Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to offer some remarks in support of Bill C-65 so we can continue to move this important legislation through the legislative process and toward being implemented as law in Canada.
I would like to thank the minister responsible for the bill, as well as all of my colleagues from different parties who have taken part in the debate from inception to today. I had the pleasure of substituting in for a handful of studies while the bill was going through the standing committee process after second reading, and I am pleased to have it return to my attention today.
The bill is meant to address harassment and violence in federally regulated workplaces, Crown corporations and the federal public service. Over the course of my remarks, I hope to offer some thoughts on the scope of the problem of workplace harassment and violence, as well as address some of the measures included in Bill C-65 to combat these social problems. If time permits, I will address some of the Senate amendments.
It is my pleasure to begin by discussing head-on the subject of workplace harassment and violence. This social phenomenon, quite frankly, is a serious problem that has no place in Canadian society whatsoever. It is disappointing to me that while most people we speak to would acknowledge this, workplace harassment and violence continues to persist.
I note that in a study conducted by Abacus Data, one in 10 people believed harassment in the workplace was really quite common. This is unacceptable. The standard of one in 10 thinking it is quite common should shock the conscience of every Canadian. We need to be promoting healthy workplaces where people can feel free to be their best selves and ensure they are able to contribute fully.
What makes it worse is I anticipate that most people who actually experience harassment or violence in the workplace do not come forward as often as we would like to think they do and when they do, they feel the measures are extraordinarily ineffective. This is a very serious problem. In my opinion, the system we have today disincentivizes people to report harm done to them in the workplace, incidents such as harassment or violence in the workplace.
The impact of harassment and violence at work should concern every one of us. It obviously has an impact on the individual who is the subject of this harassment or violence. We can imagine that people who are subjected to harassment or violence at work experience a far higher degree of stress or anxiety when they go to work in the morning and put in their shift. I am sure as well that it is a less satisfying experience as an employee to go to work and face this kind of harassment. It will also impact work performance if an employee is worried about physical violence or emotional harassment of any kind in the workplace. It is hard to imagine how the individual could be his or her best.
This can also have a ripple effect over the course of a person's career. We know that if people are experiencing this kind of subjugation at work from another person, it has the potential to cause them to miss work. They could actually have their careers thrown off track. People leave jobs over these kinds of incidents. Often the person who suffers the greatest consequences from harassment is the victim rather than the perpetrator, which is unacceptable in today's Canada.
However, it is not just the victim or survivor of harassment and violence who suffers consequences. Quite frankly, everyone suffers.
To remove the emotional or social context from this and to just look at hard and crass economics, it does not make sense to continue with the current system that helps to perpetuate violence and harassment in the workplace. When employees are subjected to harassment and violence, productivity of our companies go down. We know there can be reputational damage done to employers as well as severe reputational damage done to the employees when there are allegations of harassment, true or untrue, in the workplace. We need to consider this. We also know that workers who are subjected to violence have a poorer attendance records at work, through no fault of their own, by the way, and this also brings down the ability of companies to succeed in the Canadian economy.
However, this cannot be dealt with simply in terms of the hard and crass economics. We have to understand that there are individual human beings at the centre of this and that there is a disproportionate impact on different kinds of people based on the rate at which they experience violence and harassment in the workplace.
In particular, marginalized groups such as women, the LGBTQ community, indigenous people, people living with disabilities, racial and religious minorities and linguistic minorities suffer harassment and violence in the workplace at a far greater rate than the ordinary Canadian citizen. That is not okay.
I have been given every advantage in life. I am a white male from a good family. My parents both had good jobs. People whom I have worked with through my life have faced so many obstacles I have not faced. I am not okay with continuing to obtain advantages that my neighbours do not have. We live in an unfair society. Until every one of my neighbours is free and has the same advantages I had growing up, I cannot give up fighting inequality in our society.
If we want to take, for example, the experience that Canadian women have as opposed to Canadian men when it comes to workplace harassment and violence, the examples will shock members. For my first three years as a parliamentarian, I had the pleasure and privilege of serving on the Standing Committee for the Status of Women. It was an eye-opening experience for me, to say the least. We conducted studies on things like gender-based analysis, on ending violence against young women and girls, and on seeking equity in the Canadian economy.
I had the opportunity to sift through testimony. It is something that I will never forget. I have spoken personally with women whose careers have been completely derailed because of harassment in the workplace, including in Crown corporations and the federal public service and in certain agencies where the rules will change when Bill C-65 is implemented. I have heard stories about women who have been pushed into divorce because of the harassment they experienced when a husband and wife worked in the same workplace. I have heard tales of women being harassed so much that when they requested a transfer to another location, the employer would not accommodate their family being transferred as well. Those are consequences that we cannot accept, because they are having such a devastating impact on individual Canadians and a systemic impact on large groups of the Canadian population.
We know that women experience rates of workplace harassment and violence three times the rate experienced by Canadian men. We know that women are more likely to find themselves in an occupation that is subject to workplace harassment. We know, for example, that women are disproportionately represented in positions such as clerks or administrative assistants that report higher incidents of harassment and violence in the workplace.
This is holding our society back. We know that if we have rules that might in effect discriminate against women, though may not seek to do so, then those rules need to change. We will all benefit when they do.
Over the past couple of years in #MeToo era, we have come to better understand this problem in society and it is time that we do something about it. I cannot, in good faith, stand up here and argue that Bill C-65 is the panacea that will erase all of our social problems when it comes to gender and equity, but it will move the ball forward. I hope that some day we will get there, one step at a time.
It is not just women who suffer disproportionately when it comes to the social problem of workplace harassment and violence. If we look at minorities or marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ community, we know that they also face higher rates of violence and sexual harassment.
I had the opportunity to work for a human rights organization in Johannesburg in a position funded by the Canadian government. While I was there I did a fair amount of work with the LGBTQ community, helping them to access information held by the government. One of the key issues we focused on was employees who were wrongfully dismissed based on their sexual orientation or gender status. I have worked with clients who have been fired for reporting bullying as a result of their being transgender. That is not okay.
We have to remember that whatever one's sexual orientation, whatever one's gender, one does not deserve discrimination. I am talking about people who had spotless performance records, people who got along very well with their fellow employees but who, when they went public about going through a transition, were discriminated against and heavily bullied. When they reported to their employers they were experiencing this kind of bullying based on who they were as a person, the employers terminated their positions. Although it took years of fighting, we were able to obtain records demonstrating that the reason they were let go was that they had filed complaints that had caused their employers headaches. That is not okay. The rules in South Africa are not the same as the rules in Canada, but I want to highlight that we can always do better to make sure that everyone is treated equally.
If we consider indigenous people in the workplace, we need to do a better job at creating an environment and circumstances that make them feel welcome in the Canadian economy. We are dealing with the fastest growing and youngest segment of the population. This should concern not just indigenous Canadians but non-indigenous Canadians as well. If we are going to make progress as a country, we need to embrace the youngest and fastest growing sector of the population. Right now these people are being discriminated against. They experience violence in the workplace at more than double the rate of non-indigenous people.
If we consider persons with disabilities, one would not believe the lack of accommodation for them throughout our society. On a separate but related piece, I am so pleased that our government is moving forward with Bill C-81. I note that we have members in the House who strongly support those who live with episodic disabilities as well. I congratulate those who took part in that debate.
We know that individuals living with disabilities, and particularly those living with intellectual disabilities, suffer from harassment and workplace violence at an extraordinarily high rate, sometimes more than four times that of the average population. We know that those facing mobility challenges face an extraordinarily high rate of violence in the workplace as well, and are treated far too often as victims because they are seen as not having the tools to defend themselves like many other Canadians have. This is absolutely disgusting and we need to ensure that we have a process that prevents these kinds of incidents from occurring, one that offers a meaningful response, that delivers justice to the victims of harassment and violence and also creates a change in workplace culture.
My point is that workplace harassment and violence is a serious problem that we all need to play a part in addressing to ensure that we can move forward in Canada by supporting Canadians, no matter what their background.
That leads me to the measures contained in Bill C-65. It takes us to where we are today. I think it is appropriate to take a snapshot of where we are today and how today's rules can change for the better. Presently, if I can oversimplify things, there are two regimes for workplace harassment and violence in Canada. Those two regimes have different mechanisms for resolving the issues facing those who have been affected by harassment or violence in the workplace. This creates an imbalance between workplaces. To point to a defining kind of example, current sexual harassment rules only apply in the federally regulated private sector, whereas rules pertaining to violence apply to the public service as well. This kind of two-tier approach makes absolutely no sense. Whether one works in the private sector, in transportation for example, or the banking sector, as opposed to working for a branch of the federal public service, one deserves the same remedy if one is treated inappropriately, no matter where one works. This is incredibly important.
What really bothers me as well is that the workplace we all share here in Parliament does not fall under either of these categories. That has been newsworthy over the last number of years, particularly when dealing with the power imbalance between elected officials or senior members of government or of a different political party, who often deal with young people who are having their first experience in politics. There is an extreme power imbalance.
Today there is not really an effective remedy, in my opinion. We are getting better as a parliamentary community and a parliamentary family, but realistically, the stories we hear through the grapevine are predominantly of young women leaving politics after a few years of being exposed to it, if they have been victimized by sexual harassment or violence in the workplace. We need to do better and Bill C-65 is an opportunity to make us be just a little better.
There are three real pillars to Bill C-65 in how we are going to approach things moving forward. The first is that we are going to try to prevent incidents from taking place in the first place; the second that we will try to offer a meaningful response to incidents when they occur; and the third, and perhaps most important, that we will try to better support employees who have been victimized and lived through episodes of violence or harassment in the workplace.
On the point of prevention, Bill C-65 will require employers to train employees and undergo training. I was very pleased to take part in the training organized by the House of Commons to ensure that I could better understand what harassment and violence in the workplace look like. Some of the examples might be very obvious when it comes to a violent outburst and some of the more subtle instances of harassment, when viewed through the eyes of one person, who may be giving direction but can be interpreted and felt as harassment by another. Through training, employees and employers can better understand where the line that should never be crossed is.
Still on the point of prevention, employers will be required to work with their employees to develop a harassment and violence prevention policy. It is essential that this not be dictated from the top down. The feedback from those living in a work environment can contribute to the development of policy. When more voices from different perspectives come to the table, the quality of the policy on the back end will improve.
Under the second pillar of the changes under Bill C-65, the need to respond to incidents of harassment and violence, the bill would implement a number of measures. The first is the establishment of a timeline for responses and attempts to resolve a dispute. It will require that employers appoint a competent person to conduct proper investigations of incidents when they occur. It would also empower employers to share information with the workplace committee when it would not compromise the privacy of the persons involved in a given incident. It would also require that when an investigation by a competent person does take place, the recommendations of that investigation be implemented. Finally, it would require that when incidents occur, they be recorded and reported in a systemic way.
The final pillar is that employers will be required to provide assistance to employees who subjected to harassment or violence in the workplace and that employers engage the workplace committees in developing policies to help make their workplaces safer.
Bill C-65, as I mentioned, will not have every answer and will not cure every problem in a day, but it represents meaningful progress. One of the features included in the bill that would ensure that we are moving in the right direction over time is the five-year review. It would ensure that we revisit these policies after we have had enough time to determine whether they are having a meaningful impact. With the co-operation of the Parliament five years from now, hopefully we can examine how things have gone in this new world and continue to improve them.
In conclusion, it has been a privilege to learn about the issues that employees face when they are subjected to harassment and violence. It is completely inappropriate and unacceptable that we continue to discriminate against marginalized groups in the workplace, in federally regulated sectors, in the public service and in any employment situation in Canada, quite frankly. We need to do better and Bill C-65 helps move us in the right direction.
