Absolutely.
Evidence of meeting #47 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was survey.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #47 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was survey.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
St. Paul's, Lib.
Can you just tell us offhand which seemed to be the departments with a lower response rate?
9:25 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
9:25 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
We were quite worried that we would—
9:25 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
Yes. We had to make sure that we were the leader in the response rate, as did Treasury Board Secretariat.
Other than that anecdote, I can't remember.
9:25 a.m.
St. Paul's, Lib.
That was the only harassment that happened in your department, to fill out the frigging survey.
In more modern workplace lingo, people are avoiding the words “harassment” and “discrimination” because people find it quite a serious accusation. I think people such as Nora Spinks, and the Vanier Institute of the Family, are much more comfortable asking people to describe a respectful workplace, or whether they think their workplace is respectful, or is, as you've said in your other questions, moving to try to remedy these things in terms of “respectful” or “non-respectful”.
In terms of actually using the words “harassment” and “discrimination”, were there experts who advised you to continue on that way, or would there be an interest in maybe doing a second survey that prodded a little bit more gently the real existence or non-existence of a respectful workplace?
9:25 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
It's a very good question. You know, this is what statisticians do: we try to figure out what is the best way to measure a concept. Harassment is not an easy concept to try to measure.
Our focus-group testing suggested that the approach that we took was one that could be responded to by respondents. We would have shown them the description of harassment, the definition of harassment that I read to you, and asked them if they understood the definition. Then the following questions that related to that definition were respondable by the respondent.
Given that, I don't think we looked at the alternative measurement of the concept of harassment that you suggest. It's not something that we couldn't entertain in the future. We have to be careful, though. If we whole-scale replace the way that we've measured in the past with a new way of measuring, you aren't going to be able to compare the 29% that we got with this to the survey in the future.
9:25 a.m.
St. Paul's, Lib.
You would have to do both.
I guess there are interesting articles now, and poems and everything, around bullying in the workplace. Is there any data on whether if you use the word “bullying” you might get different numbers than if you use the word “harassment”?
9:25 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
You certainly would. I can't say to what degree you would get a different answer. Any time you change the wording in any way and move it from a question on bullying to a question on harassment, you would see some people who interpret bullying as something different from harassment. Therefore, they would respond to the question differently.
9:25 a.m.
St. Paul's, Lib.
Were you able to find out whether it seemed to be about sex or race or religion in terms of the discrimination? Do you know whether it seemed to be gender-specific or religious or race-specific, in terms of discrimination?
9:25 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
No. Other than the information we collected at ACOA and what we did in the past, in 2005, at the Public Service Commission, we have no information on the type of harassment that has taken place, whether it be sexual harassment, age-related, or any other sort of harassment. We didn't collect that.
As I was saying earlier, it's not that we couldn't. We believe that we could, because we tested those sorts of questions back in 2005, and it showed that employees in the federal government could give us good answers.
9:25 a.m.
St. Paul's, Lib.
In previous surveys of the public service, people with disabilities, people whose first language is not the culture of that particular department, there have been many things identified as specific to certain departments.
Are you able to help departments in knowing which people feel particularly uncomfortable or feel that they are not in a respectful workplace?
9:30 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
Yes. If you go to the website, there is information that shows a breakout of all the information, within the departments that are large enough, by age, by sex, and by visible minority status. That is very helpful information for the department trying to understand the issue of harassment in that workplace and who is affected more than others.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Marie-Claude Morin
Thank you.
We will now begin the second round of questions.
Ms. Young, you have five minutes.
November 1st, 2012 / 9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Thank you so much for being here today. Your study is extremely interesting to me. I have a couple of questions.
First, did you compare our results with other countries in terms of their public civil servants and such surveys? Are we sort of on par and within the parameters of normality, or are we on one scale or the other of extremes? That's my first question.
Second, I note here that respondents said that they felt that members of the public were harassing them 31% of the time. I found that very interesting, and wondered if there was any kind of follow-up discussion or something for next year's survey. What does one do with that? I mean, it's a work environment. If you are providing service to members of the public, then obviously that has an impact. But it's not your colleagues or the actual public service itself harassing you.
The other thing I wanted to ask was what the context of the survey was. You've taken the survey. You've captured your responses. Some of us have worked in various work situations, whether they be with the federal service or not. In my case, I worked for the federal government and provincial governments, etc., in my past life. Whenever you work in a bureaucracy, or anywhere else, for that matter, there are some employees who can be disgruntled employees or just unhappy people. How do you put that in the context of the respondents? Has that been looked at? Do you correlate your figures, your data, and your responses with there maybe being 10% of public civil servants who are vexatious complainants or whatever? I don't know. That's why I'm asking the question.
Thank you.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
On your last question, I think what the PSES actually gives us is the context. Without the information from the public services employee survey, you really don't know how happy or unhappy employees are within any given department. So it sets the context.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Yes, but do you correlate that with another context? If those people are unhappy, they're going to be unhappy anywhere—or everywhere, if you know what I mean.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
Some departments using this data might choose to do that. StatsCan doesn't.
9:30 a.m.
Director, Special Surveys, Statistics Canada
We just provide the results of the survey itself.
I guess that leads to your second question, the one about harassment that's perceived from the public, and what you do with that information.
What each department does with it is up to each department to respond to, but a not untypical process is to take these numbers and then to have sort of a shop floor discussion with your employees. And the manager of that area can say, this is what I found within our part of the organization and this is what the PSES tells us about our unit.
We provide the data within departments right down to the organizational unit within that department.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Maybe in the interest of time I can be a bit more specific with my question.
For example, if my job is a complaints clerk, a front-line complaints clerk at some government office, then obviously I'm going to be feeling probably fairly harassed at the end of the day, because that is my job. Do you see what I mean? Those figures, and those statistics, then, are going to show up in your survey of course because these people feel harassed—31%, it says here. Maybe that will spill over, because it's a difficult job; don't get me wrong, we know it's a difficult job. There's probably a high turnover rate or whatever.
My point around putting it into context is that these are various good figures to have. Yes, you're right, it's good to have the survey and get that information. But without putting it into that kind of context and say, okay, you know, we can see why you would feel harassed in this job....
I'm understanding what you're saying, that, yes, you can get down to the unit level, absolutely, but are you saying then that the managers do or do not wrap programs around it, or provide counselling or support, etc.? Maybe some of those jobs are just difficult jobs, and what does one do with that?