NDDN Committee Report

The New Democratic Party extends our sincere appreciation for everyone involved in producing this report, especially the veterans that gave testimony for our study.

We thank the researchers, community leaders, and members of the Canadian Armed Forces that shared with us their expertise and lived experience. We also thank the Library of Parliament analysts, the committee clerk and the interpreters for their work.

Our study included 21 different witnesses that appeared at the Standing Committee on National Defence. But the committee recognized the complexity of the military health system and the Canadian Forces Health Services Group could not be robustly explored within the time allotted for this study.  

In particular, the committee heard powerful testimony by women veterans, including Major (Ret’d) Dr. Karen Breeck, who brought to light the major gaps in research and recognition of issues facing women in the Canadian Armed Forces.

I thank my colleagues for agreeing on June 6^th, 2022 to a unique motion, wherein this study would take into consideration the testimony heard at a concurrent study on the Experience of Women Veterans at the Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs.  

At the ACVA committee, the New Democratic Party brought forward a first-of-its-kind motion to study the experience of women veterans over more than 20 meetings. We sincerely thank all the women that have appeared and shared their stories, and as parliamentarians we have the responsibility to ensure their stories are not siloed to that study alone.  

By sharing their stories at our committees, they contributed greatly to our recommendations. 

 While the New Democratic Party support many of the recommendations within this report, we would have liked to see more from the following recommendations: 

• Recommendation 5: That the Government of Canada invest greater resources and funds into the research of health and mental health outcomes and impacts of CAF service on women to create necessary health and mental health resources, particularly surrounding fertility, menopause, perinatal challenges and menstrual suppression.  

New Democrats believe that this research must provide a sex and occupation-specific analysis of workplace hazards. This would allow the research to fully inform the choice of occupations within the Canadian Armed Forces and promote necessary research into unique health exposures.  

• Recommendation 27: That the Government of Canada establish standards designed to ensure that the medical assets and resources available to Canadian Armed Forces women while they are deployed meet their needs, regardless of where they are serving, and integrate women’s health education into pre-deployment training. 

New Democrats agree with the intent behind this motion, but it must be pushed further. Women’s health in the Canadian Armed Forces has not been normalized or integrated into the medical system. Women have shared stories of needing to leave their deployments for basic reproductive care while deployed, and the intent behind this recommendation aims to address this. But within the military health system, women’s health care is increasingly provided by outsourced personnel or off-base entirely. If we want to ensure women can access adequate health care while deployed, we must integrate women’s health into all levels of the military health system.   

Once the study on the Experience of Women Veterans is complete, the New Democratic Party looks forward to bringing new opportunities for this committee to consider all recommendations as they relate to our study.

The New Democratic Party would like to raise one final concern that the committee did not adequately study, which is the growing overreliance on private contractors for the Canadian Forces Health Services.

On May 12^th, Senator Rebecca Patterson testified that the salaries of clinicians within the public service framework are too low, forcing the civilian portion of the military health system to rely on contractors.

The budget is there to provide competitive salaries. But due to self-imposed rates for public servant health care providers, the forces are pushed to pay premium rates to contractors like Calian Ltd. New Democrats wish that the committee had the opportunity to explore the overreliance on these private companies and find solutions to deliver public healthcare to our forces members.