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Sexual Harassement in the Workplace

Promoting Trust and Respect

Fairness, tolerance, freedom and security in the workplace are fundamental Canadian values. Behaviour that jeopardizes these values or limits an individual’s freedom cannot be tolerated.

The Labour Program strives to create a workplace where trust and respect for everyone are the norm. It is committed to the challenge of eliminating sexual harassment from both federal public service and private sector workplaces under federal jurisdiction. This includes some of Canada’s major infrastructure sectors, such as interprovincial and international transportation (air, rail, ports and trucking), communications, banking and Crown corporations.

A Definition of Sexual Harassment

Part III of the Canada Labour Code confirms a worker's right to work in an environment that is free of sexual harassment and requires employers to take action to prevent it.

The Code defines sexual harassment as any conduct, comment, gesture, or contact of a sexual nature that is likely to cause offence or humiliation to any worker or that might, on reasonable grounds, be perceived by that worker as placing a condition of a sexual nature on employment or on any opportunity for training or promotion.

Workers’ Responsibilities

Workers can do their part to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace:

• Respect others. Workers have the right to be treated fairly and respectfully in the workplace, and they have the responsibility to treat co-workers in a way that respects individual differences.
• Speak up. If someone behaves in a way that offends, harms, humiliates, or degrades you, do not put up with it.
• Report harassment. If you observe a co-worker behaving in way that humiliates or harasses someone else, you can and should speak up. Try speaking with them first.

Employers’ Responsibilities

An employer is required to make every reasonable effort to ensure that no worker is subjected to sexual harassment. After consulting with workers or their representatives, employers must issue a policy statement on sexual harassment that conforms to the Code.

Specifically, the policy must contain statements that include the following elements:

• a definition of sexual harassment;
• a statement that every worker is entitled to employment free of sexual harassment;
• a statement that the employer will make every reasonable effort to ensure that no worker is subjected to sexual harassment;
• a statement that the employer will take disciplinary measures as deemed appropriate against any person under his or her direction who subjects any worker to sexual harassment;
• a statement of how complaints of sexual harassment may be brought to the employer’s attention;
• a statement that the employer will not disclose the name of a complainant or the circumstances related to the complaint to any person except where disclosure is necessary for the purposes of investigating the complaint or taking disciplinary measures; and
• information on the discriminatory provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act that pertain to the rights of persons to seek redress with respect to sexual harassment.

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Date Modified:

2011-09-19