Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I think it's because I'm in the room that you don't get the little hand-up signal.
I just want to compare today's committee meeting to yesterday's. Yesterday, we had three female generals and flag officers speaking for two hours before the status of women committee with real questions, with actual discussion and with recommendations, and the focus was on survivors. The focus was on the women in the Canadian Armed Forces, on veterans, and on how we move forward and make it better.
On this committee, we had the same witnesses. We had Rear-Admiral Rebecca Patterson, who is the CAF champion for women. She has an inordinate amount of experience and an inordinate number of recommendations that she could have shared with us. This is the second meeting at which, rather than focusing on how we improve things for the Canadian Armed Forces, rather than focusing on what we do to make an environment where survivors feel that they can come forward and feel that they are protected, everything for the last number of weeks in this committee has been pointing fingers and trying to say it's this person's fault or that person's fault. Frankly, we're still talking about the men. When we're still talking about whether Minister Sajjan was at fault, whether Gary Walbourne was at fault or whether Erin O'Toole was at fault, we're still talking about the men.
I'm hearing from a lot of women I have been talking to. I'm not trying to speak for them and I'm not trying to suggest that they're a homogeneous group, because I know there are many different people with many different experiences who are very traumatized. However, I have had women describe this process as just motion after motion. You throw a motion on the table just as a committee meeting is about to start, and you know that you can't just do that. We have to talk to each other. We have to talk among ourselves to discuss whether it is a good motion and whether it is something that we want to support, and we have discussions with other parties about whether there are better ways. When you just throw out a motion like that when we have witnesses waiting.... It's not just in this meeting and it's not just in the meeting before.
Madam Chair, I commend you for suspending the meeting so that we would know that if we're going to play those games and just throw a motion, we're not going to just sit here and try to talk things out and waste time but are actually going to try to be productive on this committee.
I am very disappointed in regard to this study. I was very pleased about this study when we started. I know I had conversations with some of you, from all parties, about how this was an opportunity for us. Yes, it was a terrible thing that led to this issue being front of mind for the public and being in the media as something that has a tremendous amount of attention. We know the things that have happened and the people who have come forward so incredibly bravely. We know that this is difficult, but the fact is that we do have people coming forward. We do have processes right now whereby we have open military police investigations, NIS investigations. We have people being listened to. We have discussions happening at every level to find a way to move forward, to find a way to do better.
This committee has heard from the minister on this study for more than six hours. The minister appeared three times just for this study. We have heard from the former clerk of the Privy Council. We have heard from the deputy minister. We have heard—