On
Thursday March 11, I spoke on
a motion dealing with a harassment complaint
by a public servant against a Member of the Legislature in relation to something that the Member had said in the Chamber of our Legislature. The
curious aspect of this is that
there were two harassment
complaints and two competing, opposite,
rulings. My comments are below (from Hansard).
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River
Heights): Madam
Speaker, I want to put a few comments on the record with regard to this motion.
This is an important ruling which
the Speaker has clearly spent a lot of time looking at, discussing, referencing
previous rulings, and so on. It is an important ruling because it sustains what
we have in terms of parliamentary privilege, and parliamentary privilege is one
of the fundamental rights that we have as MLAs.
Thank you to the Speaker for
looking at this very carefully, and making a decision that it is important to
sustain the privilege of the ability of MLAs to bring up issues, to raise
concerns and to have those concerns listened to and heard in the Chamber.
There were, of course, two
allegations, which are curious. The one by the secretary of the Treasury Board,
which was made against the MLA for St. James. This matter, as I understand
it, was then looked at by our legislative procedures and a decision was made in
favour, in that instance, of the [former] secretary of the Treasury Board.
We also have a decision by the
Speaker that the approach which was used by the Premier
(Mr. Pallister) in supporting the [former]secretary of the Treasury
Board and which appears to suggest that the process which was used by the
secretary of the Treasury Board to request an evaluation of harassment was
somehow wrong or misplaced.
Let me start with the handling of
the harassment complaint, because I think this is something that clearly needs
to be looked at. I will remind the Speaker that Liberals have repeatedly called
for an independent officer of the Legislature to handle such harassment
complaints, rather than the present process, which is, in essence, an in-house
process.
I think that the ability of an
independent officer to provide an independent perspective is going to be very
important in the future. This [the
recent events] has demonstrated one of
the reasons why this has happened.
I will explore this further,
because when this matter first came to light–and I am very much aware of the
Speaker's remarks to both the MLA for St. James and the [former]secretary
of the Treasury Board, that our current policy is that they will not bring
these matters to public light, and the Speaker has, in fact, indicated that
they were both wrong in the way that they handled this.
But let us look at the process. There
was publicly a concern of impartiality in the process, even though it was
handled by a procedure which we had approved in the Legislature. There was not
sufficient general public knowledge of the procedure and the recognition that
it was impartial, and so there were a lot of people who felt that there was
some partiality in the process, and it became almost like a political decision
one way or another, rather than an impartial decision.
I think one of the lessons that we
have to learn from this is that we can't not have any information coming out.
Clearly, we have to have enough information that all MLAs can learn and
improve–and that it's not just MLAs, it's others who may bring forth
complaints, as in the case of the former
secretary of the Treasury Board and that we need to be able to have some
understanding of what has happened, some public discussion, if we're going to
improve the ways that we approach identifying and preventing harassment and
intimidation.
This is, as we've seen in the
ruling, a complicated matter, and it's not simple, but we're clearly going to
need to go back and have a look at what
the harassment policies are for our Manitoba Legislature moving forward.
There is an interesting aspect of
this. It is important that members of the Legislature not be harassed or
intimidated for things that are said in the Legislature itself, and yet there
clearly needs to be an ability of people who are spoken about whether they are public
servants or others to be able to respond and counter, if they disagree with
what is said in the Legislature, particularly when it relates to personnel
matters, as this does.
I think we all, as collective
members of the Legislature, want to be able to decrease harassment and
intimidation and bullying. We are learning that it is not always a simple
matter to do that, but, clearly, there is a need to decrease harassment or
intimidation on whatever it is based, and clearly we know all too well that
there have been people who are Black or Indigenous who have been discriminated
against in one way or another.
And it is not just such
individuals, it is individuals in the LGBTQ community, individuals sometimes who
are small, individuals who have large bodies, that this matter of making sure
that we don't attack people on the basis of who they are. We do need to
exchange ideas. We don't want people to be discriminated against. We want to
make sure that, as we move forward, MLAs have the ability to speak out in the
Chamber. But there is a line here which is actually extraordinarily important,
and that is a line of making sure that we don't have harassment or intimidation
either on one side or the other, and we need to reflect, I believe, on how
we're going to do that.
It is frequently the case that, in spite
of two rulings, one on the original harassment complaint by the [former]
Secretary of the Treasury Board and a ruling by the Speaker–which, in some
ways, seemed to be counter to one another. But, at the same time, we have to,
as the Speaker has mentioned, stand up for the ability of MLAs to speak out in
the Legislature, and yet, at the same time, we have to work out ways to do this
so that we are not harassing, bullying people, but rather we are able to
address the critical policy issues of today, we are able to discuss the needs
and desires and wants of those who have been marginalized too often in our
society.
We have seen, as an example, in the
last two months, tremendous numbers of people in Winnipeg who have been
homeless, who have been living in bus shelters, and there is a tendency to look
at people who are living in bus shelters as somehow inadequate. But, in fact,
the people who have been living in bus shelters who are homeless, all too often
have had challenge in their life, have had unexpected circumstances, sometimes
the death of a spouse, sometimes a breakup of a family relationship, sometimes
a loss of a job, and that we need to be able to recognize people who
are experiencing homelessness as human beings like us who need help to carry
them through a difficult time.
And once they are
through that difficult time and have housing and have support, that individuals
in this circumstance can do really well.
I encountered, not very long ago,
an individual who had, at one point, been homeless. Now he's got a good
relationship with his two boys, he is working hard as a painter and he was
recently injured by some individuals who went after him with mal intent.
But, here he is, with an injured
arm, absolutely determined that he is going to go on working and earning money,
because he doesn't want to go on social assistance. And this was an individual
who not too long ago, several years ago, was homeless and having great
difficulty.
There are many, many examples of
people who have struggled and who have gone on to significant productivity,
significant achievements, significant ability in their turn, to recognize and
help others.
So, let us move forward in spirit
together to figure out how we better reduce, eliminate harassment, bullying and
intimidation. And it will not be easy, and as the Speaker herself has said, it
is complex. But let us go on this journey, all of us as MLAs together, and work
toward a better future where we are more empathetic, more courteous, more
sympathetic toward others.
And let us do this in the spirit of
trying to build a better Manitoba, trying to build a better democracy, trying
to build a province which will stand out not only in Canada but internationally
for the good things that we are doing and will do in the years ahead.
Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this
opportunity to speak. Merci. Miigwech.
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