Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to all honourable members seated around this table today. It is with pleasure that I present some thoughts to you today on Bill C-4 on behalf of FETCO. For those of you who are not aware, FETCO stands for Federally Regulated Employers - Tran

Human Resources committee  The latter, that it's more a partner. Speaking on behalf of the member organizations of FETCO, we are 18 members, firms, most of which are very large within the Canadian context, and most of which are heavily unionized, almost all in fact. These companies have long-standing sop

Human Resources committee  The legislation put us really in a tough spot because there were principles in the legislation. It shouldn't surprise anybody around this table that the employers within FETCO were supportive of employees having the right to a secret ballot to vote their own conscience on whether

Human Resources committee  As I noted in my presentation, the fundamental right we believe employees should have is the right to choose their union representation. Not unlike most decisions that are made in that context, these votes in the democratic system are done secretly where an individual has an oppo

Human Resources committee  That's a great question. That's really one of our fundamental points throughout this process when Bill C-525 was brought forward. We've been consistently making the same argument and that is that under the Canada Labour Code, for our employers in particular, we do have a rich and

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee, for having me here today. I'm pleased to be here to speak to you on behalf of FETCO about Bill C-65. By way of background, I should tell you that FETCO stands for Federally Regulated Employers—Transportation and Communications. That's a mo

Human Resources committee  The argument we've been making is that we believe the definition is more suitably placed in the regulations because they allow it to be updated as our understanding of this particular issue changes and evolves over time. The minister alluded to this in her comments when she tal

Human Resources committee  This bill is coming at the tail end of what we view to be a very positive consultation, and it's in the context of a broader, very positive, societal conversation around the issues of harassment and sexual harassment. That's all good. We've taken what was a one-line obligation un

Human Resources committee  Consistent with that, when I asked our member organizations about this, many were proud of the way they're handling it. It starts at the top. There is leadership involved. Offices that are handling complaints report directly into the CEO. There's a culture around the importance o

Human Resources committee  When we first started talking about the issue of sexual harassment in the federal sector in a tripartite way and we were considering what the alternative ways forward were, one of the options presented by the government was to take this clause in part III of the Canada Labour Cod

Human Resources committee  Yes, I think that is the most appropriate place to have that conversation. The experts, the stakeholders, can meet and go through what honestly is sometimes a painful process of fighting over words—ands and ors and buts—that matter at the end of the day. What we would end up with

Human Resources committee  I don't think that's necessarily so. I think what that clause is trying to get at is examples whereby the department can try to learn ways of doing its work better. It wants to launch a pilot project around the way it, for example, ensures compliance under the act or the associat

Human Resources committee  In that example, it would impose a burden in that particular place, yes.

Human Resources committee  I think the intention behind this clause is not to do as you've described but to ensure the department is doing its best to ensure compliance. They may look at the way specific industries are doing their work and review their work in that regard. I don't think it's necessarily to

Human Resources committee  I think leaving the details to the regulations is the legitimate way of approaching an exercise like this. In the case of occupational health and safety in the workplace, we have the Canada occupational health and safety regulations, and that document is maybe 250 pages long. It