Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. Good evening. I would like to begin by thanking members of this committee for inviting UFCW - Local 232 to testify on a very important piece of legislation, and to all of your respective political parties for providing the unanimous consent that fast-tracked

Human Resources committee  It is difficult to come to a solution. I can understand why we're now at this point as the committee has heard a lot of testimony from multiple organizations, unions, other employers as well. As it stands, if my understanding is correct with the bill, the competent persons will

Human Resources committee  Mutually agreed between. We're testifying from a unique position here on Parliament Hill where it's our understanding it will be a third-party within each office, or someone will be selected in order to deal with allegations where the employer is concerned. The competent third-

Human Resources committee  No, of course not.

Human Resources committee  Yes. One really important thing to note is that in terms of our bargaining unit, our collective agreement, all the articles regarding anti-harassment and the majority of our collective agreement, applies to interns, volunteers and otherwise.

Human Resources committee  We do have a definition specifically in the agreement. We actually stipulate that they cannot work.... Nothing they do is mandatory. They come in as they please. They cannot be disciplined if they only do three hours, for instance. In my volunteer experience, I was coming in as

Human Resources committee  That's absolutely not what I'm referring to in my experience, and in the experience in our offices that we are aware of. We do not allow for unpaid work, particularly where it concerns the activities of.... We actually have job descriptions that describe what each person does, th

Human Resources committee  We do believe that the full definition should be included in the bill itself. There are a few reasons for this, which echo some of the concerns that have already been reiterated. First, we do actually currently have a government that has shown some willingness and desire to impro

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. In my statement earlier, I was talking specifically about the mandatory management and anti-harassment training. The reason we address management training specifically is that a lot of incidents of harassment can come from, essentially, unhealthy communication amongst

Human Resources committee  Congratulations.

Human Resources committee  We had discussed this quite at length, and something we'd like to see is for it to be included in the orientation for new members coming in. We particularly thought a window of within 60 days of being elected, because MPs are automatically hiring staff, or nearly automatically. O

Human Resources committee  I can see where the concern comes from, but right now, again, we're speaking from a very specific context. When members of Parliament come in, when staff come in, they are provided with very little information on this, so I would rather it be normalized than not addressed at all.

Human Resources committee  I think, oddly enough, that actually does come back to definition in one way because in the definition, it should be defining the different forms of harassment because there are very distinct categories. Now there may be a category that is more difficult to define or situations t

Human Resources committee  I have a hard time believing that someone would want to go through this process to complain about an employer who just didn't give them a day off. I know you're just giving an example. I just want to respectfully reiterate that I don't see someone making this complaint. This comp

Human Resources committee  I don't have an exact time frame. One thing I would say is that there should be different categories for individuals who have experience, but also recognizing that this is a completely different environment from where someone else may have managed in the past.