Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
I wanted to thank Mr. Bagnell for his amendment.
I think I want to pick up on what Mr. Bagnell was saying. He was talking about how we drive change on this issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the armed forces. If this committee is serious about doing all we can.... Well, let's take a step back. If we're serious as Canadians, as people who care about this issue, about taking action, then we need government to take that action. I think we can all agree on that.
I think this committee's role in ensuring that action is taken is to do the most we possibly can in terms of putting our shoulders to the wheel on making sure that government takes action. It's to write a report with thoughtful recommendations and ask that the government implement those recommendations. Then it's to hold the government to create an accountability mechanism, or do all we can as a committee, anyway, to ensure that the recommendations that we've put together and that we believe in are acted upon and that the government tackles this issue of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the armed forces.
To me, the government response, which is traditionally provided to most committee reports—almost all, from my understanding—has an important role. It plays the role of an accountability mechanism in my view because, in a transparent and public way, it asks the government to address to what degree it plans to implement what the committee has recommended. I think that's why it's a useful.... It's an important mechanism when committees issue reports, and it's important that we have that response in this particular case.
We've all been shaken by what we've heard from some of the folks who have testified at the committee. We've all spoken about how we've spoken to members of the armed forces and to victims and survivors. We owe it to them to make sure we do everything possible as a committee to make sure the right ideas get put to the government by this committee in terms of tackling this problem. We need to do everything we can to make sure the government acts on that—to advocate. I think the response from the government is an important mechanism in making sure we can translate into the government's acting on what I hope will be a report built on consensus that's very thoughtful and that would allow us to tackle this problem of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military. I really think that what Mr. Bagnell has proposed is constructive and important over the medium to long term, to make sure we tackle this problem.
When I think of some of the things we've heard, I know we've heard many times from witnesses who have come forward to this committee, from witnesses who have come forward to the status of women committee, from victims who've spoken in different forums in the public realm, etc. We've all been touched by that, and if we're going to.... However, we've also heard from them that this is not a new problem. We all know that. This problem has existed forever, and people have spoken out about it in the past in different forums. It's not easy to do. Certainly, what we have heard is just a fraction of what's been happening, of course, and we've all heard that from those who have testified, from the witnesses and from the survivors.
The facts that there have been so many victims and that such a small fraction of them are heard from, that such a small fraction of their cases of this problem are being tackled—being addressed and brought before an appropriate enforcement mechanism—show how important the accountability piece of this is. It's not just about putting forward good ideas. It's about putting forward good ideas and then making sure we are all on the same page, no matter which political party we're members of or elected from, in making sure that this government, the following government and the government after that continue to move the ball forward on this issue. I think we would all acknowledge that this is a complex problem. It's a difficult problem. It's going to require commitment from all future governments, if we're going to tackle it.
When I think about some of the people who have spoken out, and whose advice has not been taken, one person I think of is Julie Lalonde. She has spoken publicly in the past, and she was good enough to present to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
I want to share with you something she shared. I want to share it with you because I think it's important. It underlines what we need the government to respond to and address, which is what Mr. Bagnell's motion is striving for, I think.
In French, she said the following:
I'm pleased that the committee decided to take some time to hear from experts in various fields, including me. My name is Julie S. Lalonde. I've been working for almost 20 years to end violence against women in Canada. Each year, I provide training to thousands of people. I've worked in five countries, on three continents and in two languages. Although I am the daughter of a former CAF member, my expertise in system change, violence prevention and bystander intervention is what dragged me into this conversation. I had a now-infamous day of training all officer cadets at the Royal Military College in Kingston in the fall of 2014. The anti-harassment educator got harassed at RMC, was the headline across the country. What was unfortunately missed is that I filed a complaint with RMC for reasons that go beyond the harassment I personally experienced. I was, and remain, deeply troubled by the comments cadets made with regard to sexual violence. Victim-blaming was rampant and the cadets insisted that women who drink too much are asking to be raped, except for one Navy cadet. He showed immense courage, and courage is what I would like to focus on for my comments today.
Just to recap or contextualize this, Julie Lalonde was speaking and providing testimony at the status of women committee. She was speaking about how she has tried to speak up, how she has tried to act to help train Canadian Armed Forces members to address this issue. She spoke about how awfully she has been treated and the resistance she and her thinking and what she was trying to teach have faced in the system.
That's what she was speaking about in the segment I just read to you. She underlined how challenging it was, even when giving the opportunity to young cadets, presumably young members of the armed forces, to address this problem. There was tremendous resistance. This is one reason Mr. Bagnell's motion makes a lot of sense.
Julie Lalonde's been doing this for years and has faced that kind of resistance. We need everybody pulling in the same direction on this. Obviously, government is at the top of that list of organizations that need to be pulling and pushing in the same direction as the armed forces, this committee and many others.
That's why I think the amendment Mr. Bagnell proposed makes a lot of sense. Mr. Bagnell's motion, in my view, is trying to ensure that government is publicly declaring its position on the recommendations this committee would make.
I now continue reading from Ms. Lalonde's testimony.
I was invited to train all officer cadets grouped by year on a rainy October day in 2014. The first and second years were unruly but manageable. The third-year group was by far the worst audience I have ever dealt with.
Yes, they did accuse me of hating all men, laughed at the definition of consent, and took every opportunity they could to shift the blame from perpetrators to victims. During a particularly tense moment, I frankly lost the room. They were furious with my focus on bystanders and began yelling over each other and heckling me.
Ms. Lalonde described what happened. What I take from her testimony is that she came up against resistance and was even mistreated because she was trying to solve the problem of harassment and sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces. She was talking to very young members of the Canadian Armed Forces. As she said in her testimony, she was talking to third-year groups. That demonstrates that cultural resistance exists, as do other reasons that cause people to resist. That is why the committee, the government and the Canadian Armed Forces must do everything they can to make sure the problem is corrected.
Let me continue reading from her testimony.
In a sea of largely green uniforms a man in a Navy uniform shot his hand up. He was sitting amongst the most boisterous group, so to be honest, I called on him with hesitation. To my surprise, and the surprise of everyone else in the room, he stood up for me. He began to berate his classmates for attacking me, told them they were being babies for being so upset, and went so far as to say that the way we talk about women at RMC is embarrassing. The room was stunned into silence. I think of this man often. In the days and months that followed my day at RMC, cadets and CAF members took to social media and traditional media to praise the cadets for being brave enough to challenge the educator. Hundreds of men derailing a conversation on sexual violence prevention to call the female facilitator a man-hater is not brave. Being the sole voice in a room of 200 people willing to take a stand in support of progress is bravery of the highest level. That is what we need from you now. You will not eradicate sexual violence, misogyny and other forms of oppression within the military, such as racism, transphobia and homophobia, unless you are willing to be brave. Are CAF members uncomfortable with terms like rape culture, toxic masculinity and survivor-centred? Absolutely, we've seen that, but you cannot change something that you won't even name.
I will end my reading of Ms. Lalonde's testimony at this point. It is incredibly important, in my view. She testified before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, but she could say the same thing before this committee, right here, right now. That is why I believe that I thought it was important to read you her testimony.
I want to repeat a sentence she said about the Navy cadet who stood up to intervene. She said: “Being the sole voice in a room of 200 people willing to take a stand in support of progress is bravery of the highest level.”
Let me ask my committee colleagues: is what we are doing “bravery of the highest level”? Put another way, what bravery of the highest level should we be showing for our other colleagues, for the survivors, for the government? How brave are we going to be?
As I see it, our bravery of the highest level is to write this report constructively, productively, and to make sure that the government will act on our recommendations. The amendment that Mr. Bagnell has proposed is an essential mechanism by which we can be sure that the government will do so.
If we do not demand a response from the government, I will be concerned. We may have a productive, constructive report that contains magnificent recommendations—and I have no doubt that we will succeed in that—but we must also seize that possibility and demand action from the government in this regard.
I implore you to support Mr. Bagnell's proposal. It is constructive. Ms. Lalonde spoke about a sailor being brave enough to stand up in a room of 200 people who were abusing her. I am not asking you to do the same today, nor yet in the coming weeks. The sailor did something very courageous. What I am asking from you does not require as much courage, we simply have to act and do what we can. It requires only that we are driven to help and support victims and survivors, to solve this problem of sexual harassment and assault in the Canadian Armed Forces.
So I am asking you to support Mr. Bagnell's amendment. It is our best way to make sure that the government will take heed of our recommendations, and that we will have done everything we can to solve the problem of sexual harassment and sexual violence in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.