Veterans Affairs Committee on June 1st, 2023

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

So we understand that there's still a lot of work to be done to adapt equipment to women.

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Yes. We're continuing to work on this, knowing that it's a challenge and that it needs to be addressed head on.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

What percentage of women can now have equipment tailored to their physical needs?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

It would be difficult to know.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Would it be 10%, 15% or 50%?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

I can't really say. Again, it depends on the profession. The needs are different between a pilot, a driver or a firefighter.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Okay.

In your current role, what more do you hope to put in place for women? What do you have left to do? Let's say you have a year of work left.

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

I think we need to understand women's needs, which are different from men's, and look at the gap analysis. Personally, I think that Canada is still a traditional country when it comes to gender roles. Women are often responsible for doing household chores, raising children and so on. Women's demands are real. How do you respond to that?

If I had a magic wand, for me, with my experience, I would choose child care for all military children. It should be accessible as and when needed. We know that about 45% of military families have trouble finding child care services for their children. It's a huge challenge.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I don't have much time left. I think child care is a very interesting issue. Are there any other priority issues you'd like to pursue while you're in your position?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

I think the women's health file has just been launched. It will be very interesting to see what we do about that.

We're also continuing to work on the equipment issue, so that we can be at our best to do the work we need to do. If you don't have the right equipment, you can't be at the top of your game, and you're going to get hurt.

For me, it's about child care, health care and equipment. Those would be my three priorities.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Bourgon.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you, Mr. Desilets.

For the fourth round of questions in the first round of our questions this evening, we have Ms. Rachel Blaney from the New Democratic Party.

You have six minutes. The floor is yours.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank you all for being here today. I really appreciate your testimony, and I found some of the things you were talking about earlier today rather inspiring. Thank you for your service and thank you for giving us a little bit of hope within the challenging study we've been sitting through.

I'm going to come to you first, Lieutenant-General Bourgon.

One of the things we have heard again and again from women from their history of service is that they often felt invisible. Now, in their experience in VAC, they're feeling similarly that issue, where they're trying to prove again and again that the things that happened to them while in the services had an impact. Because it wasn't being measured very well before, it's really hard to prove it on the other side. I hear them really clearly and hear that concern and that there's something we have to do.

The other thing I found really interesting about their testimony, though, is that they've talked about the opportunity for women if they're provided the proper equipment and the acknowledgement of who they are when they serve. It's this interesting opportunity that comes from some severe struggle, and I really appreciate so many women veterans coming forward and sharing that experience.

I am wondering if you can talk a little bit about the role that you are playing and what you have seen in the last few years, so that women veterans who have served our country could hear this from you today. They may not be aware of those changes that are happening and what that looks like.

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I hear your comments, and I hear the comments of the women veterans because I've lived it. That's the reason I'm so enthusiastic about that inclusion.

The CAF of today is not the CAF I joined in 1987. We've made a lot of progress. There's still a lot of progress to be made, but now we're aware of that progress. We have, again, the gender-based analysis that is mandatory on everything we do, from policy to equipment to infrastructure. There is a fail-safe that we need to address every time we want to do something.

We have GENADs, or gender advisers, in all of our commands, who are there to advise. The chief professional conduct and culture is there too, to provide that expertise.

I don't think, honestly, that women are invisible anymore in the Canadian military. We are part of the CAF, the same as the different employment equity groups. We are taking our place, and we are being supported.

Is it perfect? No. Do we have improvements to make? Absolutely, but our voice is being heard. We have the defence advisory organizations. When we look at indigenous peoples, visible minorities, LGBTQ and women, we meet regularly at the tactical level. On each of the bases there's a level across Canada where we hear them and we hear about the gaps, what they want us to change and, as much as we can, given resources, priorities, sequencing and everything, we try to deliver on what they need.

I think we're here to hear and to change. That's the big difference that I would note from 35 years ago when I joined.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that.

My next question—and I've heard this as well and I'm trying to wrap my head around it—is that, as things change in the CAF and as there's more clarity about the impacts and what needs to change so those impacts are less disabling to women, how is that information shared with VAC?

What I'm hearing again and again is that veteran women are coming forward and they're talking about the challenges they have. They're talking about how they think, based on their medical records, the impact was from their service. I hear clearly that you're working collectively to say, yes, those things do have impact, and how do we lessen the impact by changing what we're doing? How is that getting to VAC so that when they do the assessment they actually know how to support those women veterans most effectively?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Thank you very much.

I'll give the floor to General Bilodeau to talk a bit about the medical side. One thing we've just initiated is a better understanding and joint research between VAC and CAF to understand the needs of women from the medical side, but also from the physical, the psychological and the wellness side, so that working together we can make progress.

I'll give you the floor, Marc, and maybe Dan might have something about the transition services that are focusing on women.

[MGen Marc Bilodeau]

There's a steering committee between Veterans Affairs and us that is basically trying to align our services so that we reduce the gap between the two departments when a member transitions, because we serve the same community, just at different times in their careers, as you would imagine. There are subcommittees to that steering committee, and one of them is about health care. How do we align the health care services we provide to our service members, and how do we make sure the same level of service is available to our veterans after release?

Obviously, a component of that belongs to the provinces because our members, then, once they leave, become citizens and health services are covered by the provinces and VAC is supplementing that care with whatever we provide that is missing there.

Our goal is to align as much as possible to minimize the gap. We know there was a significant gap several years ago, and slowly we're trying to better align our programs so this gap is as small as possible, or non-existent. The goal would be to make it non-existent.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

That's the end of our first round.

We'll move to our second round of questioning now. We have a bit of a different order here. We'll have five minutes for each of the Conservative and Liberal parties, and two and a half minutes for the Bloc Québécois and the NDP. We'll then finish the round with another five minutes for both the Conservative and Liberal parties.

We'll now move to Mrs. Cathay Wagantall for five minutes.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here this evening. I very much appreciate it. Thank you for your service as well.

I have some concerns around the issue of sexual misconduct. It's disproportionately affecting women in the Canadian Armed Forces. Instances are on the rise in the Canadian Armed Forces. In the 2018 fiscal year, there were 256 cases reported, and that number has risen every single year. There were, in this last fiscal year, 444 cases reported.

In your most recent departmental plan, there isn't a determined goal to reduce cases. It just says, in that column, “Target to be determined”. Could you expand on that a bit and explain what that means? That seems very undetermined.

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Thank you very much.

I can't really answer the question, because it's more of a “chief professional culture and conduct” area.

However, I want to point out that an increase in sexual misconduct is different from what is being reported. Saying there is an increase is wrong. People are reporting, which is a good thing. Am I right? It's a good thing. Does that mean there's more sexual misconduct? No, I can't say that. The people are coming forward and reporting. For me, it's a clear sign we are doing something right if people have the confidence to come forward and report so we can take action.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

I appreciate your clarifying that, because I think that is very important: the freedom to feel you can come forward and not suffer any consequences for doing that. That is powerful. Thank you very much.

I have to ask this question. It is always on my mind.

We're dealing with things somewhat, now that there's this realization and movement. However, how were women brought into the military? It was in the 1980s, some time ago. It seems there was no forethought about the fact that there would need to be significant adjustments made for their service, especially, I'm thinking, within combat roles and whatnot.

Are you aware of the past, in that time frame, and what was predetermined to make that entry less painful?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Thank you very much for the question.

There's a long story of how women came to be accepted in the CAF. From my research, it was not always welcome. The military had to be told to take women into its ranks and all military occupations. I will be honest. There was resistance. Therefore, assimilation was more important than inclusion.

That's where we're seeing the difference now. It's not about assimilation. I don't have to change who I am in order to belong. I can belong as who I am: a woman, a mother, etc. That is the switch we did, I would say, in 2010: Inclusion is the key, not assimilation.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

When you began the system of identifying the four barriers you mentioned.... When was that actually implemented? When did you say, “Okay, here are the things we've determined and we're going to move forward in this way”? Was there a...?

[LGen Lise Bourgon]

Barriers...?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

You talked about your identifying barriers, the four things you look for, injury or illness, physical requirements.... You named them off quite quickly at the beginning.