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Tougher harassment rules to apply to online spaces, says Labour Minister Hajdu

Tougher harassment rules to apply to online spaces, says Labour Minister
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Tougher harassment rules to apply to online spaces, says Labour Minister

OTTAWA — The Liberal government wants its proposed stricter rules to crack down on harassment in federal workplaces to reflect the fact that colleagues no longer restrict their interactions to daytime hours at the office.

“We know that those boundaries are very blurry and especially in workplaces like ours,” Labour Minister Patty Hajdu said Monday after appearing before the House of Commons human resources committee to discuss her proposed legislation to support safe federal workplaces.

She said many of the jobs that will fall under Bill C-65, including those on Parliament Hill, involve after-hours receptions, lunches, emails and social media exchanges where the same preventive measures and policies should apply.

“The harassment, if they’re experiencing harassment, may not stop at five o’clock,” Hajdu said.

“It is really about the behaviour between colleagues or between employer and employee, less so than the hours of work or the place of work, because all of those things create an unsafe workplace,” she said.