Currently, if someone were to make a complaint of harassment, the person would do so to either his or her supervisor or to the alleged harasser's supervisor. A couple of streams of activity would engage.
If it's alleged harassment against a regular member or a police officer, there's a question as to whether that alleged conduct constitutes a violation of our code of conduct. If it does, we often embark on an investigative sort of crime and punishment approach to the problem. The complainant is left standing there looking at the process and wondering what's happening. Very little effort, in some cases, is put towards modifying or rectifying the conflict in the workplace. That's the code of conduct approach, which is confusing for the complainant. People often get entrenched and locked into positions, and there's no room to go back and resolve the underlying conflict.
Meanwhile, we have tried to apply the Treasury Board's rules and policies to workplace harassment. They call for early recognition and engagement of the complainant, keeping the complainant apprised of what's going, and having proactive systems in the workplace to do all of these things.
These two streams of activities collide, and as a result, the complainant is often left unsatisfied. That's why, in some of the literature, you will see people saying that they don't have confidence in the harassment complaint because it results in a big, protracted investigative effort to find evidence. There's more downside to it than what I just described.
In the new process, we intend to use a process. In fact, the legislation calls for me to deploy an early conflict management system in the workplace, as we are already beginning to do in some workplaces, to address instances of conflict immediately. Where there are complaints, we will apply an improved version of the Treasury Board guidelines to keep the complainant involved and keep the complainant apprised, and we will not allow the code of conduct to interfere with the proper management of the complaint.