Status of Women committee  They're not covered under part III, only under part II, occupational health and safety. For that, that's the violence prevention that encompasses sexual harassment but isn't specific to it.

Status of Women committee  It's actually the employees who can complain to us. If the employees are complaining to their employer, the employer, in setting up the policy, must provide an explicit explanation to employees of what to do if they encounter sexual harassment in the workplace. They would go to their employers.

Status of Women committee  I can't answer the question right now, because we don't actually have a repository of all of the employers' policies and policy statements. There are almost 10,000 employers, so you can imagine the nightmare this would create for us to keep those, and this is one regulation. We don't have that information in terms of being able to offer a comparator.

Status of Women committee  Under part II, yes.

Status of Women committee  We have this intervention model. This is under part II, occupational health and safety, the violence prevention regulations. We identify which ones are our high-risk industries. We identify those through an analysis of data in terms of which sector, rather than employer-specific, has the most hazardous occurrences or the most fatalities, in that sort of scope.

Status of Women committee  I don't think that's safe to say. You may not have an inspection this year—

Status of Women committee  Those sectors are defined as high risk not specifically to sexual harassment. We don't have an identification of high risk based on sexual harassment because we don't collect data on that.

Status of Women committee  For the high-risk industries?

Status of Women committee  Right. Again, even though we are HRSDC, the labour program also regulates HRSDC, the same way it would regulate any other federal department. In that respect, we would take the same role vis-à-vis our own department. The department is responsible for ensuring that they comply with the elements of the code, which means that they have to have a policy with respect to violence in the workplace.

Status of Women committee  We provide a definition of “sexual harassment” under part III of the code. The employer's policy has to be aligned with that. Although there might be some nuances from employer to employer, they have to be aligned with what's in the code. That's the safeguard, if you will, in that respect.

Status of Women committee  That's part of the follow-up we do, as I mentioned earlier. We will do a proactive follow-up. It's what we call the inspections. We go into the workplace and ensure that the employers are compliant with the requirements of the code. We can go into the workplace and look at a variety of things.

Status of Women committee  Because we don't collect data specifically about sexual harassment, we're not able to provide you with that information. The data collection we have is specific to what our intervention activities are. If we go into a business or workplace to do an inspection or an investigation, we'll record that.

Status of Women committee  Our mandate under both part II and part III is very specific. We keep data that is in line with what we're mandated to do under the legislation. We have data on the number of occurrences where we've been pulled in. An important point of clarification is that we provide the legislative and regulatory framework, and we provide the education and counselling, but it's up to the employers to ensure that they adhere to the code.

Status of Women committee  Unfortunately, as the labour program, we are the regulator. That information falls within the purview of the employers. You mentioned specifically the public service cuts. Treasury Board Secretariat, as the employer of all public servants, would be in a better position to answer that question.

Status of Women committee  To refresh, yes.