Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, which I may not have clearly understood. Was he talking about harassment complaints filed by RCMP employees?
Unfortunately, we found that the harassment of female RCMP officers by male officers is a major problem, and that female officers probably have some difficulty being heard and breaking the silence. Will the proposed legislation improve these people's lives? We doubt it.
Instead of giving this mandate to police forces, it would have been much wiser to create a civilian investigative body to deal with these issues, listen to female officers and investigate sexual harassment complaints. Female officers would probably be much more comfortable with this type of structure.
The establishment of a totally independent civilian investigative body would certainly have been more appropriate for dealing with this type of whistle-blowing and would have helped officers who may find it hard to report a fellow officer to do so confidentially.