National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I see that you have done your homework. It is true that I founded Women in International Security Canada, or WIIS-Canada, 10 years ago. The organization is dedicated to diversity and to increasing women's representation and participation in the world

National Defence committee  I think we can recognize the opacity of the current culture. I want us to switch the framing from operational effectiveness to organizational effectiveness. Operation Honour framed misconduct as a problem that undermines operational effectiveness; and I think moving forward, it w

National Defence committee  Hello, everyone. I am a professor of political studies and Canada research chair on gender, security and the armed forces at Queen's University. I'd like to start with a question: Can a large organization like the Canadian Armed Forces transform its culture in five years, guide

National Defence committee  Actually, in terms of deterrence, the other flank that needs to be looked at is the southern flank. In this respect, NATO has just enacted a series of initiatives and measures to project stability and to make sure that NATO is protected and deters threats beyond its own borders.

National Defence committee  It's the CDS and the top brass. It's also our military educators. I think we can expect some generational change, but the generational change and the deeper cultural change won't happen if it doesn't happen right at the schoolhouse and at the basic training institutions as well.

National Defence committee  One thing I'm still a little bothered by in this whole wave of changes is the disconnect between the internal dimension, the sexual misconduct issue, and the external dimension of integrating a gender perspective in operations, because to me, they're connected. I think you need t

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. It's very important. I was quite disturbed and concerned with the reversal of the policy in the United States when it came to LGBTQ service members. I'm happy that right now the issue is being reconsidered in the face of the lack of evidence to suppo

National Defence committee  There are a lot of questions wrapped up into that one. I will try to tackle them all. I do have the numbers for NATO as a whole. NATO has 440 trained gender advisers. I should say they have not been necessarily trained by NATO. This is a national responsibility. Then there are 3

National Defence committee  That's an excellent question, and I think both of your proposed answers are correct. I know that NATO allies look to Canada for leadership on this. I used to think that this expectation was not necessarily deserved, earlier on, but since the reforms that have been undertaken in r

National Defence committee  Some of the deeply held gender biases that we have and we harbour can lead to faulty operational planning sometimes, or incomplete policies. I think we only need to look at missions of the past to see that those are lessons we tended to learn the hard way. Bringing this forward

National Defence committee  Thank you for your question. With regard to deterrence, there has been a fairly interesting evolution since the end of the Cold War. After it ended, we saw NATO try to focus on other pillars, such as crisis management and security cooperation. The deterrence and collective defen

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question, because this is a message that I want to highlight. We don't necessarily have to emulate what the Nordic countries have done. I think it's okay to have a Canadian approach to how to do this gender mainstreaming strategy. I think the gender-based anal

National Defence committee  What I'm going to say is going to sound like we're going to compete with the Nordic countries a bit in this case, and that's true. Right now, for training our own gender advisers, we send them on a course in Sweden. Sweden is a partner with NATO, not an ally, but it has a bit of

National Defence committee  It starts at the very beginning. We have to look at the cadets, for instance. There is a curriculum review that's under way right now. I believe it's led by military personnel generation. The idea is to look at the entire curriculum and to see it in terms of the education piece a

National Defence committee  Yes, and I think he has said that, and now the gap is to make sure that gender adviser capacity is bolstered. Right now you have some gender advisers in some missions. You have some gender advisers in CJOC and CANSOFCOM and strategic joint staff, but you need a whole lot more if