Thank you very much for the question. We have to turn the clock back quite a ways. Unfortunately, I think I'm the oldest person in the room. I'm looking around here. You have to go back to the 1970s, when Archie Bunker was a real person, to realize when I first joined the RCMP.
A lot of things were different. I was transferred from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. I really didn't even know where I was. The staff sergeant I worked for reached out in an almost paternalistic way, but at the same time it was a paternalistic time. The people I worked with treated me like their sister. They worked hard to make sure that I learned all the survival skills I needed to survive.
Luckily, enough things happened in my career, and even early on, I was able to do some fairly interesting investigations and be successful. I worked the night shift by myself and earned the credibility to move forward. I know that in some cases people never got that chance. It was an ugly time for some women I know and worked with.
When I was in staffing for a period of time while I was going to law school, I won't say I “rescued”, but I reached out to a number of these women who were on the edge of leaving or whatever. This was in the eighties, and we worked through some fairly nasty situations that had to be addressed at the time.
In my impression, I saw the tide turning when I was the commissioner. Maybe spending six years running RCMP policing in the biggest province in Canada made a difference, but no matter where you are, there are bad people doing bad things. I really saw the tide turn, such that women in the force had enough credibility that we were no longer seen as a threat and we were considered an asset in a lot of cases, as long as we did our jobs.
As I said before, I now have lots of friends and some family members who are females in the RCMP, and I think the system is now designed so that people can reach out for protection if they need it. I suspect that in every realm, including this one, people need protection every once in a while. I see that where I work. I do believe there's been a huge sea change in the culture. Women are now proudly taking charge and owning their own bodies and owning their own place in the world. I can see a huge change. I can speak only for the RCMP, but anecdotally speaking, people I know speak of that often.
As I said, last weekend I was at a celebration for the RCMP 150th, and half of the room was made up of women members with civilian husbands and women whose husbands were members, and it just seemed as though gender doesn't matter. I think that's a huge success.
Thank you for that question. I hope I answered it to the best of my ability.