Thank you for that.
Just as I was appointed, actually, so in and around November, pre-existing cases and complaints of harassment and sexual harassment really bubbled up and attracted a lot of attention. My response and my strategy has been to first of all centralize the oversight of all of our harassment complaints. When I talk about harassment, that includes sexual harassment, but we also have other cases of harassment. Right now I think we have about 87 or 90 cases under review. From year to year we'll have maybe 130 cases, up to 150 in some years, of complaints of harassment, which include all variations of gender. We'll have male complaining against male—every variation.
One of the things we needed to do to demonstrate to Canadians that we were committed to having a respectful workplace was to assemble all of the complaints into the centre here and make sure that timelines were respected. One thing we've heard from some complainants was that they've made complaints and haven't heard anything, that things have taken a long time to get resolved.
By centralizing the oversight of the process, we've been able to make sure that timelines are being respected, that the complainants are being advised appropriately, that the people who are the subject of the complaints are also brought along. That goes to the process issue, but there are also the core behaviours that give rise in the first place to any sort of complaints. I had all of the commanding officers come to Ottawa, where we had a very special and pointed conversation about expectations around oversight of behaviours and leadership and accountability in the divisions.
I met with my SEC colleagues, the senior executive of the force, which includes all the deputy commissioners, and had that same sort of frank discussion. We recognized that there were opportunities to improve upon how we manage discipline and conduct in the organization, so we've taken some steps toward moving to improve that process.
I also had a meeting with the lead of the agency from the Status of Women. We've undertaken to do a gender-based audit of our workforce, which will essentially look at current practices and examine how.... The day I had that meeting with the head of that agency, we were looking at some of the paraphernalia in my office, including Mounties on horses and hands holding swords. She was quick to point out that they were all male hands and male Mounties on horses. It illustrates some of the challenges we have in terms of advancing the organization.
There are a couple more things that need to be done with respect to the sexual component of the harassment complaint. We've had a hard look at the number of women we have in senior positions in the organization. We're under-represented significantly. I think it's rather intuitive to know that if more women were at the senior decision-making level of the organization, we would have a more balanced approach to workplace issues and respectful workplace matters. I've increased the number of women that we're recruiting into the organization at depot. We had been aiming for a 30% representation in our intake. We've upped it to 35%, which is well beyond the labour market availability.
So those are just some of the things we've had to do.
