HomeAnna-Lisa Rovak - Female veteran calls out MPs studying Canadian Armed Forces’ culture
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Anna-Lisa Rovak - Female veteran calls out MPs studying Canadian Armed Forces’ culture
by Leopard Mon 06 Nov 2023, 8:15 pm
Female veteran calls out MPs studying Canadian Armed Forces’ culture
Anna-Lisa Rovak accused a Conservative MP of using her as a “product” during the veterans affairs’ committee’s meeting: ‘I am a human being.’
By Stephanie Levitz Ottawa Bureau . Monday, November 6, 2023
OTTAWA—The treatment of a female Canadian Forces’ veteran at a committee hearing on Parliament Hill has prompted a rethink of how members of Parliament question survivors of trauma.
Anna-Lisa Rovak accused Conservative MP and veterans’ affairs critic Blake Richards of using her as a “product” when instead of using his time for questions during the veterans affairs’ committee’s first-ever study on the experience of female veterans, he tried to get the committee to debate another issue altogether.
The committee’s study is underway as the Forces have embarked on a wholesale effort to change its male-dominated culture, which has led the committee to probe how that culture trickles down into the care of soldiers once they leave the service.
The incident at the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, however, also has former soldiers wondering about the impact of Parliament’s political culture on that study.
Rather than asking Rovak questions for his allotted time, Richards asked the committee to launch a study on a current controversy around prayers recited by military chaplains, an issue gaining traction in some circles, especially ahead of Remembrance Day.
He and other Conservatives have been attacking the government on the issue for weeks, and Richards had flagged he planned to move the motion in a newsletter he circulates called “veterans insider.”
While it was his procedural right to move the motion, the intervention — and the subsequent debate — meant less time for the women to share their stories and take questions from MPs.
Rovak stood up as if to leave, but others attending the hearing convinced her to stay and keep trying to tell her story.
When she next had the opportunity to speak, she used it to blast MPs, saying they had just done the exact same thing she believes the VAC has done to female veterans for decades: diminish, ignore and discredit their experiences.
“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 said at the Oct. 24 hearing.
The incident generated an outcry not just by Rovak that day but from other veterans watching both in person and remotely, leading to a flurry of emails pouring into MP offices demanding a change to how the remainder of the committee’s study is managed.
As a result, the chair of the committee, Liberal MP Emmanuel Dubourg, decided they all must undergo two hours of mandatory trauma training so MPs can more fully understand how their approach at committee may impact the people whose stories they are trying to hear.
In an interview, Dubourg said MPs had already agreed to structure the committee with more care than might normally be taken — not jamming several witnesses into a single two-hour session, as can be the case in other subject areas, and also ensuring there were scheduled breaks throughout.
“It takes a lot of courage for the women to come and testify in front of us,” he said.
Among those who contacted Dubourg was Donna Van Leusden Riguidel, a veteran and founder of the Survivor Perspectives Consulting Group, an organization that works specifically on training institutions to support victims of sexual assault in the military.
She offered a free two-hour training session to the committee, and told the Star she didn’t think what happened was a deliberate effort to sideline the voices of women but comes from a place of ignorance.
But if MPs are so easily dismissing women’s perspectives at committee, she said, it does not bold well for the broader issue of culture change in the forces.
“If the people leading this don’t see the problem with their behaviour and don’t see where they need to change, what possible hope do we have in changing the culture of an organization?”
It’s not yet clear when the training will take place nor who will provide it.
NDP MP Rachel Blaney, who had pushed the committee into taking up the study, said the incident undercut all the work that had already gone into making the committee a safe space for female veterans.
Both she and Dubourg noted that Richards was well within his parliamentary right to move a motion, but it all should have been handled differently.
“To take that time when somebody had just laid out their life and talked about really hard things, suicide, about feeling disrespected, about feeling so invisible, the timing just felt very incoherent with the reality we were seeing around us,” she said.
Richards’ office did not respond to a request for comment from the Star.
When approached on Parliament Hill by the Star, Richards said he had nothing more to add, but thought the trauma training was a good idea.
He had apologized to Rovak as well as the other witnesses that day prior to moving his motion, saying it was his only opportunity to do so.
Rovak told the Star he also apologized to individually in person afterwards – but she did not accept.
Rovak said she travelled 18 hours from her home in central British Columbia to give her testimony, which included recounting how she has attempted suicide three times in her 20 years of trying to get VAC to acknowledge the range of injuries she suffered during her 17 years in the Canadian Armed Forces.
The opportunity to have her voice heard before people she believed could actually make a difference in the way Veterans Affairs functions meant the world to her, she said.
To watch politics take over – and from all MPs she said – was disheartening.
“There’s absolutely people there that say they care, I completely believe that,” she said.
“I just wish that they could work together instead of working as different political parties, fighting to prove who’s the best and who’s the worst.”
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