Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, members of the committee.
Serving one's country should never mean having to choose between one's career and one's rights, between one's health and one's language, or between one's identity and one's sense of belonging. And yet, that is exactly what I had to do.
I served for more than twenty years in the Canadian Armed Forces. I served with loyalty, discipline and commitment. But as a francophone and as a member of the first nations, my institutional experience was marked by systemic barriers that can no longer be ignored. Today, I would like to highlight three concrete dimensions of that experience.
First: training. When I became an officer, I was required to complete a mandatory university program delivered exclusively in English. There was no support for francophones. No adaptation. No recognition that we were expected to perform, succeed and be evaluated in a second language within a demanding academic context.
When I raised this issue through my chain of command, I was told I could file a complaint, but at the cost of delaying my career. In other words: assert my rights, or move forward. I chose to continue, in English, as many francophones do. But adapting is not the same as being included. It is compensating.
This experience reveals a troubling reality: Access to career training is not equitably guaranteed in both official languages, and francophones bear the burden of that gap.
Second: access to services. Upon returning from Afghanistan, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Shortly thereafter, I was posted to Ottawa. In a moment of significant vulnerability, I had to receive care in English, not by choice, but because there was no timely access to services in French. Services in French existed in theory, but not within a time frame compatible with my condition.
Expressing trauma in a second language means losing nuance, losing precision, sometimes even losing meaning. In practical terms, it means receiving partial care. The choice I was given was simple: receive inadequate care or wait indefinitely. That is not equitable access. It is a systemic barrier.
Third: institutional experience. Within the health services, I was directly involved in reviewing linguistic profiles. I saw, first-hand, how requirements were applied. Francophones were expected to be fully bilingual in order to advance. That expectation was not applied with the same rigour to anglophones. Promotions were granted despite incomplete linguistic profiles but rarely, if ever, to the benefit of francophones. This creates a quiet but persistent reality: a structural inequity in career progression.
There is also a deeper dimension. I am a member of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh Nation. Throughout my career, I never put that identity forward. Not because I lacked pride but because I understood the environment I was in. I was already a woman. Already francophone. Already serving in the combat arms and elsewhere. Adding my indigenous identity meant exposing myself further in a context where denigration, prejudice and intimidation were part of the daily reality. So I chose silence.
And when an institution leads its members to silence a part of who they are in order to succeed, that is not an individual issue. It is an institutional signal. Today, we speak of inclusion. But inclusion is not measured by what is written in policy. It is measured by what members actually experience. And my experience highlights a clear gap: The principles exist but their application remains uneven.
Allow me to conclude with three essential recommendations.
First, make the full delivery of all career training in both official languages mandatory, without exception, prior to implementation, and suspend any non-compliant training.
Second, guarantee immediate access to health services, particularly in mental health, in the official language of choice, including priority transfer mechanisms when such services are not available locally.
Third, condition promotions on the equitable application of language requirements for all, and publish annual comparative data on the career progression of francophones and anglophones.
Because serving one's country should never mean having to translate oneself, silence oneself or transform oneself in order to be recognized.
Thank you.