If a person is alleging, for example, discrimination on one of the prohibited grounds under the Canadian Human Rights Act, a proper venue for them would be the Canadian Human Rights Commission. There are provisions in the act that preclude duplication of processes. We've talked about these in the past as well. If a person has already gone to the Human Rights Commission, for example, and their matter is being treated there—if it's the same subject matter—we would decline to investigate that matter.
Harassment can also be pursued through the typical harassment policies of the Treasury Board that belong to their department. That is not, for us, a restriction. In other words, if a person has filed a harassment complaint under the Treasury Board harassment policy, that could become a relevant factor in deciding whether or not to investigate. This falls under the commissioner's discretion.
There may be valid reasons why we would investigate something, even though there's a harassment investigation taking place. Maybe the person is absolutely not satisfied, or, as we've seen in our recent case involving the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, three serious harassment complaints were not properly dealt with, so we investigated them.
Treasury Board harassment policy is a viable option and in fact a logical option. Under the Treasury Board policy, continued harassment—in other words, retaliation—is also a form of harassment, so the person is protected.
I want to say at this point—and I'm jumping a little bit ahead of myself, but I think this is a good opportunity—that we consider the making of a harassment complaint internally as a form of protected disclosure.
This means, in other words, the person comes to us for the purpose of reporting reprisals and says, “I'm suffering reprisals; this is happening to me.” We ask the person, “Did you make a protected disclosure?” and the person says, “I reported harassment against myself.” We consider that to be a case of protected disclosure because harassment, in our view, is a breach of a code of conduct.
At the admissibility analysis stage of a reprisal complaint, we don't ask ourselves whether it was or was not serious. We say, tell us more about your harassment. For the purpose of reprisal protection, a harassment complaint is deemed to be a protected disclosure.