Blake Desjarlais, MP
Photo Credit: Parliament of Canada
Esprit de Corps Magazine October 2023 // Volume 30 Issue 9
Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 55
By Military Woman
Question:
What has been happening at the “Experience of Women Veterans” study?
Answer:
First – a reminder that the final day to submit your comments and recommendations for this Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs (ACVA) study is September 30, 2023.
In continuation of past columns, the study’s tenth meeting on the “Experience of Women Veterans” was held on June 1, 2023. Four serving Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members gave testimony, including the Acting Chief of Military Personnel and Defence Champion for Women, Lise Bourgon, and the National Practice Leader for Psychiatry, Andrea Tuka.
Information was shared about a new military women’s health initiative which includes important sex-specific occupational hazard research that will hopefully assist with injury and illness prevention and ensure more evidence-based and standardized medical care.
CAF also committed to “give voice to our women Veterans to come back and say that this is their experience, so that we can listen to them.” Hopefully, by listening to women Veteran’s lessons learned, women’s recruitment and retention rates can be raised and medical release rates lowered.
The study’s eleventh meeting was held on June 5, 2023. Three women Veterans with over 110 years of combined service provided courageous examples of lived experience feedback.
Kathleen Mary Ryan reflected that it has been over 50 years since she first marched on Parliament Hill for
women’s rights and over 40 years since she joined the military, yet here she was again — still advocating for equality.
Joanne Seviour encouraged everyone “to nip any misogynistic comments in the bud and to raise our women to speak up.” She also noted that participating in the CAF-DND Sexual Misconduct Class Action Settlement opened a “Pandora’s box” for her. She found Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) to be unprepared to understand the many ways military women can be impacted by multiple, versus single, service-related traumas perpetrated over years, if not decades.
Jacqueline Wojcichowsky stated outright her sense of broken trust with VAC. Her lived experience was that a disconnect still exists “between the military and Veterans Affairs with respect to the trauma of injury and illness in women currently serving and those who are veterans.” She felt some VAC staff “undervalue the trauma female soldiers have endured” and how the “constant stress of trying to fit in as a woman in a male's world can have long-lasting psychological effects.” She called for more programs, resources, and groups specific for women Veterans. She also gave the specific example of the VIP (Veterans Independence Program) still being denied for women with mental versus physical health claims. Attending the committee for his first time as substitute for NDP Member of Parliament (MP) Rachel Blaney, MP Blake Desjarlais opened his committee question time with a heartfelt statement to the women Veterans testifying.
He said: “…No matter if this report goes the way it needs to and no matter if these things are not implemented, you're doing something that's going to help people no matter what, even if governments, whether this one or the next, don't do those things. I want you to know that your story will live on in my heart, and hopefully the hearts of every member of this committee, to help us know that we have far more work to do. ... As a matter of fact, this is a true failure. You're talking about a failure of our governments, not just the sitting government but governments. We've heard the testimony from members who are with us and who have served for so long, and to hear that this is continuous, and that your experience validates that it's continuing, brings me great sadness, especially coming from a tradition of matriarchy. … To hear of women being treated this way, especially women who are warriors, pains me a lot. I know how much more you're worth than this system has allowed you. … This isn't just an issue of VAC. It's not just an issue of the Canadian Armed Forces. This is an issue of our culture, of how we prop up hatred in this place and across our country and how it has devastating results. It devastates our sisters, our mothers, and our grandmothers. It demeans all Canadians when we allow for this kind of treatment to continue. I want to thank you for that.”
No, MP Desjarlais — we thank you. To you, women Veterans are not invisible women. You saw us. Your words give us hope and validation.
You remind us, that women Veterans have many allies. Together — political and apolitical, military, and civilian — we can help everyone see our individual differences as a collective strength, and not a weakness.
If you want to join us to be part of that change, register at RachelBlaney.NDP.ca to attend a Parliamentary Reception in honour of women Veterans on October 16, 2023. There’s more work to be done. Together.
