Good day.
My name is Marie-Ève Doucet. I am 42 years old. I presently live in Chicoutimi, Quebec with my 10-year-old special needs son and my husband, who is still serving.
I accumulated over 20 years of service on the CF-18 Hornet as both an aviation and a non-destructive testing technician. I was medically released in 2021 from Bagotville, Quebec.
I would like to focus our discussion today on my service-related exposure to hazardous chemicals. I believe that the chemicals I was exposed to during my career not only caused my medical release and my poor health today but were also the cause of the ongoing problems with my son.
In 2018 I was diagnosed with a grade 2 pineocytoma, a tumour of the pineal gland. In 2020 that tumour spread from my brain to my spinal cord. I have already had extensive surgery and maximum radiation treatments. Due to the ongoing progression of my cancer, I recently started to begin chemotherapy treatments.
I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak. I don't know for how much longer I will be able to continue to advocate for myself on these important issues that I know also impacted other women in the military, especially from my trade.
You have probably never heard of my type of brain cancer before. It's a very rare and unusual condition, making up less than 1% of all brain cancers. What is known about it suggests that this type of cancer tends to be due to one of two things, either genetics or occupational and environmental exposures. Cancer of any kind does not run in my family. I therefore have no evidence of any predisposing genetics for this cancer or any other cancers.
This leaves us with the logical alternative that, after 20 years of significant exposure to multiple carcinogenic chemicals and ultrafine particles that are known to negatively affect the central nervous system, it was my workplace in the military that aggravated if not directly caused my present cancer, and also negatively affected my unborn son during my workplace pregnancy.
CAF does not presently keep a list of our workplace chemical exposure in our medical files. I think they should. Maybe then, when I filed a VAC claim for brain cancer on March 3, 2021, I wouldn't have received a refusal decision on March 24, a mere three weeks later, due to lack of proof of my medical condition being related to or to the case of chemical exposure of my workplaces.
For my appeal, I was informed that I had to provide them with information that was impossible for me to obtain; therefore, I couldn't move forward. Like so many other veterans before me and after me, I was caught in a Catch-22 situation. There was no way for me to win. I had to abandon my appeal.
Demanding that the impacted veteran provide researched proof for determining a cancer's original cause, as requested by VAC, is an unfair expectation or ask. I also believe that women are disproportionately burdened by this systemic unfairness, as the entire adjudication system was set up for men and to support men. Quite understandably, the foundational research for military-related chemical safety and harm has been done on men. There is still little to no government-sponsored research on how women may, if at all, present medically in different ways from men after having workplace chemical exposures.
Even though I was medically removed from continued work directly on aircraft while pregnant, I still had o continue working inside that same aircraft hangar with constant exposure to many known occupational hazards, including jet fuel fumes, ultra fine air particles and noise and vibration. Once again, I have absolutely no genetic predisposition to neurodevelopmental or any other disease in my family.
My child was the only one in my family born with issues. The pediatrician diagnosed him with autistic-like socialization, communication challenges and dyspraxia, a condition impacting his motor skills, coordination and overall development. Most of the cost of his ongoing therapy in the present has come from our own pockets.
I will always wonder if my son's issues are from the chemicals and ultra fine particle exposure I was ordered to sustain while working while pregnant.
Moving forward, I ask the committee to recommend that all reasonably sustained chemical exposures in military women causing even plausibly-related medical conditions be presumptively approved as service related.
I ask the committee to recommend this proactive approach until such time as government has a strategic military research plan in place, specifically for veteran women. Such a research plan would hopefully be able, once and for all, to prove the workplace safety of these military-specific roles and environments, versus expecting the impacted veterans to individually prove their harm.
I also request the committee to recommend that DND, CAF and VAC come together to investigate the possibility of military women's workplace hazard exposure causing direct harm to their offspring.
Thank you.