Madam Chair and members of the committee, good morning. We welcome this opportunity to appear.
Sexual harassment in the federal workplace is an important issue. We hope you'll find our practices at Canada Post serve as helpful examples of how to manage it. Our practices are an important part of our broader effort to create a workplace where people feel safe, respected, and productive.
First, for some context about our workplace, at Canada Post, not counting our subsidiaries such as Purolator, we employ about 65,000 people. This includes full-time, part-time, and term employees. Our people work in every community in Canada, including isolated posts and neighbourhoods of every kind. We have thousands of delivery agents who are on the street and at the doorstep. They have countless direct interactions with Canadians, as we deliver to more than 15 million addresses each business day. This context matters. While sexual harassment can occur in our workplace, it can also happen on the street.
Our commitment is to a safe, respectful, and fair workplace. We strive to achieve these things by focusing on a number of areas, such as: committed leadership; a focus on prevention, and when an incident occurs, responding promptly, appropriately, and effectively; the positive influence of a diverse workforce; the positive impact of training, which closely involves our unions; and the expertise of our human rights team, which has been recognized by both the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.
I will speak first to leadership, which sets the tone.
I've worked at Canada Post for more than 23 years, and I can assure you that our company does not tolerate sexual harassment. If any executive were to learn that a team leader had failed to take the right action in response to a complaint of sexual harassment, there would be consequences both for the team leader and for the employee who committed the harassment. Our policies don't merely exist on paper. We're not perfect, but we walk the walk.
Our leaders know that they're expected to uphold our corporate values. This is reinforced in our hiring, performance management, talent management, and training processes.
I speak with the confidence that comes from experience. I've been involved in decisions to fire people for serious violations of our no harassment policy. Our workforce is a microcosm of the Canadian population. As a result, unfortunately, some incidents do occur, but when they do, they're investigated and addressed. Depending on the circumstances, a range of consequences can apply. Some incidents are resolved with a frank conversation and warning, while others involve more in-depth intervention. For serious violations, nothing short of dismissing an employee is the right thing to do.
I'll now ask Amanda to speak to the diversity of our workforce, an overview of our no-harassment policy, how it's communicated and reinforced, and the vehicles for employees to speak up about harassment.