Thank you kindly.
Thank you to our witnesses.
To be frank, the driver behind this study began with wanting to look into the egregious experiences brought forward by women in the RCMP. It was extended more broadly to sexual harassment in the federal workforce. But as we know, the stories brought forward by women RCMP members have gripped Canadians, and they have also had a general impact on how they view our national police force.
We've had few occasions to discuss what is going on, and unfortunately, today, we're not hearing from rank-and-file women members who would have experiences to share that reflect the harassment and discrimination they have faced. Certainly for us in the NDP, that is an omission, especially when our role as a committee is to bring forward recommendations on how things can be improved within the RCMP and, more broadly, in federal workforces.
On the public safety committee I also had the chance to work on Bill C-42. I just want to pause on that for a moment to say that I was shocked to know that Bill C-42 doesn't use the word “harassment” anywhere in the entire document, which I think to anybody is an indication of the.... I mean, if you don't actually name the problem, is it the elephant in the room? I know there's a reference to “incidents”, but certainly the words—“sexual harassment” particularly—that have been at the top of mind for so many Canadians aren't actually mentioned in Bill C-42.
The NDP initially said that we would support it, based on what we believed to be a true intent to modernize the RCMP and to deal with critical issues like sexual harassment. Unfortunately, we saw that it was lacking, and the amendments we put forward were not passed. Whether it was adding specifically to the RCMP Act mandatory harassment training for RCMP members, ensuring a fully independent civilian review body to investigate complaints against the RCMP, adding a provision to create a national civilian investigative body that would avoid police investigating police, and creating a more balanced human resource policy by removing some of the more draconian powers proposed for the RCMP commissioner, and by strengthening the External Review Committee in cases involving possible dismissal from the force—all of these amendments were not passed. We believe, therefore, that Bill C-42 is inadequate in dealing with a host of gaps, but, very predominantly, sexual harassment in the RCMP.
We've been made aware of the intention of dealing with sexual harassment, which is encouraging, but intention isn't enough. It's not as though these allegations came up in the last couple of years; they've been going on for a long time, and talk is not enough. We have also heard about the disincentive to women, and men as well, in joining the RCMP as a result of these allegations of harassment.
When we hear about intention—and certainly we believe training is important, but one of the recurring themes is of the culture in the workplace. Commissioner Paulson referred to it as well when he first came to speak with us a number of months ago. We've heard from other witnesses that when you have a highly hierarchical organization—like the RCMP, but others as well—and you don't have women in positions of power or women represented in an equitable manner, that creates a culture far more prone to harassment.
We've heard about the target to hire 35% more women, and you spoke a bit about how you're planning to do that. What is the timeline, and how solid is that target? We'd like to see 50% so that the RCMP actually reflects our population.
What are your solid timelines and goals, so we know when to look forward to that result?
