Status of Women committee  Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. I am proud to be here to represent the Public Service Alliance of Canada. I'm happy to appear with representatives of our components, which in our union have a key role in representing our members on the front lines in

Status of Women committee  Certainly when you look at the actual brief, what we are quoting is that the public service employees survey indicates that 54% of the respondents said they were satisfied with the way informal complaints were resolved. That's the survey in and of itself. We have a process, the

Status of Women committee  PSAC will give information to the individual who is accused of harassment. We'll tell that individual what their rights are, but in the true sense of representation, we won't go into the investigative meetings with them. We will, however, go into meetings with the individual who

Status of Women committee  Ms. Chamberlain.

Status of Women committee  I certainly do agree that is going to prevent them. It's difficult for our members in terms of filing complaints whichever avenue or redress mechanism they use with respect to sexual harassment, let alone in the climate they find themselves now. We have young women, our members,

Status of Women committee  Ms. Hauck.

Status of Women committee  Do you mean the harassment policy?

Status of Women committee  We had consultation, or what Treasury Board would deem to be consultation, not necessarily our interpretation of consultation. We have worked diligently to try to have some of our changes put within it. We were successful at actually keeping a harassment policy. I think that's

Status of Women committee  It is not that job cuts cause sexual harassment. The question was why don't people come forward about sexual harassment. What I was trying to convey is that women are afraid to come forward and say they have been sexually harassed because of what's going on within their workpla

Status of Women committee  The solution to sexual harassment in the workplace is that the employer has an obligation to have a safe working environment, and—

Status of Women committee  No, no. Go ahead, Bob.

Finance committee  Thank you. At the outset, I want to make it clear that the changes in Bill C-4 to the Public Service Labour Relations Act were introduced without any consultation whatsoever with labour, and this, quite frankly, is unprecedented. The government ignored the broad consultation

Finance committee  If that's not bad enough, Bill C-4 expands the current limits on what the public interest commission and arbitration boards can consider when making their awards. I just want to mention what the worst of it is. Policy grievances were introduced when the Public Service Labour Rel

Finance committee  You know, there are some difficulties. We've had 20,000 positions that have been cut. There were many more than that in terms of affected letters, so I think it's a bit precarious right now. There are services that have been cut from Canadians, such as the Veterans Affairs office

Finance committee  Thank you very much. Certainly I appreciate that in terms of the EI, but there are many other departments that are suffering from that as well. We're doing a lot of work with respect to mental health in the workplace, because you have what I call the survivor syndrome. I don't k