Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to start by recalling how important Mr. Bagnell's motion is and to thank him for it.
I actually feel that it is a compromise that would allow us to do our work properly. Clearly, two minutes are not enough to understand the complex and difficult situation that members of the Canadian Armed Forces are experiencing. Is two minutes all the time that we have or that we can give the victims, the survivors? That's ridiculous. Not asking for a response from the government is equally ridiculous.
I would now like to quote from the article by Professor Maya Eichler about Operation HONOUR. It highlights the importance of taking time to deal with this problem.
Militaries have long relied on particular notions of femininity and masculinity, such as women in need of protection, men as protectors and women as patriotic mothers. While the warrior has endured as “a key symbol of masculinity”, women’s and men’s roles in war are not static. Women’s presence in Western militaries has significantly expanded over the past four decades. Women’s greater participation in militaries is an outcome of political and social changes. In particular, it is related to the shift from conscription to volunteer forces, the advocacy of the women’s movement, the changing nature of warfare, and more recently, international gender mainstreaming instruments, such as UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Notwithstanding women’s increased military participation, feminist scholarship shows that many Western militaries have retained the characteristics of male-dominated organizations. They privilege masculinity, and marginalize women and values associated with femininity. Not all women have negative experiences in the military and many women have fulfilling military careers. However, militaries remain crucial sites for the (re)production of gender inequalities. Women in Western militaries are still concentrated in support functions, performing administrative and clerical work. In almost all militaries, combat remains an exclusively male sphere, if not legally then in practice, and combat has been a particularly contested area of struggle around women’s integration. Militaries can therefore be seen as highly invested in “defining and policing the boundaries of women’s service”. In a recent article, Claire Duncanson and Rachel Woodward explored the question of how militaries can be “regendered” in ways that challenge their unequal gender order. They go beyond earlier feminist debates that focused on either advocating for women's right to fight or opposing women's cooptation into militarism. Instead they argue that we need to consider the possibilities of transforming gendered military cultures. In this article, I use the insights of critical feminist international relations to explore this Canadian issue by tracing the shifts in the Canadian military's approach to gender over the past three decades and examining the potential and limitations of Operation HONOUR.
I will come back to this a little later.
Thank you, Madam Chair.