Hello. I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present today. I will be sharing my views as a former Canadian Armed Forces servicewoman, a military sexual trauma survivor and a founder of the group It's Just 700.
It's Just 700 was built as a result of the online reprisals surging from the 2015 external review of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. I wanted to create a safe space in which military victims could connect with peers and learn about services and opportunities available to them.
It did not take long before we identified trends and gaps in the services provided to us. Here are a few issues that in my opinion are worthy of study.
First is that the lack of independence of the SMRC from the Canadian Armed Forces leadership has been hurting victim support. The sexual misconduct response centre's annual report 2017-18 seems to indicate that the SMRC has been enhancing its consultation and training support to the CAF leadership while the victim support remains the same. This means that while the SMRC is providing hands-on services to CAF leadership, victims are getting over-the-phone active listening and a referral service. We do not get a case manager, help with accommodations or someone advocating for our needs. I am sure you can see how these kinds of services would have been helpful to some women who testified in front of you last week.
Maybe this is the reason that, according to the same report, from CAF leadership who use the services SMRC has an overall satisfaction of 87%, while from victims the overall satisfaction rate is 64%. Maybe this is the reason there has been a decrease of victims using the SMRC and an increase of CAF leadership using it. Offering this kind of limited victim support means that only 2% of the 21% of victims who reported a sexual misconduct contacted the SMRC between 2017 and 2018. Given this very small sample, even the SMRC within its report expressed concern about its own ability to provide an accurate picture of the issues, trends or needs of the victims.
Second, government-funded programs for the ill and injured should not focus only on male-dominated types of injuries. The same report revealed that more than half of the military sexual trauma victims indicated that the SMRC should include peer support and face-to-face consultation. According to the fourth Canadian Armed Forces progress report on sexual misconduct, in-house peer support will not happen.
This means that while Canadian Armed Forces members dealing with operational stress injury—mostly men—and even their spouses are getting peer support through the military, we MST survivors would be referred to sexual assault groups for women in the community we just happen to be posted in. Giving us a subsidiary standard of care away from military view and our peers using a temporary budget is not the solution.
Third, policies, programs and research are still being built without the GBA+ lens and are not being challenged. I have two recent examples of Canadian Armed Forces initiatives that did not use a GBA+ lens. The first example came when I tried to navigate the Canadian Armed Forces transition website released on March 25, 2019. As you can see in annex A to my speaking notes, the only care advertised for the ill and injured on this website is through OSISS, which is operational stress injury social support services.
OSISS does not have a mandate to help MST survivors. The only group support tailored to women, military and civilian, that I ended up finding while navigating was The Royal Ottawa mental health centre website, where I was greeted by the phrase, “Come and join us for self-care, learning and shopping.”
I found the second example when I read the 2019 “Suicide and suicide prevention in the Canadian Armed Forces” report. Just like the report of 2016, it only covers male suicide. By being a minority group, female Canadian Armed Forces members will never meet the required threshold to be studied in a survey designed for a homogeneous population. The Canadian Armed Forces must invest additional resources if they want to understand the needs of its women.
I would like to conclude with a few open questions. Where is the independent oversight? Who advocates for victims' needs and their well-being during studies such as this one? Where is the accountability?
No entity should be policing itself. It never works. It never has and it never will. Unless the Deschamps commission is fully implemented with complete external and independent oversight, a deep knowledge of the military and its structures and challenges, as well as an ability to hold the military and National Defence accountable for oversight, as I stated previously, I can't foresee impactful results for women.
Thank you.