Honourable senators, I rise today in support of Senator McPhedran’s Inquiry No. 26, which calls on the Senate to deploy the strongest, most effective policies and mechanisms to respond to harassment complaints against senators.

This fall in the Senate, we took a mandatory workshop on sexual and psychological harassment. That’s a good start, because there isn’t always a clear line between the right to manage and psychological harassment. We have considerable power over our staff, and we need to be very mindful about not making them uncomfortable. Even more importantly, our employees also participated in those workshops, which could help them build a greater sense of solidarity. We need to put an end to the isolation of victims, the code of silence, the things that are left unsaid, the fear and sometimes the shame that allows harassment to continue or go unpunished.

A lot has been said about the relevance of this inquiry. I want to add a few more personal things that informed my understanding of these issues. In Quebec, the Act respecting Labour Standards has prohibited psychological and sexual harassment in the workplace for 15 years, since 2004. Quebec workers were the first in North America to benefit from this type of protection.

At the time, the new law was controversial. As a reporter, I investigated, and although this is just anecdotal, I listened to an office worker’s eloquent account of her experience to the labour relations board that made me understand how badly psychological harassment can break a person. I spent a long time talking to her about what she went through. Her employer isolated her in her workplace, and constant disparaging remarks about her work and her personality eroded her self-esteem. She was broken, vulnerable and shaky. She couldn’t sleep. She lost her self-confidence. She won her case, but she lost years of her life. In that case, the law worked.

The law came into force 10 years ago. To date, there have been 2,300 psychological harassment complaints per year. Sixty per cent of them are submitted by women, and 40 per cent of the complaints are rejected as inadmissible or unfounded. A lawyer by the name of Marie-Josée Sigouin theorized that this is not because people are acting in bad faith. It’s because they aren’t clear on the distinction between psychological harassment and all kinds of other things. It’s important to explain to people what constitutes harassment and what doesn’t.

These lessons apply to the Senate. Fewer complaints were filed in workplaces that had provided training. Given that prevention plays a key role, all Quebec firms have had a harassment prevention policy in place since January 1, 2019. The time limit for filing a complaint has been increased from 90 days to two years.

There is one last lesson we can learn from. A harassment policy must not be tucked away in a drawer. The challenge is to make it come to life. This can be done by putting up codes of conduct in strategic places, having themed days with activities related to this subject or establishing a system of peer helpers, namely respected employees who can become resource people.

Workplaces are changing. They are less traditional than before and this makes it more difficult to file a complaint. Quebec was rocked by what is known as the Rozon affair, which involved allegations of sexual assault, sexual misconduct and harassment against Gilbert Rozon, the head of the Just for Laughs group, a show business institution. This powerful man employed hundreds of artists, technicians and directors.

This is unprecedented. The artists who filed a complaint against their producer joined efforts to file a class-action suit. They are known as “Les Courageuses” and several of them gave up their anonymity to seek justice. They brought their crusade to Ottawa and paid me a visit in January. We had a moving conversation about the challenges of being believed and heard by a court. None of them had at the time filed a complaint under Quebec labour standards law.

The following is an excerpt from the letter that “Les Courageuses” sent to Prime Minister Trudeau. They are calling for:

[S]exual harassment to be enshrined in the Criminal Code as an offence in the same way that other sexual assaults are, and for the six-month limitation period after which a victim can no longer file a complaint to be repealed. We know that for all sorts of reasons, harassment of a sexual nature can be much harder to report than other forms of harassment, especially when there is an employer-employee power relationship, and even harder to report in the case of a minor, which was the case for one of the complainants in our group.

Last fall, he Quebec National Assembly also moved into the age of zero tolerance with respect to harassment. It launched an awareness campaign and mandatory training for all MNAs on harassment and incivility in order to protect political staff. This came about following allegations of sexual misconduct made against an MNA. A policy on the prevention and handling of harassment was adopted in 2015. However, the policy was criticized for its lack of transparency, especially given that, at the same time, the Quebec government was asking universities to provide quantitative reports on the number of harassment complaints received, the average timeline for dealing with complaints and the penalties imposed. It was agreed that the Quebec National Assembly report would protect the identity of victims, but it would provide information on the sex of the complainants and respondents, the outcome of the complaint, the number of complaints withdrawn or deemed unfounded or frivolous, informal settlements and investigations. I want to emphasize those promises regarding transparency, for the Senate must also ensure accountability in that regard in the form of public reports.

That being said, sexual assault is being reported more frequently, which is encouraging. In 2017, the year the #MeToo movement went viral, reports of sexual assault reached an all-time high across the country. In October 2017 alone, at the height of the #MeToo movement, the police received nearly 2,500 complaints of sexual assault. That is a sharp rise of 46 per cent over October 2016. Quebec saw the most significant increase for three reasons, according to Statistics Canada: media coverage of the movement, charges of sexual misconduct against public figures, and the introduction of help lines specializing in sexual assault reports at countless police stations.

Police practices evolved, which had an impact on the number of reports. Workplaces, such as the Senate, also have to be more sensitive to these difficult realities. In that spirit, I commend the recommendation to do a complete rewrite of our anti-harassment policy, a recommendation contained in the recent report of the Human Resources Sub-Committee. Among the new foundations of this policy we find prevention, better support for victims, and serious penalties for the offending parties.

I also think that we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by our much-valued privileges as parliamentarians. When it comes to psychological and sexual harassment, we must try to set an example, to listen, to admit when we are wrong and to be accountable for how we treat our employees. Thank you for listening.