Madam Chair, thank you very much.
This is on the main motion. I want to thank colleagues for the change we made in it through the amendment.
We've said a lot about the virtue of having the power to summon somebody, and many of us, I think, have thought a lot about the restraint we need to exercise when deciding to issue a summons. This is a tool that's best held in a committee's vest pocket as something to use only as a last resort in extreme circumstances.
We've had extensive testimony from officials at the Prime Minister's Office, from officials at the Privy Council Office and from the minister himself, who was in front of this committee for six hours alone. As my colleague Mr. Baker just said, the desire on the part of some of us to want to recycle through some of that testimony at this point, with the runway we have left, really isn't helpful.
I want to take Mr. Bezan at his words, which I cited in my last intervention. He has expressed a desire to dive in deeper, to really do the work to correct the issue of systemic sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces. Diving in deeper doesn't just mean looking at the most recent case in the headlines. It means looking at the recommendations in the Deschamps report; it means look at the witness testimony; it means listen to the minister, who has flung the door open, saying that the time for patience is over and that we need complete culture change now.
The volume of recommendations in our minds and hopefully in discussion within in this committee is extensive, and prioritizing those recommendations is incredibly important to serving women, to former serving members of the Canadian Forces, to male allies, to recruits, to members of our reserves, to those deployed overseas, to those deployed at home. Nothing could be more important at the moment for the Canadian Forces.
With respect to the time frame we have, when we look at the motion and the window of May 28 and a desire to bring in additional witnesses now, we can see that it would require a week and change to drill through these recommendations, prioritize them and identify the ones that are going to be most impactful and pass them to the House of Commons before we break for the summer.
This is hard work. This is work that will take discussion among ourselves. This is work that will take place not in front of a camera, but among colleagues—with disagreements, yes, but with a desire to actually achieve the change.
Mr. Bezan brings a motion and says he wants to dive in deeper. This motion leaves out a significant issue, Madam Chair, concerning the time when the former chief of the defence staff was appointed. There are witnesses whom we could potentially, and maybe should, hear from again. In the same breath as Mr. Bezan brings forward the name of Ms. Astravas, we could ask for Richard Fadden. We could ask for Ray Novak and we could ask for Erin O'Toole, who, at the time of appointment of the former chief of the defence staff, was in office.
I'm not saying this to be partisan. I'm saying it because the former chief of the defence staff is now reported in the media to have said that he “owns” the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. Back in 2015, he felt that he “owned” the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
From a systemic perspective on the deep-rooted, systemic sexual misconduct problem that the Canadian Forces have, nothing could be more important than a former chief of the defence staff saying that he “owned” the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. How can any one official rise to a position of asymmetric power within the Canadian Forces to have that kind of influence and to potentially alter or quash or get rid of investigative processes at the stroke of a pen or at the click of a keyboard?
That is a systemic issue that goes far beyond the name of Jonathan Vance. That is a systemic issue that my Conservative colleagues and colleagues from all parties on this committee should be deeply interested in.
If I saw the names I just mentioned and saw a desire to look at them in this motion, I would say that this is a transpartisan motion that is really focused on the issue at hand, but we don't see their names. I take seriously the comments from my colleague Mr. Baker that this is not a time to play partisan politics but a time to move to the same side of the table, with very limited runway left and with full knowledge of what the recommendations are that are at issue. We have them; we've identified them.
What we need to do now is prioritize them, sequence them, adopt them and pass them as a committee—not in a single session without any further discussion, but with deliberation, with thoughtful input from all sides, having listened to our experts, our witnesses, and the women and men who have served in the Canadian Forces.
Nor is it just those who served just during this Parliament; we've heard their voices in the previous Parliament and in other studies. The issues are known. The willingness on the part of the minister and this government are there. The country is now looking to our committee as the pivot point to take these recommendations and put them into the hands of government so that in very short order we will have made the changes that are so urgently needed.
Thank you, Madam Chair.