Status of Women committee  Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear alongside my colleagues today, and thank you for your interest in this important topic. It has been more than 30 years since I began my military life as a cadet at the Royal Military College in Saint-Jean

Status of Women committee  I'll just add from an operations perspective because I'll kind of focus my interactions today on the operations side. We have gender-based analysis plus, but we also have a gender-based analysis planning aspect that our soldiers, airmen and sailors take before they deploy so tha

Status of Women committee  The gender advisers are now in all of our major organizations: air force, navy and military personnel. Inside the institution, we have gender advisers who report to the commander directly on gender issues, and gender is more than male and female; it's GBA+, the full spectrum of a

Status of Women committee  I'm married and I have two lovely children, so I'll answer that one from my personal point of view. The Morale and Welfare Services and the military family resource centre are there to provide support. Family is the strength behind the uniform. We understand the requirements of w

Status of Women committee  Diversity is a strength. Women and men think differently. They bring different perspectives. The more diverse your workforce, the better the solutions will be. In the same way, women peacekeepers can connect with the communities more easily—especially to the women in that communi

Status of Women committee  I don't have direct deployment experience, but we understand the importance of women on the ground to be there and to be able to communicate. People who have been victims of sexual assault will feel more comfortable approaching women soldiers. That is a known fact. Having women t

Status of Women committee  This is outside my experience in my portfolio, and so I will not make any comments on that recommendation.

Status of Women committee  No, thank you.

Status of Women committee  I think it's called leadership and every commanding officer, every leader in the armed forces, is clear that is their responsibility. General Vance made Op Honour an operation for that reason. He truly believes this is a duty for the command team and every member to support. So i

Status of Women committee  I think too, when you look at it, it's to educate. Educate about the values and what we expect. Monitor throughout. Take action when required because some people will make mistakes. You need to put them back on the right path. You also need to have leaders in position as examples

Status of Women committee  I agree with Virginia. It's sad. I think we can't look back, we need to look forward and educate, and make sure it doesn't happen again. Again, just because I've never lived it, it doesn't mean it hasn't happened, so I can't comment. However, we need to accept that we are not pe

Status of Women committee  If people do not respect our values, we will force them to leave because they don't belong in the CAF.

National Defence committee  Madam Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear alongside Ms. Jacqueline O'Neill, Canadian ambassador for women, peace and security. Thank you for your interest in UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda. Over 33 years have passed since I began my career as an offi

National Defence committee  As you mentioned, 50% of the women in the military right now are in six occupations, very support-intense, and also in medical occupations, as you pointed out. I don't have the actual numbers, but I have the percentages. When we're looking at deployed on operation, normally on

National Defence committee  I would reflect what Ms. O'Neill just said. There's a lot of attention on Operation Honour. We are working extremely hard at trying to have a solid policy, changing the culture in the CAF, supporting the victims. There's a lot of progress that has been made. What we're saying,