Status of Women Committee on Oct. 25th, 2012

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thanks.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Now we are going to go over to the official opposition's side.

Ms. Ashton, you have seven minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming back for more questions on this study.

Picking up on your last point, Mr. MacLeod, around the management accountability framework, you referenced the survey, but this survey doesn't have explicit references to sexual harassment. Is that...?

[Ross MacLeod]

No. As you'll recall from our last presentation, we did not have that in the last survey.

The question was about how we actually monitor departments, so that's one of our main tools for monitoring them. As I mentioned in the last presentation as well, we will be having a look at survey questions for the next round. We always adjust them from survey to survey to take account of new issues and so on, and that's one, obviously, that we would be having a look at.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

I know it came up last time, but I'm wondering why there isn't a question on sexual harassment.

[Ross MacLeod]

In doing a survey of that size, you're always facing a tension between how much you're looking for—how many questions you can ask—and your response rate, so we're always trying to balance the number of questions.

The news that led to the study of this committee wasn't that prominent at the time. We were actually designing the survey over a year ago. Given the evidence we'd had from previous discussions with departments, we didn't include it, but obviously, since the developments that have happened in the last year, we will be looking at that again.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

In the description of how the policy on sexual harassment is implemented, it was made clear that there is no shortage of information made available to department heads and HR departments, and no one can claim that the written tools to prevent harassment are not being made available.

However, given that the overall levels of harassment are very high, the 29% that was referenced, I wonder about accountability. How is the departmental duty to prevent harassment being made accountable?

Are there mechanisms in place to ensure that the tools are being used in every department and agency? On accountability and oversight, what is being done?

[Ross MacLeod]

I'll just mention that Treasury Board's role with respect to its policies is monitoring, not oversight, but we do have those tools in place to actually do that.

We have a continual conversation with the leads in departments who are in charge of making sure that the policy is implemented. Our senior officials here at TBS meet with them regularly.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

At the what? Sorry.

[Ross MacLeod]

At the Treasury Board Secretariat. We meet with them on a regular basis to ensure—and there's a series of communications that happens as well.

When the harassment policy was approved by Treasury Board, our communications went from deputies to heads of HR to the lead practitioners in the area of harassment prevention, and included messages to all staff and additional materials on the website. As I mentioned too, the feedback loop is really through the management accountability framework, as we know from the survey results.

Finally, if there were well-known and publicized incidents of harassment in organizations, we have the compliance framework to do a follow-up if we need to.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

You mentioned that Treasury Board doesn't have an oversight role. It seems to me that the 29% is significant. Well, it's frankly shocking.

Why couldn't we have somebody in charge of oversight?

[Ross MacLeod]

The deputy head responsibilities in the Financial Administration Act give them the responsibility for that, so it's really a legal matter.

We monitor all of our policies, and we find, generally speaking, that the monitoring activities are fairly effective at bringing issues as they arise to departments’ attention, leading to corrective action.

I should clarify too: it's a perception survey that we do, so this is people's perceptions of all types of harassment at work, from all sources. As Martine mentioned earlier, there is a formal process you go through to resolve harassment issues. Those become the documented cases of harassment. There is a step to take between the perception of harassment that's reported in the survey and the actual resolution of it. It's still a puzzle to us why there's such a big difference. We don't know yet.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

You have two minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

We talked last week about culture in the workplace. We've heard from various witnesses about cultures conducive to a safe and healthy workplace, one without harassment.

I wonder if Treasury Board is taking into consideration the current times we're in, with respect to the significant cuts made to the public service and the kind of work environment that it creates for public servants, and of course with special attention to potential harassment, but also perhaps the increased unwillingness of certain people to come forward with harassment allegations because of the fear of losing jobs that are being lost currently in certainly a much tighter and much more challenging environment in that workplace.

Is there any understanding of that situation with respect to harassment and perhaps a plan of action?

[Ross MacLeod]

On monitoring what's happening in the workplace, I'll note that the public service employee survey was taken as the final proposals were being submitted to the government in preparation for Budget 2012. We were in the middle of that process at the time. The overall results of the survey, with a couple of unfortunate exceptions, were very positive in terms of the work environment.

There was one other question that related to employees’ willingness to launch complaint processes. We found a rather high response rate in unwillingness to launch those, which I think is core to your question.

In the preparations the government made for the actual downsizing we've been through in the last—and I've been heavily involved with those as well. We took great care to ensure that the workplace was restored and cared for as much as possible during that. Personally, I know the deputy ministers were very concerned about that, and had made that a priority.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Is there—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Your time is up, Ms. Ashton. You are going to have to stop there.

Now we move back to the government side.

Ms. Ambler, you have seven minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both of you today for coming back to tell us a bit more.

My questions will centre around consultation and training. When you were here last week you mentioned that consultation with employees is used to implement the policy as part of the process. I'm wondering how this works, and if you find that employees often have good suggestions, good ideas. Maybe you could give us an example of a policy that has developed from a suggestion made by an employee.

[Ross MacLeod]

Sure. I think we can answer that question on two levels. I'll answer the first one in terms of how it related to the development of the policies, and I'll ask my colleague, Martine, to talk about the details of the policy, because there is a requirement for deputies to include bargaining agents in the discussion within their departments.

We went through several months of consultation with bargaining agents in developing the policy. Our staff paid great attention to the proposals they had made to us, and one that I know was included in the policy was allowing two routes for a complaint process related to harassment.

We had originally thought that putting it through this five-step process that we talked about would be a good way to do it because we thought this was very restorative of the workplace. The bargaining agents were very insistent that they wanted to use a normal grievance process as well. So we have two routes in there, and that was a specific item that we kept in response to their suggestions.

They felt that people would be a bit intimidated by the formal process. A grievance process is a little less onerous, so we left it in the policy in response to their suggestions.

I'll now turn to Martine to discuss how deputies should engage bargaining agents in the actual implementation of the policy.

[Martine Glandon]

Thanks.

Following some discussion with the bargaining agents, when they said they had some information and they knew which departments may be having a bit more difficulty going through the process and may need a bit more enhancement to their process, we added a policy requirement that says something like “Regularly consulting with bargaining agents, informal conflict resolution practitioners, and other stakeholders....”

In a sense, we're saying that when you deal with harassment, don't do it in a silo. You have other colleagues in different areas within your department; have a great discussion with them and see exactly what's underlying all that. Is it a specific manager, a specific person? Have a bigger picture.

We have a requirement for a deputy head to discuss with other stakeholders what's going on as well.

There is also a possibility under the monitoring and reporting requirement, whereby we are allowing for some focus groups, so we're getting more information about what's working well and what's not working so well, and with different stakeholders as well.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you.

I think also last week we did touch on the training aspect, in particular whose responsibility it is to train employees with regard to what's acceptable and what's not.

I'd like to hear more about the School of Public Service, the kinds of training they do and their relationship with other departments. Is the training available on demand, is it mandatory, and what courses are offered to deal with sexual harassment?

[Martine Glandon]

I guess the courses that are offered by the Canada School of Public Service are more about harassment in general than sexual harassment per se.

I can't find the names, but three courses are offering that right now. I believe one is on investigation and the others are on harassment.

Each department decides if those courses should be mandatory or not. It's up to the deputy head to decide what should be part of their training curriculum.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Are some of the courses for managers and some for the employees?

[Martine Glandon]

Yes.