National Defence Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 14 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on October 23, 2025, the committee is meeting to resume its consideration of Bill C‑11, an act to amend the National Defence Act and other acts.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Before we continue, I ask participants to consult the guidelines on the table. These measures are to help prevent audio and feedback incidents and to protect the health and safety of the interpreters.

I would like to remind the witnesses and members to please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking.

If you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For those on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can.

For language interpretation, please use the earpiece and select the desired channel in front of you. For those on Zoom, select the appropriate channel on the screen for floor, English or French.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Before we welcome our witnesses, please note that we may be discussing uncomfortable experiences related to sexual misconduct. This may trigger sensitivities and distress. We recognize that these are difficult discussions, and I'm sure we will all be compassionate in our conversations and questions. If you need help, please advise the clerk.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses.

We have with us Elvira Jaszberenyi, a retired corporal; Paula MacDonald; Heather Vanderveer; and Rachelle Smith, founder and host of the Silenced Voices of MST.

I'll now invite Ms. Jaszberenyi to make an opening statement.

You have up to five minutes.

[Elvira Jaszberenyi, Retired Corporal, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for inviting me. I'm not supported by any groups nor am I political. I was proud to serve my country as a 50-plus-year-old soldier, but my rape case with forcible confinement in a broom closet on base was botched. The government's obligation is to protect citizens from harm and is the basis of criminal law.

My assailant was under investigation for a previous sexual assault, SA, bad conduct, and was a known predator to the NIS. I was also infected with an incurable STD, but NIS ignored his admission and tampered with evidence. My case was dropped after four months. I was told not to call MPs as I was stalked and exposed on social media and pressured to accept a redacted version of my file.

When I handed in a lawyer's letter, COC blamed my own delay. My assailant was charged for his first victim two years later for his conduct, but DOJ is trying to redact her from the file. My ATIPs are being withheld, but the past won't show gossip by COC as retaliation continued after my transfer, resulting in injury.

As a weapons tech, I held nine unrelated jobs. Padres, COC and mental health said to take the victim tag off as I endured retribution and was ordered to return to where the rape occurred as doctors asked for information on my case or prescribed unneeded medications. After switching to intelligence, my career was held back. While under trauma and with health issues, I was ordered back to work. COC, wellness checks and calls now increased.

My private prosecution was taken by the Crown, but actus reus and mens rea were overlooked along with evidence. VWAP and ILA coupons were insufficient and demeaning.

CAF, our justice system and our government's handling of crimes and preventing harm is lax. Hockey Canada, Nygard, etc. have angered the public. Insufficient evidence was given to MPCC who labelled my case a shoddy investigation and were baffled by why the accused wasn't charged. I was wrongfully released, CAF signing on my behalf.

My application to VAC was lost. My support, Steve Torinor, was threatened legally. They threatened to come to my residence and pressured me for information. He urged government members, with little response. VAC distorted my application, requesting my medical information. Ignoring my IRB is enough. My human rights lawyer also turned on me with JAG, threatening AWOL. I reported a crime, but suffered consequences for protecting myself and others.

Culture change and gender issues are a mask. Gatekeepers who silence victims and crimes, and speak on our behalf, must be removed. CAF must screen soldiers properly, as they reviewed my assailant speaking Russian in our combats about CAF on YouTube, AKA Russian spy guys. Facebook sexualized political posts were ignored. General Eyre wrote that he's only informing Russians.

This ridicules my country and our military. Why did Canada's former spy, who advised you on safety tied to CSIS and the RCMP, get involved in my case and say to record and take pictures? Someone linked to a group that appeared before you said to claim to suicide to get money. I was ordered to report in combats while ill, write memos and call 1-800 numbers. The CO offered me to sit with my assailant, or call if he shows up or...diversion.

CAF used NIS and DOJ in court to follow my story. As victims of suicide increase, the system will crumble if you don't act. As a single-income person fighting for my rights and safety, I have been paying lawyers with no results. My assailant is still working on base. CAF employed a known predator and placed him on course while under investigation.

It's clear we are not protected from harm or our enemies. With Bill C-11, we must implement the previous justice's recommendations. However, the military justice system and police shouldn't overlap.

Victims should have the same rights as the accused to balance the safety of our country and be accountable; bring back loyalty and integrity to our country; give justice and restitution not just to those who were wrongfully accused but to the many victims who have been silenced; and prevent these crimes, which were not in the grey zone.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Ms. MacDonald, go ahead.

[Paula MacDonald, Master of Social Work, As an Individual]

My name is Paula MacDonald, and I was a master's educated social worker who served in the Canadian Armed Forces between 2014 and 2016 in both the reserves and regular force.

My service was marked by gender discrimination and escalating gender-based violence that ended in retaliatory sexual assault. I'm not talking about workplace conflict; I'm talking about what happens when the chain of command uses powers of the state to control, minimize and bury sexual misconduct inside the Canadian Armed Forces. It's the CAF's sexualized culture that made inappropriate comments and jokes and unwanted touching seem normal. People in positions of rank use the atmosphere as a tool of control, treating subordinates as objects instead of human beings or soldiers worthy of respect.

The CAF is not a private employer. My commanders, harassment advisers, assisting officers and the military police were all exercising public authority under the National Defence Act. They controlled my work, my medical file, my career, my release and my access to complaints. They also influenced how military and civilian police handled my allegations. When they acted, they acted as agents of the state. This means the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies.

When I reported sexual harassment and, later, sexual assaults, my allegations should have been taken seriously. I should have been kept safe and given access to independent, impartial investigations. Instead, everything stayed inside the chain of command. My harassment complaint and grievance threatened to expose senior medical officers who had violated the rights of a social worker who named the hostile culture. Protecting themselves in the institution came first.

My complaints were routed through chain of command-led investigations and internal processes. Harassment advisers and grievance officers reported to the same leaders I was complaining about. Military police opened files, spoke only to my supervisors and then closed the files without ever interviewing me.

When I went to the civilian police, I was told more than once to go back to the military system that failed me. At the same time, my leaders reframed my complaints. Instead of naming sexual harassment and abuse of power that led to sexual assault, they called me emotional, hypersensitive and a mental health problem. They used medical referrals, medical employment limitations and threats of discipline under the National Defence Act, including threats of dishonourable discharge, to pressure and punish me for speaking up. My harassment case became a disciplinary and medical case against me, not against those who engaged and created the hostile sexual environment.

From a charter perspective, this matters. Section 15 ensures equality of rights. As a woman reporting sexual harassment and sexual assault, I did not receive equal protection or equal benefit of the law. My experiences were minimized, my credibility was attacked and supposedly neutral tools, medical labels, career limitations and administrative measures were weaponized against me. This is sex discrimination.

Section 7 deals with liberty and security of the person. The chain of command knew about escalating sexual behaviour, threatened to misuse legal powers and allowed a senior commander to gain power over my future in exchange for sexual access. This caused serious ongoing harm to my psychological security. This is state-driven exposure to risk and abuse of process.

Section 2(b) ensures freedom of expression. Every time I used my voice—complaining internally, going to the police or speaking to oversight bodies—I faced reprisal. I was labelled as disruptive, threatened with discharge, buried in pointless tasks and ultimately pushed into a so-called voluntary release just to escape their abuse. The release freed the chain of command from having to answer for its membership's violence and violations of the National Defence Act.

Chain of command-led investigations are not neutral when members of the chain of command themselves are implicated. The military provost's office is not independent from the chief of the defence staff or the broader command structure.

In my case, the Canadian Armed Forces didn't simply mishandle a file; it used the machinery of the military justice and grievance system to protect its membership, who violated the National Defence Act and silenced me. The misuse of state power that the charter is meant to guard against is what they did.

It is exactly why the reforms like Bill C‑11 and a real shift to independent civilian jurisdiction over sexual offences is so urgently needed to maintain the rule of law within the Canadian Armed Forces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Ms. Vanderveer, you have five minutes.

[Heather Vanderveer, As an Individual]

Chair and honourable members, I thank you for hearing me today.

My name is Heather Vanderveer. I am a veteran. I work with survivors of military sexual trauma, harassment, coercion and abuse: people whose lives have been altered not only by what was done to them, but by what the system failed to do afterwards.

I'm here today because Bill C‑11 as drafted does not protect survivors. It risks harming them further.

Every week, I work with people who have reported assaults and have waited months, sometimes years, for an update. I watch their files get passed between military police and civilian police like an unwanted parcel: being told to start over because jurisdiction is unclear, their credibility being questioned more often than the conduct of the accused and being abandoned by institutions that promise to protect them.

The trauma does not stop at the assault. It continues every time the system avoids responsibility. Survivors call this “institutional betrayal”. I call it predatorial jurisdictional behaviour, because avoidance like this is never passive. It protects institutions, not survivors.

Civilian judges and Crown prosecutors are rarely trained in rank and power dynamics: coercion tied to postings and deployments; the impossibility of avoiding an abuser in a military environment; delayed reporting by retaliation and career threats; or the structural pressures unique to military life.

These gaps shape outcomes. Civilian sexual assault conviction rates in Canada are already extremely low. When military complexity is added, the outcomes worsen. Survivors are not being transferred to a stronger system. They are being transferred to a system unprepared to receive them. The CAF believes they are modernizing through Bill C‑11, but their definition of modernization is administrative, not survivor-centred.

New oversight bodies may look modern on paper, but without enforceable responsibility, it isn't modernization. Shifting cases to civilian courts without preparing those courts is not modernization. Adding new steps and new hand-off points does not bring clarity.

Let me be blunt. If no one is required to act, the system never learns it has to, which means that this isn't random. When the law doesn't assign responsibility, the system doesn't step forward: It steps back. The longer it persists, the more the system learns to protect itself instead of the survivor.

As written, Bill C‑11 creates more steps, more hand-offs and more opportunities for avoidance, yet it does not identify who must take care of the case. Instead of providing clarity, it gives institutions more places to send a survivor rather than help them: more doors to knock on, more forms to submit and more timelines to wait through. Survivors cannot endure another round of bureaucratic ping-pong.

Right now, survivors navigate a maze. Bill C‑11 adds more hallways and more locked doors. Every unanswered email, transfer and “not our jurisdiction” sends the message. You are not worth the effort. Your case is not worth the risk. Your trauma is too inconvenient.

Major reviews—Deschamps, Arbour, Fish, the ombudsman, the Auditor General—and class action findings say the same thing: Survivors are falling through the cracks because no one is accountable. Bill C‑11 doesn't fix that. It reorganizes the cracks.

True modernization requires accountability, clarity and survivor-centred outcomes. Bill C‑11 delivers none of these. The greatest harm is not only when cases are dropped but when they sit in procedural limbo. That is cruel in its own right.

Closure means certainty, dignity, the ability to heal and knowing that your life matters as much as the institution that failed you. Bill C‑11 as drafted risks denying survivors closure.

Survivors are not asking for special treatment. They're asking for the bare minimum any justice system should provide: a clear process, a responsible authority and a real pathway to resolution. If Bill C‑11 cannot guarantee these three things, it will retraumatize survivors, deepen mistrust and reinforce the failures that brought us here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Ms. Smith, you have five minutes.

[Rachelle Smith, Founder and Host, The Silenced Voices MST]

Thank you for the invitation to appear today.

I'm a former United States Air Force officer and a survivor of military sexual assault.

My experiences are not unique. The way the system responded to what happened shaped the course of my service and my life. The patterns I experienced appear across the accounts of many survivors with whom I work today.

When I arrived at my first duty station, women who had served there before me offered quiet warnings about safety. Two weeks later, I was assaulted. I did not report the full incident, yet retaliation still followed. That experience made it clear that the system in place did not protect me and that I did not truly have a safe or independent way to come forward.

This pattern has been identified by many service members and veterans who described an environment where the chain of command controlled both their daily lives and the responses to their assaults. Through my work with survivors, the same issues come up again and again. Many describe being exposed to further harm by reporting pathways created by military leaders.

There are descriptions of support systems that did not operate independently from the very structures they feared and of long-term consequences to their health, to their careers and ultimately to their abilities to continue serving. These accounts come from individuals across different branches, ranks and backgrounds, reflecting structural weaknesses rather than isolated failures.

When independent investigation and external oversight are missing, predictable and well-known outcomes follow. Units lose trust in their leaders. Survivors avoid reporting, while offenders remain in authority, and the ripple effect touches readiness, retention and national security.

From reading Bill C-11, I believe the measures in it outline and address the core weaknesses that shape whether service members trust the system that governs them. Independent investigative authority, external judicial oversight and protected support mechanisms for victims create conditions where they can ask for help and can report without fear of retaliation or compromised processes.

These measures also help restore confidence in the institution as a whole. Across the survivor accounts that I encounter, one point comes up consistently: the harm does not end with the sexual assault. The way the institution responds has deeper and more lasting effects. A military force cannot be effective when its members doubt the fairness, the independence or the safety of the structures intended to protect them. Accountability requires clear processes, credible oversight and reliable support. Strengthening these areas protects survivors and then strengthens the institutions themselves.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you, to all four of you, for your opening remarks. We appreciate your being here, and we appreciate your courage and transparency, giving us information and enlightening us in terms of the issues.

What we're going forward with in this bill, as a committee, is to ensure that we protect the rights of victims so that justice prevails.

We're going to start our first round with Ms. Gallant.

You have six minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Ms. Jaszberenyi, to whom did you first report the incident?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

At first, when I reported it, I felt.... Hold on. I can't find my notes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

That's okay, Ms. Jaszberenyi. I don't need the name, but was it your commanding officer? What was the relationship?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

Yes, I have it written down, condensed. I called my COC because I was distressed. They called the MPs to check on me. The COC ordered me to speak with them. Then they called an MP who drove me to NIS, but they said I could leave at any time. Anyway, years later, it looked like it was a police training exercise in Borden. Reporting a crime was one thing, but the COC, the NIS, the lawyers and the gatekeepers in place took this to another level. Each person who tampered, gave away information and interfered is responsible for their actions.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

I'm going to ask you questions in a certain order so that I can get a clear picture of what happened.

Were you on your own base, or were you away training at that time? Where did this occur?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

I was on base, yes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

You were on your base.

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

I was, yes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Were you given the choice of dealing with the OPP versus the military police?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

I had communications with OPP. I tried every possible avenue, and they said that it was not in their purview to help me.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

When you were with the military, did you ask them to be in charge of it instead of the military, the CAF?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

To be honest, I was still processing everything.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Then you didn't ask the MPs for your case to go to the OPP, as opposed to the MPs?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

That I don't remember, but I do not believe.... I did it on my own.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

All right.

Were you offered a medical visit to gather evidence after the attack?

[Elvira Jaszberenyi]

Right after I was interrogated by the MPs, which was over three and a half hours, they had another NIS officer drive me to the hospital for the SA kit.

ATIPs later revealed that the chain of command was more worried about media attention and about what was going on. There were a whole bunch of other things that happened, but their concern wasn't me; it was what was going to come out of it.