National Defence committee  Fear of reprisal is definitely an issue. Perhaps, as alluded to before, when the internal disclosure regime does not work very well, it affects the entire disclosure regime. We have jurisdiction over the Department of National Defence but not the Canadian Armed Forces. However, we can investigate members of the Canadian Armed Forces alleged to have taken reprisals.

National Defence committee  No. A member of the CAF can provide us information, as any member of the public can, with respect to wrongdoing.

National Defence committee  They're DND employees with respect to wrongdoing and DND employees with respect to making a reprisal complaint. People alleged to have taken a reprisal can, however, include a CAF member.

National Defence committee  Thank you. Madam Solloway is correct that we have not seen this issue raised with us to any significant degree. With respect to our own commissioner's office, we're a very small entity of 36 people with a single mandate to implement the PSDPA, the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, which means it might be a bit easier for us to meet the 30 days when we are faced with an access to information request.

Government Operations committee  Yes, proportionally speaking, the higher number of requests for access to legal advice come from the reprisal files. Although we have fewer reprisal files, we can understand that the people are more directly involved. They are making complaints. They're named as having taken reprisal action.

Government Operations committee  Under our current process, the identity of the discloser is known to PSIC and to the investigator.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for those questions, Mr. Chair. We will meet that commitment.

Government Operations committee  No, we are not. The Deloitte report was a special report that was made in 2010. After the resignation of the first commissioner, Madame Ouimet, interim commissioner Mario Dion ordered a review of all of our closed files. As a result of that, Deloitte identified about 70 files that needed follow-up.

Government Operations committee  Finally—

Government Operations committee  With respect to reprisal complaints, that's a very different world again. I think the courts have recognized that the commissioner enjoys quite a lot of discretion, and deference has been given to the commissioner by the courts in matters of disclosures of wrongdoing. Not so much deference has been given to the commissioner on matters of reprisal complaints.

Government Operations committee  We will distinguish between disclosures of wrongdoing and reprisal complaints. Mr. Lampron, can you inform us of the statistics and the grounds for refusals of both reprisals and disclosures, please?

Government Operations committee  To be clear, we do not provide training directly. Our commissioner's office is committed to meet as often as possible with the greatest possible number of public servants and managers. In the first document we distributed to the committee, we list the number of contacts that we make as well as the number of presentations.

Government Operations committee  Yes. One philosophy of whistle-blowing is that you can create a right of whistle-blowing and if you meet the criteria that Parliament chooses for whistle-blowing, and Parliament is free to adjust those criteria, you can then invoke a recourse, whether it is a recourse under the PSDPA as we have now, or generally another recourse, which is not precluded under the act.

Government Operations committee  Yes. First of all, discussions take place between the person making the disclosure, the whistleblower, and our office, either with Mr. Lampron or with our analysts. Our recommendation to our analysts and investigators is to take care not to promise absolute confidentiality. Absolute confidentiality does not exist.

Government Operations committee  That's right, except that not all recourse is confidential. Clearly, complaints made under the Access to Information Act and the personal information protection act are confidential. However, there are other organizations, like the Canadian Human Rights Commission, where recourse is less confidential.