Status of Women committee  That's exactly what SMRC does, either by referring people to the appropriate support services or through our own response and support coordination service, where members are assigned a single point of contact at SMRC and we support them throughout their journey. Members define wh

Status of Women committee  If resources were not a question, again I would take as my starting point a comprehensive set of supports and services for members that best meets their needs. That needs to start with hearing from survivors themselves about what it is they want. If that turns out to be SMRC or s

Status of Women committee  There is a range of things that need to happen, but one of the important things to think about is the approach that is taken to address some of the gaps and issues. What I've seen and certainly what I've experienced in the last number of years that I've worked on this file is tha

Status of Women committee  At present there is not a huge amount of data. There is some information that was in both of the StatsCan reports. However, the need for further information on the experiences of these intersectional groups has been raised with the CAF's research department, which is currently ei

Status of Women committee  We are not automatically notified when a victim makes a complaint. Victims need to reach out to us, to call us. It's therefore very important that we engage in ongoing outreach to raise awareness and to make sure that the people who the victims might actually interact with at the

Status of Women committee  We tend to send teams out. We have a sort of three-year outreach plan whereby we travel to all of the bases and wings across the country in that time frame. We send out a team. That team comprises some of our counsellors, and there is always a member of the management team. As we

Status of Women committee  Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Absolutely, all of the members of my counselling team are fully bilingual. Therefore, for members across the country, and across the world, in fact, because we offer 24-7 services, there are always fully bilingual people who will respond to the calls

Status of Women committee  Regardless of what sort of mechanism is set up, whether it's for support or for reporting and investigation, I think what is of fundamental importance is that it's in the best interests of survivors. That's what we need to take as our starting point in designing—or perhaps redesi

Status of Women committee  It's an important question, but I want to preface it by saying that sometimes people react when we talk about perpetrators because they think that in talking about perpetrators we're negating the impact of culture. That is absolutely not the case. This is a very complex problem t

Status of Women committee  The duty to report has been a significant issue for us at the SMRC, for a variety of expert stakeholders who have provided advice over the years and for survivors themselves. Effectively, the duty to report disempowers victims and survivors because it removes all agency from them

Status of Women committee  Certainly. I can start. All of the services we provide at the SMRC are confidential. We are the one safe space that CAF members have to call to talk about what's happened to them, knowing that we are receiving that information and keeping it in confidence until such time as they

Status of Women committee  The first thing I should note is that the sexual misconduct response centre is not a reporting centre. We do have a military police liaison officer who is a member of the national investigation service who works with us. We are able to facilitate reporting with the consent of an

Status of Women committee  At present we are a centralized service so we have a 1-800 number, as well as a website for people to contact us by email if they so choose. We are in the process of developing plans to expand our services into regional centres.

Status of Women committee  Certainly, as I mentioned in my opening comments, the demand for our services has increased steadily year over year. The volume of calls that we get has certainly increased over time, and in the last couple of months, as you can imagine. We use that information to inform the de

Status of Women committee  With regard to how the centre addresses military sexual trauma as a support service, we provide the same range of support services to anyone who calls us, regardless of the type of incident that's happened to them or the severity of the impacts that people are experiencing. We m