Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here to discuss Motion No. 58 before us today.
It is always a pleasure for me to rise in the House to speak to a motion when the objective is to support women. I am always so happy to see more women in the House and more women candidates, and it is just a pleasure when they get elected and join us here in the House.
The thing I struggle with regarding this piece of legislation is that it is coming from a government that says one thing, yet does another. We have seen this repeatedly, and in particular with the Liberals' GBA+ program. We have mostly heard here today about the testimony from the status of women committee. I am very fortunate to have been on that committee for a brief period. I did enjoy my time in that committee. However, the testimony that we have heard here today is very damning of the history of the current government and certainly of the representation of women and the rights of women within the Canadian Armed Forces.
Within the testimony we have heard regarding sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, various things have included the rollout of Operation Honour. Even with the rollout of Operation Honour, which former chief of the defence staff General Vance was responsible for, members of the military were actually heard saying it was “hop on her”: a play on words indicating the toxic culture that existed at the time. We are hearing in testimony that it still exists to this day.
Another terrible story is that after one witness appeared before the committee to share her experience, the following day, on a private military police Facebook page of predominantly men, there were comments such as “sounds like PMQs,” private married quarters, “on payday”. Another said “giggity”, in reference to a character on the adult show Family Guy who is a sex addict and a womanizer. This is the type of activity that was going on in the Canadian Armed Forces.
In fact, the man in charge of developing Operation Honour was regularly committing this offence. One witness referred to Operation Honour as “sour milk”, and the quote is as follows:
[Operation] Honour certainly got the conversation going and improved resources and education available to [Canadian Armed Forces] members, but the leadership has been wilfully ignorant—