Status of Women Committee on May 14th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now going to move over to Rachael Harder.

Rachael, you have seven minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Commodore Patterson, you talked about a number of things that are being done in response to the report that was put out about a year ago. In some of the remarks that you didn't get to in your opening statement but are written here, you talk about seeking further action. I'm wondering a few things. Number one, is any further action being taken to account for the fact that we are now in 2019 and, as a number of our witnesses have put it, the Canadian Armed Forces are changing?

Increasingly, they are moving towards a knowledge-based centre, rather than a combat-based entity. As a result, that changes the type of person you want to recruit. That certainly changes things. Within that as well there is more opportunity for women who join the military to also have a family, so children are now involved in the equation, but it is my understanding, based on testimony we've heard from witnesses, that the policies have not caught up to this reality, the fact that someone could have children and could be a single mom or a single dad responsible for the care of those children.

What types of policies are you looking to implement to account for these changes in society?

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

I promise you I'm not try to evade your questions, but again that would be outside my current portfolio. Very generically, there is something called the journey that you may have heard about, which is looking at the whole life cycle of a person who wishes to join the Canadian Armed Forces, from the moment of recruitment through potentially to the end of their life. Within there, putting people at the centre of all we do, involves reviewing policies as they relate to families and how families are managed.

That work is under way. I'm very sorry, I cannot provide specific answers for you, but it is being looked at, trying to look at what the systemic barriers are to allow all people to serve, no matter their family circumstances. It is definitely priority work as an institution under “Strong, Secure, Engaged”.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Again—perhaps you can't comment on this either—another recommendation that a witness brought forward was that perhaps a woman could decide whether she wanted to go through the Canadian Armed Forces or an HR tribunal to have her case heard. Do you feel that could be considered?

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

I'm so sorry. I'm not able to comment on this specifically. Very generically, the expectation is to use the processes that exist within the system first and then move forward to human rights.

Alain, are you able to provide a greater comment? May I just share with my colleague?

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Sure.

[Alain Gauthier]

A human rights complaint is part of my portfolio.

Absolutely nothing prevents a CAF member from going directly to the commission and making a complaint. The commission will decide if they prefer to deal directly with the complaint—and they have the ability to retain, deal with it, investigate and sort it out—or in discussion with the armed forces to say they'll use the existing mechanism.

But for every single case that discussion does happen.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

It's my understanding that grievances have to be taken all the way through the CAF before a person can file a complaint outside, let's say, with a human rights tribunal or the commission. Is that not correct?

[Alain Gauthier]

If they've launched a process and they're already in the grievance process, once again, nothing prevents them from going to the commission and making their case. The commission will usually ask them to wait until the decision is taken in the grievance process.

If they go early and the first thing they do is go straight to the commission, once again nothing prevents that and there have been cases where the commission has said we will deal directly with these cases.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

One of the concerns that has been expressed by a couple of the witnesses who have been brought to this table is that they were in the midst of a CAF proceeding with regard to their grievances and felt that they were being taken on a bit of a merry-go-round ride. They were able to outline that quite well and I would agree with them, based on what they shared with us.

Basically, they were being held within the CAF so that they couldn't go to the commission, because the commission said they wouldn't hear their case until they had closed it with the CAF. It feels like there is perhaps a bit of a ploy taking place there, then, to keep members of the Canadian Armed Forces within the CAF, thus preventing them from being able to go and seek other assistance from the outside. Is that true?

[Alain Gauthier]

No. This is not what I saw—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

There are no mechanisms like that at play?

[Alain Gauthier]

I saw a clear example of where people can go to the commission, and it is a commission decision to deal with it or not. They decide.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Always...?

[Alain Gauthier]

Always.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Ms. Patterson, another thing you said was that there is a manual, and you kind of chuckled to yourself, knowing that it is somewhat laughable that there is a manual.

Again, a number of witnesses have talked about the fact that, yes, there are policies. There are policies galore, but they're not asking for new policies. They're asking that action be taken on the existing policies. They're asking that the proper protocols be followed and that the culture be shifted.

What would be your response to that?

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

I think we have to start at the basic level. The reason for my comment on the manual was that if you say it's another policy, it's actually not a policy. It's a useful tool and a guide. There is a difference. This is something that's used at the coal face, and I do hear that everything gets labelled “policy” when that is not in fact what it is. Within our culture—we are very large—having that tool available to you, as well as on an app that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, is quite a valuable piece.

As it relates to policy, a unified policy approach is one of the recommendations out of the Deschamps report, and we are actively working on that. As with anything, it is complex. We do want to make sure that it's been through a GBA+ process to make sure all aspects are there.

In addition, my job is to be the universal translator to make sure that the advice we're receiving from the sexual misconduct response centre, and ultimately from the external advisory council, actually can be read and be usable for the CAF. That consultative process and that development process take time. Where we are right now is that we have usable and valuable tools that we have put in place as we come up with unified policy.

I'll go back to your original comment, which was, what does policy do? What people on the ground need is a tool that's usable. It's a decision tree. It's about knowing how to look after people. It is about having a manual that doesn't just apply to “Here's your cookbook, chain of command”. This is also for people who are affected and it can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Putting those useful pieces in place is very important.

To go back to the question about education—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm going to cut you off, because we're quite over time on that one. I'm going to pass the floor over to Rachel Blaney.

Rachel, you have seven minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I want to thank all of you all for being here today.

I will direct my first question to you, Commodore Patterson. I really appreciate your being here. I'm the proud representative of 19 Wing Comox, and I have to say that I'm honoured to do amazing work with them. I'm always impressed by the people who serve our country.

In your brief, you talked about how you're currently developing a campaign plan to look at how you're going to move forward. I'm curious. Could you talk to us a bit about what that looks like and tell us if women who have gone through these experiences were part of helping you develop that plan?

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

Thank you.

I used to have a unit in Comox. I love Comox.

This is actually a two-part response. We have the campaign plan, but we're also developing that prevention strategy and cultural change strategy we talked about. We are in the early stages of a pan-Canadian Armed Forces campaign plan that is trying to break down some of the different silos that definitely have been mentioned here. How do we start harmonizing all the various approaches?

In the early phase, we have stakeholders from all sorts of groups now. One of those is the sexual misconduct response centre. We're getting to a point where it's going to be basically making sure, for the Canadian Armed Forces, who will be responsible for implementing this and that it makes sense.

Then, as we start moving through the continuous developmental process, it will be going back to the SMRC. Again, this is the group that includes the affected person perspective. Again, we want to stay at arm's length from that so they can retain their independence but also so the advice they're getting is very clean and clear. We've included them at the stakeholder perspective, being represented through the SMRC, and as we move forward with the campaign plan, I'll pass it to Dr. Preston to talk about what would happen then.

[Denise Preston]

I would just add a couple of things.

Part of the role of SMRC is to essentially represent a victim's interests, a victim's issues or that perspective on things. We do that in a couple of ways.

One—as I mentioned earlier—is that all of my staff have expertise working with victims of sexual trauma, so they provide their own professional expert advice. We also get advice directly from people with lived experience. We do have a member on our external advisory council who has lived experience.

As well, we actually have a member who is working with us right now to establish a formal stakeholder engagement strategy, because part of the challenge for us—to this point—is that a lot of our engagement has been sort of ad hoc, or one on one with people with whom we have relationships or It's Just 700, which has already been established. We know we don't have the range of voices at the table that we want represented, so we're developing a stakeholder engagement strategy to be able to include those voices in a systematic way on everything we develop.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

I'm going to come back to you, though, because I think—and I really appreciated that addition—that one of the challenges is the culture. It's one of these realities that, when it is so normal—this is how it's always been done—it's very hard to change and move it.

I'm just wondering about this strategy around changing culture. What are the specific challenges you're facing that are the ones that, if you could knock those down, it would really make a difference?

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

As you know, this is a problem society faces and we are a microcosm of that society.

The challenge is being able to articulate what that change needs to be. The one thing we do know is that everything we do is founded on respect and dignity. You have to go back to basics, as they say. What is it that the Canadian Armed Forces is? What do we value? What are our ethics and what is our ethos? There was a mention made of “Duty With Honour”. That's actually a document that articulates the ethos of the profession of arms.

What we're actually looking at, though, is how we articulate bringing us back to what our ethical bases are, what we believe in and what our culture should look like. That is the first step, and that work is under way.

The challenge is that there is no road map. Therefore, what we are hoping to do, as we look at the actual philosophy behind the cultural change we need to make in the CAF, is to look at it from a prevention perspective, because I don't believe it matters that I'm talking about sexual misconduct. It could apply to harassment, racism or anything if we have a founding principle of respect and dignity for all.

Our challenge, then, is how to articulate that. One thing we value hugely is external advice, and that is why we are happy to.... We were at the Status of Women Canada advisory board this morning. What a fabulous group. What a fabulous organization to help us change and figure out where we need to be.

This is why, when we look at who is trying to articulate the strategy, Dr. Preston and I are collaborating on this as co-chairs to come up with where we want to go. What we want to be able to do is to put these out-of-the-box ideas on the table.

One thing I can confirm to you is that there is a huge desire to figure out how to accomplish this change, and we have been given some flexibility to try to say that this is where we need to do, where we need to go and how to inform it.

Again, I say external advice is always greatly welcome, especially in academic research, etc., and it is challenging.

Would you like me to pass it to Dr. Preston?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I'm just wondering...because I think it has to be very centred by the people who've had this experience. That voice just needs to become more robust and loud in this environment.

[Cmdre Rebecca Patterson]

Absolutely.