Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, I want to say that this issue is too important to get wrong.
For many years, we have been embracing doing more with less, trying to find efficiencies where we could. I feel we've pretty much reached the point where we can’t really do much more with much less.
We're starting to burn out our people. People in the military were already stressed, and then we had a pandemic. The pandemic has not helped. I worry that if nothing comes from this issue, which has so much heat and light, people in uniform will lose hope that any other issue can be fixed, and that could trigger more people leaving uniform than our organization can handle.
My second point is that the navy is unique. From the environment we operate in, the way we operate and the training it takes to make it through our junior ranks, we are unique. That means that any solution that is found to help us cement change for the better will need to be capable of customization for the navy or it will not work for the navy.
Getting justice for incidents of sexual assault is generally very difficult for the average female in our Canadian society. It becomes more difficult when you are trying to get justice through the military under the National Defence Act, where there are more options to plead down to an NDA offence that carries little consequences for the perpetrator.
It becomes even more difficult if you are in the navy and the incident happens on a navy ship at sea or in a foreign port. We do not have police officers with us on ship, so if there is a need for an investigation we rely on our coxswains and chiefs to do unit disciplinary investigations. This greatly reduces the chance that there will be admissible evidence gathered and preserved to help the victim find justice in a court of law. Most times, the victims pay a greater price than the perpetrators when they come forward, and that is why most victims are reluctant to come forward.
We need to fix this. We need to make this a better and safer place for females to work. The #MeToo movement very much exposed our societal gender problems. The military somewhat amplifies those issues, because of the fact that females are also a minority. As a minority we stand out, and we end up being more under a constant microscope than the average male sailor or soldier.
Added to that, females of all rank levels have a very fine line that they have to walk. Act with too much empathy or concern and you are labelled as “mothering”, which is not perceived as a positive or sought-after trait. On the other end, be too firm or decisive and you are labelled a different derogatory term.
One area that I also think we need to understand is what I have heard called the old boys' club. For the most part, what I hear is a denial that it even exists. We are in an organization that relies on the most basic trust of your fellow soldier or sailor. When we find ourselves in hazardous conditions, we rely on the people we are working with to have our backs, to keep us alive. This creates relationships that are strong and cohesive. This is what we want for our organization.
The problem happens when those relationships are taken off the battlefield and applied unchecked. They can further pervert the balance of power and make it even less likely for victims to get justice. We want these relationships to happen. We want to encourage that, but we also need to recognize when those relationships need to be checked. We need to put balances in place to make sure they don't end up poisoning our organization. We can’t get to that if we don't even acknowledge that they exist.
As well, any reporting system we come up with needs to make the victims feel empowered and engender trust in the system and processes. There needs to be independence from the normal chain of command for that to happen.
We really need to acknowledge this is not a black and white issue. There are many shades of grey here. I have worked with many outstanding individuals over the course of my career, and I think it's very important to understand that generally good people may not see the areas where they are doing or allowing harm to be done to others. We need to accept that good people can and should receive appropriate consequences for their actions, and in some cases, it shouldn't always be career ending.
I'm not sure where we go from here. I don't have the answers, but if I were to fall back on my project management skills, which I learned over the course of my career as an engineer, I would say we need to do some thorough options analysis and present some concrete options with the pros and cons, so that we can choose the option that will best achieve the goals of our organization and best serve the members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Thank you.