Madam Speaker, my questions tonight address the failure to get an adequate response from the Minister of National Defence earlier on what steps and actions are going forward to respond to the allegations of sexual misconduct and how to root this out in the Canadian Forces.
I would like to remind everybody that when I asked the minister back in March for his opinion as to who was responsible and accountable for the failure of the allegations against the CDS being investigated, he replied, yes, he was absolutely responsible. I take the minister at his word. However, when I asked him in the House, which is why I am here tonight, what lessons the minister has personally learned from his failure to investigate and what actions he has taken to ensure the same mistakes do not happen again, unfortunately, I got a non-response.
I am sure many of my colleagues in the House know that I spent 25 years serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. So many of my former colleagues have reached out to me, especially female colleagues, who are disappointed, to say the least, in the lack of accountability and action being taken by the government to address these serious allegations and figure out the best way to ensure they never happen again.
I am going to paraphrase some of the comments that I made publicly in a national newspaper. Our country and all Canadians need an effective and well-led military to face the ever-evolving and complex global conflicts. We cannot be strong at home when leaders fail the women and men under their command, nor can we be engaged in the world without leveraging every competent, willing and capable Canadian who enrolls in the military. When we have phenomenal leaders such as Lieutenant-Colonel Eleanor Taylor retiring in disgust, not much more needs to be said. This needs to be fixed now and into the future. The Canadian Armed Forces needs more Lieutenant-Colonel Eleanor Taylors, not fewer.
I know the minister himself spent years serving Canada, both as a police officer and in uniform, and I respect him for that, but what I do not respect or am disappointed in is his lack of taking action and coming up with a plan. When a similar question was asked in question period today about what actions are being taken, the response was that the government is giving another $236 million to combat sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, with the assumption that this is somehow taking real action. I do not accept that. Money is not going to solve the problem. This is not a money solution to stop and root out what is going on when Canadian Forces members are losing trust in the senior leadership, especially the women and men dealing with sexual misconduct and harassment. They need to have faith that when an allegation is brought forward, concrete action is being taken.
In closing, what I really want to know is what specific plans and actions the government is taking, specifically the minister. What are those lessons? I am not talking about the lessons that he has identified. Something we learn in the Canadian Armed Forces is that there is no use identifying the problem. What are the actual lessons we have learned so that we can ensure this never happens again? What has the minister personally learned?