Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. It was a pleasure to work on this study with her and the other committee members. She is absolutely right: we need the government to show leadership so that we can change the culture and eradicate sexual harassment.
I am glad she raised a point that we heard about repeatedly during our study: retaliation can be the worst part.
We must learn from the examples people gave about departments that mishandled sexual harassment cases. We heard about people who had been harassed being punished, not those who did the harassing. That makes no sense. That has to change.
The RCMP harassment cases are shocking. Those who repeatedly committed sexual harassment were simply sent home for a few days or transferred to another posting. Unfortunately, there have been no punitive measures yet.
Over the past few months, we have started seeing some things that could deter people from sexually harassing co-workers. This is something concrete that we have to act on. We are asking the government to do so as soon as possible.