Thank you, Madam Chair.
Obviously, we're at an impasse that stops us getting forward with recommendations that can help the military and help the survivors, because at the moment, the opposition refuses to withdraw a motion that would lead to an unreasonable report.
I proposed a possible way forward. I haven't put in an amendment yet, but it was a compromise where we could get some recommendations to help the military and to help the future men and women who want to go into the military and so that the survivors have been heard. My solution was roughly that we go through all recommendations from all parties, see which ones we could unanimously agree to use Mr. Bezan's process on, get those recommendations forward and then deal with the more difficult ones at the end.
I haven't heard any objections from the opposition parties, so I assume they're still discussing it. The committee will have to wait until we see a response before we can go forward.
What I really want to do today, because the particular motion doesn't allow us to debate recommendations—other than the two minutes which, as the previous speaker mentioned, is totally inappropriate for a number of very serious recommendations—I want to propose some major recommendations today, and then those members who are interested can help me word them, reword them or object to them, and we could have a debate on each of those, but that will have to wait.
Before doing that, I want to, as I've said earlier today and before, time and time again, and the previous speaker just mentioned it as well.... The serious recommendations we make should be based upon what the witnesses told us and what the experts have told us. The recommendations I will come up with for our discussions at subsequent meetings are based on the testimony of those experts and witnesses, which is what all committees do. They hear witnesses, and then that's what's in the report, what the witnesses said and what is recommended.
I just want to go into some of that expert witness testimony from elsewhere, because it leads to some of the recommendations that I am going to make later on.
Ms. Lalonde said:
I can tell you that the highest rate of post-traumatic stress disorder worldwide is among victims of rape and sexual violence. The second-highest rate is in the military. We urgently need to take this seriously. Trauma shouldn't be organized into a hierarchy. When their trauma isn't considered equivalent to the trauma caused by war, victims of sexual violence don't receive the support that they deserve. That's unacceptable.
Later on I'll be making a recommendation related to our report, related exactly to that, that this type of trauma has to be treated equally with other types of trauma.
There was another question: “How important is it that this is a constantly evolving way of finding solutions? ... How important is it that this is a constantly evolving process? ”
Dr. Okros said:
First of all, I definitely agree that it is important, and I definitely agree on the evolving. One of the challenges of Operation Honour was that there was an end state. There is no end state to the way in which Canadian society has continued to evolve and, therefore, to how the Canadian Armed Forces has to continually evolve. I think these will be valuable and required processes going forward.
The other comment I would make is that, while there are efforts to reach out, again, we need to understand the consequences of military sexual trauma. We need to understand that there are still individuals who are not able or willing or in a position to come forward and speak. I think part of this needs to be reaching out to the organizations and to the colleagues they are willing to talk to, in order to have individuals bring their voices forward.
We've heard before in some other testimony from high-ranking military members that there are more stories to come, and that they just haven't been able under the circumstances to bring them forward. That's the type of recommendation we should be looking at, how it can be appropriate and easy for them to bring it forward and not have reprisals.
I'm just going on with the quote.
The last quick comment I will make is that we need to be very careful about people speaking for others. I cannot speak for members of the armed forces, and I definitely cannot speak for women. I think we have concerns when people choose to speak for other groups.
That's why it's very important that we hear the direct testimony of victims and people who are involved on the ground who can outline the horrific situations they've been in. I still think over and over again that if that happened to me, I have no idea how I would handle that. People cannot denigrate the gravity of those instances over a lifetime.
Then it went on to talk about power imbalance. The question was, “In what way do we need to address [that]...in order to be able to get to the point where we're preventing all of this kind of behaviour in the first place?” To the quote I gave earlier from the debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday night, I mentioned a quote related to that earlier in this meeting. I mentioned a quote related to power imbalance. Dr. Okros said:
This is part of self-insight and self-understanding. I think the more we can do to facilitate people.... I will say that I'm the best representative on the screen. Old white men like me in particular need to really open up our eyes and start learning. We also need to look at customs and practices that reinforce these things. A simple example is visible in this committee.
That was the committee he was speaking to.
The speaking order and length of time for questions signal a power hierarchy. We need to be thinking about what message is sent. Who is the least important person on this screen right now? What are the ways in which we can level or address those or make sure that those who perceive they're the least important are still empowered to speak up and speak out?
It's complex. All organizations, all institutions, practice it. It requires open communications. The most critical thing I would go back to is that it needs those who have the weakest voice to be able to be heard the most.
I'm sure, as you know from testimony we've heard, that it's simply not the case at the moment. She gave us all food for thought and no easy solutions. I don't know what all of the solutions are. That's why we need to debate more than two minutes very serious recommendations and try to come to the best conclusions on those recommendations.
On the urgency of taking action now, Dr. Okros said:
This is urgent. We have people who are still hurting. We have members internally within the military. It's been stated. They have lost trust. That needs to be rebuilt with urgency. Canadians need to have confidence in their military. They need to have confidence that when particularly young women, young men and people of diverse identities choose to serve Canada in uniform, they will be treated with respect and have good, full, meaningful careers. That needs to be something that is communicated effectively.
Christine Wood went on after that, on getting to action:
I can tell you things that you have heard before. Victims need supports. There are more and more coming forward and there is still no safety net there to catch them. These individuals are not coming forward to report a simple discrepancy that they saw in paperwork. They are coming forward with their experiences of terror, debilitating anxiety and shredded self-confidence. They are broken. It is simply unethical to continue to ask them to come forward without having a plan in place to support them.
To be clear, we are asking for the same supports that we were asking for four years ago: a national platform for online peer support, group therapy, outpatient therapy and in-patient psychiatric care when necessary that is MST-specific in its focus. It needs to be trauma informed and needs to be able to address the moral injury of betrayal by your brothers and sisters in uniform.
That's why in my recommendation I said I will be bringing it forward later for extensive debate. We have to talk about that peer support that has been recommended there.
If the committee brings forward some recommendations, it will help survivors. If the opposition lets us get by this impasse, if we can bring forward recommendations, people will want to have confidence that they will be implemented. That's why my amendment to the motion is that we should have a reply that the government is going to be implementing them.
There was a suggestion that there's a loss of trust and that it needs to be overcome. Obviously, there are certain senior leaders in the military presently under investigation and we'll let that run its course.
In reference to the minister, I know Mr. Bezan has been criticized a lot today, but this is not something he brought up; it was another committee member. If the committee members are interested in progress, when has there been a minister who is so open to the progress? As I mentioned, if there are media watching who weren't at all the previous committee meetings, I spoke for close to an hour about the things that have been done by this government and under this minister. That's a good record that people can go to in case someone says that things have not been done.
Obviously, the minister is the first to admit, as the committee and the number of incidents that Mr. Garrison and I have outlined show, there's a lot more that needs to be done. These are the things that we should be discussing.
To assure you that the government is open to respond, if there are some suggestions that there's no response because they won't, as Mr. Baker said earlier today, out of the three big items that really need recommendations, the first is culture change.
To show you that the minister is open to culture change, as he said, anything is on the table. He's just waiting for us to move ahead as a committee and make recommendations. He's not actually waiting. Because we're stalled, he has gone ahead and made some major appointments, including Madam Arbour. With or without us, he's moving ahead, and we will certainly get our recommendations to him. I will, one way or another.
However, just to show you that he's open, I'm going to quote him for anyone who suggests that there's a lack of openness from the minister to listening to our recommendations for change. As everyone knows, change is often difficult.
We could spend a whole committee on the quotes of how he's willing to look at what we're proposing, what victims are proposing and what experts are proposing to try to deal with a difficult situation that plagues not only our military, but militaries around the world. Of course, culture is important, because you can't blame individual members totally if they're in a culture where that's acceptable. We're social animals, so we have to improve that culture.
To show that the minister is open to change, I'll just go through some comments he made. He said in the other committee:
Culture change is something we're all committed to. I believe that in the committee here, there are some wonderful recommendations that can be provided, but also a need to look at changes that need to be made. We need to make sure we just don't look at a report, look at a recommendation, sign off, and think it's done.
That's very insightful by the minister. I've mentioned at earlier meetings that not only was there roughly an hour of things I outlined that have been done, including an update of an administrative procedure that I thought was much better than the previous one, but obviously, as the minister has just said in what I quoted, they're not all working. You can't just make the recommendation. You must have the appropriate follow-up.
He went on:
For example, I can list off a whole bunch of things, but ultimately I'm always looking at what results we are creating on the ground. When somebody is joining, are they in basic training and having a safe environment?
Again, that's very perceptive, because as was mentioned before, there was an incident in basic training. A recommendation was that this needed to be incorporated, related to sexual misconduct and inappropriate behaviour, yet the trainer was besieged by laughs and ridicule by the people taking the training because that was the particular culture. Therefore, it can't just be the recommendation. As the minister says, there has to be the follow-up.
On creating a safe environment, I'm quoting the minister again:
If something comes up, whether it's a religious conversation, a gender issue, LGBTQ rights, or anything, we should immediately address it, because the Employment Equity Act states that we must. Do we have the right action groups? Do they have the right governance structure? This is what the independent panel on systemic racism, gender bias and LGBTQ rights is currently doing: looking at where those issues are, digging deep inside the Canadian Armed Forces and looking at what changes are needed.
Again, as you can see, the minister is open to change and already has taken significant action. That's the type of champion we need to bring our recommendations forward.
The minister went on:
I talked about the numbers, and right now, those aren't the metrics we want to judge ourselves by, but you know what? That's progress. It's not success. Going from six to 14 general officers is important, but the pipeline—when you look below that and when you create a greater pipeline—can never be stopped. Why was it, with regard to the representation of women, that the percentages were obviously nothing to be proud of? If it was 15% women in the past, why didn't we have 15% women before? One of my goals was to immediately start making those changes, so when somebody had a complaint, they could come forward, regardless of retribution. When I sign off on any general officers, I don't look at what their ability to command is; I trust they can do that. The question I ask is, “Are these persons leaders who can bring in cultural change?” If they are not, we don't want them being promoted, but if they are, we want to give them proper resources to do so.
Again, the minister is almost ahead of us here in making these suggested changes, because that would be one of the recommendations that I've referred to as needed and that I think the parliamentary secretary has referred to: what is taken into consideration during promotion. Obviously it has to be looked at in our recommendations and in our systems.
The minister went on:
We also need to make sure we have senior women at the table, so that we have proper representation. This is not the be-all and end-all, but it does make sure that we have the right people to put the right structures in place. We need to look at how the independent investigations are conducted.
Of course, I mentioned a potential question about that earlier, related to General Vance's appointment; and survivors have brought up the second big issue, which I'm not going to address right now, but that's the chain of command involvement related to investigations.
The minister went on:
We need to take a look at whether we have the right resources in place, so that people are supported.
In the testimony of the experts that I just read a few minutes ago, that was one of the points they raised as well, and the minister is right on that:
The one question I have...is, if somebody has done something in the past, would it be acceptable for them to join the Canadian Armed Forces? If somebody does something inside the Canadian Armed Forces, why can't we get them out sooner?
The minister is already looking at all these questions and he is obviously moving forward and looking at very important considerations. However, we could add to that. We've spent a lot of time studying and hearing experts and witnesses, and we could actually add to that if people would co-operate and come together on the things that we can at least agree on. Obviously, there are some things we won't agree on.
The minister went on:
Those also have to go through proper legal checks and balances, because ultimately I can't make a decision on that. That's the law. We have to follow the law, and if changes need to be made, we go through the parliamentary process to get those laws changed, so that we can create the proper changes. Ultimately, all of us—including this committee, and I look forward to your recommendations—need to be able to do the ripple effect of any recommendation to see how it can actually have that impact. Too often in the past, what we have done and where we made some changes, they actually didn't achieve the outcomes we wanted. When I became minister, that was the last thing I wanted, giving out these speeches. I wanted to be focused on the metrics themselves and the changes we're making.
That, from my perspective, is insightful from the minister. We don't hear often enough that it's the measurement of the outcomes that is important. Certainly we can consider that if we're allowed to have a serious discussion on recommendations.
The minister went on:
We have made progress, and we're proud of that progress, but obviously, this is not enough
As I said earlier, the minister has said that many times.
He continued:
I'm deeply hurt that we couldn't move forward, and I wish we had a magic wand to make all this go away, but we don't. At the same time, I didn't quit before, when I was serving to support the people, and I'm not going to quit now. I'm committed to our Canadian Armed Forces and to ensuring we create an inclusive environment—
You heard earlier in his statement about ways he's already working on that.
—because there are people in Canada right now who want to serve their country. They deserve to have a harassment-free workplace so they can reach their true potential. We're not going to stop until we achieve that, regardless of how long it takes.
You can see that there's no question that the minister and government are not ready to respond; they're ready to take our recommendations seriously. He said previously that everything is on the table.
That's why I have said over and over that we should get to these serious recommendations that would help survivors, based on the testimony we've heard from survivors and the experts. I hope to hear some more of it so that I can refine the recommendations. I want to have a lengthy discussion at this meeting or at subsequent meetings about that.
I will leave it at that for now. Thank you, Madam Chair.