Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to continue where I left off in the last meeting.
I know there are significant recommendations that we've heard from witnesses, from survivors, and I would just like to reiterate my hope that we could still come to a consensus on this committee and that we could move to actually debating. When I say “debating”, I mean really having an in-depth discussion about these incredibly important recommendations so that we can come to a consensus and ensure that we have a report that we can not only table in Parliament and request a government response, but also inform Madam Arbour's review that she is doing because this is a very historic moment here. I would very much hope that these important recommendations would be given the amount of time and attention and debate that they deserve to have.
Just continuing with some of the recommendations that we've heard—and, again, I would emphasize that these are things we've heard from the survivors—I'll continue where I left off last time. For one, there was the recommendation on “addressing the unstated, but institutionally assumed white heterosexual male norm culture in the CAF. I think the wording of this is very significant for the survivors who said, “unstated, but institutionally assumed”.
When we talk about culture, this is really what we're talking about. It's not something that is written in any kind of procedural manual or that people are told outright. It is the things that are just assumed, the things that, when you join....
We heard from Professor Okros and from others about the ways in which groups in society—and not just in the military—are able to determine who belongs, who doesn't belong and who is more important than others, all of which is done through assumptions that we make. It's done through body language. It's done through certain kinds of language that we use about each other. It's done in a way, as it says here, that is “unstated, but...assumed”.
The next part, I think, is really important. It talks about “white heterosexual male norm culture in the CAF”. I think that this is something that is not just in the Canadian Armed Forces. I think we're seeing this across institutions, particularly military or policing institutions around the world, not just here in Canada, where there has been an assumed white, heterosexual male norm culture.
When you include all of those things, it's very important to understand that this isn't just about women and men. This isn't just about gender. This is about what is considered to be the normative, as I mentioned before, of a good soldier, a good sailor, a good aviator. Those things are very much based on what has been seen before as being good and successful and valued, and what a soldier may have looked like a hundred years ago.
I think that when you look at it this way, race is a big part of it; gender identity and sexual identity are a big part of it. We've seen for a very long time the discrimination—and in this case, not just unstated, but overt discrimination—against transgender, gay, lesbian, LGBTQ2+ and other members of the Canadian Armed Forces because of this normative culture.
The best way of describing it is really when we're socialized, even as children—“boys will be boys”—and this idea of how we're socialized. Girls are told to be nice. Girls are told, “Don't be bossy.” Boys are told, “Be assertive.” Then you add to that all of the intersectional layers. If you are not in the normative, whether it's because of your race, whether it's because you're indigenous, it's anything that is different. That's what they mean by “norm” here, I think. It is anything that is different.
When we say “different”, we're talking about “different from something“. The something that it is different from is the toxic masculinity, the normative culture.
When we talk about shifting culture, we're not talking about telling people that they're bad people because they have been part of a particular kind of assumption of what is normative, what is good. It is not about attacking individuals for wanting to conform to that, because, as humans, this is what we do. We join a group, and if there is a normative culture in that group, it is a natural human instinct to want to be included, to want to adapt and, in many cases, to change our behaviour and our interactions with people in order not to be an outsider, in order not to be excluded. We have seen that with many people, whether women, members of racialized communities or LGBT people, in order to be included. We, all of us, I think, have been in groups in which we feel as though we are on the outside, in which we don't call things out and we try to fit in.
The question is: What are we fitting in to?
Changing culture is about changing what we are fitting into, and if that thing that is the norm, that represents inclusion, is welcoming to who you are in your identity, and if you can come into a group and feel that the culture of that group is such that those small things that tell you that you belong are there, then you feel as though you are included. When you feel that it is something that you are a part of, then you don't have to adapt; you don't have to self-censor; you don't have to change your behaviour or language, what you say and what you don't say, or what you speak out on or don't speak out on.
If there is an inclusive, welcoming culture, then every identity, every person, regardless of whether they seem to be different from what the majority in that group has been traditionally, will feel as though they have a place in that group, and that will then become a self-fulfilling thing. As you bring in more people who have different backgrounds, assumptions and ideas, and diverse people who do things differently and are welcomed, that will then, of course, cause the culture to become even more inclusive so that the next people who come in will find themselves reflected in the normative.
This is why I don't think we can divorce what's happening with sexual misconduct from what's happening with white supremacy, racism, homophobia, or anything that is causing harm, hatred and exclusion. I don't think that these can be divorced from one another, because we have heard—and we have heard this many times—that this is not about sex; it is about power, and it is about the power of people who want to maintain a culture the way it is to exclude others and to keep that hierarchy the way that it has always been.
When somebody experiences sexual harassment or a sexual joke, or if somebody is experiencing all of the ways in which they can be diminished because of their identity, that's not about sex; it's about abuse of power. What makes it worse in hierarchical structures like the military, like policing services, and like places in which there is a very strong hierarchy of power is that the person who is abusing the power already has significant power over the person who is not as high as they are in the chain of command. That is why when we talk about changing culture, we're not talking about just saying that these people have been bad. Obviously, there are cases in which people need to be punished. Obviously there are cases in which we can't have impunity for really significant abuses of power, but it's also about changing all of those small ways in which people interact day to day.
I think that this particular recommendation that links the intersectionality, that talks about the white, heterosexual, male normative culture, is one of the single most important recommendations. As we discuss these recommendations, I hope we will actually get a chance to really discuss them and not just for two minutes before we have a vote. I really hope that we as parliamentarians get a chance to sit and have a real back-and-forth discussion about what these recommendations mean, why they are important, and what it is that we want Madam Arbour to look into.
I believe parliamentarians have an incredibly important role to play, based on all our testimony, and in some cases very difficult testimony, based on the people who took time out of their lives to come to us on the assumption that we would then be able to take that and put it forward and request a government response.
I have more recommendations, but I will for one moment talk about the cynicism behind a committee—and this is in that motion—putting forward a set of recommendations and a study and all the material that we have in that study and then not asking for a government response. The whole purpose is to make sure that these things are acted on. For a committee to not want the government to respond to our report, I can only assume that the underlying desire is not to have recommendations for the government to act on, to actually implement, but something else. I really hope that it isn't cynical. I really hope that we can actually get to these reports.
I would remind the members of the committee that if we were to even be able to adjourn debate or adjourn this meeting, that would give us a chance to get to the report immediately and be able to actually start to debate these recommendations the way they should be debated.
I'll go through some of the other things we've heard, because we've heard some really compelling testimony. I've been in the role of parliamentary secretary for national defence now for over a year and I can say that I have learned more in this position, in the last year or 16 months that I've been in this role, than I have in any job I've ever had in my life. I have learned more and I want to be clear for those veterans and members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are listening and watching that I see the incredible desire to serve. I see the good. I see members of the military who are willing to sacrifice everything for the good of our country, for the good of our neighbours, for the good of other people, to make sure we live in a world that is better, that is more peaceful and that is more stable, to make sure those who would do us harm are not given the opportunity to do so, people who sacrifice their family.
My husband grew up in a military family. My husband's family were in the air force, and do you want to talk about gender discrimination? My husband's parents, his mother and father, met in the air force. His mother was a meteorologist in the air force. They met, they married and they moved around as many people do. As soon as she got pregnant with my husband, she had to quit the air force because she was pregnant. We're talking about 1962; this is in many of our lifetimes. In 1962, she was not allowed to stay in the air force because she was pregnant with a child.
She left the air force and became a military spouse and spent the rest of her career as the trailing spouse, following her husband's career. My father-in-law stayed in the air force and they moved to Germany and were in Zweibrücken. They lived in Cold Lake. They lived in Comox. It's the same lifestyle.
My husband is very proud of that history. He joined the cadets. He got a gliding scholarship. In fact, after his father died, he had to, of course, return to the Ottawa Valley where the family was from, and I think the sacrifices that are made by military families are not known to a lot of people. I don't think they realize the roots. My husband was 20 years old, returning back to a place, the Ottawa Valley, that he had never really lived in and had grandparents that he only knew on holidays.
When we're talking about this, I think we cannot lose track of the sacrifices that are made by the members of our Canadian Armed Forces so that they can protect us, so that they can do good.
Madam Chair, I'm looking at you and I want to acknowledge here in the committee the 31 years of service that you gave to this country.
I have to say that, for those people who are willing to do that, who are willing to give their lives, who are willing to go into danger to keep us from harm, we owe it to them that their work environment be safe. We owe it to them that when they put that uniform on, when they go to places like Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan....
I've lived in Bosnia and Kosovo. I can tell you that my life was only safe because of the military, the Canadian Armed Forces and the other NATO forces that were there in the corner. When I lived in Sarajevo, there were 20,000 NATO troops in and around Sarajevo at that time. I could not have been there or been safe in the work I was doing to promote democracy and anti-corruption without those NATO troops. At that time, they were under Canadian command.
I don't know that young Canadians know how incredibly grateful the people of the Balkans are. I lived in Kosovo at the time that they declared independence. I can tell you that if you were Canadian, British, or American.... People were walking in the streets, old men with wrinkled faces, tears running down their faces, holding the hand of their young five- or six-year-old grandchild. They would see us as Canadians, and they would start to cry and say that because of us, their grandchild would not know violence, their grandchild would live in freedom. I don't know that Canadians know that. Our Canadian Armed Forces put themselves in harm's way so that people can live in freedom, so we can live in freedom.
My family are from the Netherlands. My father, who passed away just before Christmas, got his first candy from a Canadian soldier in his city in the Netherlands in 1945. He was born in 1940. He lived in a city. He was still afraid of airplanes the day he died because he knew that airplanes meant that the bombs would drop. He knew the word “cellar”, by the way, an English word. He was five years old. He did not know any English, but he and his younger brother were hiding in the cellar when the fighting was going on and the Canadian Armed Forces had gone into the city that he was living in. They were led, by the way, by the scout who was the head of intelligence—and this is one of those wonderful synchronicities in life. He was the first Canadian to cross the river into the city that my dad was living in. His grandfather and great-grandfather and uncles were in the Dutch resistance. They made contact. That was the man we grew up next to. He was our next-door neighbour, and we knew that Ernie—Ernie Dombrowski was his name....
I'll be honest. Ernie was a bit of a curmudgeon. He was an older guy. We were little kids. We probably made lots of noise and played ball, and the ball ended up in his yard and he was a little grumpy. My father said to us, “You show respect to Ernie. You always respect Ernie because he saved us.” He was the first Canadian into Deventer, the city my father and his family were living in, the first Canadian soldier to make contact with his own family who were in the resistance and to pave the way for the liberation.
At that liberation, my dad's family were hiding. My dad was the oldest. They heard silence. Of course, the children didn't want to stay in the small cellar, so they came out. They came out into the street, and there were Canadian soldiers who said, “Cellar. Cellar.” My dad didn't know what the word meant, but he knew that the fighting wasn't over, and it was still dangerous and they had to get back in that cellar. They were finally able to get out of that cellar and go out into the streets, and my dad would talk about this until the day he died. He talked about the fact that when they came out they saw the Canadian soldiers and they saw the tanks. They were throwing cigarettes to the parents—this might not be so good in modern days—and candies to the children.
He would talk about this little candy. I think it must have probably been a Werther's Original, because he said it was a hard candy that was like caramel, with a golden wrapper. He took this candy. In five years, he had never had candy. The Dutch barely had enough to eat. They talked about how, when they would scoop the butter, they would get more and more butter, because they had so many breadcrumbs that they would try to make more butter by keeping the breadcrumbs in the butter. They had nothing. He had never had a candy, and this soldier gave him a candy. He remembered that for the rest of his life.
Madam Chair, if you'll allow me, recently I went to a seniors' home in my riding, and it was a 100th birthday party. To the gentleman, a sharp, sharp man of 100 years old, I said, “Thank you”, because he had been a Canadian soldier, and in the discussion I had with him, he said he had been in Deventer, in the town my dad was from. Almost in tears, I thanked him. I said, “I am here because of you”. I am in Canada, I am here as a member of Parliament, and I'm alive because of those soldiers. This man, this old man, was turning 100 years old, and when we started to talk, I asked, “Did you know Ernie Dombrowski?” He said, “Ernie? Ernie Dombrowski? He was my boss. I worked with him”.
This was his birthday, so there were all kinds of candies on the table. They had these little packages like at weddings, where they have candies and a little ribbon. He takes this candy—100 years old, this man—this little package with the ribbon on it, and hands it to me, and says, “Madam Anita, will you please take this candy and give it to your father?”
That afternoon, an hour later, I went home to my parents, and I walked up to my dad—this was just a year ago, just not long before he died—and I gave him that candy. He had tears in eyes, and he said, “You know, Anita, it's the second time in my life that I have a candy from a Canadian soldier”, and it could even well be the same one.
The point I'd like to make—and I have a lot more recommendations to go through, but I've let my colleagues speak for a little while—is that we owe it to the people who sacrifice as they do. We owe it to them to make sure they are safe. We owe it to them to make sure they have an environment where they can give their all and never for one second feel like they don't belong. Not only do they belong in the military, in the Canadian Armed Forces, but they are the reason we are here.
Madam Chair, I hadn't intended to go off on all of those stories, but it's something I feel very profoundly. I think it is very, very important that our committee realize the gravity, the importance and the seriousness of what we're talking about today.
Thank you, Madam Chair.