Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on Bill C-451, an act to prevent psychological harassment in the workplace and to amend the Canada Labour Code.
The member has identified an issue that is also of deep concern to us on this side of the House. Violence in the workplace, how to identify it, how to control it and how to respond to it when it does occur, is a policy area that the Minister of Labour and her officials in the labour program are engaged in very closely.
Some recent high-profile cases have drawn public attention to the issues related to workplace safety and have highlighted the importance of having appropriate legislation and procedures in place to protect employees from harmful situations.
Naturally we are concerned when events occur that put workers at an unusual risk, and we are firmly committed to responding to these kinds of situations with all means at our disposal, but creating a healthy and safe work environment where all employees are treated with respect and dignity all of the time is among the most fundamental objectives of this government. Workplace safety is a matter of ongoing interest to this government and we are working on it on a number of fronts.
In this context, the Canada Labour Code is one of the key instruments available to us. As members of this House will recall, there are three parts to the Canada Labour Code. Part I deals with industrial relations matters such as work stoppages, arbitration, conciliation and so on. Part II deals with workplace health and safety and matters like workplace violence and harassment, including the issue of psychological harassment that Bill C-451 raises. Part III deals with workplace standards such as vacation entitlements, family benefits like maternity leave and so on.
A few years ago, when this House approved changes to part II of the Canada Labour Code, the part that deals with workplace health and safety, the changes included the authority to introduce regulations that would require employers to “prevent and protect against violence in the workplace”.
As a follow-up to that change, a working group, including representatives of the public service unions and the Treasury Board secretariat, was set up to study the situation and to make recommendations to the Minister of Labour on regulations that would give substance to that authority.
The working group drew its members from three sources: representatives of employers in the federal jurisdiction, representatives of employees, and officials of the federal labour program. In other words, its membership is drawn from all three stakeholder groups in the federal jurisdiction. In fact, the group is called the tripartite working group to reflect its representation from all three parties in the federal jurisdiction.
The working group has met a number of times. Much of their early discussion revolved around the physical aspects of workplace violence, but their discussions eventually broadened out to include the psychological dimension of violence in the workplace too. This means that the expert working group has been studying and discussing the very same issue, psychological harassment, that Bill C-451 is raising.
It is interesting to note that the working group is looking at this issue as it relates to part II of the code, the health and safety perspective, but Bill C-451 asks us to amend part III of the code, the part that deals with workplace standards, not health and safety issues.
Since other experts see this as a health and safety issue, and since the House already agreed to deal with the issue of workplace violence under part II of the code when the act was last amended, it does not make sense to start to confuse the issue by bringing it in under part III, as Bill C-451 asks us to do. Moreover, it is part II of the Canada Labour Code that applies to the federal public service, the target group of this bill, not part III.
Instead, the Public Service of Canada falls under Treasury Board policies on workplace harassment. In fact, Treasury Board introduced this policy to protect its employees from harassment more than 20 years ago. At that time it was the first employer in Canada to include personal harassment and abuse of authority as forms of harassment in its policy.
That policy was updated in 2001 when a revised policy on prevention and resolution of workplace harassment was announced. The updated policy defines harassment as “any improper conduct by an individual that is directed at and offensive to another person or persons in the workplace, and that the individual knew, or ought to reasonably have known, would cause offence or harm”.
The policy goes on to describe any objectionable act, comment or display that demeans, belittles, or causes personal humiliation or embarrassment, and any act of intimidation or threat as harassment. It also includes harassment within the meaning of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Therefore, the government is engaged on a number of fronts to address the issues that were raised by Bill C-451.
Another concern about the bill has to do with timing. Given the activities of the tripartite working group, as I have mentioned, and the expectation that the group will report to the minister soon, the timing is very bad for bringing forward a new bill.
The expert working group has been discussing the development of new regulations covering workplace violence for some time. These discussions have included consideration of the same issue and psychological harassment which are raised by Bill C-451.
Since this consultative group is expected to report in the near future, I personally want to wait to see what regulations are recommended to address the concerns that are raised by Bill C-451. It is also important to note that the Canada Labour Code is not the only vehicle the government has to address the issues like workplace harassment.
Another instrument is the Canadian Human Rights Act. This federal legislation is already in place to protect employees from discrimination or harassment because of their personal characteristics or beliefs and that applies to all workers under the federal jurisdiction in Canada.
Like others who follow the workplace issues closely, we have seen a growing concern about the potential for violence in the workplace over the past decade or so. There is now a much greater awareness about the potential for violence in the workplace and its impacts. We know that workplace violence can be psychological as well as physical, but whatever the form, it creates fear, stress and anxiety, and that is damaging to both individual employees and to the organizations.
Those of us on the government side are as concerned about the implications of these developments as anybody else.
The potential for physical and psychological abuse are of particular concern to the government. Federal labour program officials are actively engaged in a process to develop new regulations to deal with these issues.
I share the concerns of the member opposite. I know that we are equally interested in addressing them in a forthright manner; however, I cannot agree with either the substance of the approach being proposed in the bill, nor the timing.
Thus, while I support the underlying objective, I cannot support the bill.