Status of Women Committee on Nov. 1st, 2012

[Geoff Bowlby]

It's up to the manager. If in this example you've got someone who is in charge of a complaints department who sees that the results from the survey show that there's a high degree of harassment within that part of the organization, they might discount that and say that this is the way the employees feel as a result of the nature of their job. Or they may not. They may see this as a problem and—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I apologize, but I must cut you off. Ms. Young's time is up. Thank you.

It is now Ms. Day's turn.

You have five minutes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

Continuing along the same lines as Ms. Young, I would like to know, from your statistics, how many people handle complaints, and how many of those say they feel harassed?

[Geoff Bowlby]

No, we didn't ask that specifically on the survey. “Do you deal with complaints on a regular basis?”: that could be an example of a question that we could ask, but we didn't.

You could get some clues from the survey, however. We did collect the information by department, by organizational unit, and by group and level of the employee. If you are in an organization that has a public face and you know what part of that organization has that public face, you could see, if you're responsible for that area—

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

On the flip side, then, you can say how many people—it appears on the site—handle complaints within a department. Out of 72,000 people, there has to be some percentage.

[Geoff Bowlby]

There aren't exact figures on that, but the survey does have elements that can give us an idea of how many people are responsible for complaints of that nature.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

The results are broken down by age and gender, and by other routine statistical categories. But was a gender-based analysis done?

[Geoff Bowlby]

Each department was provided with an analytical report. One was actually done by StatsCan but not as a part of my unit. I administer the survey. There is an analytical part of StatsCan that produced very nice reports for each department, and reports on each section of the survey. Each department would have received a report, for example, that showed their statistic on harassment.

I can't tell you exactly to what degree that information might have been cross-classified in the analysis with age or gender or any other factor that it could be, but it's certainly possible to produce those sorts of data.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

In response to a colleague's question, you said that military personnel were excluded from the survey.

Were other groups excluded as well, RCMP members, for example?

[Geoff Bowlby]

No, they were not excluded. The RCMP was included fully in the survey.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Any other exclusions?

[Geoff Bowlby]

The sorts of exclusions were people who were not at work during the time the survey was being run, people who are ministers' exempt staff, contractors working on behalf of the department within a department's premises. Those are the sorts of exclusions from the survey. It was quite broad in its targeting of employees within the federal government.

As I mentioned earlier, our definition of what was a department or agency did not include some of the crown corporations, for example. Really, the main focus was on the organizations where Treasury Board is the employer, as defined in the Financial Administration Act, schedules 1 and 4.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you. We see that—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

One minute left, Ms. Day.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

Since the short-form, not the long-form, census is now used, it calls into question Statistics Canada's figures. You said this was an internal survey. However, the budget cuts have become a real cause for concern among the public, especially when it comes to the quality of the data collected in order to fully understand the issues facing Canadians and as regards the advancement of knowledge.

Even though the internal survey of public servants doesn't fall within the scope of the census, I would like to know your opinion on the statistical risks associated with the significant decrease in funding for your activities and the risks directly tied to your activities.

[Geoff Bowlby]

On this particular survey there was no cut to funding from past cycles. It was sufficiently funded to run the census that I described. It will be up to the government to decide whether or not it wants to fund the next cycle in 2014, but the indication I have right now is that the client is very keen on running the survey once again in 2014.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you.

We will now go to Ms. James.

You have five minutes.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

May I ask how long I have?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Five minutes.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I have one particular question, and a number of my colleagues have touched on it. I've been trying to listen, but I'm not sure whether it was asked in its entirety. I know Ms. O'Neill Gordon asked whether there was a trend with areas that were left blank. You responded to that. My colleague across the way, the Honourable Madam Bennett, asked questions about departments, etc. But I am wondering if there was a trend with responses—so the numbers that were received or not received back—with regard to gender and also regions or areas within Canada.

[Geoff Bowlby]

Generally, no. We did look at the public service as a whole and how well distributed the responses were, and we saw no what would we call “risk of bias” in the data.

You would have a problem, to use an extreme example, where no women answered the survey and it was all done by men. You would only get the perceptions of men. You wouldn't get the perceptions of the whole of the public service.

We did not find that. We found our response to the survey to be proportional to what we knew were the characteristics of the public service.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Of the 300,000 employees that you sent the survey to, 211,000 responded, and there was nothing that stood out as being an issue in one particular area or department or region.

[Geoff Bowlby]

Absolutely not.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

My next question has to do with regard to the statistical information you provided on.... I believe it's on page 8 of the handout. Here's the question: “My department or agency works hard to create a workplace that prevents harassment.” There was also a question similar to that on discrimination. The percentages returned were 72% strongly agreed that was the case, and 77% strongly agreed that was the case.

Has this question been asked in the most recent three-year cycles?

[Geoff Bowlby]

Yes. It was introduced in 2002, so we have information for 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011, which is four cycles of the survey.