Julia Gartley, Vice-President and Director of Me Too Mining Association spoke with the press regarding her experience with sexual assault as a young professional, and how she believes that we can help empower people to change their workplaces to be safer for all employees.  Bystander intervention can equip your employees with the skills to recognize and safely intervene to reduce sexual harassment or assault in the workplace. ​

"It’s one of her motivating factors for joining Me Too Mining and why the industry advocacy group has started offering bystander intervention training for the industry."

"“I don’t want to hear the story of another young person going through a similar incident that I did,” Gartley said."

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The Story

Me Too Mining Association rented booth space at PDAC 2019 to introduce our association and our message to the mining industry.  Let everyone know that we are out there.  The response from conference attendees was overall very positive. 
Our messaging of

• Safe, Inclusive and Respectful workplaces through better reporting options,
  
• Better policy support and training around appropriate workplace behaviours and bystander intervention strategies, and
  
• Messaging that sexual harassment in the workplace impacts all workers and is a Health and Safety issue and should be included in H&S policies, tool boxes, daily H&S talks and explicitly included in whistleblower reporting policies.

Having a presence at the major mining conferences this year has really helped to start and continue the conversation in the mining industry around sexualized violence, sexual harassment, Intimidation and Discrimination.

Our Active Bystandter Intervention Pledge was well received and we gathered a lot of new signatures on our table runner.

Susan Lomas, President of Me Too Mining Association was invited to participate on the panel discussion sponsored by Goldcorp Inc. on Gender Diverse and Inclusive Workplaces.  The panel was organized and moderated by Valerie Pascale of Goldcorp Inc. 

Other Panel members included Anna Tudela of Goldcorp Inc., Shastri Ramnath from Orix Geoscience and , Susan Lasecki-Coiro from BHP.  

It was a lively discussion on many aspects of inclusion and diversity in the workplace with a lot of active discussions with the audience.

.Many of the discussions at the booth and while participating in other events at the conference, included sexual harassment of female conference attendees at the PDAC in 2019 and also historically.  

Susan Lomas, President of MTMA started attending the PDAC conference back in the late 1980s and has experienced a lot of inappropriate behaviours from other conference attendees over the years.  Especially when attanding as a university student and as a young geologist

MTMA had a great time at AMEBC RoundUp Conference 2019 in January and would like to thank everyone who stopped by the booth and gave us such positive feedback! 

We participated in a Women at RoundUp event that was hosted at the Elephant and Castle Pub in Vancouver on Jan 29 with MTMA, Women Geoscientists Canada (WGC), and Women in Male Dominated Industries (WIMDI).  We had a good turnout of women and men in the mining and mineral exploration industries.  We broke up into small groups so we could have an opportunity to have discussions around the challenges faced by workers in these industries and how we can grow safe and respectful workplaces. 

On the last two days of the conference, MTMA had a booth where we had banners that explained the goals of MTMA and a table display that promoted our Active Bystander Pledge.  We had 72 people come by and take the pledge by signing our table runner.  We also handed out information on Bystander Intervention strategies to empower everyone in mining to action when inappropriate behaviour happens to them or in their presence. 

We really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with conference attendees and let industry companies and workers know what our goals are and how we hope to accomplish them.

MTMA is travelling to Toronto in March for PDAC 2019 at booth # 6428 in the Trade Show North Area.  Drop by our booth and say hello and take the Active Bystander Pledge by signing our table runner.