Evidence of meeting #136 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 women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, folks, for being here.
I don't have an awful lot. Ms. Dzerowicz was on the same track.
General Wynnyk, you were talking about the fact there have been some accomplishments, but that there's more work to be done. You also talked about the 10 recommendations in the report in 2015. Could you maybe outline what's left to be done and what you have done that needs to be redone because it wasn't successful?
4:40 p.m.
LGen Paul Wynnyk
To build on what I said in the introductory comments, we're developing and implementing sort of a unified policy on sexual misconduct. In fact, this week—to give you an idea that progress is ongoing—the chief of the defence staff approved something called the Operation Honour manual, the Operation Honour decision tree and a forces-wide message that actually defines sexual misconduct. That may seem insignificant, but the definition of sexual misconduct is different to different organizations.
All those products were informed by Dr. Preston in a sense. She defined what the requirements were. They were then passed to Commodore Patterson and her team. I think they've been looking at these products for about four or five months. Then they were re-validated, if you will, given back to Dr. Preston to ask her, as an independent body, if this checks off and if this is what she were talking about.
That process has gone on. Dr. Preston may want to add to it. I think she even had the external advisory committee look at it, and then these documents have been issued to the Canadian Forces or are in the process of being issued. It might even be today or tomorrow; it's that fresh as we go forward.
These are incredibly important documents because they address some of the confusion surrounding what constitutes sexual misconduct. How do you deal with sexual misconduct? What is a simplified decision tree? We're used to that in the Canadian Forces, yes or no. You follow the decision tree down. That is sort of translating what Dr. Preston has given into military-speak, if you will, as we go forward. That's one example of some great work that has been done primarily by Dr. Preston's team and Commodore Patterson's team that will help us as we go forward. Once again, these are not perfect documents. We're going to circulate them, and we're going to take them for a test run. We'll get feedback on them and amend them accordingly as we go forward.
I talked about the campaign plan, and I don't want to underestimate the importance of that. We're used to doing that in the Canadian Armed Forces; that's how we communicate. When we want to effect change or when we want to do something hard and complex, we come up with a campaign plan. That's the way we communicate in the Canadian Armed Forces.
It is a campaign plan to address Operation Honour, of which cultural change will be one aspect. I know I'm dwelling on cultural change, but I'm most concerned about that because that's the hardest task we have coming forward. That's changing attitudes and beliefs, as I mentioned before, and that involves everything. That involves training, it involves education and it involves what we talked about, which is getting more women into leadership roles and more women into the Canadian Forces so we reach that critical mass and just hammer home that this behaviour is unacceptable and won't be tolerated.
Another big part is that performance measurement framework. I'm quite excited about OPHTAS, the Operation Honour tracking and analysis system. As I said, it's the first bespoke system. What we have to do is develop those linkages to the other databases, all the while making sure we're preserving, where necessary, the confidentiality of the reports. I stress once again that it is completely independent from the database that Dr. Preston has. Information will only be shared if Dr. Preston thinks it needs to be shared as we go forward, but there's no link in those particular databases.
We're going to need time to collate and collect this data as we go forward. As far as I know, it's probably one of the first bespoke data collection devices or methods that we've seen in the Five Eyes countries.
Finally, we're well on our way to doing this under Dr. Preston, expanding the mandate of the sexual misconduct response centre and clearly defining the roles of the particular organization. That is not finished yet. We are still working on the terms of reference for Dr. Preston's organization and Commodore Patterson's organization, which fall under me, so it's clearly understood who does what.
Getting back to your original question, I think that was one of the bigger obstacles we had initially in the last three years, that confusion over who does what.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Dr. Preston, I want to thank you for the acknowledgement that groups within the Canadian forces are quite often victimized at different rates, LGBTQ2, visible minorities and others. I really welcome your saying you're going to study that a bit more. I want to put that on the record.
In your presentation, you said the centre will also fund, through a contribution program, sexual assault centres located near large spaces.
Can you tell me a bit more what that means in practice? It sounds like a very good thing.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
Yes. This stemmed from a budget 2018 commitment where the government committed funds to a number of government agencies to fund a number of initiatives all related to gender-based violence. The Canadian Armed Forces did receive $2 million over a period. It's basically $400,000 a year over five years to fund 10 sexual assault clinics that are in proximity to the 10 largest bases across the country. This is in recognition of the fact that these bases are already providing services to either CAF members or their families, for example. It's an acknowledgement of that and some financial compensation for that.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Coming from a community that has one of the 10 largest bases, I know that it will be very welcome in my community.
My second question is related to this. It's about the relationship between your programs and the military family resource centres. What I hear from military family resource centres is that because they are familiar to family members who might suffer from sexual misconduct or other things, sometimes they are the first door that people go through. There were some questions about how much training and how much they know about what should happen in that situation. I'm wondering about that relationship between the military family resource centres and your programs.
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
It's a good question, and to be honest with you, it's not.... I've met with representatives from morale and welfare services, but we haven't entered into a formal relationship yet in terms of looking at the demand on them and their capacity and what resources we might be able to provide to them. It's absolutely a valid question, though, because you're right; sexual offences and sexual misconduct often do occur within a family situation.
4:45 p.m.
LGen Charles Lamarre
Could I add to that?
April 11th, 2019 / 4:45 p.m.
LGen Charles Lamarre
The military family resource centres are part of morale and welfare services, which is under my organization. I'm glad you raised this, because they're one of our great resources. On those bases they often have extraordinarily good links with local community systems, whether it be sexual assault response centres or whatnot.
When families do come because something has occurred, the centres usually have all of those links already in place and can assist them. They also have great links, of course, with the military police and with any sort of organization, including the chaplaincy, that can reach out. There are a number of different ways in which these families can be helped as they go forward.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
I guess my point here is that I believe they already do a lot of the work on some of these cases and they need to be assisted in doing that work, in terms of capacity and training. I know that they're very open to a closer relationship on these issues.
I'm probably out of time.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
You are, but there's good news. Given the time we have available on the clock, and the fact that lot of members would like a third and fourth round of questions—MPs Dzerowicz, Gallant, Garrison, Spengemann, Robillard and Fisher, you have all indicated that you wanted more time—I'll keep going. I'll give five minutes and then three minutes. The first four members will get five minutes and then the last three will get three minutes, very similar to what we've been doing. That should take us to the end. There is also a little bit of extra slush in there for anyone else who wants to jump in.
I will now yield the floor to MP Dzerowicz.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
My question is directed to Dr. Preston and Commander Patterson. I want to talk a little bit about the remarks that Commodore Patterson made.
How many incidents of sexual misconduct are not reported? Do you know?
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
It's hard to measure what's not reported, but certainly we know, from decades of statistics in Canadian society and in fact around the world, that sexual offences are the lowest-reported offences. Typically, fewer than about 10% are ever reported. The ones that get reported tend to be the ones that are more severe in nature.
Within the Canadian Armed Forces, again, it's under-reported. The only way we can really look at that is if we look at the results from the StatsCan survey that measures anonymously people's reporting of victimization as compared with, say, the official police reports. There is under-reporting, for sure.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
I think the other way of asking it, although I know it's a bit of an unfair question, is what confidence do you have that there is confidence in the current system for reporting—i.e., you can actually go out and say that this system is one you would want to engage in, should there be an issue? That is question one.
Two, for those women who have reported some sort of sexual assault or sexual misconduct, to what extent have they had input into the current system that exists right now? I'm wondering if you've gone back to say, “You know, you've gone through this process before. How do we make it so it's a process that...if we had to recreate it from scratch?”
Could you respond to both of those?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
I think the measures we have of confidence are the annual “Your Say” surveys that are conducted by CAF. Typically, a high percentage of people, usually around 85%, report they have trust in their chain of command to appropriately address sexual misconduct.
If I recall correctly, delving a little further into the data, the people who tend to have less confidence in the data, that extra 17% of people, tend to be people who have had experiences.
It's the people who have either never experienced it and never gone through these sorts of issues who have confidence. The people who have gone through them are a little more challenged.
That being said, linking to your second question is: what are we doing to address that? One of the priorities at our centre is that we want to develop a very robust stakeholder engagement process where we are constantly getting the input of people with lived experiences, whether they're former or current CAF members.
At present, we have a small pool of people who we are able to draw on case-by-case to get input on any number of issues, but we absolutely want to expand this, and that's exactly the kind of feedback we want. Based on their experience, what worked and what didn't? How could it be better? That sort of thing.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
We don't have time for you to go through the definition of sexual misconduct, but I'm assuming there's quite a range of sexual misconduct—
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
It's very broad.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
—from something that's very basic and minor to something that's fairly extreme.
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
Yes.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
We talked a lot about culture change. What was normal 10 to 15 years ago is very not normal now—
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
You're right.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
—and so, I would hate for people to feel.... I'm thinking about what happens to perpetrators, because often they don't necessarily want them going to a court system, but I would like them to either go through a course, or have some sort of mechanism to understand the correct current way of working.
Do you have some sort of a program in place for that?
4:50 p.m.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
I'm going to let my military colleague speak about the processes that perpetrators would go through.
As a subject matter expert, I think one of the gaps that exists right now within the Canadian Armed Forces is that very response to perpetrators that you're talking about. There is a wide range of severity in this behaviour, and some of it can very readily and very informally be addressed at a local level. Some of it would mirror the severity of offences I saw in the federal penitentiary system, and those people would require specialized referrals for specialized assessments and intervention.
I think that's an area that definitely needs more work within the forces.