Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

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

The collection of information is currently internalized. Do you think it should be external in these kinds of incidents so that there is more accountability and less connection to the CAF?

[Stephanie Hayward]

If it were a perfect world, there would be some kind of way for this for all women across Canada, women in the CAF included. Sexual assault is not just about the assault; it's about the collection afterward. It's about the physical body afterward. It's the fact that victims deserve the right to a criminal court case, if they can do it.

I found out through my studies and working with the national ombudsman that only 20% of Canadian hospitals offer rape kits. Every single hospital that's around basic training or any kind of military base is hundreds of kilometres away. That's where you have to go to even receive it. From contacting the surgeon general, I know they have no interest in applying a rape kit protocol. It costs $1.25 to provide these tests.

The sad part is with regard to the collection of data. I think it should be similar to victim services in Canada, where they have a different person who records the information. At least there's a middle person. For me, when I was trying to report this, I wasn't even allowed to go to the RCMP. I wasn't allowed to go civil. I was basically contained into an area and I couldn't speak to anybody. I couldn't even go get sanitary pads by myself, even though I couldn't walk. I couldn't go anywhere. At the end of the day, if I'd had somebody to talk to that wasn't them....

I did whatever I could to survive at that point. I was just fearing for my life. If I'd had somebody else who would listen to me, I could have explained what happened. To them, they labelled me with all these military legal terms, but they never let me speak to anybody. When I got back home, the RCMP said they couldn't do anything because there was no information. They had contained the information.

I believe this is how rapists get away with what they do. They get to hide the information. If there was at least a way that we could trace it, maybe somebody who was doing this could be found. I know I'm not the only victim.

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

You talked about the fact that you went through extreme poverty and periods of homelessness after being discharged. Did you get any sort of support from VAC to figure out what benefits you could benefit from to prevent you from being unhoused?

[Stephanie Hayward]

Three times prior to 2020 I tried to apply for Veterans Affairs benefits. The first one was in 2010, when I was escorted out of the building by security. The second one was later in 2010, when I was suicidal. They denied it. When I became pregnant with my daughter, I ended up in Villa Rosa, a pregnancy shelter for women. I couldn't work because of the excruciating pain I was in. I reached out to them. It's part of protocol with the shelter that they reach out to any person you can potentially have funding from, because I had no income. They denied me at that point. Even working to get it addressed, I was denied. Veterans Affairs wouldn't even talk to me until 2020. They wouldn't even accept any information from me until 2020.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much.

We have 15 minutes left. We will have a last round of questions.

I would like to invite Mr. Terry Dowdall to go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our guests today for their service and also for their testimony. Hopefully it helps other individuals who either are currently serving or plan on going through at some point in time.

I happened to see a report that come out today. It's a shocking, disturbing report from Stats Canada that says there is a significant increase in sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. It just came out. Actually, I just saw it while we were here. The numbers are extremely disappointing.

Originally they did a study, way back when, on sexual misconduct in the military, which I was part of at that time. I believe it was early 2020. These are the numbers we're seeing here, as an example. In 2016, 1.7% of the people reported sexual assault in the military workplace. In 2018, it was 1.6%. In 2022, we're seeing 3.5% of individuals.

It's not getting better. We did a report, but I don't know if that was actually acted upon. It is extremely unfortunate to see those kinds of numbers come through.

In your testimony especially, Ms. Wong, you were saying that those who committed these awful crimes in the military either were demoted or moved on, while you're a barely tolerated guest at times. Those kinds of comments are extremely disappointing.

What can we do as an organization? Do we need more females in the higher ranks?

Seeing some of this.... As you said, when you're a bystander, you feel bad at that particular moment in time. I'm sure there is a lot of that.

What do we need to do? These numbers are absolutely shocking. We're not going to get people wanting to join the military. Certainly we don't want them to have the experiences that the two of you have had.

I'd just like your comments on what we can do to improve on that.

[Caleigh Wong]

Thank you for your question.

I don't know that it's going to be a simple solution by any means. I don't think that adding more women to senior positions.... I'm sure it's a good start, but it's kind of like that analogy of a different captain at the same ship. It's just a numeric representation rather than something more substantial.

One thing that I think does need to be targeted early on is the training system and the way we articulate to soldiers that they are good people just by virtue of being in the military. Almost any grievance that happens outside of that is still lessened because of the fact that they're a good man in the military. I think that is why sexual violence is sometimes so reduced. It's an organization with more important things on its mind, to be frank—national security and Canadian sovereignty, etc.

We train soldiers to believe that we're preparing them to potentially die for their country, so anything outside of that is almost secondary. That's what you're being trained to do.

I think a reconfiguration of what we say we want in a good soldier is a start. That's not just outside the merits of courage and bravery and all of this, but it's being a good, ethical and just person in the civilian realm as well as the soldier realm.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you.

I have another question for Ms. Hayward.

In your testimony you were talking about frustrations with VAC. We hear quite often that there are silos when you leave National Defence and Veterans Affairs and there are frustrations there.

Do you have some recommendations or something that we can improve upon for how we deal with those situations so that there's a quicker response and also, quite frankly, so that the forms might be a little simpler so hopefully we'd be able to get some information back? I know we've been pushing that as a party for a long time.

[Stephanie Hayward]

I do believe that it has changed a lot, because in the past they wouldn't even let me apply. I do believe they have taken some steps forward.

The best recommendation I have is, why doesn't Veterans Affairs trust the doctors that are in the communities? I submitted doctors' reports on different medical conditions. I reported all the information I could, but they wouldn't accept it because it wasn't under their list of doctors or on their list of recommendations.

We trust providers, but for some reason veteran case managers are allowed to make medical decisions for our veterans. I just don't know how that's legal.

At the same time, I know they're trying to do their jobs, and my case manager is lovely, but at the same time, when a doctor is explaining something and trying to get medical forms, why don't they trust the provider? They went to medical school, so why aren't they worthy of giving an explanation of what kind of treatments are available?

I wasn't even aware that my file was stored somewhere else until the pensions advocate found it for me. At the end of the day, I think that if somebody was to go look at these files and see what kind of information is there, I think we'd see that there is a lot more information there than we even know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Dowdall.

Now I invite MP Carolyn Bennett for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you both for your testimony. Your really upsetting stories, we've heard too often.

To start, I was wondering, Ms. Hayward, in the last paragraph, where you said to thank the sexual resource centre at DND, is that the sexual and misconduct resource centre that was set up after Deschamps?

[Stephanie Hayward]

Yes, it's the same one.

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

I was part of Women's College Hospital, where we set up the first sexual assault care centres 30 years ago with rape kits for everybody. Eventually we put in freezers, because women didn't necessarily want to report it right away, but if the evidence went in the freezer, then they could report it when they felt they had sufficient psychological support to be able to do that.

I think there are systems out there that don't seem to have infiltrated DND or Veterans Affairs. What we keep hearing is that DND doesn't seem to have a system for women's health and doesn't seem to link sexual trauma with a poor pregnancy labour outcome or with postpartum or perinatal mental health issues. It doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. What we're also hearing is that, as Rachel said, the data isn't there even while people are serving, so VAC doesn't seem to know that this should be compensable. We're hearing a lot that there should be a presumptive approach in terms of compensation.

First, we're really grateful for the recommendations you've put forward there. Certainly, Ms. Wong, we've heard that that story about the instructor just being moved somewhere else. Whether it's priests, doctors or whatever, everybody just gets moved. There are no real consequences and there's no geographic cure for this.

There need to be consequences, because it adds to the trauma when it appears that this person got away with it. I guess I am asking what more we can do in terms of a systems approach.

For Ms. Hayward, I was very impressed with the idea that there should be some approach to children in terms of intergenerational trauma from what their parents, male and female, went through, but how do we look after those children who've been exposed to intergenerational trauma?

Say whatever you want and then send us whatever.

[Caleigh Wong]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Ms. Hayward, go ahead.

[Stephanie Hayward]

This might be.... I don't know if you're going to take this the wrong way, but I respect it in the way....

I think that for the first bit of basic training, they should separate genders for the first few weeks, just to get to grips with understanding the concept and how the process works. At the same time, until they can set up these systems to protect the [Inaudible—Editor] people from getting injuries.... I know it's not a modernized approach, but a lot of other countries don't train men and women together at the same time.

At the same time, that doesn't mean there are other.... There are same-gender assaults. I believe it has to start at the very foundation of how these people are getting trained and how they're coming in. If they don't change at the bottom level and if they don't change the top views, it's not going to meet somewhere in the middle.

As Ms. Wong said, I don't think that when they mixed females into the ranks, they properly integrated them. I think they just did it to meet a standard of government policies about women and diversity. However, they didn't understand the complex situation of putting 99% males and 1% females into the same pool of people.

I know that when I went to basic training, the concept was that you're either 99% men or 1% women. Three-quarters of those girls are lesbians or bisexual. If you're young and unmarried, you're basically an open target. It's just one of those things. It's a culture belief. We, as women, can't go against that 99% of men. We can't do it. I know women are strong, but if they don't implement this in the highest ranks and then go down, it's never going to be adapted in the way it should be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much.

We're going to have two quick interventions.

Mr. Desilets, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Wong, have you heard of summary trials?

[Caleigh Wong]

I'm sorry. It just went quiet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Could you repeat the question?

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

Ms. Wong, have you heard of summary trials?

[Caleigh Wong]

Have I been to a summary charge...?

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

No, I am not asking if you have attended.

In the army, I believe there is a process whereby members are judged by their peers. Those are referred to as summary trials.

[Caleigh Wong]

What I heard is whether there's a process in the military of a summary charge, and whether I have ever attended one. Is that the question?

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

I would like to move on to something else.

In your opinion, would it be feasible or preferable to have groups made up exclusively of women, cases with just women?