Evidence of meeting #125 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 men.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay.
From these letters, do you still get the sense that men cover up for one another?
4:05 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
Oh, God, yes, absolutely. Not always. There are many situations where they don't, but absolutely they will stick to one another; they will support one another.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Did you have a chance to go through the Auditor General's report?
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
What kinds of questions would you have for the Auditor General based on what you read?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
You have about 10 seconds, but I'm pretty sure there will be time at the end to circle back to this question.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Maybe we can circle back, because we would like to ask the Auditor General these questions. I hope this committee has a chance to as well.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you.
Thank you both so much for being here today and for sharing your testimony. I really appreciate what you had to tell us. I think it's important we remember that when there's a predator doing what they do, it's not really up to the victim to make sure the predator doesn't get them. I just want to recognize that.
I'll start with you, Major Perron. They talked a little bit in the Auditor General's report about recruitment and some of the challenges they're facing. One of the things I didn't hear a lot about, and maybe I didn't get that part, is around promotion and retention. One of the things I can see, and it's been addressed a little bit, is that we're not seeing women get promoted, but it's also about keeping them in. Women are coming, and when they can't get that promotion—I've heard this from multiple women in the CAF—they leave, because they can get promoted in other places.
I wonder if you could touch a bit on that, and then if you want to follow up, I would appreciate it.
4:05 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
Women are leaving the forces for a multitude of reasons, and they're not just about promotions. Promotions and career progression would be a major factor for any woman who's worked so hard for her career. It's also about juggling all the other demands on her time with her career. If she's going to make the sacrifices and deploy for eight months to former Yugoslavia or any other theatre of war, she wants to be recognized and she wants to progress at the same rate as her peers, and according to the data, that's not happening.
Why isn't it happening? It's because what gets measured gets done, and in the units, we're not measuring the level of success and progress of women. We're not doing it at the military college level. When I sat on the board of governors for the military college, every year I said, “Why aren't we measuring the success of women?” We're measuring when they come in, when they're recruited, and then they fail out, and we don't ask why. We don't measure it. We don't observe it.
We need to get better data at every level. Corporations do this at every level. I worked for General Motors and Bombardier as an executive. We measured our DGMs at every step of their career to make sure we were doing the right things. When women weren't promoted, we did an analysis. We did problem-solving and wondered why we were losing our women. Sometimes it was work-life balance; other times it was career progression.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you.
You said that Operation Honour is messy. It's a messy part of the process. When we read the Auditor General's report, we see there is a lack of training to educate people about what to do when somebody discloses. There was a lot of concern about reporting and what would happen if you did report, and the challenges that people had in knowing. They may think, “They've told me, and now I'm their chain of command. Do I do it, or do I listen to them?” It's that women-focus part.
I want to talk a bit about what the messiness is and what might be the richness that's coming from that messiness.
4:10 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
We are asking leaders at every level, from sergeant up, to teach courses on diversity and harassment. They are in front of a class and they don't want to do it; they don't believe in it. They have never had problems with women themselves, so they ask why they should even be exploring the issue. The first thing they say—not always, but it's where the problem lies—when they're in front of a classroom is, “We have to do this, so you're going to put up and shut up for the next half hour. Then you're going to sign the paper that says you've been inoculated against harassment. If any one of you does anything, then I will have your name on a paper saying you knew about it.”
They don't believe in it. It doesn't come from a place of conviction for them, and that's the problem.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Yes. I appreciate the difficulty of this. One of the things that I think the military is struggling with, and what I'm struggling with as an outsider, is what the internal culture is that creates this environment and how we can get to the root causes.
I don't know if you have any feedback on that.
4:10 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
The military is an old career. I won't say it's as old as some other careers, but men have been fighting wars for centuries and centuries. Women fighting alongside them have been doing so for only a few decades, so it's a culture that's going to be very long in the making, in evolving. That's a fact. For us to accelerate that process, we have to go upstream and create conditions in the training where women are valued, and all of a sudden men wake up to the fact that, hey, we do better at war when we have women fighting side by side—not by sitting in a classroom and learning about diversity. It's just the way it's going to happen.
If you talk to the 42 anti-armour gunners who have been to Croatia with me, you'll see that they are convinced of women's place in combat arms—before that, probably not so much. We have to create those conditions where men value women because they bring something to the table, not because they've been told and politically it's the right thing to do.
I think Kristine mentioned that.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
That's interesting, because it's really about making sure women are in those leadership roles so we can see that and it's living reality.
It brings me back to the part that so many women are hearing, the hard part of this story right now, that women can be hurt in the military. When I look at attracting, this is becoming another part of the messy process.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
How are we going to recruit women to take these leadership roles if it doesn't feel like a safe place?
4:10 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
Maybe I'll leave this one to Kristine.
4:10 p.m.
Director, The WPS Group
It really has to start at the beginning, with what Major Perron is doing in the schools in changing that perception, changing that mentality. Starting with the education, whether it's at RMC or even here, and showing that we can all work together is certainly a first step.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you.
The last seven-minute question will go to MP Robillard.
The floor is yours.
January 31st, 2019 / 4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My first questions are for Ms. Perron.
In your book Out Standing in the Field, you talk about the difficulties you encountered when you wanted to testify about the abuse you were subjected to.
Can you tell us what those difficulties were about?
4:15 p.m.
Senior Partner, A New Dynamic Enterprise Inc.
First I want to say that at the time, I thought I was the problem. That is what many women think today. I thought I was causing the abuse, whether it was rape or other misconduct, rejection, or the way my colleagues treated me. I told myself I was new, that I was blazing a trail, that I was the first, and that because of that they did not understand, but that they would get used to me. That was the first reason.
The second was that I could not complain to a commander who did not believe in what I represented as a woman in the infantry. I did not think I would be supported.
The third reason was that there were a million transgressions. How could I go to the commander and say that the guys had put eggs in my boots or stolen my beret? He would have said:
“Suck it up, princess.”
He would have said that now that I was in the infantry and was in the men's ballpark, so to speak, I had to endure certain things. He would have said that that was the infantry. All of these factors meant that I could not speak up. I did not feel comfortable. My personal mission was to be a member of the infantry, and everything else was secondary.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal