My understanding of the bill is that in legislation, every time it reads “participate in an investigation”, the code would be amended to say, “unless it is related to a complaint of harassment or violence”. That is not to say that committees are always or even in most cases the right people to lead the investigation, and that's not required now under the code. For “competent person”, in many cases, having that be an impartial, qualified third party who understands the legislation is important. When you talk about “participate”, that's a broad term.
It's making sure that they have the ability to look at the criteria for who that competent person should be and what skills they need to have, and what the essential components of a competent person's investigation are. We have all heard of terrible investigations where we get to the end of the process and that investigator has not spoken to the right people, not asked the right questions. Having the committee's input at that stage, in terms of participation, will be important so that we don't end up, at the end of the process, whereby the committee has had no input into that and they're given these very limited workplace recommendations to review without being able to impact the process.
Unless I'm misreading the bill, specifically excluding committees by saying they shall not participate doesn't allow the nuance that you need, I think, to be able to say that in a certain case the committee doesn't have the expertise, doesn't have the right skills, and isn't the right body to be leading the investigation. That's currently allowed. I would say the challenge is that, by completely excluding the committee, it doesn't allow you that nuance as you get into it down the road.