First of all, I'm going to say this: Mr. Genuis just brought to the government operations committee a very similar motion, which was defeated. It seems that he is moving along from committee to committee to try to move this motion to the House, when he knows full well that this can be included in the final report. He can raise these concerns in the final report.
Now I'm going to talk a bit about Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, who not very long ago was testifying before the government operations committee. I'm sure—it sounds like it—he was at more than one committee, because the Conservatives have this study going at four committees, which, like I said, could be focusing on things like housing and other things that are a real crisis in this country.
I'm not saying that we don't want to get to the bottom of this. We have to get to the bottom of this, but the outsourcing issue that ArriveCAN has is reflected in many different contracts, I'm sure. It started under the Conservatives, when outsourcing doubled under the big six consulting companies. It's gone up 400% under the Liberals and it's out of control, but it started with cuts to the public service by the Conservatives. This was actually cemented by Michael Wernick, who testified at the government operations committee, saying that when the Conservatives gutted senior public officials in 2012, this caused huge problems when it comes to leadership, and now it's costing us in outsourcing to outside consultants to fill the void.
The other thing we heard when the Conservatives were on the witch hunt around McKinsey is that we couldn't get some information from redacted documents. That started with a government policy in the Privy Council Office that was set by the Conservatives. You can't make this stuff up.
Conservatives were upset because they couldn't get information. I support that documents shouldn't be redacted before a committee, but it started with their own policies. This was affirmed at committee by the Privy Council Office. They know full well that they implemented policies that were going to make it difficult for future governments. Then they tried to use that as an excuse for not getting access to information. This started with the Conservatives.
I'm going to go to what is going on with Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, because I saw these two witnesses testify before us at our committee when we tried to get some answers. They were absolutely grilled by the Conservatives. They were attacked by the Conservatives when they testified. There is no way that anyone could watch the tape of those committees and believe now that the Conservatives have their best interests at heart. That is absolutely hard to believe when it comes to what really took place there.
Now I want to talk about reprisals as well. I want to talk about policies that we've seen and about the failures to address protecting people like Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Utano or any public servant who feels that they are under threat from government for coming forward. We know that brave Canadians who report wrongdoing or crimes in the workplace often experience consequences such as losing their income, health and happiness, all for speaking the truth. All Canadian workers should feel free and safe in reporting workplace crimes and negligence. Absolutely, as New Democrats, we support that. Canada has the worst whistle-blowing laws—we're tied with Lebanon—and the Liberals and Conservatives teamed up to make sure that doesn't change under a number of amendments to Bill C-290.
We heard from David Hutton, who spoke to The Hill Times. He said that when the Conservatives reformed whistle-blowing laws under the Harper government—actually, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the official opposition, was the minister in charge at the time—they actually made things worse, so here we are, with whistle-blower laws tied with Lebanon's as the worst whistle-blower laws in the world.
The Libs and the Cons teamed up to defeat numerous amendments that would have strengthened protections for whistle-blowers. They voted against many amendments to Bill C-290 that we and the Bloc put forward. It's not surprising for the Liberals: Their rich friends are not worried about whistle-blowing, so they're not. Pierre Poilievre, like I said, and the Conservatives always prop up big bosses, not workers. Ask workers about that. Ask unions about that.
Canada needs stronger whistle-blowing protections so that there is more transparency and more accountability of government in the public service to protect all workers. New Democrats are committed to protecting the rights and safety of all workers. That's why we're pushing to make sure Canada has the strongest whistle-blowing protections possible. Whistle-blowing laws are important. Because of how weak our protections for whistle-blowers are, less wrongdoing will be reported and stopped.
Protecting whistle-blowers is necessary to protect Canadian lives and security. Whistle-blowing reports protect Canada's global reputation and relationships. We saw Luc Sabourin. He came and testified at the government operations committee. He reported that superiors at Passport Canada were destroying foreign passports and then logging that they had returned them to the foreign embassies. He endured eight years of harassment and abuse: hand sanitizer in his coffee, threats to his children's safety—