Thank you, Chair, for your patience through all of this.
There were a lot of votes. My knee hurts. I was getting a bit sore walking back and forth to vote, but there you are; that's pretty fun.
I'm taking this as an opportunity to read the report about women veterans again. I was recently recognized by women in the defence world because of this work, but it's not public yet and that worries me greatly.
I am finding it hard to listen to the back-and-forth between the Conservatives and the Liberals about who did worse in the role they played with veterans. I don't know if that's why we're here. I just want to be clear that I need to get this report done. We have a commitment to women to get this done. This matters more to me than anything else I've ever done in this committee. It means that much to me.
If we cannot get this resolved, I'm going to encourage people to use other ways to get the answers they need, and I will be looking toward supporting an adjournment. If all this is going to be is a back-and-forth about the monument and we're not going to get where we need to get, I cannot sacrifice the work we did for women veterans because of that. I just want to be really clear with the committee that this is the direction I'm starting to go in, and I'm hoping we can get somewhere.
I will repeat this again: We heard in testimony on this monument that, even though we keep hearing the Liberals say it was veterans who responded, we have no clear way of knowing what happened, and that does bother me. I trust veterans. I believe that if veterans know they're being asked a question, they are going to step up and are going to answer. There's a confusing lack of communication for me, because I have also heard very clearly, as I think everyone on this committee has, that veterans often feel they are not connected to these systems.
When we were talking about the services to support veterans with rehabilitation being moved to the private sector, we heard very clearly that a lot of them had no idea this process was going to happen. We heard the ministry say that, yes, she sent out information. One of the things I proposed is that a letter should be sent, or something more physical.
We are not doing our job in this country for veterans with regard to connecting with them, so I don't buy what I'm hearing from the Liberal side. I don't even know that big drama was hidden behind this. I don't know what's behind it, but at this point, I'm having to make a difficult decision. I'm going to choose the women. I'm going to choose them every single time.
I just want the committee to know that I hope we can get this figured out. If we cannot get this figured out, I'm willing to adjourn to get this work done. I also want the committee to know I'm willing to come back, but I am going to prioritize the women.
I think this is an impossible decision and it's not right that I have to make it, but as I said earlier, I will choose the women every single time. They've been made invisible and I will not continue to support that.