A lot of problems have been identified in dealing with the issue of sexual harassment in the federal workplace. Part of the problem is a lack of accurate statistical information. In a PSAC brief, for example, a suggestion was made that when we do our next public service employee survey, we clearly delineate a question concerning sexual harassment.
When Ms. Truppe raised a question earlier about informal, I mentioned that one of the problems is that essentially, the so-called solutions to these issues are being kept hidden. Too often in government departments, whether it be the RCMP or whatever, the resolution is buried in legalese and the complainant is essentially obliged to agree to a confidentiality agreement in order to obtain some form of redress to address the complaint. The consequence of this, of course, is that there's no statistical information for government departments at the end of the year so that they can say that they've had x number of sexual harassment files. The other problem is that this methodology for dealing with cases doesn't provide any assurance to co-workers who may have similar problems with respect to how their department or their government handles sexual harassment in the workplace. There's no way, for example, to advertise successes in dealing with sexual harassment.
In Donald Ray's case, for example.... I sit on the RCMP working group that's going to deal with a response to the changes as a consequence of Bill C-42. I pointed out to the RCMP regular member chair of that committee the other day two particular areas I thought we needed to deal with. One was that not just at the RCMP but throughout the federal government recognition needs to be given to applying the reasonable woman standard of assessing evidence when dealing with sexual harassment in gender discrimination files, rather than always looking at it through the optics of a man's eyes.
The other point I raised, in particular with the RCMP, is that you can't always focus on how we're going to change the way we deal with regular members in the RCMP. You have to have a corollary process that addresses the victims and the victimization. They've taken cognizance of both things.
At the end of the day, people like Donald Ray should be fired. If they were to be fired, and if that was a clear message that was pronounced in the media and within the department, I think it would embolden and provide courage and support to females who are being harassed to come forward with these issues. Until such time as the government and its various arms are prepared to take that step and deal with this issue in a concrete fashion, change will be very, very slow.