It's a very good question, and thank you for asking it. It's one of the things I wanted to address during the presentation.
The type of harassment is not asked in the 2011 PSES. It has not been asked in previous versions of the survey as well, although it was tested as possible content when we were preparing for the 2008 survey. This focus group testing that I described earlier is a process that we engage in at any time we run a survey.
That focus group testing showed that we could actually measure type of harassment. We proved then that we could do it.
The concern at the time was that any addition of any new questions could affect the time series, the comparability of the data from one year to the next. So the client at that time decided that they didn't want to risk that break in the series, in the history, with the addition of the type of harassment questions.
So the short answer is, yes, it could be done, and we would do it if it was asked of us by the client. But it hasn't been done for that reason: because we were concerned that the introduction of any questions could affect the other questions in that suite of questions on harassment.
There are two caveats to the fact that we did not ask it in the 2011 survey. We, in fact, did for one department, and that was the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, ACOA. We had a capacity to add up to five questions for any department that had department-specific concerns they wanted us to ask on the survey, and 13 departments said they were interested in such services. ACOA focused their five questions on the issue of harassment and discrimination within that organization.
A similar approach was taken in 2005 when the Public Service Commission had its supplementary questions for their organizations that were tagged with the public service employees union.