Status of Women Committee on April 18th, 2013

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Are the members of that committee experts in sexual harassment toward women?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

They're mostly HR professionals who, of course, study this type of activity. They're really in touch with what's going on across the workforce, particularly when they cover the Ontario public service, which of course numbers thousands and thousands more employees in addition to the OPP. They certainly become more of a centre of knowledge for us than the average manager or supervisor in the organization, because they hear and see it all from across the public service. They know what's happening out there, what the trends are. If we needed to do something or communicate something because of some trend they're seeing, whether it be in the public service or the within the OPP, then they're on it and can communicate that quickly and try to prevent that sort of activity from occurring.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

How often does the committee handle situations that include harassment or violence toward women? Do you have any statistics on that?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

I don't have statistics on that committee in terms of what they have seen or recognized, or how often. I do know, just from my role as commissioner, that there are no glaring systemic issues out there. There are one-offs, and with 9,000 employees, to have 10 to 15 complaints of that nature a year....

One is too many, but for the ones we do have, I know they are very swiftly and appropriately dealt with. If the complainant is not happy, then he or she—often she in the vast majority of cases—has the ability to take that further, to either go to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, or put in a grievance through their bargaining group.

I really can't say that any serious issues have occurred in the OPP in recent years. There were more some years back, and we demoted some very senior people right back to the bottom of the organization in terms of their rank over some of these issues. That sent a shock wave through the organization, because people realized, wow, from a senior leader perspective, they were back to being a constable. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from having that properly communicated. Without naming names, those situations became very public in the organization.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you.

You spoke about dealing with cases in a reasonable time period. What do you think a reasonable time period is?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

It depends on the circumstances. There's a variety of factors there. We certainly try to resolve these within two months, but we often don't. Sometimes there are issues around investigation and interviews and things like that. Generally speaking, though, the vast majority of ours are resolved without it going to any kind of a hearing or a tribunal. There's alternative dispute resolution, or some action such as a supervisor actually moved to another area because he or she created a poisoned environment for an employee. We're not going to move the employee unless he or she wants to be moved. Sometimes the supervisor is moved. Everything's documented, and they are dealt with, but not necessarily are they brought before a discipline tribunal and maybe lose pay or rank, depending on the severity of it.

Our respectful workplace committee and our WDHP liaison officers deal regularly with our professional standards bureau, the ones who really deal with more serious discipline issues. Some of the previous witnesses described grey areas, and we have them too: is this full discipline or can this be resolved? Often that's at the choice of the complainant, but they do have the dialogue, and they make sure they are singing from the same song sheet, so to speak, in terms of how they are going to address these things.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you.

You said that about 33% of new recruits are women.

Do you know what percentage of these women belong to ethnic minorities?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

I don't have that figure, but about 20% of the OPP is female on the uniform side. About 60% of our civilian staff are females. Those jobs are more administrative, where there are steady days, weekends off, and not shift work. It includes lab assistance and a variety of other things. I do not have before me the statistics, and I don't even know about the other visible minorities—

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

Well, some of that is the self-disclosure issue. Do certain members, male or female, want to disclose their heritage or things that maybe aren't necessarily visible? We don't basically go and around and check boxes off, i.e., someone's of a certain colour or a certain religion. We don't do that. We don't keep those kinds of statistics. Male and female is easier to track, but we don't have those other statistics.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Do you have any statistics about women in executive positions, who are higher in the ranks?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

Yes. For the higher ranks, the commissioned officer rank, inspector up to commissioner, I don't have the number right in front of me. I did mention it earlier. It's in the material I provided to the clerk. I believe it's something like 14% versus 20% overall in the organization.

For example, we have four deputy commissioners and one is female. We have x number of chief superintendents and so many are female. To get to those levels, you often have 25 to 30 years of experience. Given that at one time we hired a few women a year, and then more a year, a generation.... Some from 1974 have retired, or the vast majority have, but that bubble is getting bigger.

As time goes on, as those females are getting up into more experience and years in the organization, they are starting to emerge more and more at the higher levels. Our previous commissioner, two back, was female. That was Gwen Boniface. We've had a number of deputy commissioners who have been female.

Other than that, it's hard to give you any definitive statistics on top of what I have presented.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Commissioner. We'll now move over to Ms. Bateman.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, sir. I really have appreciated your comments and I have particularly appreciated your responses. You're clearly an organization that's taking this issue seriously. I have a list of questions that I'm going to start on, but I want to follow up on one of your responses first.

You said if a person has harassed someone, ultimately you will demote.That's very impressive, and you said that this has in fact happened in your organization.

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

It has happened, yes.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I think of all the unions we're dealing with in the public service of Canada where if a person at the EX-3 level offends, they still get paid at the EX-3 level. What are the logistics for you to actually demote somebody who offends in that way?

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

It's been a number of years since we did it. I know two individuals personally who were involved. One was an inspector and was demoted all the way to sergeant. Another was a staff sergeant.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Did that include his pay? He wasn't just red circled.

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

Yes, he was red circled. They didn't suddenly lose $30,000 a year in either case. They were red circled at their current rate, but their position then was at a lower level, so they were no longer managers, no longer supervisors. They were put in positions where they were working alongside people who they used to supervise.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That's a real way to change things.

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

We haven't had any recent cases so there's no kind of legal precedent in terms of appeals of that. I don't know what the processes were back then in terms of whether they appealed it or just accepted it. It would be interesting to see if we did it in the current day how that would legally proceed through different tribunals and adjudicators, but I'm proud to say that we haven't had to do it because we haven't had that serious issue.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Once you do that once or twice I don't think—

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

It certainly sent a real shock wave. One day you're wearing a white shirt and you're in charge of a pile of people and the next day you're not. It showed we're willing to hold everybody to the same standard not just the people in lower ranks.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That's outstanding. I think that is something we have to examine closely at this committee if we want to effect real change in the workplace that we're doing this investigation on.

Another one of your responses was about this two-year period where you can be a bad person, get documented, and then suddenly your slate is wiped clean. In the federal public service that becomes a problem, and of course our study is on the federal public service. It becomes a real problem because there's so much churn, as they say, especially in the national capital region. People just hop jobs so they can absolutely have unacceptable behaviour and in two years they're cleansed, they move on, and they get a promotion.

You said that you keep the statistics in perpetuity, but this is in Joe Smith's file and it's on the file for two years that he had to be spoken to--

[Commr Chris D. Lewis]

That's right.