Government Operations Committee on Oct. 8th, 2026

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

To follow up on that question, now let's talk, broad range, about all veterans and the inclusivity pieces, but with a rural lens. There are very different challenges that come with accessing things like health care services, housing and transition support.

From your experience, if you want to be able to live rurally, but still get those supports, what do you think some of the biggest gaps are? I'd love to know what you think are some of the things that can get done to help fill those gaps. Thank you.

[Jessica Miller]

Yes, one of the biggest challenges for anyone—men, women, civilians, veterans—is access to stable transport. Not everyone drives. Not everyone drives as they age. We have no public transit across the province that's accessible to people unless you're in Dartmouth or the HRM. Because of that, putting spaces for veterans in rural locations with limited work possibilities and limited access to services, which are mainly in Dartmouth and Halifax, puts in a cycle of not accessing appointments and falling down the rabbit hole of missing services that VAC could pay for. They just have no way of getting there.

The valley in Nova Scotia where I am, West Hants, is the beginning of what people think is the breadbasket of Nova Scotia. However, in that area, we are considered the largest food desert in Canada because there is no transportation in rural Nova Scotia. Access to food and to daily needs is just not there.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I know I'm out of time. We didn't get time to fill the gaps, but we're good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You can go ahead if you have a quick one.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The second part of the question is that we know those are some of the things we're experiencing. Are there any ways that we can help to mitigate or fill those gaps? That was the —

[Jessica Miller]

It's transportation. We need someone to invest in reliable transportation for the rural areas of Nova Scotia. Everything is concentrated in the HRM. If you live outside of that, you're out of luck.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

Madame Gaudreau is next.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Miller, I see that there are many recommendations that could be forwarded to the department, but also get departments like Public Services and Procurement Canada to ensure a dialogue between needs and accessibility.

We talked about transportation and building quality. Are there three recommendations that you think are critical?

[Jessica Miller]

Thank you.

Would the three recommendations be specifically for the Amherst armoury or in general?

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Let's go with the buildings we're talking about, which are vacant.

[Jessica Miller]

Okay.

My recommendation would be to ensure we're not preserving buildings out of a community's interest in preserving history. We have many ways to preserve history and remember those who have helped to shape this country and served before us. I don't think we need a dilapidated building that no one has access to being that representation, that symbol of remembrance. Right now, it just looks like we don't care and we don't remember. We need to re-evaluate our perspective on what a heritage building is and if it should be repurposed or reused in a different way.

I also think that investing in rural environments that don't have all of the services for veterans is not an appropriate way of spending money. There are a lot of better options out there that should be explored. I fully believe in honouring those who served and in acknowledging that we have a long storied history in Nova Scotia of those who have served and helped shape the country, but saving a building for the sake of a building that is already represented somewhere else in the province is not, in my opinion, appropriate.

Also, the footprint the building holds would be what would be divested to create something new, but there's no thought process on the land and how the land around those buildings will be used. Is it then going to become public land? Is it going to still be held by the federal government?

I think everyone should have access to nature and outdoor spaces because I think it's incredibly important. If we're only divesting the buildings and not thinking about the land itself, how do we secure safety for those who are living in these spaces? We have no idea of what could then be developed around them, and it may not be something that's appropriate for veterans.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'm pleased that Ms. Miller was able to speak when, unfortunately, she wasn't able to do so and be heard when she was on the women veterans council.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreau.

We'll go to Mr. Bragdon for five minutes, and then Ms. Sudds.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses today. I really appreciate hearing from each of you.

I'd like to address my questions to Ms. Miller.

Thank you, first and foremost, for your service to our country and the sacrifices you've made in more ways than could ever adequately be expressed in words.

I want to circle back to what we've heard. I'm truly shocked and saddened to hear that you felt silenced and felt you could not adequately express what needed to be expressed on the council that was created to give women veterans a voice. Is there anything you would like the committee to hear today that should be heard, or you feel should be heard and you were unable to get heard while you were on that council, that you would like to express here now?

[Jessica Miller]

Sure. Thank you.

I first joined the council after the “Invisible No More” report was tabled and accepted, and those 42 recommendations became the goal for what we thought on the council. I'm very saddened that those goals are not necessarily a priority for the VAC minister. For me, and I know others felt the same way, but I will speak only for me, with the amount of trauma that was incurred to give testimony to create that document, to then let it go and not be the guiding direction for how to support women.... I think it was a complete waste if we don't look at it and intentionally action the recommendations.

With recommendation 26 accepted by Parliament, veteran female housing should be a priority in understanding why women are different and have different requirements for that housing, but we weren't able to touch any of those recommendations in the way that we wanted to work towards actioning them.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

You say you felt so limited. Can you help us understand who exactly set those limits and how they were communicated to you?

[Jessica Miller]

We had little communication, so we didn't know what we were doing. I'm not here to discredit anyone or to say that it was a bad idea. I'm just speaking from my own lived experience and just telling the truth. The truth is that with those who were working within VAC, the staff, it felt like everyone was not comfortable in the roles they were in. There were a lot of emails directed at us, as opposed to collaborative work. I feel it was a very big missed opportunity to actually hear from women veterans who had served their country, survived war, survived military sexual trauma and survived the horrific incidents that they'd seen, felt and heard.

We have those experiences to then guide policy and guide how the 42 recommendations could be enacted, but we were.... I was not being heard. I will speak for myself. I was not being heard in those moments when I had questions about implementing peer support and community outreach, and the significance of women spending time with other women in a safe environment. Unfortunately, I feel the other women who left with me—resigned—were feeling the same way as well.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

You felt, if not directly, implicitly, from higher-ups, very much intimidated to be able to share fully what you had experienced. You felt very constrained. I don't want to express that for you. I Just think it's important for this committee to understand the constraints, or how you and other women victims were feeling as a result of this.

[Jessica Miller]

I won't speak for the other women, but I do share the same thoughts as others. I wouldn't say we were constrained by being told directly that we cannot speak or cannot engage with women. We were silenced because they did not create a space where we could communicate with other women. The continued answer we got when we asked for a communication tool was that we could potentially do harm to other women with our responses to their emails.

My response to the minister directly was that we are strong, capable women leaders. Some of us went to war. Some were officers who directed an entire company of infantry soldiers. We saved the lives of those who were at their lowest point or at their most injured. To say to us that we don't have the skills or ability to then speak with other women, that it's a safety concern and that we would do harm was, I felt, very demeaning to me and to the others who wanted to be able to speak with women, because that is why we're doing what we do.

Unfortunately, the only way women could reach out to me was through my non-profit because they either knew me or worked with me. Many questions were coming to me through personal email. I would redirect the questions to the committee and to the VAC staff, but nothing would be responded to because there was no interest in it, in my opinion.

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Ms. Sudds, go ahead.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I give my sincere thanks to the witnesses. Thank you for being here today.

I'm going to direct my first question to Mr. Shimooka.

I'm a member of Parliament representing Ottawa. Here in the national capital region, we certainly have our fair share of both federal lands and buildings. As part of this study and as part of the motion, we are tasked with thinking hard about those buildings, that land and the possibility of future uses to better support veterans.

Given the extensive work that you've done in defence policy, I'm wondering if you have some feedback for us on how as a government we should be distinguishing between land that is genuinely surplus and land that might appear to be under-used today but could be important in the future for Canadian Armed Forces requirements.

[Richard Shimooka]

Thank you for the question, Member. I think that's an excellent question.

One of the interesting things about defence that's very much different from any other government area is that the time scale that is required in defence policy is not just five or 10 years down the way. You're thinking about 20 to 30-some years.

Going to Ms. Miller's comments earlier about Robert Borden and building these facilities back at the turn of this last century, many of these facilities still provide a role. If you think about the increase in natural disasters or emergency preparedness, many of these facilities can play a key part in semi-rural communities for the coordination of those activities. It is difficult, to some degree, to identify what could be utilized for these areas.

I think the use for housing, especially in some of the higher-cost areas, such as within metro Vancouver, Esquimalt-Victoria, Calgary to some degree and obviously Toronto and Montreal, is a useful purpose, given that how the housing benefit is provided to serving members especially is not so much adequate. It can provide some level of relief for those individuals. That's a case, and I don't see that being a short-term trend that's going to be alleviated quickly.

Having the ability to identify what can be effective, especially for the personnel side, is important and critical. Keeping some of these facilities for these longer-term purposes, such as coordination of activities.... As we are actually going through a significant change in the structure of the armed forces, especially in the army and its locations, how that can be aligned with that task is pretty critical. I think that's an area where the Government of Canada has not been great in the past, and it still may be overlooking the need to marry up the right type of infrastructure in these areas overall.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

Thank you for that. I think this study gives us an opportunity to dive into that and to provide some guidance and advice on it.

Are there any safeguards that you recommend we could put in place to ensure that as we are disposing of land or buildings, they are considered for the CAF's purposes first, as opposed to thinking about transferring them to other public purposes?

[Richard Shimooka]

That is going to come to a very in-depth answer. I'll try to keep it brief.

I will give you this example: Near me are the Jericho lands. We are seeing a significant redevelopment and sale. The reality is that I don't think the future trend of land prices will go down. We have to be extremely careful about the divestment of these properties, because it's not going to be easy to bring them back into the fold. The divestment of significant portions of the Chilliwack facilities is a significant one. You won't have that ability.

Right now, defence spending is high. We're seeing this increase. Infrastructure, as I said before, is being targeted for increase along with that. I don't necessarily see much problem with the divestment aspect right now, but if there's a turn on the spending side, that's where the real challenges are going to emerge. Whatever government is in at the time will look at what it is spending: “Can we subsidize other parts of defence spending and move that?”

A process that has worked in the past—you see this in the United States and other countries—is having a commission that goes through what the requirements are in order to have a really good look at the marrying of long-term objectives. What is surplus and what's not? Try to have a much broader view of that. Often, these decisions are made with more short-term objectives in mind. I would look to a commission of some sort that looks beyond pure military assets and has that longer-term view on these areas.