Evidence of meeting #118 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Founder, It's Just 700
Also some tracking, because of the relocations. People are frequently relocating. If you put this in the chain of command and then within that there's a posting of A, B and C, that case is left in limbo. The other person comes in and has to start again to learn the facts and everything.
There needs to be proper guidance, and timelines and procedures that need to be followed.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Who would be responsible for that?
Should it be JAG, or should it be—?
Founder, It's Just 700
If JAG is the one that wants to delegate it, I think they should be responsible to ensure it's done properly.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay.
In the Auditor General's report, there's the whole issue of this service gap that they talked about.
Especially when we start talking about the portability of the crime and the victim, moving around from base to base, how do we fill that service gap?
Founder, It's Just 700
Well, if the victim liaison officer is trained enough and could be attached to one specific area and that becomes their expertise, and anyone who has questions can contact that person, that may help. If you're a victim liaison officer within your unit and have an expertise, anyone who has questions can reach them when they have a case. The expertise needs to be somewhere, and then you'll be able to....
Again, it's about guidelines. I'm really strong about online guidelines and information—strong procedure. If they have guidelines on how to tie our shoes, they sure can have guidelines about how to handle these things. We know they have them on how to brush your teeth and everything. It's all there, so—
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Under Operation Honour, there's been a recent report that the number of prosecutions, investigations taking place, has dropped dramatically. It was done rather quietly over the last few months. What's your take on why that happened?
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Yes, it's tied to the AG's report, that there was a reduction in the number of prosecutions that were being proceeded on, and that nobody really talked about it. There is supposed to be transparency and accountability, and yet it took the Auditor General to actually discover it.
Founder, It's Just 700
There needs to be a consistent, frequent accountability review and reports done, in order for that not to fall through the cracks...saying every five years that we'll do something different, and then it takes five years and they're doing something different again.
There needs to be more frequent oversight.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Mr. Chair, I want to move a motion in light of testimony that we've received and the report that came from the Auditor General. I move:
That the Committee invite the Auditor General to appear before the consideration of Bill C-77 clause-by-clause and discuss his Fall 2018 report.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
It's a dilatory motion.
(Motion agreed to)
I'm going to yield the floor to MP Spengemann.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Chair, thank you very much.
Madam Gagnon, I'm going to ask you a question that goes slightly outside of the bill, and then I'll give the remainder of my time to my colleague MP Dzerowicz.
It goes back to what our colleague Monsieur Martel said about the well-being of victims. The bill talks about the right to information, the right to protection, the right to participation and the right to restitution.
In your experience as a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, what support mechanisms were there prior to Bill C-77? What support mechanisms would there be in the future for a victim to come forward with respect to counselling and mental health services?
This being one incentive to take the step of coming forward, I think it's a very important—
Founder, It's Just 700
The way it's done right now is, they highlight all of the support that exists in the military, but they're not all specifically for that. They say, “Well, we have health care providers and we have chaplains”, but they haven't been trained on these things. This is the support available. It's done; it's there, but it's not cognizant of these specific needs.
What is needed is either to create something separate or ingrain it in what's offered now. For example, the operational stress injury people are not trained for sexual trauma. They don't have peer support. Those are the kinds of things that are really needed in order for people to be able to have those kinds of supports and care they need.
Right now it's redirected to external agencies. In the new budget 2018, they said they were going to put $5 million over four years into external rape crisis centres in nearby bases in order to help victims. I'm not so sure that happened, because I haven't seen any victim centres get anything. Even if they did, how are they sure that this money is invested for that specific need? What was the scope, and how do they make sure that happened?
If you just outsource it, you make it a system that is inconsistent and care that is inconsistent for all victims, because it's led to local organizations all over the country.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
That's really helpful. Thank you very much.
I'm going to pass it to Madam Dzerowicz.
Davenport, Lib.
Thank you so much.
Thanks again.
We're almost at the end of the testimony.
Leadership matters. It very much plays a role in how culture unfolds and even in how things like Bill C-77 are implemented and enforced. What more do you think needs to happen at the leadership level to ensure that Bill C-77, what we're trying to do and the support we're trying to provide to victims will go through?
What more do you think needs to happen at the leadership level?
Founder, It's Just 700
I think the way they can provide, I'll say, more teeth is to enforce that any person in the chain of command that did summary hearings should have to write a report of what happened, and the victim and the accused should also give their input about how they felt they were treated.
That should be put together and sent to the sexual misconduct response centre of the CSRT, if that's what they want. Then they compile it, and they can review the cases, the outcome, and how people felt they were treated. From there, from having that every year, they could have an evaluation, see trends and have a plan that could be published on how they're going to remediate the gaps they see in these things.
Davenport, Lib.
It's like continuous improvement. What is it that we're seeing? What are the gaps that we're seeing and how can we improve? I think that's excellent.
You mentioned—and again this is probably just because I didn't listen closely—that proposed subsection 71.16(1) should be removed. Could you just let me know—
Davenport, Lib.
I'm not sure. It was after you talked about victims when you talked about adding the principle about victims being treated with dignity.
Founder, It's Just 700
I think it's about the request. It's not the whole thing, but the part referring to it being on request should be removed. Victim liaison officers should be given automatically; it shouldn't be done at the request of the victim, because they won't know to request them.
Davenport, Lib.
Thank you. That's a very helpful recommendation.
There's another thing I would love to talk to you about and that is I've only worked in male-dominated environments as well. Changing culture is a tough thing to do, because for many years people operated under a particular environment that was perfectly normal for them and reinforced by leadership.
For me, part of this whole process is trying not to get people to be victimized. I also don't want people to feel bad that they're normal people and they've acted in a particular way, but now they have to change their behaviour.
Do you have any comments about what more could be done around that change in culture within the military?
