Status of Women Committee on May 11th, 2021

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

Thank you very much.

We heard very discouraging testimony from Dr. West today. In her testimony she talked about the double standard, and that when she was posted outside of the country and fraternized with the U.S. military as a junior officer, she was fined, charged and repatriated. She was drummed out of the Canadian Forces essentially through a constructive dismissal.

We know that Lieutenant-General Coates was posted as the deputy commander of NORAD, which is one of the most significant positions for Canada's defence, and that he was guilty of a very similar offence. However, the media and the military have stated repeatedly that no rules were broken.

Could you help us understand which it is? Is it that no rules are broken when you're on deployment and fraternizing with another person, or they are, and a general was not charged, was not fined, was not repatriated and is still serving in the Canadian Forces?

[LGen Jennie Carignan]

Madam Chair, I cannot speak to the particulars and the facts of the cases, but what I can say is that we have to make sure that the same rules apply to everybody. This is part of the work that we will be doing: to clarify these rules and policies for everybody. This is the testimony that we have heard from many survivors, and I'll tell you that it is—

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

General, we have Dr. West on the call, and she has a record for being charged for what appears and has been in the public to be exactly the same thing, probably of a significantly lower level of severity because she was a junior officer, not a three-star general.

I think, if you could, we would like you to get back to the committee and give us some clarity on whether or not, in fact, no rules were broken in the case of Dr. West or in the case of a still serving lieutenant-general.

[LGen Jennie Carignan]

Madam Chair, I can tell you that I have been very touched and affected by both Dr. West's experience and the many other experiences we have heard. I am not taking this lightly. I want to drive the appropriate change that will allow us to not have these cases in the future. We are determined to make this happen.

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

General Carignan, we know of generals who are complicit, either through their silence or their actions. What authority do you have to hold them accountable, to ensure that their conduct is beyond reproach, if they are holding such important positions?

[LGen Jennie Carignan]

Madam Chair, that's exactly what I meant in my opening statement about the gap between the reality and the values that we are espousing and want to see happening. We definitely have a lot of work to do in that sense. This is exactly what I mean by bridging that gap and ensuring that people are held accountable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Zahid for five minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to both witnesses

I say a special thanks to you, Ms. West, for your powerful testimony. I know that you need a lot of courage to come out, so really, thank you on behalf of all the members.

My first question is for you, Ms. West.

Do you think the military is capable of a transformational culture change? If so, what recommendations do you have that will help to ensure success for current and future members of the Canadian Armed Forces?

[Dr. Leah West]

Yes, I do. I powerfully believe in the CAF's capacity to change, because I know that so many of the strong leaders who are still there take this issue extremely seriously, not just women and men, but my peer group, which is now at the commanding officer and subunit level of command, and they are fiercely determined to bring about change now.

The response to these allegations and to testimony like my own has gotten far different responses from men and women in uniform than the Deschamps report in 2015. I believe that CAF has now accepted.... At least the senior leadership has accepted the issue as a legitimate issue and is putting forward real steps to make change in a way that I do not believe was the case even three months ago, the appointment of General Carignan being one of the steps.

The thing I would say most immediately is that General Carignan talks about all of the necessary institutional changes that need to happen, which do take time. I believe that my friends, the subunit commanders, the commanding officers, need to be empowered to organically take steps to improve the culture within their own units and subunits, and they need to feel empowered to do so by the chain of command.

The CAF is going to change itself. It won't be an external report that changes the CAF, and it needs to happen not just from the top down, but from the bottom up. It's a lot easier to happen from the bottom up in a hierarchical organization when you have leadership that empowers you and makes the mission clear.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you for your answer, Ms. West.

How can we encourage more survivors to come forward? Do you have any recommendations of any changes that need to be made so we can encourage more survivors to come forward?

[Dr. Leah West]

I do believe the class action process is one way that survivors may take the opportunity to come forward through that reconciliation process.

I hope that process is spurred by the momentum we're seeing now. I also believe that survivors in uniform will come forward if they believe they are going to be supported, that their chain of command will have their backs and that they will not face repudiation for coming forward now.

I also truly believe that we're not going to get out of this by punishing every man in the CAF who has misbehaved in the past 30 years. The Canadian Armed Forces needs to move forward by accepting its failures. Obviously, there are those egregious abuses of power that need to be dealt with, but there needs to be acknowledgement, reconciliation, a chance to share, be sad about the culture, and then move forward all together on a new path.

Taking down every single senior officer who has misbehaved in the past is not the way forward, I don't think.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Ms. West.

Madam Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You have 30 seconds.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'll take this opportunity to thank both the witnesses for appearing before the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

We'll go to Madam Larouche.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. West, I would like to go back to your testimony. You were indeed, in a way, a victim, but you were asked to remain silent about this culture of omertà surrounding sexual assault. You talked about the importance of keeping the identity of victims private. How does that discretion allow you to go further?

I would especially like to return to the fact that you were kept silent following your assault.

[Dr. Leah West]

It's hard to speak out in a culture where you feel like an experiment. As a woman in the Canadian Armed Forces, especially in the combat arm, where I was one of very few—I went through all of my training. I was the only woman. I felt constantly that I needed to prove I needed to be there, that I was an experiment and that I was to conform and behave as I was expected to; otherwise, I would have been proven to not belong and to have failed the experiment for others.

When you feel like that, when something happens to you that doesn't happen to anyone else, and you're going to potentially rock the boat, take somebody down who's highly beloved, someone I felt love towards as a big brother, it's incredibly hard to speak out.

This is why I go back to the point about fundamentally it's about women and men not feeling equal. If you're constantly trying to conform to this toxic masculine behaviour, it's incredibly challenging to stand up for yourself. You have the idea that you have to be like them, and if you're not, you're wrong; you don't belong, and it will just prove you don't belong, so you stay silent. I think this is not just about sexual assault. It's also about the jokes, the showing of pornography, the ridiculous comments, the unwanted touching. It's all of it. Women and men need to be treated equally for that to stop, and that, I think, is the root problem that General Carignan has before her.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

Now we'll go to Ms. Mathyssen for the last two and half minutes.

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

We've seen a lot of reports and reviews. It's not just the Deschamps report. There's also the Auditor General's report and the report from this committee in 2019.

Lieutenant-General Carignan, I don't want this future review, this report, our report coming out of all of this now, any of that to be lost again. It needs to be acted upon.

How can this committee, in your opinion, ensure that happens. This may be beyond my purview and we may have to do it in a different way, but I would like to ensure that you come back to this committee to report on your progress potentially after you've had a bit more time to solidify your mandate and all of those things.

Can you provide a recommendation on what this committee can do to ensure this isn't just another lost report?

[LGen Jennie Carignan]

Madam Chair, we will take on the recommendations. We will build mechanisms to measure what we are doing, as well, which was another weakness of the implementation of Op Honour. We will have mechanisms in place to measure the effects of what we are doing so that we can monitor progress.

This is, from my part, what I can tell you that we will be doing.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's all I have for today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

I want to thank our witnesses. I want to thank you for your testimony, for your service to the country and for helping to effect change on this very important topic.

We are going to suspend briefly while we do sound checks for the next panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'll call this meeting back to order.

We want to welcome our witnesses. From the Department of National Defence, we have Brigadier-General Simon Trudeau back again, Canadian Forces provost marshal and commander Canadian Forces military police group. We also have Major-General Guy Chapdelaine, the Canadian Armed Forces chaplain general.

Both of you will have five minutes for your opening remarks.

We will begin with Brigadier-General Trudeau.