Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Barsalou-Duval, it is always a pleasure to hear your son. You must never apologize for that.
I thank MP Garrison for his words. I'm subbing in here today and haven't been part of the study, but I think that's something that seems to have been forgotten along the way. If the goal of this committee and the members of this committee is to provide a report with recommendations to finally stamp out sexual harassment in the military, that's great. I think every member of the Canadian Armed Forces and the families who support them want us to come together to finally come up with a concrete solution for this problem.
If the point of this is literally to get content for social media, well then, shame on you. When I decided to run for office, as a military mom I was really concerned for my son, who joined the forces in 2011, and for the younger one who joined in 2013. Many of you on this committee who served with me in the last Parliament know that. The reason I decided to run is that I was a ticked-off mom. I was worried that if my kids got sick or injured in the Canadian Armed Forces, they wouldn't be taken care of when they left. I said, “You know, I can put up or I can shut up,” so I got involved. I decided to run for federal office because I was not happy about how we were treating our veterans and members of our forces.
As my colleague MP Alleslev and the chair will know, when my kids joined the forces, the family joined. The whole family is involved. You hear stuff and you talk about stuff and you get worried. You start thinking about things and you hope things will change. You get involved and you get active.
I now have another member of the Canadian Armed Forces in my family. My son married a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, so I have my own little platoon going on.
However, I'm really concerned. The Deschamps report clearly brought forward the problems in the Canadian Armed Forces. As MP Garrison said, we had a duty to act. We all have a duty to act.
We can stand here, beat our chests and blame each other over who did what and who didn't do what, but what's important is what we do moving forward. How do we fix this? Those survivors and the families who support them, who went through horrible experiences, need us to move forward. They need us to come together as a collective and move the dial.
I ask that we come together and get this done for them. I don't want to have to hear that one of my kids went through this. I don't want to have to bury another family member or friend in the Canadian Armed Forces. I don't want to hear that anymore. I don't want to go to any more funerals. I want to know that we did something. I don't know about you guys, but that's why I ran.
I was once told you either run for office because you want to do something or because you want to be someone. I don't know about you guys, but I want to do something. Let's get this report finalized. Let's hear from whoever we have to hear from, but let's get it done.
I don't know what the regular practice is for the national defence committee with respect to submitting witness lists. In my committee, if a member wants to submit a witness's name, they submit it to the clerk and we just invite them. We don't invoke Standing Order106(4) and have these debates on a witness; we just send in the witness's name. To me, this sounds like political grandstanding. You're playing games. If you really want to just have someone come to the committee, send in your witness list. Get the people here, speak to them, and get it done, but stop playing games for the sake of getting political points. This is not what we're supposed to be doing.
Thank you, Madam Chair.