Thank you, ma'am.
The first thing that comes to mind in terms what is to be done is that there have now been two reports, two external reviews, in the last six years on precisely the same issue. There's an immense amount of overlap in the recommendations between Deschamps and Arbour. I fear that there's the possibility that this will go nowhere. It's the matter of the implementation of these recommendations, the policy graveyard that we've been warned about.
Beyond that, I think a big issue that the military internally is unwilling to engage with is that this whole issue of systemic sexual violence is a result of the unfulfilled process of gender integration in the military.
Throughout the 1990s, 2000s, etc., so many military leaders claimed that we were a gender-integrated military. We've had women in our ranks in all trades since 2000-whatever, and it's been this check in the box, but we can really clearly see that this “add women and stir” thing that we've done in the military has had these awful consequences, such as systemic sexual violence.
I think that needs to be really deeply understood by military leadership, and I don't get the sense that it is. This isn't an issue of biology or even just simple culture; this is the process of the unfulfilled task of gender integration and organization.