Legislation, no matter how laudable, cannot change a culture.

It can give it a push, and the sexual harassment legislation dealing with federal workplaces and Parliament Hill staff that has been fast-tracked by all three parties will be, with amendments, a step forward.

But there are questions. And then there is the culture.

Why is Kent Hehr, removed from cabinet after sexual harassment allegations, still in caucus when other Liberal MPs facing similar allegations have been given the boot. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not adequately answered.

How, exactly, was then-Conservative MP Rick Dykstra green-lighted to run in 2015 when it was known he was facing sexual assault allegations? Andrew Scheer owes us a better answer, whether or not he was then the leader.

And is it really wise to start from the default position that a harassment complainant is telling the truth in all cases as Trudeau would have it?

Making it easier for victims to speak up and providing all support possible? Absolutely.

But Trudeau’s starting point sounds just a tad unsettling.

The biggest challenge, however, remains the culture of official Ottawa.

This is a place populated by the powerful and the ambitious, but also the wide-eyed and those drawn to power.

It is tiny.

As the old adage goes, two blocks from Queen’s Park no one knows who the health minister is. Two blocks from Parliament Hill, you could see the health minister at the next table at your restaurant.

It is a transient population. Most of those in the precinct are thousands of kilometres from spouse and family. Its currency is information, but that too often takes the form of gossip, very often of the baseless, malicious variety born of jealousy or a bid for partisan gain.

The winter nights are long. An empty condo does not beckon. It takes a special commitment to go home with a committee report and tune in CPAC reruns.

A Toronto friend told me Ottawa was nights at different venues with the same people. She was right.

And there is booze everywhere.

Here, I will defer to Michelle Rempel, the Alberta Conservative whose Monday speech in the House trenchantly laid out the problem of power imbalance and provided perhaps the best description of Ottawa I have heard.

“It is a highly tribal environment,” Rempel said, “where information is a commodity and blind partisanship, conformity, loyalty and acquiescence are often traits significantly valued above judgment, compassion or acting with dignity.”

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Mix this with absence from spouses, those anxious to further a career, journalists chasing a scoop, workaholics, put them in a tiny place and pour in alcohol and “the issue of what constitutes appropriate sexual behaviour becomes critical.”

For my first 15 years in Ottawa, it was my home, which meant heading home to walk the dog, or, later, rush to day care and head home to family.

But in my final five-plus years there, I essentially lived life as an MP, in Ottawa when the House was sitting, but with a partner in Toronto, meaning most weekends and recess weeks I would join the VIA/Porter/401 tango and head home.

If you wanted to decompress after a long work day, there were precious few places to hide in a small city, and I saw cabinet ministers who had too much to drink, MPs sitting at the bar by themselves, men and women together who maybe shouldn’t have been together.

Nights on barstools led to a lot of drinking of each other’s bathwater.

That brings us to the “everybody knew” mantra, a favourite of those who have never lived in Ottawa.

Yes, I heard rumours about Patrick Brown and Dykstra. Many of us did. I didn’t care about Brown’s sex life. Had I known it included an allegation of sexual assault I would have had a much different reaction.

There were all kinds of rumours about cabinet ministers, MPs from all parties, journalists, senior bureaucrats, those alleged to have copped a feel in a cab or had hit on someone too aggressively at the bar.

Over the years, the most powerful in the town were the subject of rumours of marital separations, drinking habits and health problems.

Here’s how the culture will change — rumours are being more vigorously pursued, brave women are feeling emboldened, investigative reporters such as Glen McGregor, Rachel Aiello and Stephen Maher are not the only ones digging.

The realization among middle-aged politicians that this can now kill your career in minutes will change the culture.

There will be more to come. There must be some sleeping fitfully in Ottawa this week.

Tim Harper writes on national affairs. tjharper77@gmail.com, Twitter: @nutgraf1

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