Evidence of meeting #57 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 workplace.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
February 7th, 2013 / 11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
Madam Chair, I'm going to be sharing my time with Roxanne James, my colleague.
Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to be with us this morning. I certainly appreciate your presentation and congratulate you on the fact of there being no complaints for five years.
I always say when things like that happen, there's a reason. It's either camaraderie or leadership or how things are handled. If you wanted to point to a few factors that you feel are important, that make your workplace such a safe and happy place, I'd say, what would be some of the factors you would point to?
11:25 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I'd like to say good leadership.
11:25 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I think I'm lucky. I have a very good staff and a very congenial staff. We just don't happen to have anybody who's caused problems in the office.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I think also that because we're so small, it's very informal.
I was mentioning earlier that we have three levels in the hierarchy in our organization. It's a really flat organization, so it's easy to approach and to deal with people in different groups and at different levels. I think that helps because there's always open communication.
We also try to organize events. We have an annual staff retreat where we always make sure to include in our group discussions a topic that deals with wellness at the office.
When we developed our code of values and standards of conduct, it was done in collaboration with the employees. They came up with all the behaviours. They didn't come from management.
I think it gives them an opportunity to have that dialogue on a regular basis. Although we should be doing more training on this specific issue, we can still have discussions related to the issue in a more informal way.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
It probably wouldn't have come into effect in your situation, but you mentioned too that supervisors are really expected to notify and take care. If they don't act on reports and concerns, how do you deal with this? What measures are taken to make sure supervisors do their job, that sort of deal?
11:25 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
If we were aware that a supervisor was not doing the job, I would speak to the supervisor about it. We do take this seriously. As I say, we don't have a lot of experience in dealing with problems because the problems have not arisen.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
The management group meets on a weekly basis, and because we're so small, we know everything that's going on, of course, on the two floors. If there was to be an issue, we'd probably get involved informally. It wouldn't go unnoticed. It gets discussed.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
The fact, like you say, that it is a small group does make it that much easier, but still the importance is there. It's something you still pay attention to. I was in a small school one time, and it made quite a difference when you moved into another staff. I know where you're coming from, and we can probably all reason with that.
11:30 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's probably not irrelevant that this is an office that deals with ethical issues, too. We're tuned into those issues.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
All the time, yes....
Thank you. I'll pass it on to Roxanne.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Thank you.
You're not governed by the Treasury Board, so did you come up with the code of conduct and policy yourself?
11:30 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Yes.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Did I hear you say that you engaged the employees as well to help participate? In your opening remarks, Ms. Dawson, you indicated that it actually includes concrete examples of sexual harassment. This is the first time I've heard that with any of our witnesses. I tend to hear that sexual harassment is defined more as something that someone ought to have known would offend someone else. I've kind of stuck to those types of questions because it's up to interpretation of what may or may not offend.
I'm just wondering if you could indicate to the committee concrete examples that you clearly define in your code of ethics.
11:30 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I'm going to pass that to Denise, if I could.
11:30 a.m.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
When we covered the value of respect for people in our code of conduct and standards of ethics, we were general and we provide general statements, but when we covered the behaviours that would be prohibited at the office, one is specific in that it says that no employees will feel harassed by either words or actions of others. We didn't go into specific examples of what those would be.
What we're saying is that any behaviour that would make someone feel uncomfortable would not be tolerated.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Okay, so there aren't specific concrete examples such as touching, a type of verbal phrase, or anything like that.
Again, it still leads to interpretation. I know that you're a small office of 50 employees. I heard you say that only one person has left in two years. Obviously when you're working with the same people over a number of years, if there's been no sexual harassment or harassment of any nature, it's not likely to start all of a sudden, out of the blue, two or three years later.
Do you think that because it's a small department and you're the same employees year after year that's partly the reason it works so well? It's a small department, so it's hard for statistics to say anything.
11:30 a.m.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's the culture. The same people stay and the culture remains pretty much the same. If there's nothing that changes the culture of the organization, it should pretty much remain the same way.
If I could clarify, although the code isn't specific about behaviour, our policy is. When we talk about examples of harassment, we do mention inappropriate touching. That's covered under our policy.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Very quickly, you said that you're looking into more options for harassment resolution. I've heard something similar to that. I'm always looking to come up with alternatives or something.
11:30 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I think I said that there are a number of different ways of dealing with harassment, and I gave a couple of examples.
11:30 a.m.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We're not looking for any more.
