Status of Women committee  First of all, I want to reiterate what I said from the start, which was that the third years were the worst group, which means those are people who have been there for three years. If the first years were unruly, you could argue that we pulled from a bad pool. Third year means they've been indoctrinated to believe this is appropriate behaviour.

Status of Women committee  Yes, it's a feeder school essentially. So if you're a third-year student who can say to my face that you didn't listen to me because I'm a woman and a civilian, and I know that 18 months later you are going to be leading troops, I'm concerned, and we should all be concerned. It wasn't just about me.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  We need survivor-directed, survivor-informed bystander intervention mechanisms. I say that because when Operation Honour happened, and the military decided to do something, they did not have bystander training from a survivor-directed perspective. So what they saw was a massive increase in third party reporting, but a decrease in people actually wanting to go through with the court martial process because the bystanders did not report with the victims' permission.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I can tell you that the highest rate of post-traumatic stress disorder worldwide is among victims of rape and sexual violence. The second-highest rate is in the military. We urgently need to take this seriously. Trauma shouldn't be organized into a hierarchy. When their trauma isn't considered equivalent to the trauma caused by war, victims of sexual violence don't receive the support that they deserve.

Status of Women committee  Christine, do you want to answer that?

Status of Women committee  The first thing to recognize is that the trauma experienced by military members isn't just related to serving in a war, even though we often hear that. Even in my field of work, which involves combatting violence against women, when someone says that they've experienced post-traumatic stress, the assumption is always that the stress relates to their role as a soldier.

Status of Women committee  First of all you have to build off what Christine said. You have to name the problem. Right away, you have to acknowledge that this is a systemic issue. We need to move away from this “one bad apple, oh it's this CDS, oh no it's this CDS”. Clearly it's a systemic issue. First, there needs to be acknowledgement.

Status of Women committee  Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I'm pleased that the committee decided to take some time to hear from experts in various fields, including me. My name is Julie S. Lalonde. I've been working for almost 20 years to end violence against women in Canada.

Status of Women committee  I think that the core of your question is really the nature of the military itself, frankly. I think that it does tie into high rates of people taking their own lives and high rates of trauma within the military. If you have to suppress how you feel because your masculinity and machismo is a key characteristic to help you succeed in the military, then that is conducive to men having high rates of trauma and not being able to address it, and also not being able to talk about the importance of care work for them and being parent, to speak to Sandra's point.

Status of Women committee  Well, first of all, I wouldn't encourage more women to join the CAF at this point. I think that's the wrong goal to have. You have to fix the problem. You can't just add women and stir, which has traditionally been the approach. One, I think CAF is missing this massive opportunity, which is that the forces are changing in many different ways.

Status of Women committee  Well, first, we need to stop saying it's a big ship and that it takes a long time to turn it around. I've heard that ship metaphor a hundred times in the last five years, and I'm bored to death of it. The other one is, “Well, sexual violence is not unique to the military. Sexism is not unique to the military.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I think Sandra's and Laura's testimony today and the stories that Sandra is hearing criss-crossing the country are indicative of that, but then again, I'm a white, educated, bilingual civilian woman with a written apology from the Department of National Defence. I was thrown under the bus by the general at the time on national television.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.