Accounts of sexual harassment from seven current and former Vancouver Police Department employees reported exclusively by CTV News Vancouver have prompted a response from the city's mayor.
"I can assure you that I will be reviewing the cases," Mayor Kennedy Stewart told CTV News on Friday.
The seven people who told CTV News they experienced or witnessed sexual harassment on the job all came forward after seeing an earlier CTV News investigation, this one detailing the internal probe into two senior officers for their alleged inappropriate relationships with Const. Nicole Chan.
Chan was suffering from mental health problems and took her own life in January.
Those who have come forward argue that there is a systemic problem with harassment at the VPD, but the department disagrees.
"We don't believe here at the VPD there are any systemic issues with regards to harassment," said department spokesman Const. Steve Addison.
On Friday, Stewart echoed this assessment, saying he hasn't seen a culture of harassment in the police department.
"I haven't seen that," the mayor said. "When I was an MP in Ottawa, I was on the justice committee, where we did review the RCMP and started to uncover the cultural problems with the RCMP. I don't see any of that here in the VPD."
Stewart said he will take up CTV News' reporting with the city's police board, which he chairs, but advocates say he's mistaken in his view of the department.
Kerry Gibson, an entrepreneur who has spoken at the United Nations on how to improve gender equality in the workplace, says she believes there is a cultural problem at the VPD. She says the department would do well to learn from how Canada's Armed Forces dealt with similar issues.
The military's response to the issue was called "Operation Honour."
"The VPD has taken on some of the policy of operation honour and that is a good first step," Gibson said. "We have to go beyond that. We have to do exactly what the military has done and admit there has been a problem and there is an ongoing problem."
