National Defence Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[Julie Dzerowicz, Davenport, Lib.]

Thank you very much.

I also wish you had been here much sooner, because there are lots of questions and you've really outlined things.

One of the first questions I actually asked our officials, those who put in place this proposed process, was whether they had checked with victims within the system to get feedback from them and they hadn't. I mention that again just because I'm hoping that moving forward it becomes a standard. To me that's the obvious thing to do. If we're actually proposing a system to help address an issue that's very serious within the military system, we should be going out to people who have actually been victimized to tell them what we're proposing.

You mentioned ensuring gender parity on military panels, which I really thought was important. I'll mention two things, and I'd love for you to comment on them.

One, you mentioned that there is a much smaller pool of women. Two, the culture can be the same for a woman and a man, so women aren't necessarily the best advocates for themselves. I want you to comment. How could we make that work? I think it's an excellent suggestion.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

I agree with you on that. It's not because it's women who are going to be on the panel that would necessarily change the ruling. It just would make the victim maybe more comfortable to have less uniformity on the panel itself.

I just think this is one of the.... To show how a system applies to civilians, when you say we're mimicking and mirroring the exact same thing in the military, how that makes a difference.... That's why there's a difference, and that should be considered for victims.

As to how to look into it, I don't really know how the process is randomly done, but if there's a pool of people, the representation could be two and two, and then for the fifth one, the decision is up to.... I don't know exactly how it would be done, but I just think it is something to look into, how to ensure better representation, diversity and such.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

You also mentioned that the victim liaison officer does not necessarily work, and the victim might need their own attorney. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Why do you believe that's so?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

It's a really complex system, like anything else, and the victims are not really aware of what they are entitled to. Also, there are a lot of processes and procedures that were not designed with the victims in mind. They're old.

When they're facing those things, they're not aware of what they can have or cannot have. The bill of rights is not there yet, right? There are fewer resources available, and they have to face greater obstacles to access justice, especially if it's from different provinces, from an operational deployment situation and the power structure within the military.

There are many things to take into consideration. The chain of command won't necessarily be the one supporting, so I think it helps to have somebody there to at least tell people what they should be expecting from the process, and not just the process itself, but what their rights and protections are. They'll highlight them clearly.

Let's say you need your medical documentation. How do you go about that? Are there time restrictions for that? Can the person give you give you an ATI and wait for six months, or do you have a right to get this quickly in order for your trial to happen in time? Are you the one to have to ask for these things?

Do they have the right to look into all your DWAN accounts and your relationships in the past? They have access to all these things because you worked there since you were maybe 17 years old. They could have easy access—I'm not saying they do—to all your medical records since you were really young as well. How many times have you had an STD, or whatever it is? Can they have access to these things without your permission?

These are the kinds of things that I think the victims should be aware of when they're signing and what they're signing for. They can make a decision on that.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

I think that's fair.

I'm not sure if the process actually looks at this, and I don't know if you have any recommendations. Once someone has been victimized and has gone through the process, do we have something in the process that allows them to reintegrate? Is there something we should be doing around that?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Do we have something for people who were victimized to reintegrate?

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Yes, to go back into the system. If you've had an issue and there's been some trauma, it's not an automatic thing to go.... You might say that you love this job and you might want to go back, but you're not sure how to actually reintegrate.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

There's a high release of people who were victimized by sexual violence—especially medical release for mental health reasons. That's a high one. There are obviously people quitting.

There's not a lot of research or work done to look into the care of how to rehabilitate people who were victimized by sexual violence. What concerns me is that in the SMRC report that came out a couple of months ago, the leadership had their top three priorities. One of them was to ensure rehabilitation of the perpetrators, but there was nothing said about the victims. It kind of shows where the priority is. What do we do? Right now it's outsourced to a civilian system. What are they saying to the victims? How do you make sure these programs are efficient? Are they working? Is the focus to rehabilitate them to come back?

One thing is, what does the chain of command do to make sure secondary trauma doesn't happen? This is usually what makes people not come back. You can see tons of people who were victims of sexual violence who didn't say anything. They stayed in the ranks and you never hear about it, and they kept doing their job fine. Yet, when they report, there are a lot of people who are gone. Obviously, something happens after they report that creates an additional trauma that makes people unable to stay.

They have to look into how to mitigate those things like the secondary trauma, the additional trauma or what we call “sanctuary trauma”. This is within the control of the military to do. They may not be able to erase all harmful or inappropriate sexual behaviour, but they sure can do something when it happens, to mitigate the factors that cause a person to leave.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Part of what we're trying to do is.... There are a lot of changes happening at once. I was reading—and I think it just came out last week—that the Canadian Armed Forces thought there would be 1,000 sexual assault cases coming forward. I think we're at 3,000 right now. I think that says there have been a lot more than we originally thought.

I think that we have to deal with the sins of the past while we're changing the culture, which takes time. It does take time to change the culture, put new rules and processes in place, and then educate. I think that Bill C-77 is part of that. This is what we're trying to do all at the same time. All of that is really important.

You have made a number of excellent recommendations. You went through them really quickly.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Yes. I wanted to get in as many as I could.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

I think you were trying, but could you actually pull one out that says, “Julie, this is something that's really important for this committee to consider”? If you could put that on the table, it would be great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Unfortunately, you're over your time. Maybe Mr. Spengemann will latch onto that one, or he might have his own questions. I'm going to yield the floor to him. We'll go to the five-minute questions.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

Ms. Gagnon, thank you for your testimony and for joining us today. I also thank you for your service to our country and, once again, for your advocacy. I would first like to invite you to tell us a bit about your organization.

You haven't had a chance to put much on the record yet about what led you to found It's Just 700, how it networks and what its aspirations are.

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Okay.

I will continue in English.

My group was built in 2015 after the Deschamps commission report. The reason I called it “It's Just 700” is that when the Deschamps commission report came out, in the social media there was a lot of backlash towards victims. A lot of people said that it was just 700 people who reported it and it wasn't a big deal, so I used that term as the name of the group. I was kind of mad that day.

The first thing, the objective, was to create an online group where we could safely talk to each other without being judged. We saw as well that there were trans-systemic issues within Veterans Affairs to access services, but also within CAF. Instead of just calling each other and crying, we tried to make some changes. Also, when things happened, we saw that could be a broader trend in this.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Does your group have connections to militaries outside of Canada, particularly those that are contributing or taking leading roles within the UN peace support operations system?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Yes.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

What kind of feedback have you received from them?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

I have had conversations with my equivalents in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S., as well as within Canada with first responders of different forces, such as the RCMP. They want to see how we can.... Within here, it's how to work together, and outside, especially with the women, peace and security agenda, it's how to ensure that.... For example, rape kits are not standardized. Right now, if somebody from another country does the rape kit on you, it may not be admissible in the court system within your country. How do you ensure that these things get pushed to have a standardized process and approach?

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Even though we're still dealing with some of the very pressing problems that my colleague was just referring to—3,000 cases—we haven't solved the issues yet. Bill C-77 is an important part of that. Do you see a role for Canada in teaching and training at the level of the UN on issues of military sexual trauma, abuse and assault?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

I think they can take the lead on it, but I think it would be more for the Minister of National Defence than the CAF to do that, especially through MOUs, let's say. That's my own opinion on it, but if we go through a conflict, it's just to ensure that the care is there, that it's provided, and that people are trained to ensure safety. That probably should be done through some kind of memorandum of understanding when we go into conflicts in other countries.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

This is more specific and more directly related to Bill C-77. I had a chance to ask General Lamarre at a previous session about the risk of different service discipline cultures emerging across the country under Bill C-77. They're much more minor offences, but still one unit of the armed forces having a different culture or a different vision of service discipline from another. He did not express that there was concern about that.

I now want to ask you in the context of much more serious offences—military sexual exploitation and assault—do you see a risk under the framework of Bill C-77 that different units of the Canadian Forces will take this issue more or less seriously and that the outcomes for victims would be different within the justice system that's contemplated by Bill C-77? If so, what levers do we need to examine more closely to make sure that doesn't happen?

[Marie-Claude Gagnon]

Obviously, if the more serious crimes are dealt with in a centralized way, there'll be some consistency there, but all the minor cases that can lead to bigger cases, that can foster this to lead to those, is where the concern is. Decentralizing this does help with regard to serious crimes being handled on time, but at the same time, the smaller crimes should also be looked into by people who are competent and able to provide some kind of consistency. That's why a clear definition process needs to be done. Accountability, making sure that these are being followed, needs to be done as well. Maybe the SMRC could be doing that. I'm not so sure.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much.

That's just about my time.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Martel.

[Richard Martel, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, CPC]

Good morning, Ms. Gagnon.

Congratulations on the work you are doing.