National Defence Committee on April 27th, 2022

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

We always aim to ensure that courses are offered in both French and English to members of the forces. Because of the fact that there are different numbers of francophones and anglophones in the forces population, sometimes we have more courses in English. There may be two English courses, followed by a course in French and another course in English, for example. We make sure that courses are offered to members of the forces. Unfortunately, if you are still waiting for a course in your language, you may have to wait a few weeks or a few months before the course in your preferred language is available. We sometimes provide assistance to members if they want to take courses in a language that is not their mother tongue. Assistance is available in both English and French.

It's true that we don't offer courses at the same frequency in both languages.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

The reason I ask is that we're dealing with a study on recruitment and retention. These are important issues. For members of the forces, they can seem to be a barrier rather than a motivation to pursue a career. When you feel you have to be assimilated into another language, it's a sign that efforts have to be made.

The private sector attracts more skills or talent. What can you do to counter this, so that the forces become at least equal to the private sector or are truly competitive?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

I don't think Canadians always realize that being in the forces is not just one thing. There are so many jobs and opportunities. You can become an engineer, a pilot, and so on. There are a whole range of possibilities. We need to highlight what's available to the public, so that people who like to fly a plane can do so in the forces rather than with Air Canada or WestJet, and allow their hopes to be realized in the forces rather than in civilian jobs.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

You agree with me that salary conditions can be an issue.

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Yes, absolutely. Sometimes there are big differences between the salaries in the forces and in the private sector. There are also the opportunities and experiences that exist in the forces that don't exist in private employment. We really need to highlight what's available. The responsibility we give to young people is a great experience early in life. These experiences don't exist in the private sector.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

For the final five minutes, we have Madame Mathyssen.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

General Bourgon, you wrote a document on employment equity, and you had several recommendations. One of them was to fully implement the women in force program in the country. It was a pilot program, I believe.

Can you talk about whether that's actually happening and your reasoning behind that?

[MGen Lise Bourgon]

The women in force program was implemented as a pilot project pre-COVID, to give the chance to women to try, for a few days, the military life and gain more information. We have talked about Canadians not being aware of what the military is about. It was a safe space for women to give it a shot on the physical fitness and understanding the different occupations.

Sadly, we had to stop because of COVID. We're looking at reinserting it in our program, because I think it's an awesome program for people, mostly women, to try without the pressure. We're going to start in the foreseeable future to look at this program again, because there were some great benefits for women. If they didn't want to join, at least they understood the military.

We know, through the research, that women join the military more from word of mouth. They know someone who has been in the military or have advice from family or friends. If more people have the chance to try this program, it will be a success in trying to sell it to the women in the Canadian population.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You said it was very successful pre-COVID. What were the numbers? How many women did you get in versus how many stayed? Do you have those numbers for the committee?

[MGen Lise Bourgon]

I don't have them with me. I will have to take this on notice and provide this information at a later date.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That would be great. Thank you.

One of the other recommendations that we had from the status of women committee to the Government of Canada was to establish an external defence advisory committee on women and minorities in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Could one of the witnesses, I guess who it best applies to, comment on that recommendation and say whether you believe it has merit and should be followed through with?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

I will turn that question potentially over to General Carignan, who has been looking to provide a viewpoint on the best ways for us to consult different groups out there.

Jennie, perhaps you could jump in there.

[LGen Jennie Carignan]

We are developing currently a way to do just that, via various consultation groups inviting specific stakeholders and having regular touchpoints with them—to consult. They would be external to Defence.

Internal to Defence, we have also our defence advisory groups, who provide a lot of awareness on equity-seeking groups, and provide us, again, with the data that allows us to devise and design initiatives to increase diversity and to increase an environment that is safe and welcoming.

There are two pieces to that. We need to do our work internally via our defence advisory groups, but also externally, via the advice of various stakeholders who have lots of expertise in that space.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Mathyssen.

That will bring to a conclusion our time.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank each one of you for your excellence in presentations, General Allen, General Bourgon, General Carignan and General Brodie. You've considerably aided our study.

Before I gavel this to a conclusion, there are two things.

We've going to open up the study on aid to civil authority on Monday. We have some witnesses who are available on Monday, and we need party witness lists by this Friday.

General Eyre is not available next week, so we're going to have leave the recruitment and retention study open for a while longer, and we're scrambling to do draft reports on the threat analysis study.

We're keeping a few balls in the air here, and I appreciate your ability to work with us, colleagues.

With that, this meeting is adjourned, and, again, thank you, each one of you.