Anna-Lisa Rovak, Veteran
Photo Credit: Anna-Lisa Rovak
Esprit de Corps Magazine December 2023 // Volume 30 Issue 11
Let's Talk About Women in the Military –Column 57
By Military Woman
Question:
What happened at the October 24, 2023, meeting of the “Experience of Women Veterans” study?
Answer:
The Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs (ACVA) began this study’s fourteenth meeting with its first witness to date from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In 1974, Beverley Ann Busson joined the first class of regular member RCMP women. In 2006, she became the RCMP’s first female commissioner. In 2018, she was named to the Senate.
True Patriot Love Foundation representative Eleanor Taylor also spoke. She shared with us her deep personal connection and pride in the fund named after her friend, Nichola Goddard. Since 2018, the Captain Nichola Goddard Fund has financially enabled many community programs that support servicewomen, women Veterans, and their families.
Despite the importance of both these testimonies – this meeting belonged to Anna-Lisa Rovak. Her testimony was riveting. Her opening statement was raw and direct; starting off with a poem she wrote on February 20, 2022, just after her second suicide attempt.
To Serve
Identity stripped to a bare soul
Twisted and pressed to fit a single mold
Told how to think and what to wear
Punished for any individuality
Mind and body pushed to the brink of insanity
Soul is empty of pride and self worth
Praised only when obedience is met
Rewarded when orders are fulfilled in silence
Tossed aside when worth is expended
Ignored, belittled by those who still serve
Unless the heart remains a slave
And traditions are followed with no thought
Today, I'm
Searching for identity
Searching for the original me
Searching for a new beginning
Trying to fill the void
Disappear or Reinvent
Sometimes they are the same
After such a heartbreakingly vulnerable testimony, the first Member of Parliament (MP) to speak to her was the Conservative Party of Canada’s Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs – Blake Richards. For reasons only known or understood by him and his political party, a party that self-identifies as honouring and respecting the nation’s military and all those that have served, MP Richards chose to prioritize matters unrelated to this study and committee over discussing
the testimony of the Veteran sitting directly in front of him.
Granted, the Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs, was within his Parliamentary rights to do what he did. However, given the limited committee time available to develop recommendations to improve the health and wellbeing of Veterans, it was not the Veteran-centric thing to do.
When next given a chance to speak, Anna-Lisa’s response to this situation included the following:
“I do need to say one thing first, if I may, and it is that there was a prime example of exactly how women Veterans are dealt with daily, an hourly basis, in what we saw here earlier today. I got up from the table on purpose. I didn't get up because I hurt. I didn't get up because I was triggered. I got up because I was being ignored; I was being treated with disrespect; my story was not acknowledged, and someone was using me as their platform. That is part of the problem here.
I am not someone else's platform. I am not someone else's cash cow. I am not someone else's product. I am a human being; I am a veteran, and I am strong in that.”
She went on to describe many other personal challenges dealing with Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC). She noted that cumulatively, VAC had caused her more trauma than all her time in the military had, rapes included.
She challenged VAC to improve its trauma-aware and -informed support and care to Veterans through:
Better handovers of care plans between case managers and contractors.
Less requirement to retell past traumatic events to new VAC contact points.
More trauma-aware treatment programs that don’t intermix or pre-assume co-existing addiction issues.
More Veteran-VAC partnership in therapy and program decision making.
More support for Veteran autonomy to do whatever is needed for them to feel safe, including leaving, when at VAC funded programs and services.
More female-sex only programs like the “Women’s Program” offered at the Davidson Institute (OperationalStressRecovery.com).
More VAC employees with “the right attitude” to enable more Veterans access to “the right care options” for their healing journeys.
Allowing Veterans their human dignity. Don’t force Veterans to “beggar.”
No Veteran, of any sex or gender, should ever feel a loss of their dignity, freedom, self-control, and sense of self as the price required to be paid in exchange for accessing the VAC benefits, programs, or services they need and are entitled to.
No Veteran should ever feel negated or that they are being used as a cash cow or product for someone else’s platform.
VAC (and some MPs) can, and must, do better.
