Madam Chair, thank you very much. To begin, I would like to thank you for your leadership on this committee over the past months. It's clear that some partisanship has taken hold. Thank you for keeping us on the rails and for keeping the conversation going. I think we are talking about extremely important issues, even though we now have different visions, clearly, in terms of what needs to be done and how to arrive at the conclusions before the end of the parliamentary term. Perhaps today will offer an opportunity to get to a better space.
I would like to support the comments made earlier by my colleague Ms. Vandenbeld with respect to the intersection of this topic with the issue of military justice. She mentioned a potential appearance of Justice Fish. I would support that. Time is ticking, and we're rapidly approaching the end of the parliamentary term. If we can create connection points and synergies that stress the horizontality and systematicity of the issue of sexual misconduct into the domain of military justice, we should absolutely take advantage of that—even though, as I said, the clock is ticking and time is being used now to discuss the different visions that we have in front of us.
In response to Mr. Bezan's motion, it's very clear that Mr. Bezan and colleagues of his have a particular view. They've made certain allegations. They've been spending the last few weeks trying to substantiate those allegations by chasing after one more witness, one more statement, that would allow the conclusion that what they say is accurate. In the meantime, the clock is burning and ticking away. We have a different vision, a different narrative, a different account of what needs to be done, which is to solve the systematic issue of sexual misconduct in the armed forces in a deeper way.
It's easy for opposition colleagues to say that we are filibustering. We're not filibustering. What we are doing is putting on the table not only, most importantly, the ideas, the visions, the experiences of serving and former members of the Canadian Forces and people who aspire to join the Canadian Forces, but equally, as I've tried to do over the past number of sessions, work that's been done elsewhere. This is work that's been done in other jurisdictions with a military that is structured similarly to ours, that is under democratic control, where the issue of sexual misconduct, all the way up to sexual assault, has equally caused concern and equally led to initiatives. In several cases, the work has been done. Colleagues in those jurisdictions at the parliamentary and executive levels have been able to get to the same side of the table and create high-quality reports with recommendations and accounts that are granular enough to warrant serious consideration by this committee.
In some cases, our experience has been cited elsewhere, in a good way, in a salutary way, but it's very clear that in Canada a lot of work remains to be done. It's urgent work. Those countries that are working in parallel with us are going to look to see if Canada will follow suit, take a leadership role on this issue and solve these questions and issues urgently. That's one thing I've been trying to do under the “filibustering” description by opposition colleagues.
Mr. Barsalou-Duval's amendment, which has since been withdrawn, stated very clearly that with the study under way, there was an expectation that this committee take cognizance of new facts. New facts come to us in the form of witness testimony but also in the form of, very often, comparable experience from other jurisdictions, particularly Five Eyes countries. We work with them very closely on questions of military co-operation, security and intelligence. That includes the U.K., as I've highlighted in recent interventions, as well as New Zealand and others.
In my last intervention before the committee, I drew attention to the work we had done as parliamentarians in a very different way, in a much less partisan way, in the 42nd Parliament. The report we issued then was not directly related to sexual misconduct. It was related to equity, diversity and inclusion in the armed forces. There were sections on sexual misconduct and the issue of the sexualized culture in the military. Some of the witnesses who appeared then appeared before us as well, but the outcome was different. The outcome was a report where colleagues had opportunity to consider among themselves, in a non-partisan way, a series of recommendations and approaches that we made to government, with respect to which a government response was requested. It wasn't a dissenting report. That means that even though it was a majority government at the time, if colleagues had disagreed with what was put forward, they would have had the opportunity to voice those concerns in a dissenting report. The committee spoke with one voice.
In this intervention, Madam Chair, I just wanted to put to the committee the consideration that it's time to move out of the partisan divisions and find a way to work together fairly, because time is tight. It's not impossibly tight, but we're at a stage where we now need to make the right decisions with respect to this report.
I think it's incredibly important that colleagues—as my friend and colleague Mr. Baker has outlined—have an opportunity to debate, but not in the form of a two-minute statement on each paragraph or recommendation. By the way, if we take that at face value, that would be utterly inconsistent with the time frame that's recommended. The motion recommends that we be done, as I read it, on June 7. That level of debate—each member of the committee making a two-minute statement for each recommendation or paragraph—would potentially, first of all, be a series of monologues without the ability to really interact with each other, because we can't amend the recommendations or paragraphs. It would also take more time than the timeline of the 7th would allow.
Third, Madam Chair, it eliminates your ability to act as chair to really exercise discretion and debate among colleagues and guide debate in a very complex setting to a productive conclusion on recommendations or textual paragraphs. If we simply vote paragraphs up or down after a two-minute monologue, we don't create a report. We create a run-on series of statements that may or may not solve issues. We wouldn't raise the chances of them solving issues, because we haven't had the ability to combine, amend or reconsider motions, or to look at experiences from elsewhere to see if the recommendation hits the right tenor. We haven't had the ability to prioritize them in terms of timelines—in other words, what needs to be done first and what the government should most urgently take account of to really get on top of this issue quickly.
Time is of the essence. It's not only parliamentary time, in terms of getting this report finished before we rise for the summer, but, most importantly, it requires such urgent attention with respect to protection of members of the Canadian Forces who are currently serving.
Our efforts are to do two things. One is to prevent additional cases of misconduct. The other is to allow, in those instances where sexual misconduct has happened, victims to come forward in a much more empowered structure and with greater independent oversight that takes into account the evidence we've heard with respect to senior ranks and the cultural differences between various ranks within the armed forces.
These are very important considerations. To do a quick, slapdash, up/down approach in the course of a week, where the real heavy lifting.... I've described this in other interventions as the tip of the iceberg being the cases we've actually looked at, high-profile as they were. The important cases of misconduct that have really taken the entire country's attention with respect to the problem are one portion. The massive issue of the lower part of the iceberg, which is hidden, is the system itself. It's the system that empowers people like the former chief of the defence staff to say, in 2015, that he owns the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
How can this happen? How can one senior-ranking officer of the Canadian Forces be so empowered institutionally—“misempowered” is probably a better term—that he would claim that he owns the entire national investigation service. That's a system challenge. That's not a challenge I've heard any thoughts or recommendations on from opposition colleagues, who are now saying that we should find another witness who may have an additional sentence to add.
Let's do the real work. Let's work on the iceberg. Let's chip apart the iceberg and change the culture. Let's look at those countries that have done it well and incorporate their experience and their testimony. Let's prioritize the deeply scarring emotional impacts of the messages that came directly from former and current serving members of the armed forces. That needs to be front and centre. That can't be done in a report that's voted up and down in a quick session with a basket of recommendations that we have not even had the opportunity to relate to each other, to prioritize or to discuss in any meaningful way.
I appreciate Mr. Bezan's concern that we do need to get this report out. I think it's incredibly important. As I said earlier, no report in this committee's recent history will be more important than this one. It needs to be finalized and it needs to be published, but it needs to have impact. To publish something that falls flat on expectations and impact is not worthy of this committee's mandate and effort.
For that reason, I hope the motion on the table now will give us a pathway to a potential amendment, to a discussion or to a much more constructive approach where we can actually sit down as a committee on the same side of the table with the problem on the opposite side of the table and find a pathway to make those changes that are utterly, urgently needed.
I'll leave it there. I have additional thoughts that will take us into more detail with respect to other experiences and insights that we may inject into the consideration of the recommendations, if and when we get to them in a meaningful way.
For the moment, I'll turn it back to you, Madam Chair, with my thanks.