Thank you very much, Major Perron and Madam St-Pierre, for being here. Thank you for your expertise and your service to our nation. It's very important work.
I want to start by looking at a chart, and I want to thank our analysts for preparing it. It's 2018 data, and it lines up the percentage of women in the armed forces in parallel to visible minorities. As we can expect, as we progress through the ranks, both with respect to women and visible minorities, beginning with privates on the NCO side and then going up into the senior ranks of master warrant officer and chief warrant officer, and from officer cadet on to general, there is a sharp drop-off in the number of women, and also in the number of visible minorities. Embarrassingly, there are only two categories, and it's in the women's rubric where the percentage of 20% is cracked, and that is, again, with 2018 data: female lieutenants, 24.4%, and female officer cadets, 21.1%. Everything else is south of 20%, and then in some ways, when we get into the field of generals, it embarrassingly drops to zero.
I don't want to spend my time on the analysis of data. I'd like both of you to take a moment and qualitatively walk the committee through where the obstacles are that keep women and visible minorities from breaking through into senior ranks, both on the NCO side and on the officer side. Be anecdotal if you can. Each of you probably has some compelling stories or incidents that really could drive home why we don't have more women or visible minorities in senior positions.