Status of Women Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2012

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you.

In your presentation, you referred to unfounded complaints. Could you tell us what you mean by “unfounded” and what criteria were used to determine that they were unfounded? Would you have some more specific figures to provide to us in that respect?

[Karol Wenek]

Tony, could you answer please?

[Cdr Tony Crewe]

Once a complaint is lodged, similar to the new five-step process that was introduced by Treasury Board, we've had that same five-step process in place since our 2000 policy.

The first step is to acknowledge the complaint.

The second step is to conduct a situational awareness to see if it meets the grounds. A series of grounds are laid out to say we will consider this to be a case of harassment and move it forward to investigation. That's the first point at which something might be found as unfounded, as not meeting the grounds to be treated as a harassment investigation case.

If it does move to investigation, it could be simply an interpretation of whether it was something that was unreasonable or not. Again, as we've discussed, that's the million-dollar question. Was it reasonable or unreasonable? It could simply be a matter of interpretation or misinterpretation of what was said or meant and therefore, again, could be determined to be unfounded. That's going to be on a case-by-case basis, so it's hard to lump any sort of category of unfounded.

[Karol Wenek]

That's why it's important to have a third party make the judgment. If you get into a dispute—he said, she said—who's to decide? They each have, from their perspective, valid points of view. You need a third party to make that adjudication.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you. The reply is quite clear.

Do you have any data concerning these unfounded complaints? Could we have access to them?

[Cdr Tony Crewe]

In the annex we see that of 31 cases of sexual harassment, 11 have been deemed founded. That doesn't necessarily mean 20 are unfounded. They could either have been unfounded or withdrawn, or they might still be in process. We don't have the numbers for how many were judged to be unfounded.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

I think I still have time for one last brief question.

What are your processing times for harassment cases, approximately? I know that some are still being processed. Briefly, can you give me some idea of the processing times?

[Cdr Tony Crewe]

The database indicates that our average for a founded complaint is about 90 days. The responsible officer has up to 180 days, and I think under new Treasury Board policy it's up to 12 months. We have cases that have been resolved in as little as one day and cases that have taken up to 51 months. It's all situation-dependent—it depends on the availability of the parties and access to them for deployments, etc.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I must stop you here, because Ms. Hassainia's speaking time has expired. Thank you very much.

It is now Ms. Bateman's turn.

You have five minutes.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for being here. The work that you're doing matters greatly to every one of the members on this committee, and we appreciate it. We're very grateful to be able to learn from you.

Mr. Wenek, perhaps it's my training as a chartered accountant, but I appreciate the data that you have placed in here. They are concrete, tangible. In the previous testimony we heard, we didn't have that precision. It's helpful because it gives us not only something concrete, but also some context.

Thank you for that.

That's very useful.

I'm grateful that you don't survey your employees to death, because it wouldn't work. It's just close enough. When you speak about surveying people on their ethics and the efficacy of various policies on harassment, that's so useful.

I want to confirm that these are blind surveys. They're not identified.

[Karol Wenek]

Right. They are anonymous surveys.

We have two kinds of survey procedures. We have an internal research capability made up of a broad range of Department of National Defence scientists. They conduct specialized, focused surveys, which can be administered on an as-required basis or periodically. For example, a large-scale survey on harassment would be one of these kinds of surveys.

We also do continuous surveys, in which we sample from the population twice a year on a broad range of topics. You could call it a continuous opinion survey, if you like. This way, we can track data longitudinally as well.

One of the reasons, by the way, that I included data is that I'm a behavioural scientist by training. We do policy on the basis of evidence and research and data. I'm quite happy to provide that.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That's excellent.

How do you work? Clearly, the Government of Canada is investing significant resources in gathering data in these public service surveys. The cost is high, but the information obtained is useful, not only to senior managers but to members of Parliament as well.

How does that interface with your data collection process?

[Karol Wenek]

We don't use the public service employment survey because our members are not public servants, so there's a different set of—

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Even civilians?

[Karol Wenek]

That's the department. I speak for the Canadian Forces.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Of course.

Is it a useful tool to compare data?

[Karol Wenek]

Absolutely. We do comparisons. I cited Statistics Canada data earlier in terms of the employment of women. We do comparisons with the national databases. We do comparisons with other government departments. We do comparisons with other militaries. We're part of an organization called the Technical Cooperation Program, which includes Canada, the United States, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. It's sometimes referred to as Five Eyes. We have an ongoing information technology exchange program with them. We routinely do surveys, and sometimes it's the same survey administered to the militaries of five different nations as a basis of comparison. It's a way of benchmarking what we do.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'm very grateful to hear that there's that sharing. Why reinvent the wheel if somebody has the data?

[Karol Wenek]

We steal from each other.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Absolutely, with gratitude.

You spoke at length—

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

You have 40 seconds left.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

On the training piece, one of the stats I heard from you was that 90% of your personnel are exposed to harassment training of some sort.

Does that permeate every rank, every level, and how do you do that?

[Karol Wenek]

In the survey 90% of the respondents recalled having been through some form of harassment training.

To set the stage for that answer and explain why that might have been the case, during the late nineties—I can't remember when we discontinued the SHARP program—we had a blitz across the Canadian Forces that required everybody who was serving at the time to take part in this one-day or one-and-a-half-day training program on standards for harassment and racism prevention.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I am going to have to stop you here, unfortunately. I am sorry.

However, the document you are referring to sounds very interesting. The members of the committee would probably be very interested in consulting it, if that is possible. Can you send it to us?

[Karol Wenek]

We could do that.