National Defence Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Chairman, through you to our witness, the Auditor General's report revealed an unexpected consequence that the duty to report inappropriate sexual behaviour has created. There has been a spike in third party submissions of inappropriate sexual behaviour, in some cases submitted against the will of the victim. Should there be greater protection for victims' rights in the reporting of inappropriate sexual behaviour?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Yes. The judicial report is a complex thing. It does create an aversion effect, because in one way you want to make sure that people are safe and you want to be able to act on things, but at the same time, putting people through a system that they are not willing, prepared, or supported to go through will aggravate things and makes an unnecessary medical release for that. People will release because they're mentally unprepared to go through all these things.

Retaliation as well is one of the things that has not been looked into much. There's a little thing about retaliation here, but what is retaliation and how will this be handled? You need to know that to ensure protection for people when they are faced with retaliation. As Judge Deschamps said, and as the OAG report said, people who did report faced retaliation, so that's one of the things that will protect victims and entice them to want to report.

Before forcing people to report, they should at least make sure that the system is in place to ensure their protection and safety and that it works.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

The Auditor General's report found that the briefings the Canadian Armed Forces members received from Operation Honour may have increased awareness but were lacking in understanding of how to respond to and support victims. As a result, the Auditor General reported that the briefings created confusion, frustration, fear and less camaraderie.

What do you think is necessary in terms of training or otherwise to bridge the awareness gap and hopefully alleviate the negative feelings that the briefings brought about?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

On the training itself, what I find problematic is putting everything into one big basket, but that's my opinion on this.

How would you feel if we said that all injuries are injuries, from a paper cut to losing your legs in combat? That's the type of thing that is being done right now with harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour. They put everything into one basket.

We all agree that people who lose their legs will require a different type of care from that of a person who has a paper cut at work, even though they're both workplace injuries. It's that type of thing with harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour. There are two separate things where there's care that must be given when there was harm done versus the handling of, I would say, minor infractions in order for them to not get into either repetitive or worse behaviour and then make people leave.

Those are two separate things that should be looked at in a different way. There should be more emphasis on victim support and care, and also making sure that the process is done properly, instead of looking into providing additional training to the same people over and over again at the lower part of the chain. That is not the only way to solve the problem.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

We found in the Auditor General's report that the Canadian Armed Forces had not been adequately monitoring the effectiveness of Operation Honour, and any of their data on its results are of poor quality. Does this undermine the goals of Operation Honour in the eyes of the Canadian Armed Forces member?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Do you mean that they haven't reached their goals?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Yes.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

The goal was to eliminate harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour, so to be honest, that was a goal that was really hard to achieve, to eliminate it. I don't think, in a clear mind, anybody really had the impression that this would completely happen.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Despite what's often said by the officials, we know that if a victim of inappropriate sexual behaviour reports the incident, it's a good way to be demoted, transferred or discharged. How can victims trust that if they come forward, their position or career is not at risk?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Through a solid bill, I guess, with teeth in it.

The thing is that by leaving things to the chain of command.... This is a very decentralized place. People don't necessarily have bad intentions; they just don't have the education on it. They don't know how to handle these things.

We're giving them a lot of hats. One of these hats is to handle these things. In order to do it properly, they need to be properly educated on how to handle them. What would constitute a protection? What is safety? What is considered as something unsafe? Is somebody in the workplace now being confronted by the same person, living in the barracks next to a person? What is the threshold? They're going to need more guidance if they are to be the ones making those kinds of decisions on the matter.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Have you heard of any issues that victims of inappropriate sexual behaviour have had with padres or military chaplains in regard to the sexual assaults against them?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

I know that part of the SMRC is to report people to the padres. One of the things about the padres is that they have a duty to report, yet they also have conventional rights.

Basically, if somebody confesses a crime to them, they can choose to keep that to themselves, but if a person victimized by sexual violence talks to them without being in confession, they can report that. I think this can be better defined, especially if this is considered one of the services victims can be redirected to.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Have you encountered any victims whom the chaplain told, “If you want to continue in the forces, you had just better keep this to yourself”?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

I heard many different things from the chaplain. Again, I think training would help to ensure that there will be a trauma-informed response when they answer to people, and also that they have better guidance on what to do when they receive those kinds of things.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Is it your opinion that the process for dealing with sexual assault should be taken out of the chain of command?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

The process?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Yes.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

There's a part where there needs to be an oversight and there's a part that has to stay in.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

You mentioned retaliation. What types of retaliation have you heard about happening to victims when reported?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

They are not being accommodated, being under the impression that the accommodation didn't happen, having their units talk about them, obviously, and conversations about them or information gathering. They are things like that.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

In your experience—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to leave it there, MP Gallant.

I'm going to yield the floor to MP Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here today. Your testimony, I think, is very important.

I think my concern...I'm not sure what word I'm looking for here. I wish we'd had you here earlier in the sequence of testimony, because you've raised some important points about how this will actually operate in practice about which I would have liked the chance to ask some of the people here earlier. I regret—that's the word I'm probably looking for—that you weren't here earlier. I think it's very important testimony.

I want to go back to one of the first things you talked about, and that is the transfer of cases to civilian court. I'm sure you're aware of the Beaudry case and the decision of the military appeal court that serious offences, if they're not related to military service directly, shouldn't be handled by the military justice system. That will be going to the Supreme Court, obviously. When you're saying that in this bill we should have clearer indication that there's a choice, it looks as if that choice may be going to disappear.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

It may be, but at this point no one really is aware of that. Where do you find that information? If this is a victim's choice, I really think it should be part of the bill, as a choice, as one of the things you have the choice to do.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

As an MP, I can tell you that we've had numerous cases of people, either in military families or in relationships with people who are in the military, who felt that the military investigating their case was inappropriate and unfair.