Evidence of meeting #146 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was military.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
I'm subbing in for a regular member of this committee, and I wasn't here when the motion was approved. However, the motion seems to focus much more on sexual harassment than the culture of the military, or really any of the forces.
How much is the culture that has been ingrained in the various organizations potentially responsible for the sexual harassment, and if we change the culture, is that going to help change the issues of sexual harassment?
Director, The WPS Group
I truly believe so.
I think the culture is allowing.... I mean, I think it's completely linked. I think there are power dynamics at play. There is a culture of impunity. All of that combined with the need for strict policies is key, and I think leadership is key. When I say leadership, it's really at all levels. They say the same thing, toe the party line, but the party line should be that there's a zero tolerance for this.
As an Individual
I fully agree, and yes, there are aspects of the culture that I would suggest need to change.
As I tried to indicate in my comments, the challenge is that the military goes out of its way to create the soldier. With everybody who joins the military, there are three key things that everybody learns. The first is normative conformity; when in doubt do what everybody else is doing. Number two is obedience to authority; do what the boss tells you. Number three is group loyalty—fit into groups. That puts huge pressure on people to fit in and to conform.
There are many individuals—this is part of what I do with the groups coming through Canadian Forces College— who fit that.... When they joined the military, they didn't have to change who they were very much. It was them. There are others who don't.
The military is continuing to try to find ways to help them become like everybody else, rather than changing the culture to say, “You can still be who you are. You can be a military member in a different way than what we're currently doing.”
That, to me, is the central challenge, and I'm not sure that anybody has sorted that out yet.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
With approval from the committee, may I ask a question?
We talk a lot about Operation Honour. We've seen the data come back, and the results haven't been fantastic.
What are some of the recommendations you would make to change Operation Honour to make it so it does what it is supposed to do to take away sexual and physical harassment from women?
As an Individual
I'll start with a couple of recommendations.
One of the key things in Operation Honour is the duty to report. The challenge with duty to report is that it makes incidents very formal right away. There are individuals who have been on the receiving end of stupid behaviour who don't want it formally reported.
My recommendation is to change that to a “duty to respond”. If somebody were asked, “You were there. You witnessed. You saw something going on that was unprofessional. How did you respond?” It may simply be support. It may be talking with them. That would be one of the issues that I would suggest.
I would also suggest that the military take a very long, hard look at the social events that emphasize alcohol consumption. We know that's part of it. It contributes to it.
I would suggest that it would be beneficial to have professional counselling available to individuals when they're on the receiving end, particularly of sexualized military trauma.
Conservative
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much for being here. We truly appreciate the advice and the insight that you bring.
Professor, I would particularly like to thank you for your observation regarding the hierarchy in a committee and how power is used.
I'm sure most of us have been to a mess, and my God, you have to know the protocol or you're in trouble. You may not get dinner if you don't understand the hierarchy there.
I was very interested in the comment in regard to education. You mentioned the RMC, and it reminded me of a situation in the town where I come from with cadets. For whatever reason, because of friendship, because somebody had access to a vehicle, a child predator was allowed in to be an instructor. The reservist who tried to bring attention to that went right up the chain of command. He was drummed out and the predator remained. It seems to me that this education you spoke of does indeed need to start very early. I wondered if you would comment on that.
As an Individual
Yes, I agree. I think people are aware that the cadet organization is a separate construct, as are the rangers. The Canadian Armed Forces and the cadet organization certainly ensure that when people are joining, they are made aware of the policies, the standards and the expectations. I think there's been a lot of effort on clarifying the standards up front. I think the difficulty and the challenge with it is there's still confusion on occasions as to what to do when people encounter circumstances of what I will continue to call “unprofessional behaviour”.
Then we get into the difficulties of when people step forward to say something, and that's where I think there's the potential for things to go off the rails. You've heard of some examples of people where it hasn't been dealt with. There are many that are dealt with very effectively, but I think the organization is still grappling with.... I don't think it's the upfront initial education. I would suggest that equipping leaders effectively to deal with these issues is one area that could do with some more emphasis.
NDP
Director, The WPS Group
I want to mention that I do some work with a police project in Ukraine. One thing, as part of their national action plan on resolution1325, was to revise their education system. Within their ministry of interior, they launched this revision of the education system for all law enforcement agencies to look at their curriculums from a gender perspective. I thought that was quite ambitious, but also extremely important to do to make sure that, as I mentioned in my comments, it's really embedded as part of the entire curriculum from the beginning.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
That's interesting. In terms of gender-based analysis, governments are still grappling with that.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
It is tricky and it makes significant demands.
You talked about the national action plan, and I wondered how government has responded. Are you happy with the response? What more could happen, if anything?
Director, The WPS Group
We are in the second year. The second report will be tabled, if I'm getting my years correct. The second national action plan was actually a real step forward. There are specific implementation plans for each department, so for each implementation partner. As a network, we've been working specifically with DND, the RCMP and Global Affairs to advance that and advise. Certainly, I can send some of the reports that we've done, but we've been pushing on a number of issues, including the women, peace and security champion, which we're told is somewhere, or in development; and funding for women's organizations. There are a number of specific things that we've been pushing forward on that front.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you.
It's interesting that you mention the funding for women's organizations. There has been a decline, in terms of that funding—a very serious decline. There's no core funding anymore. Everything is piecemeal. I'll be very interested in your report. I think the discontinuation of that core funding has created a real vacuum, in terms of women's organizations' ability to respond to some very important issues.
I also had a question in regard to the 2016 Auditor General's report. The recommendation was to increase the representation of women in the Canadian military. Despite whatever good intentions, that hasn't happened. What do you think the main barriers are to recruiting and retaining women, because they may come along. We've seen some at this committee who enlisted with incredibly positive attitudes and intentions, and felt that they were not able to continue.
Director, The WPS Group
As Alan mentioned, I've met so many women who have joined, but after a number of years have left, because they aren't able to be themselves, in addition to everything else they may have encountered. Certainly, their voices are not being recognized.
Another point I will make is about making sure we collect data, because there has been, throughout the testimonies, a lack of data and analysis to understand what's really happening.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you very much.
We're now going to move it over to Sonia Sidhu, for seven minutes.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for giving us insight, and thank you for coming.
This is the fact. Women have less representation—I want to echo my colleague—almost 50% to 60% less.
How can we increase the representation of women? What can the federal government do? I want to ask both of you.
Director, The WPS Group
I think changing the organization, and changing the culture, as we've been mentioning, would go a long way to making it a more accessible organization. If women, or young women, are looking at this organization, and what they see in the media, it's not always very positive.
The second part is that there are so many women who want to join the military. Once they join, if they encounter all the barriers and everything that we've heard as part of this committee and other testimonies, they're certainly not going to want to stay.
Retention is a huge part, but I think it's so connected with making sure they are able to contribute to the organization in a way that they can and want to. It's about feeling empowered. Certainly, you have to go through the training. There's a standard, and I'm not questioning that, but as Alan mentioned, it's also about allowing them to be themselves.
As an Individual
I'll offer a couple of comments, one particular to the level of government. One depends very much on the image of the military and the ways in which the Canadian Armed Forces are supposed to contribute to defence and security. We had a period of time when it was very clear the military was engaged in major combat missions. There were types of advertising that went on at that time, which very clearly attracted certain Canadians to want to join the military, and they dissuaded others, particularly women and members of several of the minority communities.
As Kristine has mentioned, if the Canadian Armed Forces is engaged in providing positive contributions in the world, trying to set the conditions for peace and security, there are likely going to be a lot more women who are going to be interested in joining. So that's one from a government level.
The second one from a government level is that the Employment Equity Act does allow for and hints, encourages, the use of special measures, again, as we know, to address the historical marginalization of the four designated groups. Both the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP have been very reluctant to use special measures. Both tend to cling to the merit principle, and from there my internal recommendation is the military continues to rank order. If they have a thousand people who want to join to go to the Royal Military College, they rank order them from number one to a thousand. They actually aren't rank-ordering them from one to a thousand. The measures aren't that precise. They would be better off to put them into groupings of outstanding, acceptable and weak, and if you did broad groupings of equally qualified individuals, you could then have the principle of selecting first amongst equals. So you could select individuals based on demographic identity.
That goes not only to joining. That goes to promotions. That goes into appointing people into command appointments. There's a host of things right now where women, in particular, can commonly be the next on the list. They just didn't quite compete enough to be the top on the list, and challenging this assumption that it's a gender-neutral, level playing field, I think the principle of first amongst equals would help overcome that. There are actions that can be taken.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you.
Ms. St-Pierre, you mentioned education and training systems, that it was the chief strategy. Do you think it should be starting from the school, or should it be in the cadet program?
Director, The WPS Group
As Alan mentioned, the cadet system is a separate system. In terms of the schooling, the education in the public system, if you look at national action plans that look at women, peace and security around the world, there are a number of these plans that actually advise changing the education curriculum to ensure that we discuss these issues, that we have this as part of the curriculum. So that's a much broader issue.
In terms of the education of soldiers, whether at RMC or at other levels, certainly I think there's a lot of things that could be revised, could be changed, and it's really about the approach that you take, the content, the language, the examples, the scenarios. It's a whole breadth of things that could be reviewed to ensure that it promotes equality, human rights, women's rights, and diversity and inclusivity.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you.
Some 27% of the CAF are victims of sexual assault. It's a big number. How are the victim support staff trained?
Professor, what are your thoughts about that?
As an Individual
As you have heard, the sexual misconduct response centre has staff who are responsible for providing initial responses and supports to individuals. My understanding is that work is ongoing to move from that which is really a 1-800 number to actually providing some capacity at large bases for face-to-face support, which I think most people would recognize would be important.
So I would suggest at the present time there are some levels of support. I think more can be done, certainly, including in understanding the circumstances that individuals can find themselves in.
Again, we know broadly, particularly when women are on the receiving end of sexual assault, that there's a reluctance to speak up and speak out. There are a number of broad social reasons for that. We know that there are concerns with regard to how peers and family and others are going to respond to the individuals. So I think it's a broader system that we need to look at and that's why one of my comments is about providing psychological counselling to individuals when they first encounter the circumstances, not once they get into formal investigations and hearings, but just dealing with it initially. It's trauma, and I'm not sure that we provide the right support yet for those at early stages of experiencing that type of trauma.