Thank you very much, Madam Chair. We're very pleased to be here today to help the committee with this important study.
Harassment in the workplace is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, regardless of its source. We know that it's important for the federal public service to maintain a productive, healthy, and respectful workplace where positive working relationships and practices are promoted. Indeed, the core values and ethics of the public sector explicitly include treating each other with respect and fairness.
Unfortunately, we know that harassment does still occur, and we have taken steps to prevent and respond to these situations by developing a policy on harassment prevention and resolution, a directive on the harassment complaint process, and several guides for departments, as well as by delivering awareness information sessions and training programs. We also offer formal and informal mechanisms to raise issues related to harassment.
Success in the practice of these values will foster a safe and healthy workplace, free from harassment. When allowed to persist, harassment has adverse effects on the mental health and engagement of employees and on the quality of their work.
In a complex and demanding work environment that brings together diverse people, and in which collaboration is essential to success, misunderstandings and interpersonal conflicts are inevitable. The organizational culture influences how colleagues interact with one another and must therefore promote awareness of practices such as good communication and effective interpersonal skills. The ongoing effort to demonstrate respect is everyone's personal responsibility.
The Canadian Human Rights Act provides that every person in the workplace has a right to freedom from harassment based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for which a pardon has been granted. These are referred to as prohibited grounds of discrimination. In addition, the act deems sexual harassment to be harassment on a prohibited ground.
The Canadian government has been a leader on policies dealing with harassment in the workplace, being the first employer to introduce a formal policy in 1982. Since 1982, the policy has been revised three times. On October 1, 2012, a renewed policy and a new directive were introduced. The new policy instruments give deputy heads the flexibility to tailor harassment prevention and resolution mechanisms and practices to their operational needs. The new policy instruments emphasize the need for organizations to restore the workplace following an allegation of harassment. They encourage greater use of informal resolution processes and put greater emphasis on the need for organizations to undertake preventive activities and achieve results in a manner that is both respectful to employees and supportive of a more collaborative approach between deputy heads, employees and bargaining agents on harassment prevention and resolution.
The renewed policy and directive continue to reflect the responsibility of deputy heads for establishing and maintaining a respectful and harassment-free workplace, for promptly resolving related complaints, and for monitoring complaints within their organizations.
Harassment prevention is tied to one of the public sector values, respect for people. The new Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector, which is a condition of employment, was introduced in April 2012, and it provides an opportunity for managers to reinforce the value of respectful relationships. And this is all the more important in times of downsizing. The Treasury Board Secretariat, through the development of its communication tools and dialogues with organizations, encourages a systemic approach which educates and incents respectful behaviour for all employees, in addition to providing awareness training on harassment.
The new Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector presents an opportunity for promotion of respect and development of related skills, mainly empathic listening, difficult conversations, emotional intelligence, and so forth, for all employees and especially managers.
The Treasury Board policy applies to the core public administration. The policy on harassment prevention and resolution includes sexual harassment as part of its definition of harassment.
Federal public servants have several mechanisms for making an allegation of sexual harassment. Formal mechanisms include filing a complaint of harassment in accordance with the policy on harassment prevention and resolution, filing a grievance, or filing a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Informal mechanisms include discussions with an informal conflict resolution practitioner or with an employee assistance program counsellor.
Through the Treasury Board Secretariat website, several guides and tools are available to public servants, i.e., managers, employees, and persons responsible for the harassment complaint process in the field of harassment. Several courses are available through the joint learning program and through the Canada School of Public Service.
In addition to the Treasury Board policy on harassment prevention and resolution, some departments have developed their own internal policies and tools and are offering awareness sessions and training programs on harassment, so they're actually going further than the requirements of the policy.
I'll talk briefly about harassment statistics. In the 2011 public service employee survey, data regarding harassment indicate that public servants continue to signal a high incidence of perceived harassment, in that 29% of the 201,430 respondents believe that they have experienced harassment of some kind in a federal workplace within the last two years. The actual number of formally filed cases compared with the total number of federal government employees is relatively small. The survey results do not differentiate between sexual harassment and harassment of a personal nature.
The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat collected limited statistics on harassment of all kinds through the management accountability exercise in 2009-10. The 40 largest departments and agencies that participated reported a total of 314 harassment complaints and/or grievances between November 2009 and October 2010. Of the 314 cases, 77 were determined to be founded by the delegated managers of these organizations. The numbers provided through the MAF included harassment grievances and harassment complaints, which follow two different processes. Again, the results do not differentiate between sexual harassment and harassment of a general nature.
Thank you for your attention. We will now be pleased to take your questions.