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.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Unfortunately, we're out of time. I have to move on.
I'm going to yield the floor to MP Gallant.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
General Wynnyk, I still don't understand when a case is severe enough that it would have to be handed over to the civilian courts. I believe we've been told before that if it is a criminal offence with a penalty of five years or more, it is supposed to automatically go to the civilian courts for a charge of murder or a charge of a very severe case of sexual assault.
In what circumstances would it be automatically referred to the civilian court?
LGen Paul Wynnyk
Once again, I can't tell you the precise answer.
I don't have the JAG here with me right now, but if it's a violation of the Criminal Code, the defining factor is the seriousness of the potential sentence that could result from that, but I can't give you the specifics right now. I would need to ask the JAG.
I think the five years you're referring to is probably the Beaudry case that came out recently, but I don't think there was any guideline with regard to five years before that came up.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Yes, the Beaudry decision does play into that, and I understand that's still in limbo, along with a number of cases: 24 cases, I believe.
LGen Paul Wynnyk
If I could just add to that, the director of military prosecutions.... The cases are not necessarily languishing or waiting for the resolution of that. If there are potential alternate charges or alternate ways of looking at that without diminishing the nature of the offence, they're looking at alternate ways to take some of them forward, and sometimes there are alternate charges.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay.
Dr. Preston, is there a different call centre, separate from your response centre, that victims are supposed to call?
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
Do you mean victims of sexual misconduct? No, we're the only 1-800 confidential support centre.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Victims to whom I have spoken say that the first thing they're asked when they call in is what is their name.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
No.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay, well, we have a discrepancy there. In the Auditor General's report, do you know whether he audited the calls? Did they have people call in to see how the phones were answered?
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
I don't believe they did that. If they did, they didn't tell us that they did. They asked us extensive questions and looked at our standard operating procedures in terms of how we handle calls, but that is a fundamental premise of our service, that our services are confidential and anonymous.
We do have a series of questions that we ask people, but we tell them straight up front that there is no requirement to provide any identifying information. In fact, we proactively offer to provide them with an alias that can be used to identify them within our database in the event they call back a second time. They can simply say, “I did call previously, and this is the alias I was given,” and then we're able to make a subsequent entry under that name.
Executive Director, Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, Department of National Defence
It's absolutely not required, and we certainly understand why people would not want to provide that information.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
General Wynnyk mentioned JAG, and we did ask to have JAG back because we have outstanding questions. We have asked on several occasions that the Auditor General be called in, or the Office of the Auditor General, given his illness, to give us a chance to question him about his report on inappropriate sexual behaviour in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Therefore, I would like to move the motion that I gave notice for on Tuesday:
That the Committee, as part of its study on diversity in the Canadian Armed Forces, hold no fewer than three additional meetings regarding Operation HONOUR and that the findings be published in a separate report to be tabled in the House.
The AG's report did find that Op Honour was severely lacking in providing proper support for the victims of inappropriate sexual behaviour, which includes crimes such as sexual assault, rape and harassment. Worse, in fact, the report found that Operation Honour was not even designed with victim support in mind and that the services they do offer are poorly coordinated. Even worse, the victims are often not even told there are support services available to them, despite the legal requirement to do so.
As we've heard, some do receive the direction, but others are still unaware of it.
The Auditor General also found out that after the implementation of Op Honour, the number of reported complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour increased from 40 in 2015 to about 300 in 2017. That spike was not due to an increased level of confidence in the system, but rather, the duty to report, which Operation Honour introduced. We heard from Madame Deschamps that the centre was supposed to be able to receive both formal reports and reports or disclosures from victims who initially only wanted to be supported; but to add that duty to report, there were people whose cases were made known to the military police and the chain of command, and now they're facing the end of their careers or they're being constructively worked out of their careers.
For that very important reason, among not having quite enough information from the JAG and this being such a crucial element of being able to recruit and retain the people we already have in the military, as well as the confidence of those who might not have undergone an assault themselves but who are looking to see how their colleagues are being treated, I would like to have another three meetings on this very important topic so that we can reach our goal of 25% of women in the military and lead the way on United Nations resolution 1325.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
That's fair enough. As you mentioned earlier, you did give notice of this motion in our last meeting, so it meets the requirements.
I'm going to open the floor to debate.
MP Gerretsen.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Mr. Chair, this just came up at the last meeting. Can we suspend for five minutes to caucus on this?
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
We do see the need and the benefit in holding the additional meetings as proposed in the motion. However, we're just concerned about how it's tied to this study and the amount of time that we have left on this study. We would like to propose an amendment to delete the words “as part of its study on Diversity in the Canadian Armed Forces”—everything between the two commas—and then to insert, after the words “three additional meetings”, in parentheses, “at the determination of the subcommittee”.
Liberal
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
As we've seen throughout this Parliament, a number of motions and studies that we have put forward have just been delayed and never reached again, or just as they're being moved or are to be discussed, somebody from the government moves a motion to start another study. It goes on and on, and the issue really never does get addressed.
I think it's very important that this be part of the study on diversity because the whole point of this is to ensure that we have diversity among the Armed Forces. We've heard that operationally this is required because, as we saw in Afghanistan, women can only talk to women, so there's a key role for women in the military when they go into different environments.
We have seen the Auditor General's report. However, we have not been able to speak to the Auditor General or anyone from his staff. We have a very in-depth report, but we as a committee still have to understand that and put it into our study so that we are realistically making progress and getting more women into the military. I think we may even be able to hear from a few more women—maybe one—and not just women but people who have left the military, so that we can better understand.
Saying that they're having these exit interviews or going on about what they suppose, the measures that are being taken or the trade shows they go to is really not enough of a strategy. We have to give the confidence to the women who are currently serving that if something of this nature happens, if they're violently attacked, not only are they going to get treated but their careers are going to be protected, and they won't have to be afraid of reprisals.
What we've seen so far, and what we've heard here, is that it is the victim who gets taken from her unit and denied the career path and the education that's supposed to be involved in going from, for example, basic training to their actual career line. If we don't make this part of the study, it will never get done. This is a delay tactic on the part of the government, and we need to move forward.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
I do think this is important, and we need to have some additional sessions. We have questions we're obviously not going to answer today as a result of the motion. My understanding of the intent of sending this to a subcommittee would be that we have so few meetings left, and we have estimates to deal with and the peacekeeping report to deal with, so there's going to be a little bit of a scheduling problem. I don't see it in the way it's been characterized by Ms. Gallant as a delay tactic. I see it as a scheduling challenge that the subcommittee would have to deal with.
