Harassment fight gets premier’s backing
Laws will compel schools, employers to deal with sexual aggression
Helping victims of sexual assault deal with the legal system and requiring all sorts of authority figures to head off sexual aggression wherever they see it are the cornerstones of the Ontario government’s plan to combat sexual violence.
Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the plan, called “It’s Never OK,” Friday morning. It comes from a lot of hurried work by multiple cabinet ministers, whom she assigned to tackle the problem late last fall.
“At its core, this is a plan to change behaviours and challenge norms,” Wynne said to a friendly audience at a YWCA in downtown Toronto. “That’s because the problem of sexual violence and harassment is deeply rooted in beliefs about women, men, power and inequality.”
Overall, the idea is to take away the confidence that creeps (wherever they might fit on the spectrum of sexual aggression) feel that what they do is OK or that even if it isn’t, nobody will do anything about it.
It begins with an “if you see something, say something” ad campaign, urging bystanders, particularly men who perpetrators assume are on their side, to step in.
A lot of victimization, not just the sexual kind, really can be stopped if someone just stands up and tells the bad actor, “That’s not cool.” Much of the plan is aimed at encouraging — or requiring — people to do it.
Employers will have a stronger legal obligation to deal with sexual harassment complaints. Colleges and universities will, too. As we’ve seen with the University of Ottawa’s hockey team, improvising anew with each case that comes up can lead to both overreaction and underreaction, depending on who’s doing the reacting.
They’ll also have to publish statistics on campus assaults, so everybody can see how schools compare. (A recent attempt by the CBC to compile stats from across the country found wildly varying rates of assault, partly because different schools count differently.)
There’ll be training programs for people who work in places like bars and hotels, so they’ll know what to do if they see something amiss.
And at the other end, Wynne promised better training for police and health and social services workers on how to deal with victims. There’ll be more money for local sexual assault support centres. The government will end a two-year time limit on suing someone for damages related to sexual aggression, and experiment with a program to give free legal advice to victims whose cases are going to trial.
Wynne has had a bad winter, her reputation for decency damaged by her own meddling in a byelection in Sudbury to sideline a would-be Liberal candidate and shove in ex-New Democrat Glenn Thibeault. It’s spawned police investigations into Wynne’s own government, new ones that aren’t holdovers from the Dalton McGuinty years.
But if you like Kathleen Wynne or ever did, it’s because of performances like Friday’s, in which she spoke passionately and thoughtfully about an important problem she wants to do all she can to solve.
She made a point of crediting Progressive Conservative MPP Laurie Scott with pushing the problem onto the provincial legislature’s plate by calling for a special committee to study workplace harassment last fall, after the CBC fired radio host Jian Ghomeshi. That’s turned into a much broader effort.
“Many women in our province do not feel safe, that’s the reality,” Wynne said. “As a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother and as the premier of the province, I have a problem with that.”
Forty years ago, she said, she was a youthful activist trying to get students at the table when administrators at Queen’s University debated such problems on campus.
“Every time one of these stories breaks, we’ve once again started the conversation, talked about what to do about the problem, and then nothing changes. Well, time’s up,” Wynne said.
The legal changes promised in the plan won’t come until the fall, because the government has to craft amendments to multiple laws and because that committee on sexual harassment and violence has only just started meeting and hasn’t held public hearings yet. But Wynne is, as she said Friday, doing things that can be done immediately.
It’s not even really going to cost that much: $41 million, spread out over three years. Changing attitudes is not necessarily easy, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. It mainly takes a constant reassertion, in word and in deed, that this is something that matters to powerful people. In this, the premier’s setting a good example.
The problem of sexual violence and harassment is deeply rooted in beliefs about women, men, power and inequality.