Thank you. I wasn't expecting that.
Part of the network we are involved with includes the Women, Peace and Security Network. I hope that lens is part of this future study as well.
With the Women, Peace and Security Network, we have had access to things like the Elsie initiative through GAC, Global Affairs Canada. With lived experience as an ex-peacekeeper myself, we were able to work with the staff there, who had an opportunity to review the documents prior to a big meeting about what equipment is mandatory on all the UN missions.
Obviously, with my lens, one of the things that came up was that things like specula were available as standard on the UN mission only at the hospital level, the high level. We were able to make a number of these kinds of easy, sex-specific recommendations that these needed to be available at a lower level. Therefore, you don't have to send a woman outside of the mission to spend a day travelling—and often in UN missions they are at great risk when they are travelling—to access a speculum. Those recommendations, for the most part, I understand from GAC, were accepted at the UN level.
It's really heartening to be able to have a voice, as a veteran, and to find ways to be able to work together with government on things that we have lived experience with. I would love, at some point, to have an equivalent to the Women, Peace and Security Network and its relationship with GAC. Imagine what a group of women veterans like that could do to help CAF and VAC with the various issues we are still facing. We want to be part of the solution, but we need a way to speak.