First of all, I'd try to make it compliant with the law. The first thing is that the policy gives unilateral authority to a manager to determine how it will proceed, and the law doesn't. The law makes it absolutely clear. HRSDC has, in fact, issued directions to many employers when managers have taken that role upon themselves, but Treasury Board didn't have anybody at the table who understood the Canada Labour Code when they were drafting their policy. That's where that went off the rails.
In terms of following the procedures coming under the Canada Labour Code and the section on violence, the advantage would be that it's not complaint driven, so it's as soon as they're aware. That means even if the victim is too intimidated, somebody else can raise the issue and have it dealt with.
The investigation itself has required visible impartiality: the investigator is required to be seen as impartial by the parties.
As to the scope and depth of the investigation, they get to root cause. That's the only way you will ever get long-term prevention, by identifying what's going on in the system, what's going on at lower levels of management and supervision that allows these situations to evolve in the first place. Usually, if you just lop off the top where the problem is, it keeps happening. Anybody who has worked for a while in the public service can tell you about stories where managers two or three levels down, not necessarily through intent but just because of the managers' styles or the systems they have in place, allow these problems to flourish.
The investigation under the code gets to the cause of that, and is required to make recommendations about preventive measures. The investigations under other formats are not required to do that. They're required to make those preventive measure recommendations even when there's an informal resolution to the process.
Those are all positives. The other big difference is that when you go under policy, you have fences built around the investigation, not only in depth but in time. You're usually limited to a year back, and it's very difficult to build case history. Disciplinary letters disappear off a file after two years. One year is the cap that relates to the incidents you can investigate.
No such parameters exist under the Canada Labour Code. You go where the investigation takes you. In fact you're required to look at the history to figure out what's actually going on.
It's a whole new world, and I think there are all kinds of very positive possibilities. It has only been in place for a couple of years. There will be a learning curve, but the faster we get there, the better for all, I think.