Chair, members of the committee, I'm honoured to be invited to appear before you today.
Talking to you tonight is a great privilege for me.
I am a veteran. I served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1986 to 1989. I was hoping to serve in the military for my whole career, but unfortunately I was one of the thousands of people who were caught up in the LGBT purge. I was fired in 1989 for being “not advantageously employable due to homosexuality”.
When I was fired, I took steps to change that policy. I sued the government over the policy in 1992, and it was my legal challenge that formally ended Canada's discriminatory codified policy of discrimination against LGBT people in that year. I've been an activist ever since.
I went on to have a successful career in the Department of Justice and retired in 2019. Since then, I've been the executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund. We're an organization that was set up as part of the class action lawsuit settlement that brought together more than 700 survivors of the LGBT purge. We've been in operation since 2019.
We're the lead organization that's mandated by a court order to build the LGBTQ2+ national monument, among other things. While we do many other things, one thing we don't do is provide direct support services to LGBTQ2 veterans, but we encounter them all the time. We act as an informal referral hub and network for these veterans, who just aren't sure where to go to get support. Some of our board members even volunteer their time to gently support these folks and help them access services and supports through Veterans Affairs Canada. It's a beautiful buddy system network, and more of this is welcome.
We're also very pleased to now have an Office of Women and LGBTQ2+ Veterans at VAC to work with. In this regard, we'd like to offer some suggestions to the committee for consideration.
We're hoping that Veterans Affairs continues and funds this office for the far future. It's very essential that this office be well resourced.
We urge the continuation of work to improve the level of consistency of service. Other panellists have also addressed this issue.
We also want to make sure that there's specialized awareness training for case managers because, as we can see, the trauma experienced particularly by LGBTQ2+ veterans is quite serious and unique, and people must be well trained to support and encourage our members.
Finally, we're hoping that Veterans Affairs Canada will develop communities of practice for both veterans and practitioners—mental health practitioners—so that the practice of supporting LGBTQ2 veterans has an even greater level of awareness and professionalization.
In preparing for tonight, I want to thank the Rainbow Veterans of Canada, VETS Canada and It's Not Just 20K for help in preparing these remarks.
Again, I'd like to thank you for this invitation. It's my honour to appear.