Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, there are bills that come before the House that are routine, and there are bills that remind us why we are here. Bill C-11 is one of the latter. When Canadians put on a uniform, they place their safety and their very life in our hands, and we owe it to them to create a justice system that is deserving of that trust. Today we have an actual chance to deliver one, but it seems throughout this entire debate that the government is choosing not to. The legislation before us tries to address one of the most serious and sensitive issues facing our country: delivering justice for victims of misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. Let me begin by clearly stating that Conservatives are proud of the brave men and women who serve in uniform. They put their life on the line for Canada, and they deserve a workplace that is safe, respectful and worthy of that dedication, even after 11 years of the Liberals’ not doing anything about it. Just as clearly, every victim of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces deserves timely justice, real accountability and, above all, respect. After successive failures of Liberal governments that have been outlined by my colleagues in the House, the victims are still waiting. This bill is virtually identical to Bill C-66, which died in Parliament when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Its recommendations trace back to two independent reports by former Supreme Court justices delivered in 2021. Four years later, survivors are still waiting for a system they can trust. These are the failures we are confronting today. In the last year alone, just to put it in context, the sexual misconduct support and resource centre received over 1,400 calls, of which 588 were related to military sexual trauma. That is not an abstraction. That is real Canadian soldiers, sailors and aviators who have been consistently failed by the system. Conservatives approached this bill seriously and constructively. We studied it carefully at committee. We listened to survivors and experts. We worked across party lines with colleagues from the Bloc and the NDP to improve the bill in a very meaningful way. One thing we heard over and over again from the people who have lived through this system was the importance of choice. It was actually brought up by a member who has since decided to sit on the Liberal benches. Choice matters, because at the heart of the matter, it is about a compassionate, effective system with a simple principle: Survivors must have agency over their own path in justice. We heard it over and over again at committee and over and over again from survivors. It is like with any other Canadian, any other patient, who is choosing their own doctor. Nobody should tell them, and nobody should tell a survivor, which system and which doctor they should use. However, the government’s original approach to the legislation would have done exactly that, the opposite of what we are talking about here. It seems that it is going to dig in its heels and go with that, despite all the work that was done in committee, despite the legislative process working as it should, and despite all the survivors sitting in front of the committee and telling us exactly what they needed in order to have trust in this system. The bill, before the amendments, would have transferred all sexual assault offences to the civilian justice system, without exception and without survivor inputs. A survivor and veteran told the committee that Bill C-11, as originally drafted, would remove choice from survivors and reduces flexibility. That survivor, that veteran, was not the only one who said that. I want to say something in the House, because I think people will listen. This is the exact definition of paternalism, real, actual paternalism as we see it in our system today. It is not the kind of empowerment that is needed to hold trust in a system. Advocates and survivors have also raised concerns about moving cases into an already strained civilian justice system. We know that both systems have strengths and both have weaknesses. We heard that at committee. However, survivors told us clearly that some prefer others, while others prefer a system that works for them, so the committee made that change. Despite putting that bill forward, with agreement from all three other parties and the witness testimony, the government is choosing to turn its back on it and present the original form of the bill that does not incorporate those changes. For a government that has talked a big game about listening to survivors particularly, in this case, women in the military, after ignoring them for so many years, it is dumbfounding why it would not listen in this case and would go ahead with the very system that they said does not work for survivors. Through these amendments, the committee secured the right for survivors to choose which justice system their case would proceed in. Again, this would be a fundamental shift toward respecting that autonomy, an autonomy the government said it holds dear. It is not just a procedural tweak. Witness after witness confirmed this to the committee. Witness after witness stood in front of members who now sit on the Liberal benches and agreed with these committee members who went out of their way to make that change. We also worked to strengthen accountability in the system. We introduce timelines for key appointments, because under the current government critical roles in the military and justice systems have been left vacant for months.
