As you point out, we see a culture of negative attitudes towards women, and apparently a culture of impunity for perpetrators of sexual assault. At the same time, victims themselves have large consequences, often resulting in their being expelled from the military, or first of all not being taken seriously, treated as troublemakers, and all of that.
I want to ask both of you a question on the timeliness of responses. We've talked about changing culture; that's not an overnight thing. You talk about new procedures, and now Major-General Whitecross is going to survey best practices around the world. How much time should elapse before a parent of a young person in Canada can have confidence in saying they would be happy to have their daughter or their son join the military knowing that they would be protected and not subjected to the kind of harassment or sexual assault...?
“Sexual misconduct” or “inappropriate sexual behaviour” seem to me to be a bit too amorphous. We're talking about criminal acts in the case of sexual assault, and obviously sexual harassment is bad as well.
How fast should this be done? Is there anything in the meantime that can say to someone who is in the military that they're not going to have to wait for the culture to change, and if they want their sexual assault charge taken to the civilian courts or to the civilian police, they can do it right away?