National Defence Committee on Nov. 27th, 2025

[Diane Hill Rose]

First of all, I responded to a military base where a rape happened recently. The woman said, “I don't want to report this.” I took her to a hospital. We had the rape kits done. She did not want to report. She wanted to finish out her career. I gave her all of that. We are here for her. We have a good support system for her.

With this system, we're missing out on a lot of stuff here. The way the chain of command worked was that I would go to my master corporal and say, “Joe touched my bum.” The master corporal would say, “Go tell Joe not to do that again.” Joe would continue to do that, and I would go and tell my sergeant and he'd ask, “Well, what did the master corporal tell you?” That is the old system. Then we had reporting and stuff like that.

In the new system, nowadays with these guys, if something happens, it gets reported. People say stuff. Our men and women are standing up and saying, “Don't do that.” This is where culture change is happening, and it still needs to continue to happen.

As far as the bill goes, there's really nothing in the bill about that. We need to continue from where we're at. As she said, a sunset clause on this....

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Part of the bill also includes a probationary period, but we hope that people who join the Canadian Armed Forces are not going to have bad behaviour. This is what the expectation is, but should bad behaviour be demonstrated early on in a career, a mechanism to remove them quickly currently doesn't exist.

Ms. Rose, what do you say to that?

[Diane Hill Rose]

Kick the bums out.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Yes, I agree.

[Diane Hill Rose]

We also have a lot of issues now with different cultures coming into the military. In different countries, they have different laws and different ways of life. This training needs to be every day, not just once in boot camp. It needs to be every day that we're saying, “No, you can't do that.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you, Ms. Rose.

Ms. Kramp-Neuman, you have five minutes.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Indeed, these are sensitive conversations. I would like to start by thanking all of you for your vulnerability in sharing these. In addition, I'd like to thank all of those who may be viewing and who are serving or have served. Of course, to all of you in the room, thank you very much.

I'd like to just recap. There have been a lot of consistencies in today's testimony. There's too much at stake legally, professionally and personally. Survivors must have the right to choose between civilian and military and have a choice of jurisdiction. All stakeholders need to be taken into consideration. Survivors deserve choice. Survivors deserve resources. This bill removes choice. Military sexual trauma is at the heart. It's the nexus of many problems. We have to fix this issue and get people trained. People need to be trained to be trauma-informed.

This is pretty consistent and pretty disturbing. Recognizing that we are here today discussing Bill C-11, with its aim to correct the situation, we're trying to find the median here.

My first question is for Christine, Donna or Diane. Can you describe how your experiences were influenced by the system and how you were routed into civilian or military?

[Donna Van Leusden]

I can tell you about the one that I deemed successful, because it resulted in a conviction. It went to summary trial. You're questioned by the accused. That's different. The commanding officer of the unit of the member who did it had mandatory required attendance, so I got to testify in front of 300 of my closest friends. Yeah, it was.... When I arrived to testify, I was sat on a bench in a hallway beside the accused's girlfriend, who spent the entire time insulting and making comments. I would say the summary trial was far more traumatizing than anything that happened in that room.

I'll just add a bit to that, because I think it's important. When we talk about being trauma-informed, I've been told since by the chain of command that this is what doctors and padres are for. I can tell you that my padre approached me the morning after my assault. When I told him I'd had bad dreams that night, he responded by asking me if I was sure I wasn't sexually aroused by the experience. That's somebody you're supposed to be able to go to for counselling.

It's really important that we do the best we can to get this as right as we can because of the amount of harm that is done when it is not done right.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Thank you for sharing.

Did you feel that your autonomy was respected? I'm curious to know how your leadership responded when you shared your concerns.

[Donna Van Leusden]

In terms of how my leadership responded, I was a public affairs officer, so I was “one of”. The one sexual assault happened on exercise. I began receiving media calls about my own sexual assault. I was told that I should write the lines to respond to the media. When I replied that perhaps I wasn't the right person, the response was that, at the end of the day, they expected me to do my job.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

From a timeline perspective, or a transparency perspective, how did you feel about that?

[Donna Van Leusden]

I felt that I was fairly well informed on that one. It happened pretty fast. The assault happened in May, and by August they had the summary trial. That's how fast it can happen. When you compare that with the one that went through the civilian process, it was still in pretrial motions for about two years.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

I really hope that all of you who are witnesses here today, and online as well, are feeling heard. Not one of us around this table ought to be deemed experts in this. Mind you, I do have some colleagues around the table who have been in the CAF. Nonetheless, I want to thank you.

Diane, if there's anything that you feel you haven't had a chance to express, I'd like to give you this opportunity. You had a lot of information in your testimony. Is there anything that you feel is missing and that you'd like to add to committee today?

[Diane Hill Rose]

It's points 80 through 90 on VLOs. I don't understand why a survivor would pick their best friend as a VLO, because if you don't know the systems and you don't know whom to go to.... I mean, you're not going to go to your mom and say, “Mom, go talk to my colonel.” Your mom has no idea who your colonel is, so there's that issue of picking your VLO and who's the best VLO for you.

Then there are the mental health aspects of it. If you go into a civilian system, if you get raped and go to the hospital, the police call the rape crisis centre, and they come in and they talk to you. However, if we go in and nobody can call SMSRC, it's me who has to call SMSRC, and if I can't find their number and I don't know....

SMSRC is going through a name change right now. What was the one that...dignity and whatever? It's like, is this a funeral parlour or something that we're looking up here? Come on, please. If you remember there was something about “sexual organization,” then you can look up “sexual organization” in the military, but I'm not going to look up “dignity” or “dignity and response”. You know, we can spend the money more wisely, I think.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you, Ms. Rose.

Mr. Malette, you have up to five minutes.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much.

I will echo my colleagues' comments and thanks for your bravery and your commitment to showing us your vulnerability today.

Bill, thank you for being an ally. As a father of two grown daughters, I appreciate your work and thank you for your service.

I'd like to talk today...and I know a little bit about what I speak of. We've been speaking a little bit today about understanding the culture. I'm lucky, I think, in some respect, though not to the same extent as some of my colleagues who have served. As a civilian journalist, I have deployed to.... I've been to Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti. I've lived in some of the places you folks have lived in and served in, so I understand that culture, and it is difficult to an unimaginable degree, I think, for some of us in the civilian world to understand that. Ms. Wood, I think you alluded to that.

The provost marshal general, in previous testimony here, told us to trust.... Again, this is somebody from the military justice system telling us in the civilian world to trust that, since 2021 onward, the culture of the military has improved drastically, and that the changes are happening at such a rate that we ought to have faith that the coming changes are sufficient and that the system doesn't need quite the overhaul that this bill would suggest.

I'm going to direct my question initially to Ms. Le Scelleur.

You did not report, you said, because that would mean entering a system he influenced. That's in reference to your attacker. Where is trust, then, in this world, in this system right now? How do we assess that? What is your assessment? After you speak to this precisely, I'm going to open it up for the rest to answer that question.

[Hélène Le Scelleur]

Thank you for that question. I'm going to answer in French so that it's easier for me.

The chain of command requires a form of loyalty and trust. When we see that senior military personnel can get away with actions for which no real punishment is imposed and no deterrent is presented, I think it becomes very difficult to trust the system completely. Trust will instead develop between peers. People will support each other, but they will not necessarily place their trust in the chain of command.

By not reporting the incident, I was mainly trying to protect myself. First of all, would anyone have believed me? I asked myself: If I reveal what happened and the assaults I suffered, will my own chain of command believe me?

The whole notion of trust is called into question when we see that actions are taken without consequences. It undermines the trust we may have and perhaps destroys it.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you.

Further to that point—I will open it up to the others here who may speak—I believe that Madam Justice Arbour reminded us, in her report, that even the perception of the chain of command's influence on the military police is enough to break that trust. She also said that the fact that the military police wear the uniform that the chain of command does is enough for them to be perceived as part of or close to the chain of command.

My question for the rest of you is this: How do you suggest we...? Is this a cultural or a structural change? I'm trying to get my head around this because of the uniqueness of the chain of command, and bringing that complaint to what is perceived to be a chain of command structure.

[Donna Van Leusden]

I think that transparency in communication has to be the first action. If we can get to the point where everybody within that chain of disclosure operates from a position of belief.... When I say that, I don't mean they automatically assume that the accused is guilty. I mean that, when they are meeting with somebody, they support that the person is traumatized and they can see that the person is injured. That support is the position that you start from because, if you start from there, everything else can fall into place.

I think that overcommunicating, being really transparent about everything and coming from a place of belief.... The military hasn't always found that easy because, generally speaking, we do things a certain way, because that's the way we've always done them. However, even up to and including.... As a very simple example, I got a call from somebody who said they were supporting a survivor and they needed to send a significant incident report, but the survivor wasn't in a position where they were ready to disclose, so what should they do? I said, “Talk to the survivor and show them what you're writing.” They went quiet for a second and then said, “That didn't even occur to me.” I said, “It's a way of giving them flexibility within an inflexible system.”

I think we need to make sure that we don't have things like the accused going to court in their uniforms, because, even though...and ultimately be found not guilty. I'm not getting into the weeds on that, but the visual of watching a senior officer go to court, in uniform, to defend themselves against allegations.... The judge, in their comments, even said that they believe the survivor, but they don't necessarily believe that was the person who did it. That sort of stuff has to stop, because it undermines everything the survivors are suffering out there.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

That's an excellent point.

Can I just—

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

We're over time by quite a bit.

[Chris Malette, Liberal, Bay of Quinte, ON]

It's not a question. It's a public service announcement. Just quickly, if anybody is listening, there's a 24-7 anonymous telephone number for the SMSRC. It's 1-844-750-1648.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for indulging me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Monsieur Savard-Tremblay, you have two and a half minutes, and I'll give you a little extra to make up the time.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Wood, I think we understand your criticism of the civil courts. You are telling us that they are not suitable, and we certainly understand why, based on your explanation and your logic. You are in favour of free choice of the judicial system, but you also mention a sunset clause. You say that after two or five years, we could reassess the situation by reviewing how things have gone.

How could this assessment be carried out? Would it be through a survey of victim satisfaction? Would it be by evaluating the time frames or even the results? Finally, what factors would need to be examined every two or five years to determine whether or not the measures are working?