Status of Women Committee on Oct. 25th, 2012

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Okay, that's good to know.

Last week we also talked about lack of respect and the culture. I think that was you, Mr. MacLeod. That lack of respect creates a culture of harassment or a culture in which harassment can happen. The problem is that it's tough to legislate respect. What can we do as a government, as the Treasury Board Secretariat, to help create that culture?

[Ross MacLeod]

I think it's absolutely correct that you can't do this through rules. What we tried to do with this policy and the new directive is back off the prescriptive rules as much as possible and encourage and require departments to actually build that culture of respect.

Culture is a sometimes difficult thing to latch onto. You can recognize a healthy culture when you see it, and vice versa. That's why we think, before we even get into implementing the exact rules of this policy, it is important that deputies create a culture of respect in their departments. Culture starts at the top. It is really important to model it to ensure that people feel safe and can actually raise issues. The core of it is this respect of one human being for another that actually allows for that.

I don't know that there's a culture of harassment anywhere, but I think people read the signals around them, and are very good at doing that. That's really the core of it.

What we've tried to do is give deputies all the tools they need to do it. We're not necessarily prohibiting things and giving detailed directions. What we've tried to do is say that these are the tools that will help them provide this type of workplace in their own contexts. Some federal workplaces are quite difficult, such as correctional services, border services, and so on.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you.

Now Ms. Fry has the floor for seven minutes.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm just here for today, so I wasn't privy to all the questions you've asked and the answers that have been given. If I ask something that was already asked, can somebody tell me to shut up, because they know the answer? Now don't take that generically.

I am curious about a couple of things. One is the reluctance to report. We know why people are reluctant to report. There is a fear of recrimination, a fear of being fired, and a fear of ratcheting up of the harassment that's been going on.

You say that you want to make sure that people do not feel intimidated and that they feel they can come forward. But we have seen, in many instances, that when people do come forward, there are usually some underhanded ploys that are used. In other words, their credibility is impugned by somebody, somehow, in some leaked report. Suddenly we find things out about the person who is complaining.

It's not the overt intimidation I think people are afraid of. It's the covert intimidation in which their credibility is dismissed. We've seen that in cases of rape, where, of course, women are afraid because everyone said, well, you wore a short skirt and therefore....

This kind of credibility issue is an important one, and I think it comes to the level of a department itself, where the culture is such that people don't feel they have to be afraid. How do you create that culture in your department?

[Ross MacLeod]

Do you mean in the Treasury Board Secretariat itself?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Yes. How do you create that culture in departments as you set out certain guidelines for them?

[Ross MacLeod]

I really think it starts at the top in departments, and that's why deputy ministers are named in the policies.

There are a few other elements I should introduce. We introduced, on April 2, a new code of values and ethics for the public service. One of the elements is respect for people. It's written down, and the code is a condition of employment for all public servants in the public sector.

We have, as well, the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, which gives people quite strong legal protection in the case of disclosure of wrongdoing. And of course, this would be wrongdoing.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

That actually answers a question I was going to ask, which is whether you have a screening process when you hire. You have a code of ethics that creates a formula for looking at new hires.

If you're not going to only rely on people reporting after the fact, do you monitor the workplace at all? Do you have monitoring structures in place so that people can be aware constantly of watching behaviour around them? This would be managers, mostly, who would be in an area where they could watch behaviour. Is there such a monitoring-cum-prevention kind of situation going on? Are you building on that somehow?

[Ross MacLeod]

The federal government is the largest employer in the country, so we're quite huge. In the past there were attempts by the Treasury Board Secretariat and other central agencies to do fairly detailed monitoring of what departments did. It was largely unsuccessful because it's very hard for us to see deeply inside organizations. That's why we have relied on deputy heads to ensure that this happens. The check that we have on them is the monitoring that we actually do through the management accountability framework and other instruments we can use if there are issues.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

But deputy heads are not on the floor. When I was a minister, I knew deputy heads weren't on the floor. So how do you look at the on-the-floor behaviour? It's an ongoing environmental scan. How do you do that? Do you have managers who are asked to do that, which is what I was asking. I wasn't asking about the deputy heads—they're the last resort when people are worried or looking at the responses. What about the ongoing everyday management process?

[Ross MacLeod]

Many of them run very large organizations. The direction that we provided to them was very widely distributed, and managers and departments were encouraged to be aware of it. Heads of HR and lead practitioners for anti-harassment and values and ethics were also notified so that they could inform their departments. We evaluate departments yearly on the values and ethics element of the management accountability framework, and that's where these issues would reside. In cases where we were aware of issues coming up, we could also introduce additional measures to track what's going on. We think the key thing is creating the environment, and that starts with good knowledge on the part of managers. We've done our best to make sure they have that.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

In the case of harassment, especially sexual harassment, it isn't so much about respect. Rather, it's about someone using a position of authority in a particular way to intimidate. So the idea of sexual harassment is about a person with greater authority making people feel uncomfortable.

The thing about sexual harassment is that it doesn't have to result in an actual act. It can be based on the discomfort that someone can feel knowing that there are, for example, little overtures of inappropriate touching. Is there an early warning system, or does someone have to have a formal complaint saying something actually happened?

[Ross MacLeod]

We've graduated this approach so that people can deal with it quickly, and we encourage departments to deal with it quickly because harassment that's not dealt with is very damaging. There are a number of off-ramps that allow people to resolve matters quickly, so they're not locked into a year-long or a year-and-a-half-long process to deal with it. We're trying to encourage people to use the tools that are there to deal with things rapidly, so that they can effectively deal with the issues.

We know from the survey on alleged harassment that harassment comes from many directions. It's probably worth thinking about. It can come from people who are not superiors. That's just one thing we've noticed in the data. It's worth paying attention to the question in general.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

I know. Sometimes having authority doesn't mean being a superior person; it just means being bigger and much more intimidating, using a kind of physical authority.

Madam Chair, how am I doing?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

You have 10 seconds.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Will the new policy that you've written cover managers?

[Ross MacLeod]

Yes.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

And what will happen to non-represented employees? How will they be looked after in this new system? Currently, they're not represented by the unions.

[Ross MacLeod]

They still have full access to the protection of the policy.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

But they have only one stream of access.

[Ross MacLeod]

You can launch a grievance even if you're not unionized.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you. I am going to have to stop you there.

Ms. James now has the floor for five minutes.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to welcome back both of our witnesses today.

I have a question regarding Treasury Board policy. Is the policy we're discussing here today something the Treasury Board makes up, or does it flow from or is it governed by legislation?

[Ross MacLeod]

It's connected to a number of pieces of legislation, like the Financial Administration Act, which details many of the responsibilities of deputy ministers. It relates to the ethics code, for example—

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Is sexual harassment in the workplace under the umbrella of other legislation? I don't think you've come up with the policies yourself.