Status of Women Committee on April 8th, 2021

[Julie S. Lalonde]

The first thing to recognize is that the trauma experienced by military members isn't just related to serving in a war, even though we often hear that. Even in my field of work, which involves combatting violence against women, when someone says that they've experienced post-traumatic stress, the assumption is always that the stress relates to their role as a soldier.

I completely agree that the Canadian military must start recognizing the continuum of trauma that its members may experience. These types of trauma shouldn't be organized into a hierarchy. Just because you've been to Afghanistan doesn't mean that your trauma is any worse than the trauma of someone who was assaulted by a colleague. This really needs to be acknowledged and said out loud. It's important to insist on an end to this hierarchy of trauma and to recognize that trauma runs along a continuum. That way, people would have a very different attitude and victims would feel more comfortable reporting their attackers.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Wood, do you have anything to add?

[Christine Wood]

I would, thank you.

There is no hierarchy to trauma. There is no hierarchy to PTSD. Military sexual trauma—if we can all accept that we're using that term today—is not recognized automatically by everyone as an operational stress injury. When it is categorized as that, additional supports, programs and therapies can be accessed, but because we've been excluded from that definition, we have suffered. There have been consequences.

I appreciate the comment that it is courageous for us to be here, but it's not. I argue that it's just a moral imperative that someone is bringing this up, that someone is continuing to try to hold the government accountable for this.

I say this acknowledging that the people I know who have fought the hardest for so many years are burning out. They are at the edge. I have a dear friend who is writing emails to herself right now to remind herself of all the reasons that she should not commit suicide. The burnout and the pain are palpable, and it should not be up to us to keep sending the same message year after year. We've engaged in many meaningful consultations.

I appreciate the vote of confidence, but it really is not courage. It just has to be.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Of course, you have to do it.

In conclusion, post-traumatic stress disorder shouldn't be organized into a hierarchy. We should acknowledge that a person can be affected by the disorder without having served abroad. For example, it can also happen to victims of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces. If we acknowledge that soldiers who have gone abroad can be affected, we must also acknowledge that the same is true for victims of sexual assault, whether they're men or women. That's my understanding.

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Absolutely.

I can tell you that the highest rate of post-traumatic stress disorder worldwide is among victims of rape and sexual violence. The second-highest rate is in the military. We urgently need to take this seriously.

Trauma shouldn't be organized into a hierarchy. When their trauma isn't considered equivalent to the trauma caused by war, victims of sexual violence don't receive the support that they deserve. That's unacceptable.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I want to thank you both for doing your duty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Mathyssen for six minutes.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I find it difficult to start and try to collect my thoughts on where we need to go. As I've often heard from individuals, the idea that you don't talk about it is so overwhelming. We should try to provide them with the idea that this time we will truly create, as we go forward, an independent external mechanism that can investigate criminal activity and isn't linked to the chain of command. What has stopped victims and survivors from coming forward in the past is the need for protection and the need for supports around them. We should create them going forward.

We've studied this a number of times. Deschamps studied it, of course. This committee studied it in 2019.

Ms. Wood, in testimony at this committee in 2019, your predecessor, M.C., talked about government-funded programs for those who are injured. She said they had a strong male-dominated focus and focused on those types of injuries. She noted there wasn't a GBA+ lens applied to the programs that currently exist.

Is that still the case, in your expertise, from what you see?

[Christine Wood]

For the most part, yes, it is still the same. I feel like women have never had a level playing field in the forces; we were mandated to be included. There was never the funding or the supports or the structures, the infrastructure, that were needed.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

In other words, then, that still is experienced because of that mandate?

[Christine Wood]

Yes. It's part of what contributes to the situation now.

In terms of supports, I think, yes, most supports that are generally offered to sexual assault survivors are within these organizations that were designed to treat men and to treat their trauma. For example, at the OSI clinic I've been offered a seat in a group therapy session. They're all men, and they're all there with combat trauma. And I don't even know who raped me, so there's no way I'm going into that room. That's a personal example, but it's across the board.

It's still, I think, at that point where we talk about GBA+. It doesn't start with GBA+. Everyone kind of checks it as a box at the end of their design. I'd like to see something that is from the ground up, built victim-centric and able to address women's needs but also those of male survivors. It's important. They are suffering in even more silence than we are.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

In terms of what your organization has seen, on Tuesday the Minister of Defence came before the defence committee and said the government has been working hard to respond to that Deschamps report, putting in measures focused on understanding the issue and preventing harm. Yet, when we heard directly from Madam Deschamps and other organizations, that's not what we're heard.

The Deschamps report, ultimately, laid it out, right? It talked about that independence, that extra review process. Has there been progress in that at all? Can you provide this committee with specific examples of where it hasn't happened or where it needs to go?

[Christine Wood]

I think there has been some progress, but I also agree that all the recommendations by Madam Deschamps have not been followed. The SMRC is a skeleton of what she envisioned it would be. Specifically, I would like to see the SMRC's mandate expanded to act as that external oversight, that external place to report. As I said, I'd like to see an actual working definition. There are so many of the basics that we're missing at this point. From the point of view of my organization, there's been some progress, but not enough.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

For both witnesses, that education piece is the fundamental start.

Ms. Lalonde, you talked about prevention, and that's where that education starts.

I've been told that, yes, there's a seminar that's held maybe once a year. That isn't enough. What would you suggest that this committee put forward to the government in terms of the structure you see for that educational reform?

[Julie S. Lalonde]

We need survivor-directed, survivor-informed bystander intervention mechanisms. I say that because when Operation Honour happened, and the military decided to do something, they did not have bystander training from a survivor-directed perspective. So what they saw was a massive increase in third party reporting, but a decrease in people actually wanting to go through with the court martial process because the bystanders did not report with the victims' permission. We need robust bystander intervention training that takes survivors into account.

The second thing I would say is that all of the research shows that if there's no booster of bystander intervention training within six to eight months of the initial training, people lose the confidence to use those skills. They don't lose the skills, but they lose the confidence that bystander training tells them: yes, it's scary, but do it anyway. We need often and early bystander training that really looks at it through a fulsome lens.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Good.

Now we're going to go to Ms. Alleslev, for five minutes, in our second round.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you so very much to both of you.

I know you made a comment that it doesn't take courage because it's what needs to be done. The very fact that you say that shows how great the courage you have is. If people are not willing to do the things that are hard, knowing that they're going to have that personal cost, we can't make any progress, but you have done them anyway, so I sincerely want to thank you and Ms. Lalonde in particular.

I went to military college a long time ago in a place far away, and that is where the majority of Canadian Forces officers are trained. They have a separate culture. They have a separate rule system. They have a separate justice system, and yet it's so powerful that it carries, obviously, and sets the norms, attitudes and behaviours for the next 30 years.

General Vance, as CDS, attended military college, and if we believe what we've heard in the media, there were things that occurred at military college that may have formed his future culture as well.

What do we need to do, in addition to the other recommendations that you've made, at RMC or the military colleges to ensure that comprehensive training—including, as you said, even a booster for bystanders—of future officers in that captive 24-7 four years? What would you recommend, having been there and seen how powerful that environment is?

[Julie S. Lalonde]

First of all, I want to reiterate what I said from the start, which was that the third years were the worst group, which means those are people who have been there for three years. If the first years were unruly, you could argue that we pulled from a bad pool. Third year means they've been indoctrinated to believe this is appropriate behaviour.

The other thing that's important is that when I was there to present, I found out later, there were a number of students who got in trouble for crossing campus without having their uniform in proper order, so people are being punished for not wearing the proper belt when crossing campus, but not punished for yelling and catcalling at the anti-harassment officer.

An attitudinal shift needs to happen, and rather than being a simple policy, it unfortunately needs to involve a combination of different things. There's no silver bullet to solve what happened at RMC that day. There certainly needs to be an attitudinal shift. RMC students fundamentally believe they are above those who come up through the ranks via taking basic training and joining the reserves, for example. There is an elitism within RMC that needs to be put in check in a big way.

Second, we're talking about sexual violence, which is important, but we're not going to solve sexual violence in the military unless we also look at it through an intersectional lens. RMC is a very “white” institution. It is very male-dominated, but it's also very “white”, so again there are power dynamics at play that are just not being called out.

My belief is that if you can punish people for not wearing their uniform properly, you can absolutely mandate that they take training every six months, and you can absolutely mandate that it's done effectively. What we know is that having male and female co-facilitation is the most effective way to reach those audiences. We have the answers but, at the macro level, RMC's problem is that it thinks it is special. It thinks it is better than everyone else and so it feels as though it is removed from the conversations happening within the broader CAF, and that absolutely needs to be called out and put a stop to.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

And 30 years later, they are the primary senior officers, the vice-admirals and the admirals and the chiefs of the defence staff.

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Yes, it's a feeder school essentially. So if you're a third-year student who can say to my face that you didn't listen to me because I'm a woman and a civilian, and I know that 18 months later you are going to be leading troops, I'm concerned, and we should all be concerned. It wasn't just about me.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

And 30 years later he could be a four-star general—

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Absolutely.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

—and that attitude has remained. Exactly.

[Julie S. Lalonde]

Absolutely.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

So when offences like, as you said, not wearing a belt, crossing a parade square not around the edges, not having the right books at a lecture are considered serious, but sexual misconduct, assault, or even just behaviour is not viewed the same way, would you—