National Defence committee  I'm very sorry about that. The extent to which I advise on it relates to leadership. General Vance has said that right now he is notified about sexual assault within the military at the same speed at which he is notified of a missile strike. That's the level of attention that ne

National Defence committee  You continue to have sessions like this one where you ask us about progress and you force us to name gaps and areas we need to improve. You ask people who don't have this in the job title, who aren't designated women, peace and security or gender specialists or advisers. It's ver

National Defence committee  Thank you. That's a great question. I'm going to turn to Brigadier-General Bourgon, because I don't specifically know the latest, as I said, in terms of what is working and what's not. We're trying a wide range of things right now, and that's what you have to do, to some degree.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. Colombia was the first place that had what they called the “gender subcommission”. They had a model with various committees. They also had a gender subcommission that was half women representing the FARC and half women representing the government, and they went throu

National Defence committee  As I mentioned, I'll have to check the specific reasons we shifted down a couple of notches on the Georgetown scale, but in terms of areas that we can strengthen, as I mentioned, I think a key thing will be developing more tools. Gender-based analysis-plus is a very useful tool.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. The data you referred to is the fact that we now know that peace agreements are at least 35% more likely to endure at least 15 years if women are meaningfully involved in their creation. Why is that? We have a lot of evidence that women tend to both c

National Defence committee  In my previous job and now in the government, I have been able to work with women in Sudan, who lived for almost 40 years under a very oppressive and severe military dictatorship. They were flogged for wearing pants, for example. They couldn't have meetings. They couldn't organiz

National Defence committee  Can I add to that really quickly? The majority of countries also don't allow women to serve in combat roles. The fact that we enable it puts us on a different path that I think will ultimately lead us to be more successful.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question, and thanks for championing this and keeping it on all of our radars. There's something that I think is a really positive thing. I mentioned the Elsie initiative for women in peace operations. Through that, we're trying to work with countries around th

National Defence committee  Something that is being practised by leaders around the world—we are doing it in many different ways, and I mentioned we can do more of it—is systematic engagement of civil society organizations in policy-making. For the first time, our national action plan, for example, now has

National Defence committee  I may answer in English, but it's okay for the time being.

National Defence committee  Thank you for your question. I will answer in English to be more specific. Let me speak broadly. I'll start with the United Nations. There are about 82,000 uniformed personnel right now across 22 peace operations. Within the military forces, women comprise about 5% to 6%; within

National Defence committee  I will talk about measures that explain other countries' success, and the Brigadier General could talk about Canada. Other countries have adapted their recruitment process. They targeted women specifically by asking women what they wanted to do as interests. Working previousl

National Defence committee  The number is not zero. I know that Brigadier-General Bourgon can elaborate on that. There are a lot of different ways to assess our contribution. We're the ninth-largest financial contributor to the peacekeeping budget, based on assessed contribution. What I can speak to most

National Defence committee  We have a lot of relationships with countries that are doing that work. As part of the Elsie initiative, for example, we're working very closely with Zambia and Ghana, which are among the biggest troop- and police-contributing countries that contribute to the UN. We're talking wi