Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
I wanted to follow up on what Mr. Bagnell was speaking to in his remarks. During his remarks Mr. Bagnell expressed disappointment—I think I'm probably being diplomatic—about Mr. Bezan's comments in our committee at the last meeting when Mr. Bezan used the word “callous” to describe members of the government side who were sharing testimony from another parliamentary committee that was made on the record from survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the armed forces. When Mr. Bagnell expressed that concern, Mr. Bezan called it a “rant”. I thought that was completely inappropriate. Mr. Bezan thought it appropriate to use time in his testimony at the last meeting to criticize members of this side. As disappointing as it was to hear Mr. Bezan say that, none of us interrupted him, and none of us called it a “rant”. I wanted to object to that type of interruption of Mr. Bagnell earlier in the meeting, Madam Chair.
I also wanted to say that it wasn't just in the last meeting that Mr. Bezan shared this point of view. To be frank, I would have expected that he would have reconsidered his point of view after the last meeting. After he had heard from some of the members of the government side who responded to his intervention suggesting that sharing survivor testimony that's on the record from the status of women committee is, as Mr. Bezan called it, “callous”, I thought he would have reconsidered that position. I guess he didn't, or he felt even more strongly about his position, because Mr. Bezan decided to deliver a member's statement in the House of Commons where he said, in referring to government members of the committee, “they are disrespectfully and unfairly quoting survivors of military sexual misconduct”.
What is disrespectful and unfair about sharing the testimony of survivors that has been made before a parliamentary committee on the record? I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days since I heard these words in the House of Commons and I cannot get my head around it. These survivors are the people we should be trying to help. They should be at the centre of what we're doing in this committee. They should be our focus. Success to me is only if we as a committee do everything we can to help these folks. Anything short of that is not success; anything short of that is failure. These are the people we should be trying to help, and these are the people whose voices we should most want to hear. Their perspective, their expertise, is what we should be focusing on and giving the most weight to. It's not just because they're the victims in this, but because they know so much about this and they've thought about it and they've discussed it with people and they're experts, and they know how to fix the problem. These are the people whose voices we should most want to hear.
That's why members of the government side are sharing their testimony, we're giving them a voice, we're amplifying their message. To me, what's disrespectful and unfair is not to listen to that message, not to try to understand, not to make it a priority. What's beyond disrespectful and unfair is to try to silence those voices in any way, shape or form. Mr. Bezan has tried to do that twice on the record. To me, that shows that Mr. Bezan has a very different set of priorities and that he's not interested in solving this problem. If he was, when government members, or any member, was sharing that testimony, he would have been listening the most intently, he would have been the most interested, and maybe he would have shared some of that testimony himself or at least reflected on it.
[Technical difficulty—Editor] the platform in this committee and the platform for sharing the perspective of survivors.
I find that beyond disappointing. I find it beyond reprehensible. I completely agree with what Mr. Bagnell was saying. I think it underlines the problem on this committee. It underlines why we have a motion by Mr. Bezan before us, which is designed to produce a document that does nothing to help survivors.
That's why, in the motion, there is going to be two minutes of debate for each member and then we move on. No consensus would be required under Mr. Bezan's motion in delivery of the report, as there is with every other report that is produced by a committee in the House of Commons, because Mr. Bezan just wants to ram it through. He doesn't want to deal with these challenging issues, clearly.
The only way to get to a report that helps survivors is to build consensus. It's to list the survivors, first of all. That goes without saying, I would have thought. Certainly after having done that, we should sit down together as a committee and wrestle with our differences of opinion and find that consensus. Then, after we find that consensus around what the problems are, we should come to a consensus on the solutions, and then make recommendations, and then put them before the government and urge the government, insist that the government act on them. That's the purpose of this committee, and every committee: to make change for the positive.
The issue before us that we need to make change on is what is happening in the armed forces and the sexual assault and the sexual misconduct that we've heard about. It's about helping the survivors. That should be the focus of the report.
Mr. Bezan's motion prevents us from doing that, because we can't debate these complex issues. We can't come to a consensus on these complex issues, and then [Technical difficulty—Editor] basically decide which clauses go in and out, which clauses stay and which clauses [Technical difficulty—Editor] for us to quote survivors of military sexual misconduct.
Mr. Bezan's motion is disrespectful and unfair to those survivors. That's what's disrespectful and unfair, because all it would be is a report that doesn't take on and solve the challenges facing survivors, facing the Canadian Armed Forces.
Mr. Bezan can hold it up and say, “See? We produced a report”, a report that is absolutely useless at solving the problem that we should be solving.
The reason others and I are sharing what survivors are telling us is that we're trying to remind the members of this committee what we should be focused on and what needs to be in that report and why Mr. Bezan's motion would prevent us from issuing a report that helps survivors. In fact, issuing a report the way Mr. Bezan proposes would be harmful, in my view. It would claim to be a report that addresses the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military, but it wouldn't, because Mr. Bezan doesn't want to discuss them. He doesn't want to deal with the nuances. He doesn't want to deal with the complexity. He just wants to release a document and move on. That would be disrespectful and unfair.
That's why we're sharing and that's why I am going to continue to share.
One of the folks who presented to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, whose perspective I think is important to hear from and to take heed of, is Ms. MJ Batek.
I want to share with you some of what Ms. Batek shared with our colleagues. She says:
I'm here as a veteran military sexual trauma survivor, a military domestic violence sexual survivor and as a representative of the Survivor Perspectives Consulting Group, also referred to as SPCG. SPCG was recently created by a small group of military sexual trauma survivors. For decades, we have watched in silence and have now come together to take action, to ensure survivor voices are heard, and create solutions to help combat this crisis. Just as the Government of Canada uses gender-based analysis plus, which goes beyond sex in gender to other intersecting identity factors, such as race, ethnicity or age, the Canadian Armed Forces should consider the perspective of military sexual trauma survivors at every stage of the strategy and policy development. We at SPCG are willing to work towards the provision of that perspective in a professionally coordinated format. We do not propose to have all of the answers as we are not organizational culture or military justice experts, but we are the unfortunate experts by experience of military sexual trauma.
I'm going to pause here. This is what I was referring to a few moments ago. Here, you have somebody who's a survivor, who has experience and who is working together with other survivors to identify solutions to the problem and, as she says, to create solutions to combat this crisis. Those were her words.
There are two points I want to make about the initial part of her testimony. First of all, these are the kinds of people we need to be hearing from. These are people who are not only survivors whose perspectives we should be focused on intently, listening to and learning from, but these are also experts. That's the first thing.
The second point is that even though Ms. Batek is a survivor and really knowledgeable and has worked hard with others to become really knowledgeable to develop those solutions, even she is admitting that, “We do not propose to have all of the answers as we are not organizational culture or military justice experts, but we are the unfortunate experts by experience of military sexual trauma”.
By any measure, I think we could all agree that Ms. Batek is an expert, but even she is saying that she's not an expert in all aspects of solving this problem. If the experts acknowledge that we need other experts to help with components of the problem, surely we need all of their help to solve this problem. Surely we need to hear from all of them and we need to incorporate all of that in a report to the extent that we have heard from them.
She speaks specifically about how they are not organizational culture or military justice experts. How many times have we heard and spoken about culture at this committee and how difficult that is and how much change is needed in the armed forces? We've heard from expert after expert who has presented to this committee about how changes in culture are desperately needed in the armed forces and how difficult that is to implement in any organization, especially as one as large and as hierarchal as the armed forces.
Many of the members on the committee have spoken about this in our discussions. Mr. Bagnell especially continues to highlight the importance of culture change to solve this problem.
One of my points is that we need to hear from Ms. Batek and others like her. We need to make sure that knowledge and expertise is brought into this report. We need to also heed her warning that there are other people we need to turn to for expertise on military justice and on organizational culture. All of that has to make it into the report.
For that to happen, we need more than two minutes of debate each, or discussion each. It has taken me more than two minutes just to explain why Ms. Batek's testimony is so important and why we need to hear from these experts. It will take us time.
It will take hard work to convey and debate and find consensus around what we actually want to recommend as a committee, which is why, in my view, Mr. Bezan's motion is so dangerous and disrespectful to survivors.
I'd like to go on reading from the testimony that Ms. Batek provided to the status of women committee:
We can help define this problem, the full extent of which is still unknown. We can point to specific gaps, deficiencies and issues. We know, for example, that the internal reporting mechanism is flawed and that independent oversight is badly needed. We can help find and develop solutions—immediate, medium and long-term solutions—because we have ideas. We have ideas that can be developed into plans, policies and programs. For example, we have developed a one-day workshop that can be used in the immediate term to help kick-start the culture shift that is desperately needed throughout the organization. This training package, called the frontline workshop, is survivor born and is based on civilian best practices curated specifically for the Canadian Armed Forces. The frontline workshop will challenge and confront the social norms and unconscious biases of the attendees. It will shake their foundation and open their minds unlike anything the military has done before. We can provide feedback on and input into strategies, plans and policies every step of the way, during development, implementation and monitoring stages.
I want to pause there in Ms. Batek's testimony.
Ms. Batek and her colleagues are proposing a solution to part of the problem. They're proposing to offer their help to solve the problem in a concrete, tangible way. Is the committee going to recommend that? Is this committee going to consider that? Clearly it is not if Mr. Bezan has his way, because Mr. Bezan doesn't want to even hear from Ms. Batek. However, even if he did hear from Ms. Batek, even if we all listened to what Ms. Batek had to say, which is why I'm sharing what she had to say, would we implement, would we ask her and her colleagues to implement the solution they're offering to the Canadian Armed Forces? Would we recommend that the government implement it? We don't know.
The reason we don't know is that some members of this committee don't want to take the time to know. They want to tick the box, say they wrote a report, which does nothing for survivors. It is beyond belief, really. They're offering a frontline workshop that will challenge and confront the social norms and unconscious biases of the attendees, something we've heard about, over and over again, from people who've tried to underline or explain why this problem of sexual harassment and assault in the military exists. They're offering to help us solve that problem and we're going to refuse to have an opinion on it.
We are going to put ourselves in a position where we can't consider it, because we can only spend two minutes each talking. Some members of the opposition just want to move on to other things and they want to have a big debate in the House of Commons without actually considering what Ms. Batek has to say or what she has to offer, or the impact she could have on solving this problem.
I don't understand why our priority is moving on, with moving on from this report in a way that's not helpful to the survivors so we can have a debate in the House of Commons. We can have debates in the House of Commons, and we should, and we can continue to do that in the years to come. In the months and years to come, I'm happy to participate in those debates, but we are MPs. We're not the experts. The experts are talking to us. We should listen to them and we should think about what they've said and thoughtfully review it together and come to a consensus together like we do for every other report we ever write.
Then we should do what Mr. Bagnell is proposing in his subamendment and that is to make sure that the government actually responds. The only way to ensure that our committee has any impact is to make sure that we not only write a thoughtful report but that government is accountable for responding and tackling those challenges.
We and others can hold government to account for doing what they said they would do in their response, but Mr. Bezan doesn't want them to respond. He doesn't want to hold the government accountable for solving this problem. The only reason I can imagine is because they don't want to actually solve the problem.
He wants to have this debate in the House of Commons so he can grab some headlines and play some politics. That's not why I'm here. That's not why I ran for office. The survivors expect and deserve better.
Ms. Batek goes on to say:
Just like any GPA+ analysis of various identity factors, we want to provide the military sexual trauma survivor perspective with potential solutions to the Canadian Armed Forces as a professional voice, as well as to other stakeholders such as Veterans Affairs Canada. We are currently in the building phase of our organization, but we are aiming to represent multiple identity factors, including men, indigenous, veteran, LGBTQ+ and civilian survivors, among others, as this is not specifically a women's issue. Yes, I did say civilian survivors, because it is important to note that the impact of a sexualized military culture is not limited to members of the military. The impact reaches beyond the perimeter of the workplace and negatively affects the lives of military families, spouses and children as well as the community at large.
I want to pause on that point.
Ms. Batek is flagging for us that this problem extends beyond where many people think it extends to. She's talking about civilian survivors. She's talking about other groups of people who are impacted. I think we need to hear that, we need to listen, and then we need to write a thoughtful report that takes into account Ms. Batek's testimony and the testimony of other survivors, experts and the others we've heard from, all of them. I know it's going to be hard work and I know it's going to require a lot of consensus building, but we have to do it, because that's how we can get to a report that makes a difference or that has recommendations to government that can make a difference.
We need Mr. Bagnell's amendment to pass, because we need government to be accountable for implementing those things. If the government implements those things that we recommend, we are helping to address the problem of sexual assault and sexual misconduct in the military.
I say we listen to survivors. I say we write a report that's thoughtful, that allows us to come to consensus, that obtains a government response and that demands government actions, because I think survivors deserve no less.
Thank you, Madam Chair.