Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I am proud to be here with you today to speak to Bill .
[English]
This bill aims to address and ultimately eliminate harassment and violence, including sexual harassment and sexual violence, in federally regulated workplaces.
Bill is a reflection of our government's commitment to gender equality. Women simply can't get ahead and have opportunities equal to men's in workplaces where they experience harassment or sexual violence and where this behaviour is tolerated. This bill will provide greater protections to Canadians in federally regulated workplaces, including Parliament Hill and political staff, for the very first time in our history.
Harassment and sexual violence are unfortunately not new behaviours, and while recent reports of these unacceptable behaviours have captured our attention, it's been happening for far too long, and it is definitely time to take action. Harassment and sexual violence thrive in places where we see distinct power imbalances, especially here on Parliament Hill, and that creates a culture where victims of harassment or sexual violence don't feel comfortable bringing their complaints forward. As it stands right now, victims often don't have suitable options for making their complaints heard, and they also don't have options for resolving what are often very serious and traumatic incidents.
Like many of you here today, I have heard about heartbreaking experiences from many people who feel that their complaints will never be heard, that they will not be taken seriously, or that their issue won't be resolved.
When Canadians face harassment and violence at work, whether it's bullying, threats, physical assault, or mental abuse, the effects are detrimental for those employees, of course, but they are also detrimental for employers. People who experience harassment or violence often have higher rates of absenteeism, while employers see a greater staff turnover and, of course, a loss of productivity, so ensuring Canadian workplaces are safe and healthy is really a win-win for employees and employers alike.
[Translation]
That's why I was so proud to see my colleagues in the House take a united stand and unanimously send Bill to this committee.
[English]
I know that members of this committee agree that this is an issue that crosses party lines and that these behaviours have gone unchecked for far too long. Bill proposes amending existing provisions in the Canada Labour Code by replacing the patchwork of laws and policies that address these issues within the federal jurisdiction and putting into place one comprehensive approach that takes the full spectrum of harassment and violence into consideration.
It would expand these policies to cover, for the first time in the history of our country, as I've said, parliamentary workplaces such as the Senate, the Library of Parliament, and the House of Commons, including political staff on Parliament Hill.
Our framework aims to prevent incidents of harassment and violence from occurring, to respond effectively to those incidents when they do occur, and to support victims and survivors in the process.
I want to take a moment to outline the process for a complaint to be brought forward and dealt with in parliamentary and non-parliamentary workplaces. I want to be very clear that a complaint can be made to the Department of Labour at any time if a complainant doesn't feel that the process is being followed.
First, the employer must attempt to resolve the incident when a complaint is made. This can be done in various ways, including mediation, if the parties agree. If the incident cannot be resolved, a competent person will investigate and complete a report, with recommendations. If there is still non-compliance—for example, the employer doesn't implement the recommendations made by the competent person—there are two processes that follow, one for non-parliamentary employers and employees, and one for parliamentary employers and employees.
If an employee in a non-parliamentary workplace still believes that his or her employer is non-compliant after the investigation is complete, the employee can complain to the labour program. The labour program will initiate an investigation of whether or not the process laid out in the code has been followed. If the labour program finds that the employer is contravening the code, compliance will be sought through the use of compliance and enforcement tools that are available in the Canada Labour Code. We would first seek voluntary compliance, and then if it's not successful, there are a number of compliance and enforcement tools available that include publicly naming employers who are found to be non-compliant.
Similarly, if an employee in a parliamentary workplace still believes that his or her employer is non-compliant with the code after the investigation is completed, the employee can complain to the labour program. The labour program will initiate an investigation of whether or not the process has been followed. Then the Speaker of the House will be notified when there is an investigation. If the labour program finds that the employer is contravening the code, we will first seek voluntary compliance by the employer. If that's not successful, I, as the minister, will issue a direction to the employer to comply and will notify the Speaker. He or she may intervene. If there is still non-compliance and the direction has not been appealed, the direction, including naming the employer, will be tabled in the House of Commons.
For both parliamentary and non-parliamentary employers and employees, there is an opportunity to appeal directions from the labour program with independent boards.
[Translation]
Our government has been clear that harassment and violence will not be tolerated. The has shown that he is not afraid to take action when needed.
[English]
Also, the House sent a strong message to all Canadians in February with its unanimous support of this bill at second reading.
Now the time for inaction is indeed over. Bill will ensure that workers in federally regulated sectors, including on Parliament Hill, finally have the protections they need, and it will ensure that those who are in vulnerable positions will have a voice. Everyone deserves to work in a safe workplace, and they deserve to live free from harassment and violence.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing the committee's views on how we can strengthen the legislation. Ideas were brought forward during the debate, and I look forward to discussing these further with all of you.
[Translation]
We know that the problem is far too big for us to solve with a bill. All Canadians will have to work together to change the culture that tolerates harassment and violence in the workplace.
[English]
By discussing this legislation, we are sending a strong message to all Canadians that indeed time is up. These behaviours need to stop. We're taking important steps to eliminate these behaviours in all federally regulated workplaces and right here on Parliament Hill.
[Translation]
I want to thank my colleagues, from all parties, for supporting this important legislation so far.
[English]
This committee has an incredibly important role in examining this legislation. You have an opportunity to effect real change and to send a strong message to all Canadians that harassment and sexual violence are unacceptable and will not be tolerated any longer.
I look forward to working with all of you to ensure the timely passage of Bill .
Merci.
Welcome to the committee, Minister.
I would point out not only that the official opposition supported Bill in the House, but also that the parties agreed to an intensive study of the bill to help fast-track it. We believe this is a necessary bill whose time has come, as you mentioned in your remarks.
You said you wanted to send a strong message to all Canadians with this legislation. For those of us in the opposition, two things matter a great deal. First of all, it's important to ensure that the process is independent, especially as regards incidents or harassment on Parliament Hill. That's one element we'd like to examine with you this afternoon, as well as with the witnesses we hear from in the course of our study.
Minister, partisanship must have no place in this process. An alleged victim must not be forced to interact with their attacker or, in this case, with the minister in question. We need assurance from you on that, and by the same token, you will be reassuring Canadians about the benefits of the bill.
Second of all, will you show that the Department of Employment and Social Development has the expertise and capacity to investigate complaints and make recommendations when the process does not work?
Let's say, that, right now, someone feels they are experiencing harassment or violence in the workplace but fears going to their employer and having to go through mediation with their attacker. Can that person take their complaint directly to the Department of Employment and Social Development? Do you have the necessary resources to support the victim and make sure that the complaint is dealt with, today and after the bill is passed?
:
Thank you for supporting the bill.
[English]
To the second part of your question, yes, we have the resources available. We're confident that we will have the resources available to provide support to employers to fully implement the legislation, in particular the support they will need to develop the policy and do the training and education that will be necessary in each workplace.
A big part of this is actually the prevention piece. The prevention piece is critical. Many workplaces haven't had these conversations about what is harassment, what is violence, what steps you take if you're not comfortable in your workplace, or, God forbid, if you're experiencing ongoing harassment. We will be focusing heavily on making sure that employers have the supports to put that prevention into place.
In terms of pursuing investigations, yes, we have the finances available for that as well, and we will be ensuring that we can do that work.
In terms of the other part of your question, if at any point a complainant feels the process is not being followed as laid out by the policy in their workplace and they feel their rights are being infringed upon in terms of the policy in their workplace, they can come forward to the ministry of labour. They can talk to the department about the fact that the process is not being followed and they don't feel they have a fair process. At that point we can assist them in making sure they receive the support they need.
:
Thank you. It's an excellent point that you raise.
It is often the most vulnerable in our workplaces who are subject to the experience of harassment and sexual violence. You've heard me speak about this, and many of you have spoken about it. It's that it is ultimately an issue of power. Frequently, people who are experiencing harassment and violence in their workplace are people who are among the most disempowered.
In our workplace, it's not hard to imagine who those folks are. They are many of the young staffers who sit around this room and, in fact, are with us today. They are often in situations that are very difficult for them. They have personally told me stories about circumstances in which they've felt very vulnerable.
This legislation will protect the most vulnerable. It is about setting up a fair playing field so that when someone experiences harassment or sexual violence in the workplace, there is a response, and that person can be confident that there will be a response.
In fact it's also, more broadly speaking, trying to lay the foundation for cultural change. I think when you look at the work of our , despite it many times being very politically difficult—calling out members who have violated our own party's code of conduct around behaviour, harassment, and sexual violence—you can see that it is not just legislation that will change a culture, but brave leadership. It's people being willing to stand up and say, “This is not okay in my workplace, and as a leader I'm going to take action and send that signal.”
To your point, it is the most vulnerable in our workplaces who will benefit the most, but I would also say that employers will benefit as well. I think when you look at the whole range of harassment and violence.... We've spent a lot of time talking about sexual harassment and sexual violence, but in fact, harassment can be bullying in the workplace. It can be yelling at employees repetitively. It can be asking employees to perform tasks that are not part of their employment contracts or their employment circumstances and that put them at risk of harm. I've heard many of those stories as well.
This is really about changing the culture, about learning how to treat each other with respect.
You're absolutely right that privacy is a big part of the legislation. It's a factor that we heard over and over in terms of why people won't come forward. They feel that if they come forward and people know they've complained, there may be cases of reprisal. An employer may punish them, or their manager may punish them, or the person who is harassing them, often someone with more power, may in some way jeopardize their well-being, financial or otherwise.
That's why we've tried to capture this concept of privacy in the legislation. That's why we've made stringent criteria prohibiting workplace committees, policy committees, and health and safety representatives from participating in investigations of cases of harassment or violence: so that we limit the information and it's not spread throughout. Often a committee may have four, six, or eight people. The more people who have information, the more likely there may be a leak of that information.
It's also about making sure they don't have access to any information that could lead to the identification of persons involved in incidents of harassment and violence, such as their name, age, address, or religion. Furthermore, employers and the labour program have legal obligations not to disclose that personal information.
To the second part of your question, about what happens if that information is shared inappropriately, they're actually breaking the law, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the Department of Employment and Social Development Act, and the Privacy Act.
Finally, the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which is responsible for appeals, also has very strict policies on the release of private information. I suppose if private information is released, a complaint could come forward to the labour board, and the person could suffer penalties under those acts.
Maybe you'd like to speak to that, Lori.
:
Thank you very much, Minister, for being here today.
I also want to thank you in the sense that as a new member of Parliament, newly elected in 2015, I always had this vision of coming here and making a difference in our country. When we see what's happening across our globe right now and we see as a committee, as all parliamentarians coming together, that we want to move this piece of legislation through, I'm proud to be part of a government and to be able, with our colleagues, to start to address this issue, because, as you've said, it is all about a cultural mind-shift.
Along that line, when we're talking about large organizations, there are a lot of layers involved, but when you have a smaller organization, such as an MP's office, how does one go about triggering an investigation? Quite frankly, there are only three, four, or five people in that office. You talked about the privacy part. How does that come into play?
:
I think the conversation we're having right now is invaluable, and I thank all the brave women who have come forward to talk about their experiences, whether it's publicly in the media or privately to any of us who have taken this seriously.
I think part of this is about bringing it out from the shadows, and that's exactly what our has done time and again by making sure that every time someone contravenes a woman's right to a safe workplace or a person's right to a safe workplace, he has taken action. Leadership is another really big part. Making sure that you have a zero-tolerance culture for harassment and sexual violence means that when something comes forward to you as the leader of an organization, the leader of an office, you take it seriously and you act promptly.
I can't tell you how many stories I've heard from people who've said, “I complained, but nothing happened” or “I told someone this was happening, and they told me, 'That's okay; he's just joking around'.” That's a very common response people will get: “He doesn't mean anything by it” or “He does that to all the women.” These are very common statements that you hear on a regular basis. When we let that behaviour slide, essentially, first of all, we're invalidating a woman's experience of being harassed. We're invalidating her request for a safer workplace.
I'm 51 years old. When I was in my twenties and working in car dealerships for a while, this conversation was a regular daily occurrence. We wouldn't even have thought to speak out about it; it was so internalized that this was part of our experiences as females in a male-dominated sector that was all about drinking hard and selling cars. In fact, times have changed, so it's about leadership. It's about legislation. It's about all of the people who will stand up and say, “That's not okay.”
Finally, I think I would say that we have an obligation to not be bystanders when we know.... We talk a lot about the whisper network. This is a phrase that's new to me in this work, but certainly I recognized it immediately. That's the informal network that happens, especially in places like this where there are high degrees of power and low degrees of power, where people say to avoid that person because, in other words, that person is really dangerous.
We need to take those whispers out of the shadows. We need to hold people accountable for their behaviour. We need to do that by not being bystanders, by saying, “Hey, I don't know if you know that your behaviour makes people uncomfortable.” Sometimes people aren't aware. It doesn't have to be the most dramatic infraction or violence. It can happen when sometimes people use a certain style of joking that makes people really uncomfortable. If you have the power and the ability to say to your colleague, “You know, when you said that to Sally, I don't know if you noticed the way she looked, but she looked really uncomfortable, and you might want to think about using that style of communicating.”
It's a whole bunch of things that will change the culture.
:
Again, I hate to kind of harp on the policy, but it's because I think it's such a critical piece.
There is a framework that's available for both employees and employers to know what their rights are in a workplace, and what to do when something happens. Part of the challenge, if you think about this workplace, is that nobody knows who to talk to, nobody knows how to manage this, so we talk to each other sometimes. I don't consider myself a vulnerable person anymore, but in thinking back to being vulnerable in workplaces, I know that we talk to each other as a form of support, but we don't know how to take action. That's critical.
It's also important that people feel that they can come forward without fear of reprisal. Then they know that when they come forward, their information is going to be treated confidentially and that they're not going to run the risk of alienating themselves from their employer, up to and including possibly losing their job. This has been something that people worry about tremendously, especially in precarious employment, and not just in this workplace but in other workplaces across the country. The strong privacy protections so that information is treated confidentially, I think, will help tremendously.
The ability of a person to feel that if the process is not working in his or her workplace.... If the person is following the process that's in the policy and feels that he or she is not actually being taken seriously or the process isn't being followed, that person does have another opportunity to go to another party, namely the labour department, to say, “I have this workplace policy. I'm having this experience. I've asked my employer to address it, and nothing's happened.” The person has another avenue, whereas in the past, that person may not have had any support.
:
I think this legislation puts into place a framework in which people who are experiencing harassment and violence are going to be taken seriously and won't have to endure ongoing harassment as a condition of their workplace, their financial security, or their success in the workplace. I think the first thing is to have that framework in place so that people have actions they can take.
You're absolutely right. When people are in workplaces where they're experiencing ongoing harassment or abuse, it does lead to things like lost time, lack of productivity, and high turnover. I used to say to my managers in the organization that I ran, “If your team's turning over too quickly, you need to ask why. You need to ask yourself why you can't retain staff.”
Sometimes staff leave because they have a better opportunity or they're going back to school. There are all kinds of great reasons and very legitimate reasons. However, if there's a pattern that exists.... Those are the kinds of things that cost employers a tremendous amount of money, and employers may not even recognize what's happening.
In terms of mental health and psychological health, from my perspective, the best investment is always prevention. Employers will be responsible for taking these complaints seriously, for acting on these complaints, and people who are experiencing them will have avenues to seek that support.
:
In my own experience as an employer, I have found that you can often avoid much more serious, prolonged experiences of harassment and violence in the workplace if you are able to address incidents as they start to occur.
As you point out, sometimes people don't realize the effect that their words or their behaviour is having on their employee or their colleague, in particular when you have differing positions of power. I always say that we're all managers now. We were elected and we all have staff now, but not all of us have come to this place with the same set of experiences. Sometimes being a good leader isn't organic. You sometimes need to learn how to be a good leader. Those informal processes allow for that process to say, “Did you know that your behaviour is having this negative impact?”
It depends, of course, on the severity of the situation. At any time, if someone feels that their safety has been jeopardized or that they need to involve the criminal justice system, they have the absolute right to do that, and we encourage people to do that, but so many times it could be a case of someone's unwanted touch on the shoulder, for example. That's a common thing: “He regularly messages my shoulder on the way to his cubicle.”
Maybe that person doesn't understand that that touch could be threatening. It's quite possible. Sometimes, if you have received a complaint, you can take it up with the individual and say to the person through an informal process, “Do you realize that when you touch your much younger colleague or you touch people in that way, it may have another meaning to them and they're not comfortable with that touch?” There may be ways you can deal with it and prevent the behaviour from escalating and continuing over many years.
:
Thanks very much. I appreciate your talking to some of those vulnerable workers.
Just as in any other federally regulated workplace, the corrections systems and the various institutions will be responsible for having a very clear policy on harassment and violence, which will clearly outline, first of all, what the expectations of the workplace are. They will have requirements to do training for their staff on what harassment and violence are, and what happens if someone experiences that.
They will also have the full support of the legislation, just like anyone else, to be able to—as you mentioned—use a tip line if they are questioning what resources they have or what recourse they have, but primarily to be able to ask for an investigation at any point, or to ask for support if they are experiencing that in their workplace.
The employer will be compelled to have a process that they follow. They will also be required to have a third party who can take complaints if the person is intimidated and doesn't want to come forward to their own personal supervisor or their employer representative, who may in fact be the perpetrator.
Finally, at any point that person will be able to come forward, as we've said, to the labour department and ask for help if the process is not being followed in the way the policy outlines it should.
:
I'm very interested to hear what your team would consider an appropriate definition of harassment, or the continuum of harassment all the way to violence.
As I said earlier, this was in no way intended to limit those definitions but rather to avoid a situation of the legislation having a definition that was too rigid, and then not being quick enough to respond to new forms of harassment. In fact, it would have to go through an entire legislative change. The intent was that through the regulatory process, we would develop definitions that would capture behaviours that are a part of that continuum of inappropriate workplace conduct. This could range from teasing and bullying all the way to physical violence, and the definition would include sexual harassment and sexual violence. It really was about trying to capture those in the regulations.
As I said to you and your colleagues in the debate at second reading, I'm not opposed to having a definition in the legislation, as long as it's broad enough that it would capture all forms of harassment and violence. If there is an amendment that comes forward with language that is broad enough to capture the full range of harassment all the way to violence, I don't have my heels dug in on that issue.
It really is about trying to make sure that the legislation is flexible enough to adapt, should there be some new way of harassing people. I think cyber-bullying is the example I gave earlier. That's a perfect example. It's nothing that any of us could have envisioned. Imagine if the legislation had been written 15 years ago, and didn't include the word “cyber-bullying”. Would that be captured by the legislation? Those are the questions.
I'll look forward to the suggestions about the definition. As I said, if it makes the law stronger and there's a strong consensus that we need that definition within the legislation, then I'm really looking forward to those suggestions.
:
Welcome back, everybody.
We've been joined by, from the Department of Employment and Social Development, Brenda Baxter, director general, workplace directorate, labour program, and Barbara Moran, director general, strategic policy, analysis and workplace, labour program. From Public Services and Procurement Canada, we have Charles Bernard, director general, portfolio and government affairs.
Welcome to all of you. You will each have 10 minutes for opening remarks, and then we'll follow up, obviously, with questions. You're looking at each other—10 minutes? Did we know we had that long? You don't need to use all your time. If you thought it was seven minutes or if you thought it was five, we'll go from there.
Barbara, do you have a question?