Union alleges systemic harassment, discrimination at Veterans Affairs

One of the unions representing workers at Veterans Affairs Canada is sounding the alarm over what it alleges is widespread harassment and discrimination within the department.

The Union of Veterans Affairs Employees says it surveyed more than 350 of its roughly 2,700 members in the fall, and found more than one in three had experienced some form of harassment in the workplace.

Meanwhile, the union reported that nearly one in five respondents had faced some sort of discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or another factor.

“We should not be having so many instances of harassment discrimination happening within the department,” UVAE national president Virginia Vaillancourt said in an interview on Tuesday. “And some of these are at the senior executive level.”

Vaillancourt said the union, which represents front line workers and administrative staff at Veterans Affairs locations across the country, took its concerns directly to the department’s top managers.

But Vaillancourt, who said she was consulted on five discrimination cases last week alone, was unsatisfied with their answer, alleging they wanted to refer the issue to the department’s human-resources section rather than get personally involved.

“They always say that they value employees’ mental health, and that they want to ensure that people have a workplace free from harassment,” she said. “But that’s not the reality of what our members are facing on a daily basis.”

The UVAE’s survey found more reported discrimination and harassment than a separate survey the government itself conducts each year.

In 2019, the wider survey found 13 per cent of Veterans Affairs employees had suffered harassment. Five per cent reported being victims of discrimination.

Both those results were a decline from the previous year.

Veterans Affairs spokeswoman Emily Gauthier noted those figures in an email on Tuesday, adding the governmentwide survey included more employees from the department than the one conducted by the UVAE.

The department has also set up a new organization to help employees facing workplace harassment or violence, Gauthier said, while training has been implemented alongside new rules banning misconduct across government.