I can, but I would just preface that if this committee wants more direct testimony on that issue, I'm pleased to advise this committee that Ms. R. is prepared to appear before the Status of Women committee in camera and respond to your direct questions.
But in any case, Ms. R.—and of course I identify her this way for confidentiality reasons—is a detachment-level employee in British Columbia who experienced incidents of sexual harassment and brought them to the attention of her supervisors, who chose to deal with the matter via a code of conduct investigation rather than a sexual harassment investigation.
Quite frankly, that has always been the core of the problem for public servants, that it's not a problem dealing with public servant to public servant harassment complaints, and we don't have any mandate to speak about regular member to regular member complaints because we don't represent regular members. But the problem has always been, how do you deal with complaints where the respondent and the complainant are variously a public servant and a regular member?
In any case, the complaint was filed and an investigation was conducted. The member in question was, for want of a better term, disciplined in a very minor way, and then retaliated, leading to the filing of another complaint. This is the problem. It just got worse, and eventually Ms. R. became extremely ill. She was diagnosed with PTSD and had to go on workers compensation.
I know the RCMP came in and made their own presentation to this committee back in November, I noticed that their presentation deals very extensively with the costs of the after-effects of these types of issues. So you have a classic example here of where the improper handling of this file and the improper dealing by the RCMP with the respondent led to another complaint, led to illness, led to costs to the Province of B.C., led to costs to Canada, and led to costs to the RCMP, never mind all the personal costs to the individual.
Have I run out of time?