National Post (National Edition)
‘Offensive conduct’
THE PM HAS VIOLATED KEY PROVISIONS OF WORKPLACE HARASSMENT LEGISLATION
Apublication on workplace harassment, issued by the Treasury Board in Ottawa, provides a detailed guide to “improper or offensive conduct” in the workplace.
As any reasonably aware manager knows, it’s a minefield. Harassment can include anything from speaking too loudly, entering an office too often, paying too much attention to a subordinate’s performance, or failing to move away from others when passing gas.
Even complaining about someone who fails to move away from polite company while passing gas (or washing their feet in vinegar) could wind up in front of a tribunal.
The crucial part of the rules, however, is this: in most cases, the guidelines stipulate, “more than one act or event is needed.” And ignorance is no defence. The test is whether “the respondent knew or reasonably ought to have known that such behaviour would cause offence or harm.” The emphasis in both cases is the Treasury Board’s, which until recently was headed by Jane Philpott, one of the two cabinet members to step down over their dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the Snc-lavalin affair.
The wording is significant because both Trudeau and his former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, have pleaded ignorance as key to their defence.
“I was not aware of that erosion of trust,” Trudeau said in reference to the breakdown in relations be- tween Butts and Jody Wilson-raybould, the former justice minister and attorney general.
Butts pleaded a similar lack of awareness, insisting he had no idea of the depth of Wilson-raybould’s frustration at the repeated attempts to have her revisit her decision on Snc-lavalin’s prosecution. When she raised her objections in opposing their plan to shuffle her out of her job, both he and Trudeau were taken aback, Butts testified.
Which, under the guidelines of Trudeau’s own government, is no defence whatsoever. Wilson-raybould’s appearance before the justice committee made clear that both tests of a harassment violation were met in the government’s actions. The pressure to have her rethink her position occurred more than once, and both Butts and Trudeau knew, or should have known.
Rather than acknowledge this, the prime minister has attempted to blame Wilson-raybould. He has cited the fact she didn’t come to him with her complaints — though she says she did make her views clear to him, directly, at a meeting they had last September. She also complained to Butts, and to other aides and officials in the upper ranks of the cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Office. If Trudeau remained deaf to it, the law says it’s his fault, not hers. As he acknowledged himself, “I should have known.”
The treatment of Wilson-Raybould appears to violate several other tests used to establish harassment included in the guidelines:
“The complainant was offended or harmed, including the feeling of being demeaned, belittled, personally humiliated or embarrassed, intimidated or threatened;
“The behaviour occurred in the workplace or at any location or any event related to work,
“There was a series of incidents or one severe incident which had a lasting impact on the individual.”
Wilson-raybould testified that she felt “veiled threats” as part of “a consistent and sustained effort by many people in the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” And there is no doubt her unexpected removal from Justice — which she described as her “dream job” — had a lasting impact.
Trudeau and Butts both maintain it hadn’t occurred to them that Wilson-raybould might resist a transfer to Indigenous Services, though Michael Wernick, clerk of the Privy Council, told the justice committee everyone in Ottawa knew she’d never want the job.
“She did not ever want to be one of the Indigenous affairs ministers,” he said. “She made that very clear. She did not want to be the Indigenous Services minister … and be seen as the Indian agent for her own people. She’s made that clear in public.”
Yet they professed to be shocked when she turned down the job — Butts said he’d never in his life heard of a person refusing a cabinet post. And in response she was offered a position many in Ottawa consider a demotion, a view that might not be fair, but which Butts and Trudeau would have been aware of.
To recap, according to his government’s guidelines, the prime minister violated key provisions of workplace harassment legislation, and followed up by removing the complainant from her job and assigning her to a post that could be reasonably deemed inferior to the one she had. If he was an office manager at … oh, let’s say a Montreal engineering firm … and treated an employee like that, he’d be lucky to hang on to his job. The prime minister says he experienced the situation differently, but Liberal MP Celina Caesar-chavannes says that when she told him she was not running for re-election, around the same time as the SNC-Lavalin crisis, he treated her with “hostility” and “anger,” eventually “stomping out of the room without a word.”
Politics might be considered different from a normal workplace. Numerous Liberals have made the argument that debates over policy positions are commonplace, and perfectly normal. It’s what politicians do. Though they’ve see-sawed over whether undue pressure was ever exerted, they’ve settled on the line that no one meant any harm, and if Wilson-Raybould had a problem, she should have spoken up.
It’s a position that won’t wash. Wilson-raybould did speak up, repeatedly. Her boss, the prime minister, should have known, and acted accordingly. Instead he shifted her from the job she held, and loved, to one that she was sure to reject — a reaction he should also have foreseen. When she turned it down he shuffled her off to a post widely viewed as a dumping ground.
Trudeau now says he appreciates that things could have been handled better, that he’s learned a lesson (though he doesn’t say what the lesson is). While insisting he had no idea his justice minister was so upset, “I now understand that she saw it differently.”
Great. But it’s no excuse. What Trudeau did wouldn’t be tolerated in any office across Canada that abides by Treasury Board standards. But it seems to be in his.