National Defence Committee on Oct. 26th, 2020

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I appreciate that, General, although I think at the same time we still have problems. The Jordan principle is allowing people who have been charged with sexual assault to be released. How is that justice for the victim? Even with the supports, they're not seeing justice at the end of the day. The statistics are, I think, going to be interesting.

Ambassador O'Neill, you and I have talked about this in the past. The participation of women in the Canadian Armed Forces is key. Advancement in the armed forces is something we all want to see happen for women in uniform.

What best practices from other countries and other armed forces around the world can we employ in CAF to ensure that we have opportunities and fulsome careers for women in uniform?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

Thank you for the question, and thanks for championing this and keeping it on all of our radars.

There's something that I think is a really positive thing. I mentioned the Elsie initiative for women in peace operations. Through that, we're trying to work with countries around the world. We developed what's called a “barrier assessment methodology”. We talked to peacekeepers, people in policing and military forces around the world, and got a whole range of ideas of what types of barriers they face. These are things from their family not wanting them to join the forces, the stigma of joining the forces—often people are called “loose”, or that they can't do something else—to equipment challenges once they're in the forces. Are there helmets? Is there gear that fits them? Are they missing out on deployment opportunities because they often happen at a point in their career where women in particular who have young children at home don't want to go on deployment. They end up getting an added cycle of not experiencing opportunities that set them up for deployment.

There are 14 barriers that are identified. They're basically universal—they're broad enough to be universal—and, of course, one of the barriers is sexual assault or sexual harassment within the forces.

We have made that barrier methodology public. Various countries are undergoing it. The Canadian Armed Forces is going to undergo it as well, and perhaps Brigadier-General Bourgon can speak to that. I think it's an important thing. We're saying we have a systematized way of addressing everything from external cultural issues to internal ways that job descriptions are written or that selection processes are done to figure out what those barriers are, and then we'll have some ways of comparing and contrasting and figuring out some solutions.

I'm sorry to go on for so long.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bagnell, go ahead, please.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you both for being here for this very, very important topic.

Ms. O'Neill, you made the important point right at the beginning: We all know that success increases with diversity.

I want to follow up on a question that Mr. Spengemann asked.

In peacekeeping, negotiating, moderating, etc., although the numbers are lower than they should be, can you give me some successes of any women from around the world, not just Canada, a success story of how they've been successful in making peace, and, if possible, the value added in some cases, if there was any, that made it possible or made it better?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

Thank you for the question.

The data you referred to is the fact that we now know that peace agreements are at least 35% more likely to endure at least 15 years if women are meaningfully involved in their creation. Why is that? We have a lot of evidence that women tend to both change the process and influence the topic.

To give some examples, women in Northern Ireland, in negotiations, broadened the discussion so it included things like whether or not there would be segregated education going forward. Were they going to replicate the conditions that led to the division of their society that got them to that place? Women in Darfur raised issues of food security. Women in Colombia raised issues of land ownership and an ability to inherit property and land, and for women to own land and run for public office. These are things that ultimately add to addressing the root causes that bring a country to conflict in the first place. These are just a few examples.

I was at an event this morning with several women from Afghanistan, including women who are in Doha right now. The government has 21 negotiators on the government side; the Taliban have none. Four of the 21 negotiators are women. One of them was on today and was talking about the fact that women have to be spreading themselves across every single committee at these negotiations. They tend to be thought of as needing to be put in health or education or something related to a basic social service. They're saying, no, we have to be involved in discussing anti-corruption, the reform of our bloated security sector, a whole range of issues. It's primarily about broadening the agenda, not just issues related to so-called women's issues.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I have only one other question, so you could go on at length. It's a follow-up from Mr. Benzen, and Mr. Bezan touched on this. In anything that comes under your mandate, are there success stories from other countries around the world that the committee may not be aware of?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

In my previous job and now in the government, I have been able to work with women in Sudan, who lived for almost 40 years under a very oppressive and severe military dictatorship. They were flogged for wearing pants, for example. They couldn't have meetings. They couldn't organize.

A year and a half ago, women were 70% of the people who took to the streets to demonstrate. Finally, they brought down a dictator. That revolution was.... I was there in December. People talk about it as a women's revolution, a youth revolution: 70% of the people on the streets. You see media coverage about women joining these revolutions. They were leading those revolutions.

They brought down a dictator, and they did not stop there. This is something that does not get nearly enough coverage. I'll try not to go on for too long.

When the transition government was named, with 11 members, there were two positions. Women had to fight for those positions, and they used arguments like “We have Resolution 1325. There are 80-some countries in the world that have national action plans. We need that too.”

They successfully negotiated for a 40% quota for either gender, for women or for men. That's a minimum of 40% representation in the legislative council going forward. For legislative elections, Sudan's national parliament going forward has a 40% quota in its constitution, which I think is the biggest one in the world. These are amazing stories.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. Bagnell.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Do you have any other examples?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

Absolutely.

Colombia was the first place that had what they called the “gender subcommission”. They had a model with various committees. They also had a gender subcommission that was half women representing the FARC and half women representing the government, and they went through every single item on the negotiating table.

One of the things they did, for example, was remove the idea that men with guns essentially could forgive other men with guns for crimes committed against women. They introduced the fact that sexual violence needed to be included in a ceasefire and could not be negotiated away in a peace agreement. It's an issue of justice along the types of things we're talking about.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much for that.

Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Bourgon, when I first took the floor, I asked you what proportion of recruitment francophone women account for. You told me that you did not have that figure. Would it be possible to send it to the committee at some point?

[BGen Lise Bourgon]

I will ask about it, but I don't know whether the number of francophone recruits is counted separately. I don't think we are there yet.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay. I would like you to look into that.

We did not finish our discussion earlier about the quick reaction force, the QRF. You said that the Americans had a 50/50 concept on the ground. That's what I understood.

Is that also the Canadian objective for that kind of reaction force or would you rather have 25% in 2026, a carbon copy of the forces loaned to the UN?

[BGen Lise Bourgon]

That is a United Nations concept, which stems from the new women in uniform parity strategy. The mixed reaction team concept requires every mission to have a mixed reaction battalion whose ratio must be 50/50.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay. If that concept is adopted, there will be no choice to achieve that objective.

[BGen Lise Bourgon]

If we decide to design a battalion as such, it must have a 50/50 ratio.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

That's great.

I was looking earlier at the figures provided by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. In 2019, it ranked Canada 11th out of 167 countries in terms of the women, peace and security index. That is a drop compared with 2018, when Canada was ranked 7th out of 153 countries.

What areas do you think Canada should focus on to strengthen its engagement to the women, peace and security agenda?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

As I mentioned, I'll have to check the specific reasons we shifted down a couple of notches on the Georgetown scale, but in terms of areas that we can strengthen, as I mentioned, I think a key thing will be developing more tools. Gender-based analysis-plus is a very useful tool. We have it for a range of levels at a basic capacity level. We need to step that up. That's something that colleagues at the Georgetown University and in military and police forces and the UN are also really interested and engaged in.

We spoke earlier about it being just a tool of analysis, so it's often a way in the door, a way of saying, “Let's just find out what impact this policy might have. We're not telling you to do one thing or another; you retain complete autonomy. Here is a way of finding better analysis, some more customized and specialized tools.”

I do think we have, in our national action plan, a very strong policy framework. We just have to keep going on the process of implementing it and getting more people to implement it more consistently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karen McCrimmon]

Thank you very much.

Ms. McPherson, go ahead.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to follow up a bit on what you were just talking about, Ambassador, in terms of implementation and how we have that good policy piece in place.

How do we, as parliamentarians, assist you in your role? What are the things we can do to make sure that this remains a whole-of-government endeavour and is not left on your shoulders alone?

[Jacqueline O'Neill]

You continue to have sessions like this one where you ask us about progress and you force us to name gaps and areas we need to improve. You ask people who don't have this in the job title, who aren't designated women, peace and security or gender specialists or advisers. It's very helpful when questions go to commanders, when they go to deputy ministers and when they go to people overseeing all aspects of policy about how this work is integrated in the broader work.

We talk about it being sometimes considered as a separate or an add-on issue. I often talk about how we have adversaries around the world who don't see this as an add-on issue. In Boko Haram, two-thirds of their suicide bombers are women. In ISIS, one out of five foreign fighters who left from North America or Europe to fight was a woman—one out of five. They are targeting women, so we have to be viewing this as part of our strategic national capacity to engage in our broader goal. So keep asking them.

As well, bring experts from other countries. It's an area where we're learning from each other, so have representatives of forces and governments around the world that are achieving some success in some ways so that we can continue to learn from them.

Also, reading, interviewing and interrogating the very extensive progress reports that are submitted every year.... There are people across government who spend a lot of time providing a great amount of detail that is tabled every year, so to look that up, to go through that and to ask questions about it is very powerful.

Thank you.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I think I'll repeat that exact same question, as I have this privileged role of being one of the last questioners, of course.

Can I also ask you, Brigadier-General, what parliamentarians can do to help you in terms of CAF recruitment, in terms of the work you're doing around this work?