“The combination of power and testosterone often leads, unfortunately, to poor judgment, especially in a system where there has been no real process to date,” said Nancy Peckford, executive director of Equal Voice Canada, a multi-partisan organization focused on getting more women elected.
“The working environment on Parliament Hill is particularly unique, especially given that it sits right into the evening, the Parliamentary sessions are particularly intense, individuals are away from their families for a significant amount of the year … and the absence of process and clarity around what it means to be accountable for certain behaviour, I think, has contributed to that,” she said.
The issue of sexual harassment is far from new, but it’s taken on a new life in recent weeks.
From a viral video released by non-profit organization Hollaback, depicting the harassment a woman experienced while walking through New York City, to widespread social media discussions of experiences of sexual harassment sparked by shocking allegations of sexual violence levelled against former CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi and further prompted by the creation of a hashtag #beenrapedneverreported, a more open discussion of harassment has taken place in Canada and made its way to Parliament Hill earlier this month. Some have referred to it as the ‘Ghomeshi effect,’ and it’s shed new light on the lack of an independent, formal process for MPs to raise complaints.
On Nov. 5, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) revealed that two Liberal MPs, Scott Andrews (Avalon, Nfld.) and Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Léonard-Saint-Michel, Que.), were being suspended from caucus in light of allegations of “serious personal misconduct” from two MPs of “another party,” which Mr. Trudeau said he had been approached about personally. It’s since been reported that the complaints were raised by two female NDP MPs. It’s unclear what took place beyond the description of “personal misconduct.”
The matter has been referred to House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) or investigation and will be discussed by the House Board of Internal Economy, an all-party, closed-door committee of MPs.
Two days after the Liberal suspensions, a former NDP staffer, Fabiola Ferro, filed a lawsuit against NDP MP Sylvain Chicoine (Chateauguay-Saint-Constant, Que.) over allegations that a fellow staffer in the MP’s office abused her verbally, discriminated against her because of her gender and that she was fired after filing an unsuccessful complaint.
Ian Capstick, a former NDP and Liberal staffer who worked on the Hill from 2002 to 2008 and is now president of MediaStyle, recently said on CBC’s Power & Politics that he was sexually harassed by one male MP and sexually touched by another male MP when he worked on the Hill. He said he told the latter MP his actions were “inappropriate,” but said he never reported the incidents out of a feeling of powerlessness.
The National Post’s John Ivison wrote about the experience a former Hill intern to an unnamed Liberal MP who alleges her supervisor in the MP’s office sexually harassed her and undermined her in the workplace when she declined to go on a date with him. Ms. Ali said she complained to her MP, but the only thing that happened was the termination of her own employment.
In a column in The Hill Times on Nov. 10, former Liberal minister and deputy prime minister Sheila Copps revealed that she was sexually assaulted by a male MPP during her time in the Ontario legislature and had been raped by someone she knew. Ms. Copps said she did not report the incident, instead “chalking the incident up to personal misjudgment.”
In an interview last week with The Hill Times, Ms. Copps, who served in the House from 1984 to 2004, said the response to her column has been a surprise and “pretty overwhelming” in a positive way.
“People have told me about their experiences, some of whom have never stated them publicly either,” said Ms. Copps. “It’s been very heartwarming to get messages from across the country, literally…. I got an email from Brian Mulroney, which was very surprising, a wonderful email.”
Ms. Copps said these messages have highlighted how sexual harassment occurs in all kinds of workplaces.
“I’ve heard from people across the broad spectrum, amazingly. I even got an email this morning from a retired police officer who was assaulted in a retirement home, and it was a man by another man. So it’s obviously very widespread,” said Ms. Copps. “It’s a societal phenomenon, it’s not a Parliamentary phenomenon.”
But Ms. Copps said that Parliament needs to establish a process to deal with harassment that is designed to “parallel the public process,” available to people working in the private sector or Crown corporations. Ms. Copps said she’s aware of an example of a staffer quitting their job after finding doors closed and feeling there was no recourse to raise a sexual harassment complaint.
Former Liberal MP Mary Clancy, a founder of the Women’s Parliamentary Association and the Liberal Women’s Caucus, recalled how a former male MP called her and two other female MPs—Ms. Copps included—derogatory names in the course of debate. Ms. Clancy, who served in the House from 1988 to 1997, said as a result, new sanctions were put in place for MPs who used “sexist, pejorative language” in the Chamber.
“I often said that being in the House of Commons was like being locked up in a rather unruly boys’ school,” said Ms. Clancy.
But in the halls of Centre Block, Ms. Clancy said, “sexual harassment between MPs basically didn’t exist.”
“Was there harassment to staffers? You bet,” she said.
Ms. Clancy said caucuses tried to address this harassment and there was sensitivity training. She made it clear to her staff that her door was always open, but she said, based on recent stories involving former staff or MPs on Parliament Hill, “we don’t appear to have made a whole lot of progress.”
Ms. Clancy said MPs are “pretty well kings and queens in their little domains,” which contributes to the “culture of silence” and highlights the need to have a formal process on the Hill.
Parliament Hill is a unique work environment. MPs are considered the employer, and a hierarchy exists dividing MPs, ministers and Senators and their staff. The Canada Labour Code does not cover individuals employed on Parliament Hill, though it does cover federal departmental staff, staff at Crown corporations or similar federal agencies.
The House of Commons, including administration, procedure, security and maintenance services, as well as the Library of Parliament, are subject to the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act, which includes processes to raise grievances and resolve disputes, but this does not extend to MPs or their staff, or to Cabinet ministers’ staff. In 2001, the House Board of Internal Economy approved a new policy dubbed Prevention and Resolution Harassment in the Workplace, again for the approximately 1,800 House administration staff.
Those working for a minister, known as exempt staff (and considered public office holders) are subject to rules and procedures set by the Treasury Board Secretariat, which includes a policy on harassment prevention and resolution, as well as a guide and a directive on the harassment complaint process.
NDP Hill staffers are unionized and have a collective agreement, which lays out processes for filing a grievance or a complaint of harassment with a member of the union executive or a union steward (fellow staffers). If the grievance or complaint can’t be informally mitigated, a committee is formed of the members of the union executive and management (senior staff in the OLO and party research bureau are considered management and are not under the collective agreement) to examine and investigate the issue and produce a report, which includes recommended remedies. A complainant is able to appeal this decision.
As well, anyone to whom House resources are made available is able to bring complaints to the House of Commons’ Chief Human Resources Officer. There are no stipulations preventing MPs from doing so.
MPs discussed existing options for those on the Hill to raise harassment complaints during a study of sexual harassment in the federal workplace that was concluded last year.
House Clerk Audrey O’Brien told MPs that each party has its own way of dealing with such concerns from staff, but usually the whip of the party is responsible.
Asked whether staff are briefed on options and opportunities that already exist for them to raise complaints on the Hill, Ms. O’Brien said, “the short answer is no.”
“We don’t have any role to play in making the staff of Members aware of what their rights might be and how to operate if they have a conflict, or a harassment situation, or what they view as an abuse of power situation,” said Ms. O’Brien, adding some explanation is given to MPs about their responsibilities as an employer.
“I think for many members who come in after an election it is a huge leap to actually run an office and manage a group of people here and in the constituency. Very often they are terrifically vulnerable to whoever they hire as their chief of staff. You end up in situations, which as you say, are sometimes very unfortunate,” she said.
Michele Austin, a former Conservative ministerial chief of staff and now senior adviser at Summa Strategies, said you see a lot of “mistakes, misconduct and miscommunication” on the Hill every day, but she said the issue is one of inappropriate or abusive behaviour, not exclusively sexual harassment, and not necessarily male-on-female either. Ms. Austin said the worst abuse she’s seen was male-on-male.
“I have seen alcohol abuse in Members of Parliament offices where staff would come in and there would be blood, bottles broken across everything. So this cannot just be capped at sexual abuse…. The worst I did come across was alcohol abuse and abuse to staff based on the person being consistently drunk,” said Ms. Austin, adding these were things she witnessed in the 1990s.
In response to the recent stories of harassment on the Hill, she said: “I can’t say I was surprised. I was disappointed in how it was handled by everyone, but I wouldn’t say that I was surprised.”
“Everybody has a unique experience, right, because essentially MPs—if they’re not in Cabinet—are doing the hiring and firing, they’re the managers and they set the tone. It’s a little different when you are in Cabinet. Because you are working so closely with the civil servants, a lot of their policies bleed in to the day-to-day workplace,” she said.
For this reason, Cabinet ministers have more options than regular MPs in looking for help with complaints of harassment, she said.
Ms. Austin said an MP’s staffer would likely take a complaint either to the party, or, if “you were brave enough,” off the Hill.
The best practices for dealing with complaints of harassment in the private sector should be made available to MP offices, she said, and more training and information should be given to MPs, Senators and staff on the Hill in terms of what they can do.
Ms. Peckford said Equal Voice launched a campaign in May called Respect Her, because of “the fact that there was a culture of casual sexism on the Hill.” She said Parliament is unique in terms of disproportional gender representation in a workplace, and said getting more women elected to Parliament—more than the current 25 per cent of seats—will help change the culture.
A fair, independent process to deal with concerns and complaints on the Hill needs to be established and needs to “go beyond the Speaker.”
Anyone in Canada can file a human rights complaint under the Canada Human Rights Act and be heard by a tribunal. Complaints under the act can only be filed on the basis of certain circumstances, but sex-based discrimination is included.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro (York West, Ont.) said filing a complaint with the Human Rights Commission seems to be “the avenue of last resort.”
“Many women I have talked to, women who often raise these issues, just say that they weren’t going to put themselves through that when the chances of success. …It’s the employee against the employer,” she said.
On Nov. 13, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) sent an open letter to Mr. Trudeau and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) calling for all three parties to work together to develop and implement new procedures and policies to protect Parliamentary staffers and MPs, and proposing a formal code of conduct, the “nomination of an independent non-partisan third-party officer of Parliament,” among other things.
Lior Samfiru, a Toronto-based labour and employment lawyer who’s represented both complainants of workplace harassment and defendants, said any mechanism to deal with complaints needs to be seen as “being open minded and neutral.”
“There has to be a process of investigation and who’s going to investigate at that point is very important: if it’s going to be done internally, in which case there’s always a presumption of bias, or is there going to be someone that’s more removed,” said Mr. Samfiru.
“If there’s no mechanisms to deal with that, I would expect that someone is going to feel very uncomfortable raising a concern,” he said.
Mr. Samfiru said the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act (PESRA) offers House of Commons administration staff the same protections as other public servants. Other staff on the Hill—working for MPs or ministers—are able to file a complaint under the Canada Human Rights Act, said Mr. Samfiru, and they can also take the matter to court.
Mr. Samfiru said past court decisions, specifically in the case of Canada v. Vaid, have established that Parliamentary privilege does not apply to the management of employees. The Supreme Court ultimately only threw out the case because the staffer in question, Mr. Vaid, who had worked as driver to the House Speaker, was found to come under PESRA, which sets out its own process to deal with such matters. Mr. Samfiru said even then, the door was left open for other staff under PESRA to be heard by future courts. But he said this decision isn’t necessarily “applicable to MPs themselves.”
“I don’t think court would be possible but they would potentially be able to file a human rights complaint against somebody,” he said.
But for staff, taking a complaint to court or to a human rights tribunal is a big, bold step, and Mr. Samfiru said Parliament “absolutely” should establish an arm’s-length formal complaint and investigation process that’s applicable to everyone on the Hill, akin to a commissioner’s office.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Laura Ryckewaert
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