Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues for their comments on motion M‑58 that I introduced last Wednesday in the House. It was about GBA+, and I am sure that the motion could change things for our armed forces.
I would now like to continue along the same lines as before by quoting Dr. Maya Eichler's report on Operation HONOUR. She stresses the importance of taking time to deal with the issue from a historical point of view.
In Canada as elsewhere, there is nothing “natural” about women's history of limited participation in the military. It is the outcome of policies of gender discrimination that only began to be seriously challenged during the 1970s and 1980s. Before that, the military openly upheld a gendered military culture that defined men as the bearers of arms and women outside the sphere of combat. As such, gender differences and inequalities were emphasized and the importance of reinforcing them was seen as central to ensuring military effectiveness. The history of women in the Canadian military goes back to 1885 (the North-West Rebellion) when women first began to serve as nursing sisters. In the First World War, close to 2,000 Canadian women served overseas as military nurses. The Second World War saw almost 50,000 female enlistees in the Canadian forces. They were called upon to help relieve ‘manpower’ pressures and release men for combat duty. However, women received unequal pay for equal work, were limited to certain occupations, and did not receive the same post-service benefits as the men…As Pierson writes, the Second World War “set a precedent for tolerating the objectification and harassment of women in the CF”. After the war, women were demobilized. While women’s enlistment resumed in the 1950s, it remained limited in numbers and to the types of positions open to them. The Canadian military remained a male-dominated and highly gendered institution. Gender discrimination, of course, was not unique to the military, but reflected wider societal and global gender norms.