Certainly.
You have to understand that Part II of the Canada Labour Code deals with prevention. Should employers or companies have a policy against harassment? Usually, it is one of the obligations that the legislation could require.
It could indicate in part whom to turn to if our problem comes from our superior or—I like this idea too—from our superior’s superior. For us, in situations where it is possible, you can go to a parity committee. Again, Part II deals with prevention. Once a complaint has been made, it is often too late. The workplace is already affected. The person making the complaint is affected, as is the person complained about. So the workplace needs to come to grips with it.
Often, in cases of harassment, violence or difficulty, people start to psychologize, to say that the person is bad and behaves badly. However, any reasonable person placed in an unhealthy climate, in a company where there is too much pressure, has the potential to develop unwelcome behaviour. So who is in a position to say so? The people in the situation, and they have to have a voice. Even in small companies, you know, there can be union-management committees, and, where there is no union, there can be employer-employee committees, company committees. That is our proposal.
We believe that they should also be dealing with any problems. The more prevention, the fewer complaints, the less clogged-up the process and, most importantly in my view, the fewer undesirable effects on the workplace.
This is perhaps less a prevention issue, but there is also the whole matter of dealing with complaints. Once the superiors have received a complaint, or the parity committee, if that is where they go, their obligations could also be specified in the legislation to an extent.
We talked about reprisals. It should be clearly indicated that one of the duties of an employer is to not issue reprisals against people exercising their rights, even, I would add, if the complaint is not necessarily well-founded.