Status of Women Committee on April 8th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 24 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.

Today our committee is resuming its study on sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.

For the benefit of the witnesses, when you're ready to speak, you can click on your microphone icon to activate you mike. Comments should be addressed through the chair.

Interpretation in this video conference is very much like it is in regular committee meetings. There is a button at the bottom that lets you choose English or French. When you're speaking, please speak slowly and clearly for our interpreters, and when you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

I would like to welcome our witnesses, who will each have five minutes for their opening remarks. Today we have Ms. Julie Lalonde and, from It's Just 700, Ms. Christine Wood.

Ms. Lalonde, I will ask you to begin. You have five minutes.

[Julie S. Lalonde, As an Individual]

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the invitation to speak today.

I'm pleased that the committee decided to take some time to hear from experts in various fields, including me.

My name is Julie S. Lalonde. I've been working for almost 20 years to end violence against women in Canada. Each year, I provide training to thousands of people. I've worked in five countries, on three continents and in two languages.

Although I am the daughter of a former CAF member, my expertise in system change, violence prevention and bystander intervention is what dragged me into this conversation. I had a now-infamous day of training all officer cadets at the Royal Military College in Kingston in the fall of 2014. The anti-harassment educator got harassed at RMC, was the headline across the country. What was unfortunately missed is that I filed a complaint with RMC for reasons that go beyond the harassment I personally experienced. I was, and remain, deeply troubled by the comments cadets made with regard to sexual violence. Victim-blaming was rampant and the cadets insisted that women who drink too much are asking to be raped, except for one Navy cadet. He showed immense courage, and courage is what I would like to focus on for my comments today.

I was invited to train all officer cadets grouped by year on a rainy October day in 2014. The first and second years were unruly but manageable. The third-year group was by far the worst audience I have ever dealt with. Yes, they did accuse me of hating all men, laughed at the definition of consent, and took every opportunity they could to shift the blame from perpetrators to victims. During a particularly tense moment, I frankly lost the room. They were furious with my focus on bystanders and began yelling over each other and heckling me.

In a sea of largely green uniforms a man in a Navy uniform shot his hand up. He was sitting amongst the most boisterous group, so to be honest, I called on him with hesitation. To my surprise, and the surprise of everyone else in the room, he stood up for me. He began to berate his classmates for attacking me, told them they were being babies for being so upset, and went so far as to say that the way we talk about women at RMC is embarrassing.

The room was stunned into silence. I think of this man often. In the days and months that followed my day at RMC, cadets and CAF members took to social media and traditional media to praise the cadets for being brave enough to challenge the educator. Hundreds of men derailing a conversation on sexual violence prevention to call the female facilitator a man-hater is not brave. Being the sole voice in a room of 200 people willing to take a stand in support of progress is bravery of the highest level.

That is what we need from you now. You will not eradicate sexual violence, misogyny and other forms of oppression within the military, such as racism, transphobia and homophobia, unless you are willing to be brave. Are CAF members uncomfortable with terms like rape culture, toxic masculinity and survivor-centred? Absolutely, we've seen that, but you cannot change something that you won't even name.

I want to end by reminding you that I am calling on you to do something that I am doing myself. I am not asking you to do something that I am not personally willing to do myself. Since I came forward about my experience a few years ago, I have received thousands of threatening emails, social media messages and even phone calls. I have been accosted at in-person events and I can no longer speak in public on any topic without a security detail.

I have paid dearly for my courage, and so it is very disheartening to see those of you with immense power shying away from the hard work that's necessary to make change. Sexual violence has existed within the Canadian Armed Forces for decades.

The blame does not lie with one individual, one leader or even one political party. Please keep your eyes on the prize and choose bravery when having this conversation.

Thank you for giving me time to speak this morning. I look forward to continuing the discussion with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you so much.

Now we will go to Ms. Wood, for five minutes.

[Christine Wood, Chief, Strategic Engagement, It's Just 700]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is an honour to be here, and it's an honour to represent the group It's Just 700.

Five weeks ago, unexpectedly, the founder of our group, Marie-Claude Gagnon, who most people know as “MC”, stepped down. She stepped away from It's Just 700.

After six years of advocacy at the highest levels of government, she has reached a point where the cost of giving insight, voice and access to hundreds of men and women is too great a price to pay alone, so something simple but important to remember as we engage today is that this is hard stuff. This is ugly stuff. Sexual assault isn't talked about lightly. It's an ugly side of human nature.

At this point, I really believe that sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces is a national embarrassment. Our collective Canadian conscience has been hit hard by the recent high-profile allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour by our most senior leaders. It is outrageous that two chiefs of defence have faced allegations within weeks of each other, but it's even more outrageous to accept that every year on average 1,600 people report a sexual assault within the CAF. This isn't friendly fire. It's not an accident or an honest mistake. It's rape, and it's abuse of authority.

I can tell you things that you have heard before.

Victims need supports. There are more and more coming forward and there is still no safety net there to catch them. These individuals are not coming forward to report a simple discrepancy that they saw in paperwork. They are coming forward with their experiences of terror, debilitating anxiety and shredded self-confidence. They are broken. It is simply unethical to continue to ask them to come forward without having a plan in place to support them.

To be clear, we are asking for the same supports that we were asking for four years ago: a national platform for online peer support, group therapy, outpatient therapy and in-patient psychiatric care when necessary that is MST-specific in its focus. It needs to be trauma informed and needs to be able to address the moral injury of betrayal by your brothers and sisters in uniform.

The “nature, duration and severity” of our injuries is something that every affected individual is struggling to explain right now. That's the terminology used in the settlement forms for the class action lawsuit: the nature, the duration and the severity. So many people are struggling to find the words. It's not easy, and neither are the next steps forward. Up front, I need to say again that we need care. It has to be targeted. Post-traumatic stress disorder is chronic, and it can be deadly. It doesn't matter where the trauma came from. The end result is what it is.

Sexual trauma is not necessarily worse or easier than combat trauma. It's just different. I'm sure you're aware of the following: that one in five victims is a man; that military life is exceptional but places exceptional roadblocks in accessing care; and that we frequently are posted and moving or on long-term training courses and, most often, are away from our extended family.

It's unfortunate that we are still trying to get an agreed-upon definition of military sexual trauma, MST, as now it is an American term. If we in Canada can develop our understanding in black and white of military sexual trauma, we can have greater research, data and access, and provide targeted treatment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, that's your time. It was wonderful.

I'm sure we'll capture the rest in the questions.

[Christine Wood]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're now going into our first round of questions.

We'll begin with Ms. Sahota for six minutes.

[Jag Sahota, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here and sharing your experiences.

Christine, you represent an organization, It's Just 700, that helps individuals who have been victims of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. You yourself have also been a victim.

How did you go about reporting your assault and has it generally been the same for other victims as well?

[Christine Wood]

I reported my assault the day after I found out it was an assault. My drink was spiked at the officer's mess. I didn't think it had happened, but I made a mistake somehow. When the bloodwork came back, I knew.

I was advised to wait and consider whether it was a good idea to report or not because those who report face reprisals. It follows them around their career as they get posted. I waited 24 hours and I really thought about that and in the end I decided I had to; it was just too wrong.

The reporting process itself was terrifying. It was me in a room with men for about two or three hours. I was videotaped. I felt like a suspect. It was a traumatic process for sure, and I was very dissatisfied. I'll say that up front; I was very dissatisfied with how the investigation went, how it was conducted, how supported I was and how not supported I was.

I'm happy to speak to more of that but that's generally my experience.

It's maybe fifty-fifty within the group, It's Just 700. Some people report and some, don't but most people are dissatisfied with the response and the process that happens after.

[Jag Sahota, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

You spoke about your experience and what others feel like.

What, if any changes, would you like to see implemented in the complaint process to ensure that those who come forward are treated appropriately and that the complaint process is given its due diligence?

[Christine Wood]

I've heard a lot of talk about an independent, external oversight committee and I fully support that idea. I believe if there is an independent place separate from the CAF where individuals can report an assault, it can be investigated, it can be tracked and a victim can have an advocate throughout the whole process, that would help immensely.

[Jag Sahota, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

You also spoke about how you felt while you were going through the reporting process.

How do other individuals feel during that process?

Do people think there is a desire to investigate or was the culture unwelcoming and cold?

[Christine Wood]

I believe they took it seriously. There was a genuine interest in pursuing this.

Unfortunately, I know many people who reported within their chain of command and the complaint was not acted on. I think it is very important to make sure that this process happens outside the chain of command. It can't be influenced by the military unit where this is happening.

[Jag Sahota, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Recently it's been reported by the acting chief of the defence staff that Operation Honour has been a failure and was shutting down and would take the good and build something new from it. Do you believe there is anything that was good about Operation Honour and is there anything worth building from it?

[Christine Wood]

The greatest thing about Operation Honour is that it acknowledged that there was a problem and it brought the conversation out into the public, but it failed to define the issue. It was done in a way that did not address the deep cultural issues at play here. Sexualized culture is a real thing; an order is not going to change that. I'm happy to see that the duty to report is being replaced by a duty to respond. That's crucial and I'm willing to talk about that more, if you would like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

We're going to go now to Ms. Hutchings for six minutes.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you both for being here today for your bravery, for your perseverance, and for your amnesty in getting this resolved and moving forward. This committee has such an opportunity to really put politics aside and really bring recommendations directly to the government about how to rebuild trust and how to rebuild long-term change in the current culture at CAF. The study needs to be about all members of the Canadian Armed Forces and ensure that each and every member is working in a safe and respectful work environment. The ministers stated that all options are on the table.

Based on your expertise and following the line of the questioning of my colleague, Ms. Lalonde, what are your recommendations to ensure that a real significant change in the military culture happens?

[Julie S. Lalonde]

First of all you have to build off what Christine said. You have to name the problem. Right away, you have to acknowledge that this is a systemic issue. We need to move away from this “one bad apple, oh it's this CDS, oh no it's this CDS”. Clearly it's a systemic issue.

First, there needs to be acknowledgement. Acknowledge that you're talking about sexual violence. I think we should even question language like “sexual misconduct”. Sexual misconduct is not a term that is used outside. It's a bureaucratic term and in the military context it conflates someone having a consensual affair with sexual violence, which are two very different things. The term “sexual misconduct” doesn't raise hackles in the same way within the military because it can mean so many different things. We need to have a narrow definition.

We need long-term funding commitments. Yes we can have a review every five years, as was supposed to be the case with Operation Honour, for example, but we need long-term funding commitments to ensure that things like equipment women need is not taken from the main budget of that particular group, as then there's resentment built because women are costing more to integrate, for example.

We need systemic and long-term funding for prevention strategies. Sexual violence can be prevented. This is not a revelation. That is a fact: we can prevent the vast majority of sexual violence. If we don't have that attitude, we're only going to fund ensuring the survivors get the counselling they need, which is important, but it's not prevention work.

The military needs to listen to outsiders. The military is a notoriously insular environment. The assumption is, “we are special, we are different, no one really understands us”, but the expertise does not sit within CAF. They have shown that they are incapable on their own of solving this problem, so there needs to be a mechanism to have external input informing every decision that's made.

I would say the last thing that you always need is buy-in from the senior folks. This is a hierarchical organization and there is clearly no understanding of power dynamics within the military, which is mind-boggling to the average Canadian. You work in a hierarchy; there needs to be recognition of that piece.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you so much for that.

Ms. Wood, in your remarks you made reference to the fact that 20% of your members are men. Can you speak to this, and any recommendations you have to ensure that our survivor-focused approach really engages and empowers men as both allies and survivors?

[Christine Wood]

Yes. Thank you for that question, because it is an important thing to acknowledge.

It's difficult for women to come forward. It is way more difficult for men to come forward. The stigma and the shame are multiplied by a thousand for them.

We talk about this masculine warrior ideal. Men who have been raped by their fellow soldiers are deeply embarrassed, and they end up deeply affected by it. They suffer even more in silence than women do.

I think there needs to be a very public acknowledgement that this is not just a woman's issue. It's a human issue, and it is a systemic issue.

Going forward, men need to be a part of the conversation. They need to be sought out and engaged.

I can't speak to every one of their needs, but I know that many of them ask for what we ask for. We need supports. We need care. We need continuity with care.

[Gudie Hutchings, Liberal, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Quickly—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Your time is up.

Ms. Larouche, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Lalonde and Ms. Wood, your presentations were truly poignant. I applaud your courage and all your work to change this culture. You used phrases such as “toxic masculinity” and you spoke about a dangerous culture in the military.

You both spoke at length about the trauma suffered by the victims.

In the early 2000s, when I was a journalism student, I had the opportunity to speak with the ombudsman for the Canadian military. I had read in a newspaper that the Canadian Armed Forces were interested in the psychological health of their soldiers. Several other articles on this topic were then published in different newspapers. Since the turn of the millennium, we've been talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, a topic that used to be taboo.

The focus has been on post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by soldiers who have gone to war. However, we may have underestimated the extent of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by victims of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces. As both of you clearly stated, it's difficult for victims of sexual assault to report their attackers, especially when the victims are experiencing post-traumatic stress.

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Christine, do you want to answer that?

[Christine Wood]

Why don't you start?