Mr. Speaker, I want to start by paying tribute to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for the work it did on Bill C-65. I took part in that work myself. I especially want to honour my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît for the tremendous efforts she put in. We worked on this bill together, and I am very proud of it. She even managed to get the committee to adopt a few of the NDP's amendments.
Bill C-65 is intended to prevent workplace harassment and violence. It is a general interest bill. This was not a partisan issue. When we were listening to the witnesses and studying the bill, our focus was on survivors. Without wanting to speak for the committee's other members, those are the people we were thinking about during the course of our study.
As I said earlier, harassment and violence, especially sexual harassment and violence, are too important an issue to allow partisan politics to creep in. I think that was something the committee members were really aware of. The bill needs to once and for all free up speech, restore confidence, and empower victims to speak out about sexual harassment without fear. Workplace harassment and violence are still widespread today, even here in Parliament, I am sad to say. That is why the NDP is going to support the principle and spirit behind Bill C-65. We are going to vote in favour of this bill when the time comes.
However, we still have some misgivings. We think Bill C-65 only partially meets its goal of strengthening the harassment and violence prevention regime. Bill C-65 does not address every concern. Far from it. Judging from the emails and calls I have received, the unions are not particularly reassured either.
Here are a few examples. On April 26, the national president of the Canadian Union of Public employees contacted me to discuss “two serious flaws in Bill C-65 that will undermine the rights of workers affected by violence or harassment in the workplace.” What flaws could be so worrisome that the union felt compelled to urge the minister to correct them immediately?
I am referring to the exclusion of health and safety committees from two steps processes. First, they are excluded from the complaint process and, second, they are excluded from the investigation process. The complaints process concerning harassment and violence and the investigation process must both continue to rely on the expertise of these committees. Excluding them makes no sense to us.
Members of health and safety committees have received training and have a finger on the pulse of the workplace. Management and employees usually have equal representation, and members are experienced, know the culture, and know what is happening on the work floor. Who better to provide solutions, investigate, and also serve the victims and provide a sense of security and confidence when a survivor comes forward as a victim of harassment, or sexual violence or harassment?
The surprising excuse given by the Liberals to justify their measure was the purported breach of victims' confidentiality if they had to take part in the investigations of these committees. In my view, this is not a valid pretext for many reasons, which I would like to outline.
First of all, the decision to bring these committees into the process came from victims themselves. This was an option offered to them. It was a possibility open to victims. I am speaking in the past tense because, unfortunately, with the amendment in effect, they will no longer have this option. It was an additional choice that was available to the victim, not a constraint that was imposed. When someone is familiar with the victim's working conditions, the victim will feel understood, and this may help. This might have helped encourage people to report such incidents.
Second, to add to my argument, to date, these joint health and safety committees have always received these complaints and have successfully carried out the harassment investigations. Their modern investigative methods have always emphasized respect for victims' privacy. By excluding these committees from the investigative process, Bill C-65 is about to eliminate decades of experience, training, and work. I really want to stress the training and work aspect that will be wasted.
That is not all. If what the Liberals really wanted to do was protect victims' privacy and confidentiality, then someone needs to explain why they opposed many of my amendments. I had the pleasure of proposing nearly 20 amendments along with my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît during the committee study of Bill C-65, but only three of them were accepted by the Liberals, and even that took some convincing. In many cases, the other amendments were not even discussed. On a number of occasions, the Liberals chose to go straight to a vote and would not even explain why they were refusing the amendments.
Among the amendments that were voted down without any explanation was a very simple proposal made by the Confédération des syndicats nationaux. Allow me to explain it. Bill C-65 seeks to exclude joint employer-employee health and safety committees from investigations for privacy reasons. The problem is that, right now, these committees still continue to provide victims with unquestionable expertise. The logical solution proposed by the witnesses was to give these committees codes of practice and a code of ethics that would guarantee the privacy of victims. Did the Liberals oppose the CSN's recommendation without any explanation out of stubbornness or because they did not understand it? It seems to me that excluding these committees from the investigation process is a serious decision. There was no shortage of witnesses who supported amending the bill. Unions, associations, and law firms all supported the amendment. A quick look at the committee transcripts is all it takes to see that they all disagreed with this exclusion.
There is more. The expertise of the joint health and safety committees spans decades, but that alone does not explain why witnesses adamantly defended keeping them in the investigative process. The other reason, which is rather important, is the exceptional diversity of the investigators who make up the joint committees. The right of joint committees to conduct investigations has until now made it possible for victims to benefit from an incredible diversity of investigators in terms of colour, religion, age, and sex. Such diversity in the profile of investigators is invaluable.
Unfortunately, it is clear that Bill C-65 has completely shelved this aspect, which is inconsistent with the recommendations of the International Labour Office. In investigations into sexual harassment, the victims will not be able to benefit from the expertise or the extreme diversity within the joint health and safety committees.
That brings us back to what I was saying earlier. Members of the joint health and safety committees come from the workplace and represent all the communities. They are people we can confide in, people we can relate to if we are victims of harassment or violence in the workplace. They can make us feel understood. Unfortunately, with the changes made to Bill C-65, victims can no longer rely on this service.
It would still have been possible to include in the bill a provision to ensure the diversity of investigators, similar to that made possible by joint committees, for all investigators. That is exactly what one of my amendments proposed. It set out that the choice of investigators, although no longer the purview of the joint committees, must reflect the diversity of Canadian society. Thus, the diversity of investigators, which until now was made possible by the joint committees, would be perpetuated even though the committees were excluded from the investigation. A balanced representation of Canadian diversity would be assured.
Apparently, the recommendation made by the UN Secretariat concerning labour was not good enough for the Liberals, because they did not let Canada adopt legislation to guarantee equality and non-discrimination in the investigators' profile. We need to remember that minorities are disproportionately affected by workplace harassment and violence. By “minority” I mean members of an ethnic or religious minority as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex workers, and migrant workers.
That is why the profile of individuals responsible for the investigation must at all costs reflect diversity. However, it seems that our legislation will not take into account national diversity in the selection of investigators, and that is very unfortunate. Those are some of the aspects that were important to me. After spending all those hours listening to and reading witnesses' recommendations, we drafted amendments that were not even debated.
I would like to move on to other aspects of the bill that are also cause for concern. There are many of them. Let us first talk about the development of employer policies on harassment and violence. Some employers said on several occasions that they did not understand exactly what was expected of them when it comes to workplace policies. They need guidance on writing and implementing their anti-harassment policies. It is important to give employers clear instructions. They are waiting for such instructions in order to determine whether they are on the right track in complying with the legislation.
Since the primary purpose of Bill C-65 is to bring about a major change in political and corporate culture when it comes to harassment, we had hoped for more from the government in this regard, but that it not currently the case. When the witnesses appeared before the committee, they expressed their concerns about the effectiveness of employer anti-harassment policies. Leading law firms Rubin Thomlison and Fogler Rubinoff came up with one solution.
In order to give employers guidance and enhance protection for employees, the witnesses recommended that the Canada Labour Code set out guidelines for what is expected of a corporate policy on harassment in the workplace. The guidelines should include information about the process for getting immediate assistance in the case of harassment and about the fundamental aspects of privacy protection and the processing of complaints. I want to point out that companies also requested such guidelines.
The NDP's amendment would kill two birds with one stone. It would help guide employers in developing their internal policies and also enhance protection for employees, who would now be covered by effective prevention policies.
That amendment also would have prevented potentially ill intentioned employers from shirking their basic harassment prevention obligations through the use of deliberately complex anti-harassment policies that ultimately end up disincentivizing victims. We are talking here about how important it is to have prevention policies. Prevention in our workplaces is vital.
Even here in Parliament, people have been talking about a change in culture for several months now. I myself am now an employer. I have staff working for my constituents in Jonquière. I am their employer, and I have a duty to ensure they have a healthy environment, a place they can work that is completely safe and free of all forms of harassment and violence. Being on the Hill, we need to attend many events and meet with a lot of people. Sometimes we have interns. Here in the House, for example, we have pages who work with us every day. We must ensure their safety and provide them with a healthy environment. Even businesses need to have clear guidelines and policies so that they too can provide proper training and a healthy environment that is free of harassment and violence.
Unfortunately, it seems the Liberals would rather leave employers guessing about how to write their internal policies because not one of them bothered to say anything about this measure, let alone come out in favour of it. I do not know why, and nobody ever explained why my amendment was rejected. I hope to find out why today.
Would it not make sense for expectations around policies, specifically anti-harassment policies, to be in the Canada Labour Code? That is another thing that is conspicuously absent from Bill C-65. Once again, there were certainly plenty of opportunities to address the problem, and plenty of witnesses who spoke in favour of such a measure. All our efforts to strengthen the prevention aspect of Bill C-65 were apparently for naught. The Liberals put forward an amendment to include a five-year review, which was not at all objectionable and was in fact more than welcome. We all recognized the importance of including a provision to review the legislation over the years. Reviewing workplace violence and harassment provisions every five years is a perfectly justifiable improvement.
What is less justifiable is that Liberals refused to support one of my amendments to make the five-year review more effective. The Liberals proposed that the department publish statistics on workplace harassment and violence every five years. This is good. It complies with almost all of the recommendations of their own report published by Employment and Social Development Canada in March 2017. I said “almost” because this report lamented the “insufficient data on workplace harassment and violence“, in particular regarding sexual harassment. The report also mentioned the need for data to be collected, in order to address this lack of data. We need data.
I have much more to say about this bill. We did a comprehensive study, we heard from many witnesses, and we also managed to keep partisanship out of the debate. As I mentioned earlier, we will support the spirit and principle of the bill for all survivors. We will also encourage people to report these situations and help maintain a workplace free from violence and harassment for workers across Canada.
