Status of Women Committee on Jan. 31st, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Good morning and welcome to the 56th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are continuing our study on sexual harassment in the federal workplace.

We are pleased to have with us Canada Post representatives. I want to welcome Ann Therese MacEachern, Vice-President of Human Resources, and Amanda Maltby, General Manager.

I invite you to make your presentation. You have 10 minutes. I will let you know when you have one minute remaining. Afterwards, we will have a question period.

Go ahead.

[Ann Therese MacEachern, Vice-President, Human Resources, Canada Post]

Madam Chair and members of the committee, good morning. We welcome this opportunity to appear.

Sexual harassment in the federal workplace is an important issue. We hope you'll find our practices at Canada Post serve as helpful examples of how to manage it. Our practices are an important part of our broader effort to create a workplace where people feel safe, respected, and productive.

First, for some context about our workplace, at Canada Post, not counting our subsidiaries such as Purolator, we employ about 65,000 people. This includes full-time, part-time, and term employees. Our people work in every community in Canada, including isolated posts and neighbourhoods of every kind. We have thousands of delivery agents who are on the street and at the doorstep. They have countless direct interactions with Canadians, as we deliver to more than 15 million addresses each business day. This context matters. While sexual harassment can occur in our workplace, it can also happen on the street.

Our commitment is to a safe, respectful, and fair workplace. We strive to achieve these things by focusing on a number of areas, such as: committed leadership; a focus on prevention, and when an incident occurs, responding promptly, appropriately, and effectively; the positive influence of a diverse workforce; the positive impact of training, which closely involves our unions; and the expertise of our human rights team, which has been recognized by both the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

I will speak first to leadership, which sets the tone.

I've worked at Canada Post for more than 23 years, and I can assure you that our company does not tolerate sexual harassment. If any executive were to learn that a team leader had failed to take the right action in response to a complaint of sexual harassment, there would be consequences both for the team leader and for the employee who committed the harassment. Our policies don't merely exist on paper. We're not perfect, but we walk the walk.

Our leaders know that they're expected to uphold our corporate values. This is reinforced in our hiring, performance management, talent management, and training processes.

I speak with the confidence that comes from experience. I've been involved in decisions to fire people for serious violations of our no harassment policy. Our workforce is a microcosm of the Canadian population. As a result, unfortunately, some incidents do occur, but when they do, they're investigated and addressed. Depending on the circumstances, a range of consequences can apply. Some incidents are resolved with a frank conversation and warning, while others involve more in-depth intervention. For serious violations, nothing short of dismissing an employee is the right thing to do.

I'll now ask Amanda to speak to the diversity of our workforce, an overview of our no-harassment policy, how it's communicated and reinforced, and the vehicles for employees to speak up about harassment.

[Amanda Maltby, General Manager, Compliance, Canada Post]

Thanks, Ann Therese.

We believe having both men and women equally represented in our workforce contributes to the culture of respect we work hard to foster. Women make up half our workforce, which is slightly higher than the national average. Women are increasingly being promoted into more senior positions. We continue to work towards increasing the representation rates in areas such as operations. We believe this balance helps tens of thousands of men and women work productively and professionally side by side while enjoying respectful relationships.

At Canada Post sexual harassment is part of our no harassment policy. In turn, the policy is part of a larger holistic approach to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful.

This holistic approach is reflected in our values, our code of conduct, our violence in the workplace policy, and our human rights training. We believe every employee has the right to a workplace free of any form of harassment, including those prohibited under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

At Canada Post it is the obligation of our team leaders and officers of the company to report any incidents of harassment that they witness or they become aware of.

Our no harassment policy is included in the orientation package that's given to every new hire, no matter their role, together with our code of conduct. It's also available on our internal website, which is accessible to all of our employees. It's embedded in our training, which reflects a respectful relationship with the leaders of our unions.

We've worked closely with our unions on our no harassment policy, our human rights training, and to educate employees about workplace violence prevention and protection. Our ongoing training programs are delivered in classrooms, in self-study guides, and through e-learning.

For example, supervisors attend a mandatory course, which we call CORE, in which they receive in-class training on the theme of a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. For several years, new hires represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Public Service Alliance of Canada have received training on human rights and conflict in the workplace. This is taught in a classroom. It's co-facilitated with trainers from our unions, and it takes three and a half hours. These training sessions are well received.

Our employees have several ways to report incidents of sexual harassment. These include reporting it to their supervisor or a member of management; reporting it to their local human rights representative; reporting it to their local union or association representative; contacting our employee assistance program; reporting it to our anonymous whistle-blowing program, which is run by an independent third party that takes reports via a toll-free telephone number, the Internet, or mail; filing a grievance; or making a formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission or under the Canada Labour Code.

Reports are confidential. When investigating complaints, management will not disclose the complainant's identity unless doing so is essential to resolving the complaint. This is important to the integrity of the process.

While sexual harassment may arise in some fashion and to some degree, it is never acceptable. In 2012 we had one formal and 48 informal human rights complaints based on sex. This is out of 25 formal and 137 informal human rights complaints.

Formal human rights complaints are based on the 11 prohibited grounds of discrimination that are submitted directly to the Human Rights Commission for investigation.

Most of these incidents involved one employee harassing another, but several involved one of our employees being harassed by members of the public.

We do believe our policies are effective, and we stand behind them. We believe our practices, our people, and our record reflect our commitment to preventing sexual harassment.

I want to bring your attention to an example of one of our transgender situations, when just recently an employee transitioned from male to female. As you can appreciate, this involves incredible sensitivities. We worked hard and in close collaboration with the first employee, and we've had others since then, to ensure a smooth, safe, and respectful transition in their workplace.

We're very proud that we met that objective. The fact that others followed the first individual in the same location tells us that transgendered individuals feel safe and supported in transitioning in our workplace. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has asked us to share our experience with other employers and to help develop best practices.

I'll now ask Ann Therese to conclude our remarks.

[Ann Therese MacEachern]

On behalf of Canada Post, I'd like to thank the committee for having invited us to appear.

We believe the prevention and protection initiatives we have taken are working. As I'm sure you realize, these are challenging times for Canada Post. Canadians are increasingly leading digital lives, and letter mail volumes are declining sharply, but I can assure you that our business challenges don't undermine our commitment to be a progressive employer. In tough times, our commitment to a workplace free of harassment is as strong as ever, and we're always looking for areas to improve in this domain.

When the committee issues its report, we will review it with interest.

We welcome your questions.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you. That was very interesting.

We will now begin the question period. We will proceed in the same manner, so I will let you know when you have one minute left.

We will begin with Ms. Truppe.

Ms. Truppe, you have seven minutes.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome our guests.

Thank you for your report. It was really good. I was thinking about what great examples you had on how you manage harassment in general, as well as sexual harassment.

We've had a lot of different witnesses in here, so it's nice to hear the different things organizations are doing and how seriously they take it. I especially like the home mailer that you do. Was that the first time you did that?

[Amanda Maltby]

I'm going to say that certainly, as long as I've been involved with the program, it's the most comprehensive home mailer that I've seen us do. This is the one we did at the end of 2011.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Yes.

I've never heard of doing a home mailer before. That went to all the employees. When they sent that, you had an increase in general complaints, but some of the other ones went down.

[Amanda Maltby]

Yes, what we saw was a shift. It's been interesting looking at the numbers, because as a result of that.... I think that when any organization engages in an awareness campaign with employees, they're going to see some kind of an increase. We capture incidents of workplace violence, human rights, and also in the area of harassment. The shift we saw was from harassment to some of the workplace violence complaints, particularly complaints as they relate to threats of violence.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

You think the increase in the general complaints of harassment was due to violence as opposed to sexual harassment?

[Amanda Maltby]

No, I don't know if I'd say that. I would say that it's interesting as we work through the regulations associated with workplace violence and defining the terms “bullying” in particular and “harassment”, how in the mind of the complainant, which is obviously very important when you're looking at a complaint and conducting an investigation, they perceive the unwelcome behaviour or gesture or comment that's made to them.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Have you noticed overall any trends, any increase or decrease in sexual harassment? How are you measuring that?

[Amanda Maltby]

I'll comment on that just to say that overall we capture general harassment numbers. Where it is that we delineate based on sex is when we would move to the definition under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Actually, if I look year over year, even beyond that, the trend is actually downward as it relates to cases regarding sex.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Do you have any alternate methods of determining how many employees have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace?

[Amanda Maltby]

Yes, we have a series of programs in place that are certainly supportive of the policies we have.

I would point more specifically to some of the other avenues employees can use, where it is they would indicate complaints. I'd caution in terms of saying that's an indicator of higher numbers, because often we see employees using multiple channels to make their case known or to put their complaint forward. An example would be our whistle-blowing line, where we do capture harassment.

In looking at the numbers, and again, they've gone down year over year, but comparing 2011 and 2012, I would say we probably already capture those numbers as part of some of the other incidents of harassment.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Okay, thank you.

You seem to provide a lot of training too. Can you walk me through the training that a supervisor would have as soon as they get there, versus the training that an employee would have when they get there. What are the different methods?

[Ann Therese MacEachern]

There are different methods. The supervisors receive training as part of a supervisor orientation program, if you will, for team leaders. They receive about three and a half hours of training. Last year we put approximately 400 people through that training.

The front-line employees would receive it as part of an orientation to the company, and that's a three and a half hour program that is co-designed and co-delivered with our unions.

In one case the content is specifically on human rights, in the latter case. In the former case it's part of a broader orientation that covers many different subject areas. There are three and a half hours, again, in that segment over a number of days that are specifically on human rights, and there's a specific segment in the training on sexual harassment.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Okay, so there's a specific segment on sexual harassment for each of those, for the supervisor role and for the other role.

[Ann Therese MacEachern]

That's correct.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I understand the gist of when the harasser is on the same level as the person being harassed, but what happens when it's a superior or the supervisor who's harassing the employee? What happens to that person?

[Ann Therese MacEachern]

What happens to that person?

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Obviously, the person who is being harassed can't go to the supervisor. They would have to skirt around them and use one of those other alternate methods.

[Ann Therese MacEachern]

Amanda talked about a number of avenues.

Certainly we have human rights coordinators right across the country in different facilities, and that's an avenue for people to go through. Those are the people who would be responsible for looking into the complaint, investigating the complaint, and dealing with it.

If people are not comfortable with that avenue, there's our whistle-blowing line. They can certainly go to their union affiliate and get support that way. There are a number of different mechanisms in place to support them if, in fact, the situation relates to a team leader.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Is the training mandatory for everyone?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

You have one minute.