Thank you, Madame Morin.
Again, thank you to the committee for allowing me to appear by video conference, but I regret the difficulties that have occasioned for the committee.
To reiterate, I'm the chair of the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which is the body responsible for the interpretation and enforcement of part I of the Canada Labour Code. Part I deals with such matters as the acquisition and termination of bargaining rights, unfair labour practices, and the maintenance of activities that are essential for public health and safety in the event of a work stoppage.
Our duties mainly revolve around the relationships between unions and employers. It's very rare that we would have a case involving harassment or sexual harassment coming in front of the board. Those kinds of complaints may, and very rarely do, come to us peripherally, as part of a complaint against a union that would be filed under the duty of fair representation provision of the code. That section of the code requires unions to act in a manner that is not arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith with respect to their representation of the employees vis-à-vis their rights under a collective agreement.
I caused a study to be done of the jurisprudence of the board over the last dozen years or so. We were only able to find about 30 cases where an individual had complained about the way their union behaved with respect to allegations of sexual harassment. Interestingly enough, the majority of those complaints were from the harasser, who was complaining that the union didn't do enough to defend him or her against the allegations of harassment.
There are some cases where an individual who was harassed complained that the union wasn't doing enough to represent them, and of course those are the kinds of cases that the board would hear and determine.
As I said, though, it's very rare that we have any involvement whatsoever in the subject matter of your inquiry.
I'm quite prepared to take any questions you may have.