Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate Bill C-65 in the House today. This bill represents a major step forward in enhancing the rights of victims of sexual harassment and violence.
I would like to begin my thanking my Conservative colleagues who sit on the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for their excellent work on this bill. They successfully brought in a number of changes to the bill. For instance, they proposed a change aimed at transferring certain powers from the Minister of Labour to the deputy minister, a non-partisan civil servant. This change ensures that there can be no appearance of political interference in an investigation into complaints of sexual harassment committed by a member of the House.
I have spoken before in this House about the #MeToo movement in general and its importance. It is a movement that has had a powerful impact. It has helped women who are survivors to see that they are not alone. It has helped many men who were previously unaware to gain a greater understanding of the all too common experience of harassment and violence that has affected the lives of many women. I have always believed that men need to seek to engage these conversations in a supportive way, especially in terms of talking to and challenging other men about their behaviour. We all need to be part of the solution.
Before getting elected, I had the honour of serving on the board of a local organization called Saffron, which provides public education programs aimed at prevention, as well as counselling and support to survivors. Saffron was obviously engaged with these issues long before the #MeToo movement but it has found a significant increase in the number of people coming to it for counselling ever since the movement began. This growth is the result of people coming forward to talk about historic trauma, events that have happened in their past, maybe even decades ago, that they had not felt ready or empowered to speak about even in private until the current moment. It is certainly positive that people are now feeling able to come forward and discuss things that have happened to them in the past.
There is one particular issue, perhaps challenge, that I want to discuss today with respect to the #MeToo movement. I read with interest some discussion in the news recently revisiting the actions of former U.S. president Bill Clinton with a former White House intern. Hillary Clinton told a CBS correspondent that the relationship between the most powerful person in the world and an intern did not constitute an abuse of power because the 22-year-old intern was an adult.
About the interaction itself, that intern, Monica Lewinsky, recently wrote an essay in Vanity Fair, and I want to quote a passage from it. She wrote:
Just four years ago, in an essay for this magazine, I wrote the following: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.” I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent. Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege. (Full stop.)
Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern. I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)
But it’s also complicated. Very, very complicated. The dictionary definition of “consent”? “To give permission for something to happen.” And yet what did the “something” mean in this instance, given the power dynamics, his position, and my age? Was the “something” just about crossing a line of sexual (and later emotional) intimacy? (An intimacy I wanted—with a 22-year-old’s limited understanding of the consequences.) He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better. He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.
I think this episode from American politics and the striking contrast between Hillary Clinton's words and Monica Lewinsky's words are important for our understanding of the #MeToo movement and the dynamics around harassment which can exist in the workplace. The continuing way in which this episode is regarded by many partisan Liberal progressives is, I think, important as well.
The #MeToo movement calls on us to set a new standard for behaviour, to demand women be treated with respect, and to hold those responsible for violence and/or harassment accountable. That standard of behaviour and the appropriate standard of evidence associated with accountability must be set in a consistent way. There ought not to be a Republican standard and a Democrat standard, a Conservative standard and a Liberal standard. There ought not to be a difference between a prime minister of Canada standard and a leader of the Ontario PC Party standard. There must be a human standard enforced in the same way in all cases.
Failure to apply an equivalent standard across parties allows any perpetrator to use political divisions and inconsistent application of standards as an excuse to avoid accountability. The infection of partisanship into the evaluation of cases very clearly risks weakening the universality of condemnation that should be associated with these kinds of abuses of power.
As an avowed partisan, I do understand the temptation to stand by one's man while firing arrows across the aisle. Standing with one's team is the instinctive human response, further enforced by the norms of our political system.
The #MeToo movement undoubtedly provides political parties with an opportunity to accuse their opponents and perhaps also even an excuse to purge unpopular people from their own ranks. We see elements of this as well of someone possibly being purged on the basis of allegations but also the same person having substantial policy disagreements with the leadership of the party.
Those of us who believe in the importance of this movement must ensure we resist the temptation to evaluate allegations through a partisan lens. This movement is too important for its impact to be lost in partisan rancour. That is true on either side of the border.
As with Bill Clinton, we also had a case here in Canada where a powerful self-identified progressive and feminist leader faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct. It has been alleged, and we have talked about this in the House, that the Prime Minister was involved in the past in a “groping” incident. This allegation was made against the Prime Minister before he had entered politics. Those who talk about believing women and believing these allegations need to consider it seriously and seek to put aside their partisan hats when they make those evaluations.
In response to these allegations, the Prime Minister has said that people can experience things differently. That is perplexing, in so far as it is true people can have a different response to the same events, but events are events. In the question of appropriate behaviour, there is a subjective as well as an objective element in harassment. Certainly, the word “groping” being used in the editorial implies very strongly the crossing of an objective line.
I do wonder parenthetically what the response of my friends on the left would have been if Justice Brett Kavanaugh had said in response to allegations against him that people experience things differently. As well, the response from members of this House is interesting. The minister responsible for bringing forward this legislation, the former minister for the status of women, had the following to say about the Prime Minister's response to these events:
I'm actually proud of a prime minister that understands that you can believe that you didn't have negative interactions with someone—I think we can think about this in all kinds of different situations—and find out later that someone perceived that interaction in a completely different way, and reflect on how our behaviour and the way that we make our way in the world impacts other people.
Of course, we should consider how certain things can affect the subjective experience of others, but there is an objective element to inappropriate behaviour. There are things a person ought not do to another person and ought to know, and yet we have the former status of women minister standing up for the Prime Minister in this context. I would have thought that the role of the minister for the status of women would be to speak to the Prime Minister and cabinet on behalf of women, not to be defending the Prime Minister's action in every case, including in allegations of inappropriate action toward women.
The #MeToo movement responds to a reality that some men, who have often enjoyed disproportionate power and prestige in the workplace, take advantage of their position at the expense of women. It should trouble us then if the way in which the adjudication and debate about #MeToo allegations works out in practice is to make examples of some men while still allowing some of the most privileged and self-identified progressives to escape being held accountable. These are serious challenges that we must face up to as we go forward.