Hi and thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak to you today about my own personal experiences with sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces.
I joined the Canadian Armed Forces in July of 2018. Since then, I feel like I've experienced a lifetime's worth of sexual assault and misconduct. I'm here today to tell you that I was raped only one month—one month—into my basic training in Saint-Jean. I was also sexually assaulted during my training in Borden. I have been groped and kissed unwillingly at crew parties and mess events. These degrading behaviours are more common than you think.
On top of all that, I have put up with misogynistic and sexist comments all throughout my career. They range from being told that I only got in because I'm a girl to what an instructor in Borden said to me while looking me dead in the eye: If you've had daddy fix everything for you in your cozy little life, let us know so we can give you a hand.
I believe in the importance of the military. I hope to continue my career and to serve my country to the best of my abilities. My experience with our military justice system, however, has been quite negative. It has left me with a lot of questions about how military police should conduct their investigations. I had three interviews with the military police since I first reported misconduct. Two of those interviews were honestly dreadful. These so-called interviews felt more like interrogation. During these interviews, I felt that investigators were not treating me like a human being. I was just another case file to them. There was no empathy or humanity. It was so frustrating that I left early during the second interview. I felt like I wasn't being heard and was being treated like a criminal. No one should be treated like a criminal when they are that vulnerable and in need of help.
The military police need to improve their training for how to conduct interviews of sexual assault victims. There needs to be a specific course made to teach them that victims need understanding and empathy. If there already is a course, then they need to tear it apart and rebuild it from the ground up.
I also believe that an officer of the same sex of the victim should conduct the interview. In my situation, it wasn't offered that I could speak to a female officer until halfway through my interview, when I started crying. Even then the military police said they would have to reschedule for the next week, because there was no female officer available.
In basic training the leadership tries to ingrain the core values of the military in recruits. These values are duty, loyalty, integrity and courage. These values are taught through PowerPoint and workbooks. However, these values are falling through the cracks. That is how we get this toxic culture that we have been dealing with for so long. It has been abundantly clear that military leadership has not been able to uphold the high ethical standards of integrity. If the leadership can't follow basic core values and set a good example, how are the majority of troops supposed to?
In basic training we are shown this cartoon video that oversimplifies the concept of consent. In my view, the video is little more than a joke. It's all fun to watch, but the topic of sexual misconduct isn't fun. It should be uncomfortable enough to realize that this is a real issue that needs to be dealt with.
In regard to Op Honour, I believe it has served its purpose. It is time to end that course of action and start something else. Op Honour certainly got the conversation going and improved resources and education available to CAF members, but the leadership has been wilfully ignorant of the fact that it has been seen as a joke for years. For many of us, Op Honour has aged like rotten milk. It just leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Serving members at the rank-and-file level constantly make fun of it and degrade its message. To make matters worse, in a cruel irony, it's apparent that the man who created the whole operation is now being investigated under the same pretenses that he swore to fix.
I know that the organization has the potential to evolve and that we can end the toxicity surrounding the military, but that starts with changing the way people think. The only way to do that is by having these discussions, by hearing the stories of victims and by ending the stigma of coming forward to try to right this wrong that has been going on for far too long.
I want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity to tell my truth. As anybody knows, this has not been an easy process for me. Thank you for this opportunity and the chance to speak to you today.