the impact of language? I'm thinking of English-speaking families who have to move to Quebec or, the opposite, Quebeckers having to move to English-speaking communities.

Can you elaborate on how that aspect of relocation affects members of the military and their families?

[Shannon Hill]

Thank you so much for that question.

To start with, from a research perspective, it's something that has been under-researched, but it is something that we do hear quite a lot of from families. This is particularly as it relates to my doctoral research. Certainly, relocations to Quebec were seen as further challenging because of the language piece, but it was also because of the way the education system is set up in Quebec in comparison with other provinces and territories.

I would like to note that one of the issues that was raised in my research was that families might be limited in terms of the schools they can send their children to in a particular location. If they're looking for French immersion, for example, depending on where they're relocating, there might be only one school that offers French immersion. There can be limited options in terms of what schools families can even send their children to, depending on where they relocate.

Certainly, the language piece has definitely come up as a concern.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

To your knowledge, is that something that is taken into account before a member of the military is sent to a given place?

Does the CAF consider the fact that this makes it harder for people to adapt to the new community, especially children? That's all the more true for children with special needs.

[Shannon Hill]

I can't speak to that from specifically a DND perspective. I will say, though, that there have been recommendations put forward to reduce the amount of relocations for families that do have children, particularly adolescents, given the greater impact socially and academically that relocations can have, as well as children who have special needs. I can't speak specifically, but certainly there have been some recommendations put forth.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you to all for being here today.

Last week, at the beginning of this study, we heard from government officials from CAF and DND. I think Mr. Bezan mentioned it, but they spoke about those satisfaction levels for military housing. They actually quoted that it was at the 85% mark in terms of satisfaction. It sounds as though, from testimony we're hearing now from both Mr. Banks and Ms. Truong, that it is not in fact the case.

Can you maybe explain where that disconnect seems to be?

[Christopher Banks]

I can offer a hypothesis. When I was still in the military, I was part of a lot of these surveys. I put my hand up for everything that came down. Some of them are done by paper and some of them are done by town halls. When you're in the town hall variant, you can see this happen in real time: The facilitators will reject, out of hand, certain comments that don't fit the scope of the study. A lot of times we're told, oh, that's a budget thing and it's not going to happen, or, oh, that's just a gripe and the hardship of the service. The comments get rejected out of turn.

It's the same with the paper copies. When we do those paper surveys, we get together afterwards and ask each other about what we put. When the eventual report comes out months later and we all get together, we see that the comments we brought up are nowhere to be found in the highlighted section. You have to go all the way back to the raw data.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Ms. Truong, from a spousal family aspect, can you put forward maybe an equal hypothesis?

[Alyssa Truong]

If I understood your statement correctly, 85% of families said they were happy with on-base housing. Is that correct?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's what we were told last week, yes.

[Alyssa Truong]

Okay.

I would say that it's probably fair. Those of us who do get the privilege of living on base are probably reasonably happy. I am very happy to have a roof over my head. I think the greater stressor is that an astronomical number of families do not get that privilege.

I think if we were to be posted somewhere that didn't have that ability for us to seek housing, then we would be outside of that demographic. I'd actually be curious to hear the actual demographic they were looking at and screening as opposed to whether it was an overarching number.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

So it's more like 85% of an overall 15% as opposed to 85% total.