Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 9th, 2023

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

Thank you for that.

I really appreciated your recommendation that all the chemicals you are exposed to should be listed in your medical file, so there can be follow up on the impacts of those chemicals on your body. I'm definitely going to push for that recommendation.

One thing that I've heard from other testimony is that there's no research done on service and pregnancy for women or women who want to become pregnant.

I'm wondering if you feel that this needs to be a higher priority moving forward, so that there can documentation at the CAF that can be transferred over to VAC so that services meet the needs of women.

[Marie-Ève Doucet]

Yes, I do believe this is critical.

Women in the military will keep on getting pregnant. It's just the way of life. If it affects our kids....

I would be curious to see, if we compare the military population with the civilian population, how many would kids have neurodevelopmental issues. I feel like the numbers are completely out of whack. I know so many military people who do have kids with ADHD and all kinds of neurological developmental issues, like my kid does. I don't see that in all my civvy friends. Every once in a while you'll see one.

I think there should be research done to compare how much of an impact it has on us.

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

Yes, I really agree with that.

I will turn to Ms. Smith. I only have a moment.

You talked about the importance of having continuity of care. Could you expand on what that means for you and what that might look like?

[Jennifer Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

Continuity of care really is important so that there aren't gaps in care and so the veteran feels supported as they move through their life.

Whether they're having to relocate because of financial reasons or personal reasons.... When I moved from Ottawa to Winnipeg, I was given a three-month supply of medications and a finger crossing in the hope I'd get a case manager before that runs out. That was even after giving Winnipeg VAC a heads-up. Six months ahead of my move, I let VAC know that I was coming and to please set up my files, etc.

Really, continuity means you are caring for the veteran and you care what happens when they leave one office and arrive in another one. That's important. If you're talking about building trust and rapport, I think continuity of care is at the base of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Ms. Blaney.

I'd like to welcome MP Sidhu by video conference. She will replace MP Bryan May.

I propose we suspend for five minutes, so we can have a coffee and then come back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

We will now resume the meeting.

Let's begin the second round of questions right away.

Ms. Cathay Wagantall, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you so much, Chair.

I do need to go back to Dr. Nevin, but first, Ms. Smith, I'm going to bring something up that I hope is okay with you, from what I heard in your testimony. If you're not comfortable answering it, I understand.

You talked about your experiences, and you alluded to the fact that the intention was to force women out of the military, through the threats to your life and the abuse you experienced. That seems to be an elephant in this room on the basis of the whole military sexual trauma issue, because DND didn't see it as due to service.

Am I...?

[Jennifer Smith]

I don't know what DND was thinking.

There was the tribunal. The human rights commission tribunal had determined...just months before I was aggressively recruited into the trade that I went into, although I wanted navy.

The tribunal said that, yes, it was open to all women—all trades, combat trades. I chose the navy, and I chose to be in a combat naval trade. As I mentioned in my testimony, I was the only woman, the only female in that group to go through the training. My ship was the first mixed-gender warship to be deployed on—I'm blanking on that acronym—NATO exercises.

You really have to understand that the navy in particular is highly.... Particularly at that time, there was no way they were.... They accepted women going to sea on supply ships in supportive roles, but definitely not as a combat sailor.

There are a lot of superstitions, hundreds of years of superstitions that come into the navy, and being out at sea, you're in international waters. In fact, we know that recently, sadly, someone did fall off a ship, and no one knew until it was too late. It does happen, but yes, 100 per cent, being a women was....

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

Thank you.

I really appreciate that.

[Jennifer Smith]

I hope that answered your question.

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

The goal here is to change this culture, and we have to be direct about what it is that we actually have to change, so you're very brave. Thank you so much.

Dr. Nevin, just briefly, I have to leave here shortly. That's the life of.... You plan your steps, and then somebody changes them for you.

Your focus is on women serving in the military and the need for proper care for them, specifically in regard to anti-malaria drugs.

Can you broaden out your opening statement a little bit on what you see as the concerns and the needs within our military? I know that the U.S. is somewhat ahead of us on these things.

[Dr. Remington Nevin]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for the question.

As I mentioned in my opening brief, the deployment of large numbers of women of reproductive age provides an opportunity—but, really, it forces the issue. It forces, or should force, militaries to reconsider, if they haven't already, their previous one-size-fits-all policies, including for the mandatory command-directed administration of anti-malarial drugs.

Just for some context, in Somalia, the use of mefloquine was ordered, and there were, for example, formations where every service member would be observed to take the drug on a weekly basis. Of course, that sort of policy of mandatory command-directed administration of a drug that may have reproductive toxicity to female service members with undiagnosed pregnancy is simply not acceptable.

The fact that we have large numbers of women now who are deploying to areas where we use anti-malarials, I think forces—or should force—militaries to reconsider these former strategies for malaria prevention.

It may be that anti-malarials aren't required at all in certain deployments. It may be that alternative malaria prevention measures might be appropriate.

The most important thing among all these possibilities is that these be customized to the individual service member—that malaria prevention be considered a medical treatment, just like any other medical treatment, and not a command-directed measure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much.

I'd now like to invite the Honourable Carolyn Bennett to go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your testimony. Thank you to the veterans particularly. This has been really important to us. I think we want to make sure that when you leave here, there's nothing you wish you'd said that you could have said. As you leave, if there are things you want to follow up on, we would love to hear from you.

In terms of prevention, it seems that even as you were deployed, you didn't have information as to what was expected, that it should be zero tolerance—or to whom you would go if there were any incident. The same thing then happened to you as a veteran. You didn't actually know what the structure was in terms of making things safe for all of you.

I guess my hope is that as we come up with the recommendations, you can help us with what would have been helpful when you were first deployed. I think we are worried about, as you say, whether it's in international waters or it's in other countries, where the enforcement takes place. As we've heard from RCMP, sometimes the person who's the most in charge is the perpetrator. How do you know where to report? In other countries, certainly what we're seeing is that there might be a peer support person as well as the case manager, or a buddy or somebody trained to be able to partner, even with new recruits or with people newly leaving the forces and with proper training and all of that.

Do you think it would have been helpful if you'd been given a peer support person who could walk you through this, particularly at the time when you were moving and didn't have a case manager? It seems that there could still be people who have been through it themselves who could give you advice. I'm just wondering what you think of that idea.

I'm appalled that the meds stop when you change province. As a physician, I just can't believe that this can happen. I think what we've heard here is the idea of presumption is something that gives some dignity to the veteran, that of course the meds should continue, that of course things should continue until there's a different assessment. But the assessment shouldn't require you to have to tell your story again and again and again. You want people to read it.

In terms of round tables, I think we've heard from other people about the minister having an advisory committee of women vets. We would also love to hear about that. You seem to have a case history of everything that went wrong in the system. Someone like you, who really has told the story of a system that's failed you, would be very helpful, I think, in terms of any minister pushing to do better.

[Jennifer Smith]

I'm not quite sure what the question was, other than—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Could a peer support person have helped?

[Jennifer Smith]

I've been asking for a personal support worker—which is essentially that—with my caregivers from the day I became a VAC client and was assessed, and all of that. So we've been asking since 2018. It's not been provided. VAC will not. They say they don't do that. They say maybe the community has some people—which is out of pocket for the veteran—or maybe the regional health authority does.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

But you also didn't get help with housing.

[Jennifer Smith]

Correct.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Because people are supposed to have a wife, you actually didn't have any extra support as a single woman.

[Jennifer Smith]

No. That's right.

Actually, I have spoken to several people at VAC in administrative positions, and they have told me that the presumption is that the veteran has informal supports baked in. Any funding such as VIP services or whatnot is really just to be an addendum to to that. It's not actually to pay for the services that the veteran needs. It's just like, “Well, if you need a little top-up on what your spouse brings in,” or, “If your kids can shovel the walk this winter, then we can kind of give you a little bit more to top that up.”

If you do not have those informal supports, as I have said to Veterans Affairs over and over again, so succinctly, telling them that I am 100% reliant on external paid services, that still results in my not getting the services.

I am just marking time until I die, basically. I mean, it sounds dramatic, but it's true. That's the truth of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you.

Now, we're going to have two short interventions, for two and a half minutes each.

Mr. Desilets, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Doucet, during your pregnancy, did you get any kind of support from the Canadian Armed Forces?

[Marie-Ève Doucet]

I was treated by a military doctor, but that's it.

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

Did you get any special support during childbirth?