Thank you, Madam Chair.
A number of committee members have mentioned what potential evidence might come from another witness, but few have spoken yet about the process. That's about the serious ramifications of inviting someone who has not refused to come and, as a number of members have mentioned, what the serious ramifications of abusing that process could be. I look forward to hearing that from members who haven't spoken about that process.
There's a saying in government that there's not much use in doing it if you can't measure the results. I'm hoping that there are certainly ways of measuring the results of the recommendations we're talking about. As we've seen in the past, some things have been done, but they haven't necessarily worked.
First of all, I want to commend all the committee members for taking this so seriously and thinking about these many recommendations that Ms. Vandenbeld has mentioned. Know that everyone is really dedicated to doing what we can to fix this, and as soon as possible.
I've been taking the philosophy that I'm not getting into the details of recommendations but rather talking about the context. However, I'm going to break that for one small point. I heard—and I can't remember if it was in committee or it was directly—that a woman required a piece of equipment that had a different design or that was personally made because she was a woman. The commander told all the people in that division, group or base, whatever it was, that they couldn't do a lot of other things because that woman's piece of equipment took up all the money, which was obviously ridiculous. I'm hoping it's in the recommendations that we've heard so far or are going to hear that anything like that, anything that's to help gender inclusivity, be in a totally different budget. It doesn't detract from someone's budget. It can't be used as an excuse. That's an absolutely ridiculous situation.
To get back to my philosophy of talking about just the overall context, I want people to think about it. Someone chooses a career, and a very honourable career. The military is not just any career. It's very honourable. They put their life at risk for a country they really believe in. They're already investing a lot more than they would normally need to invest in some other careers. Then a situation occurs that could harm them physically or devastate them mentally or emotionally. Under normal circumstances, they would report that and have it dealt with, but if they're in a situation where reporting that could devastate that whole career and could set them back from the reason they were there in the first place and could negate all the years of dedication that they have given and their chance to move forward and make even more contributions, what an awful position to be in.
It's heartbreaking. I'm not sure how many of us could take that, psychologically. That's the thing that I think what we've been discussing this afternoon has to fix. I'm confident with the positive view of all members of the committee that we will certainly make great strides towards that.
I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Madam Chair.