Madam Speaker, when the bill was last read in the House of Commons, I spoke very strongly in favour of it, with some suggestions for committee to look at. It is very important for us to have a framework by which we combat harassment. It is certainly a pressing need in Parliament.
I continue to take that position. For members in this place, I would like to offer some thoughts on how the bill could continue to be improved. For colleagues in the other place, should the bill be passed there, perhaps its committee could look at these.
This is a difficult topic to talk about, but the whole concept of what happens with a vexatious complaint is not adequately dealt with in the bill. Many private sector companies or organizations that the bill would not cover will have policies on disciplinary action if somebody makes a complaint and it is found to be vexatious. This is a very difficult conversation to have because I in no way want to make it seem as though people who make complaints through this process do so for anything other than to protect their rights.
However, given the atmosphere that we work in, and there is a political element to this, in order to protect people and encourage people to stand up for their rights, there also has to be a framework in which people understand the gravity of making such a complaint, especially if they do it for vexatious purposes. There is nothing in the bill right now that talks about what happens should a complaint be found to be vexatious, and that concerns me. It is also difficult to train people on what that means if we have not discussed that at the committee stage.
I am trying to present this concept in a way that acknowledges that oftentimes when victims report sexual harassment, they will be accused of making it as a vexatious complaint. It is this double-edged sword that I do not think we have quite gotten right. Indeed, we have seen incidences recently of colleagues who have cases litigated in the media and that concerns me. It concerns me for people who might say they do not want to get involved in this because they do not want to have to go through the process, that it seems away too stressful. I also am concerned about colleagues, of all political stripes, who perhaps are being targeted unjustly. I do not think that is yet in the bill and I hope that either this place or the other place considers that as we go forward.
The other thing I am not clear on, even with the amendments, is what defines “consent” in this situation. The bill talks about the definitions of “harassment” and “violence”, but it does not really address what consensual activity is, especially when it comes to sexual activity, in the context of our workplace. That lack of a definition will make it difficult for trainers to say that these are situations the code suggests are improper and these are situations by which they can make the situation proper.
Again, I want to qualify my comments by saying I am in no way, in any shape or form, saying that harassment should be tolerated in any situation. However, in my training, I found that the situations that were given based on this definition were very vague and subjective and could be interpreted differently based on different cultural backgrounds or if people had worked in different workplaces.
This is the beauty of the House of Commons. We do have different backgrounds and situations here, and that diversity should reflect better legislation. However, especially given that if I am speaking specifically to Parliament, our workplace turns over, at a minimum, every four years. Therefore, if we do not have a framework that talks about consent, it will be very difficult, both for investigators and for trainers, to have a quantitative, definable way to discern what is appropriate and what is not appropriate behaviour in here. I wonder if that notion could have been expanded a bit more in the bill. I know it is difficult, but is worth talking about that.
The other thing that I wanted to mention was that we talk about harassment and the bill talks about punishment for that, but it does not really talk about the fact that what somebody might consider harassment, another person might consider typical workplace behaviour, depending on where they come from.
Again, I do not want to make excuses for somebody who is a harasser—that is the last thing I want to do—but what I would like to say is that perhaps all of us, our political parties, and Parliament itself need to think about providing management and leadership training to people who have not been in that situation before. Somebody who has worked in a very small, highly stressful group situation might think that communicating in certain way to team members is appropriate, but if they are ported here or to another organization, that behaviour is not going to translate.
When we come here as new members, we are kind of given O'Brien and Bosc and are told to be on our way. I often wonder if there is something that we could do or put in place to give people who have never managed staff before a bit of a leg up on understanding what is common practice.
I know this might sound like really common sense stuff to the average Canadian, who might ask, “Don't you know how to treat somebody appropriately?”, but the way I take harassment as it is defined in the bill is that it is in the eye of the beholder, and then we need to have that level of training, as my colleague said about the importance of education.
I also think that a more difficult conversation to have is that of resiliency. This is a highly stressful workplace where we are making decisions on the fly and emotions get tense. I realize it is incumbent upon each of us to treat one another like human beings, but at the same time, there are going to be situations in which we have to make decisions quickly and somebody might not be consulted. There is this intensity to our work here.
For these reasons, we also have to have a conversation about what resiliency looks like in that situation, so that time after time we could have a common understanding on what the culture of this place looks like that could be turned over to new people.
I think that true cultural change is only going to happen if we talk about these very difficult and sort of intangible things. Right now we have a good start on a framework in this place, but there is a lot of subjectivity to how it is being applied. I just worry that we are going to have a lack of consistency. I worry about the ability of people to use it functionally. I certainly hope my colleagues will consider this as we go forward.
The last thing I want to speak about is that broader cultural change. As I am sure happens with other colleagues here, especially female colleagues, once a week I will get a call from media asking if I would like to comment on something. This week, for example, it was on the Premier of Alberta receiving death threats, which is completely wrong and completely disgusting. I condemn that.
However, there needs to be a broader cultural change in our country to not accept this type of behaviour within the political discourse writ large. I think we are all guilty of it from time to time, but certainly when it comes to violence and threats of rape, I am just tired of talking about that. I said that in my first speech. I have a lot of things that I want to talk about, that I want to use my voice for, and I find that week after week it is media request after media request to talk about how I feel as a woman in politics about this or how I feel about that.
I am just so tired of how we are not talking about the issues. Certainly I have a role and we all have a role to ensure that we have a healthy work environment here, but there needs to be a broader cultural change. This bill will not fix all of that. I think it will provide a framework in which we will operate, but I want to impart to colleagues that this bill is not the be-all and end-all. Yes, we had to start somewhere, but I think there are going to be some bumps along the road, as we have seen with colleagues in this place over the last couple of months, to be perfectly frank.
Those are my thoughts. I do not think we have adequately addressed the vexatious complaints issue, I do not think we have talked about consent, and I do not think we have talked about training, either in terms of how to be a good manager or in terms of how to ensure that we have resiliency when we are here.
To me, that would be the next iteration of this conversation. It would be to ensure that we are creating a broader cultural change as we move forward.