Status of Women Committee on Feb. 26th, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

A very quick question, please.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

What makes the RCMP think they're any different?

[Ian McPhail]

I may have misunderstood your question. Very definitely, there needs to be external review of the RCMP's actions. When I answered the question, I was thinking of the conduct of the specific investigations into specific harassment complaints. External review is necessary to determine how effectively those are conducted.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much.

[Ian McPhail]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you.

Ms. Ambler, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here today. We appreciate it.

My question is on recommendation 11, and specifically data collection. Ms. O'Neill Gordon's last question had to do with that, and I noticed that you were a little rushed in your response. You talked about accessibility and how important it was for the public to be able to access the findings of the data collected.

Since this is a relatively new thing, having started in 2011, I also want to know how you're doing it. What kind of data are important for you to collect? Are you collecting data about the complainants and the departments this is happening in? I want to know what kinds of questions are being asked.

How detailed is the information coming in? How will that ultimately help the way it's collected and accessed?

[Ian McPhail]

Ms. Inman led the team of investigators and is very familiarity with the data, so I'm going to ask her to respond to that particular question.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you. Please go ahead.

[Lisa-Marie Inman, Director, Reviews and Investigations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Public Complaints Commission]

Just to clarify, I wasn't sure whether you were referring to how we're collecting data on an ongoing basis, how the RCMP collects data, or how we collected data for this investigation.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I'm more concerned with how it will be done going forward.

[Lisa-Marie Inman]

Okay.

The recommendation we made was directed at the RCMP. The commission itself won't be collecting RCMP data on an ongoing basis, although, as Mr. McPhail mentioned, it will be open to the commission or the future commission to go in and do a specified activities review or a systematic review, at that point, on how the RCMP is doing with its harassment commitments.

Going forward, with respect to the RCMP's data collection, we're suggesting having a centralized system that collects all the data, basically relating to what's currently there, so that it's brought into the centre. By that we mean data about the complainant, what type of issue it is, what the allegations are, what resolution is sought and, most importantly, what ends up happening with the complaints, what steps were followed throughout, and how it was eventually resolved, as well as any details of the investigation.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you.

Do you think that the process as it develops into the system that we will have—which I believe will be more comprehensive than it used to be—will add credibility and lead to the independence that Mr. McPhail talked about? Do you believe there's a direct correlation?

[Lisa-Marie Inman]

Our thinking was that when you're able to point to a meaningful set of data that you can be sure is consistently collected and is valid, and you can show what the problem is and how you're dealing with it, that builds credibility in the organization's ability to deal with the issues it faces. We're hoping that this recommendation will contribute to the organization having more credibility among employees in how it is dealing with the issues they bring forward.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Sure. And ultimately it will help indirectly, as well, in that people suffering from harassment will feel more comfortable if they can see the numbers that are being dealt with.

[Lisa-Marie Inman]

That's the goal.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's good.

Your investigation revealed there were 718 complaints over five years. It was interesting to see that the 4% classified as sexual harassment is consistent with what we've been hearing from other federal departments. Their numbers are more akin to 3%. But I'm not sure—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Ms. Ambler, your five-minute period is over.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Really? I was going to get to the systemic issue and whether.... Actually, it's been covered a fair bit, but the witness talked about it being a systemic issue, but—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I am going to have to cut you off, Ms. Ambler.

We will now turn to Ms. Day. You have five minutes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming here today.

My first question is for Ms. Inman.

You are the director of complaints. As a result, you receive complaints. A short while ago, we heard Mr. Paulson, the RCMP Commissioner, testify before the Standing Committee on Public Safety. He stated that he did not believe women were afraid to file a complaint.

Ms. Inman, since you receive complaints, could you tell me whether women are indeed afraid to file a complaint? In addition, if they do contact you, do they ever decide not to go any further out of fear? Have you seen any evidence of that?

[Lisa-Marie Inman]

Thank you for your question.

In my current role at the commission, I don't actually receive complaints. I'm the director of reviews. I'm in charge of complaint reviews when people are dissatisfied with the first resolution of their complaint by the RCMP.

As far as your question is concerned about whether or not women are afraid to come forward to report harassment—and tell me if I'm misphrasing this—while that has come up anecdotally and I'd say that it's likely true, there was no way in our investigation to say what the exact extent of that was.

We had made a public submission process in the hope that people would come forward with their stories, if that is what they had experienced. The public submissions we received didn't actually go to that at all. As a result of what we acknowledged as likely under-reporting, we made the recommendations we did, in the hope that by making the system a bit more credible and robust and having a mechanism to deal with complaints about retaliation, more women, men, or whoever it might be who suffered harassment and were afraid to come forward would step up and be more comfortable in making a complaint.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. McPhail, 4% of complaints are related to sexual harassment. The report mentions that 44% of the 718 files are related to complaints made by women. It is about abuse of authority. I would call that abuse of power, which is illegal, in my opinion.

Of the other 40% that are not complaints due to sexual harassment, are there indicators that show that these complaints could be related to pornography or other elements that do not correspond exactly to the definition of sexual harassment, but in fact are? The definition of harassment is restrictive.

[Ian McPhail]

A number of good points have been raised here. One of the things that we did discover in our review of how other bodies define sexual harassment and harassment in general is that there's a variety of definitions. One of our recommendations in the report was that the RCMP adopt a more specific definition of harassment to give greater guidance on it, because the current more general definition results in inconsistent application.

But to get back to the specific numbers that we discovered, approximately 90% of the files we reviewed related to abuse of authority or bullying of one sort or another, and 4% dealt specifically with cases of sexual harassment. Could there be an overlap between those areas? Certainly, but that's what the actual files told us.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Since I have little time left, I will go quickly.

Mr. McPhail, you do not seem to have the same opinion as Mr. Paulson regarding systemic harassment within the RCMP. The word “systemic” refers to a system. That means discrimination and harassment caused by the system.

Could you put in place data collection that would reveal whether or not there is systemic harassment within the RCMP?