Bill C-11 (Historical)

Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act

An Act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings

Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas for splitting his time on this important legislation for Canadians. It is important for them appreciate it and have some understanding of it. Because of the way we have operated in the House this past session and in sessions before, the erosion of public confidence in this place has been extraordinary. When we go back to our ridings and talk to average Canadians about their faith in not only politicians but also in the work that is carried out on their behalf, it is clear the erosion in faith has been steady and consistent. It is at an all time low, I would suggest.

The bill starts to move in the direction of addressing the issues. Bill C-11 is an example of how a minority Parliament can improve upon any government's unwillingness to see something through to the end of the day. The first attempt at this bill in the previous Parliament was a second class affair. The intention of the bill was at some point buried in the midst of protectionism and it became much more about ministerial protection than it did about what it was truly intended to be.

The modifications from all four corners of the House, including from the member for Winnipeg Centre and many others who have contributed to the debate, have led to a bill that has the congratulations and support from all four corners of the House. This is very important to me and to many here. We are trying to make this place work, despite the constant mudslinging and the rest that we see on a daily basis.

I will contextualize for average Canadians who are watching the debate, why the bill is important and why it came to be. It is important to understand that the intention of the bill is to prevent the scandals we have seen over the last number of years. Many people will understand this issue from having watched the movie The Insider . Great strain and stress is put on a person who has the evidence of a company or a government that is doing something wrong. That person has to break through the many barriers, which now exist for public servants and administrators, to proclaim from on high the wrongdoings of someone potentially at a senior level who, by de facto, has more power than the person who blows the whistle.

Our own Insider movie has been playing in Montreal and Ottawa: the Gomery inquiry. There are absolutely scandalous tales of what went on in the backrooms between the government of the day and the present government and their supporters, the people who funded them and worked on their behalf. Brown bags of money across tables at nefarious restaurants and all the rest brought cynicism to a new high within the Canadian electorate. We saw that through the last election, which bore extraordinary fruit, a minority Parliament. We have taken mediocre bordering on bad legislation and improved it to a quality where people can start to be proud of the work of the House.

The strength of the opposition in this place has contributed to the government's slightly increased humility and intelligence in introducing legislation that would meet the requirements of the constituents who have elected us to represent them from all parts of the country. They are seeking a government that is accountable, not only in words, but in action.

For years we have heard rhetoric of this government and past government about the need for openness and transparency. Yet when it comes to action, when it comes to the day to day happenings at the most senior levels, both within the Liberal Party and those they appoint to those patronage spots in particular, the House of Commons and the entire parliamentary system suffers. The reputation of the hard-working people in the Canadian bureaucracy also suffers. It becomes an embarrassment to admit that we work for the federal Government of Canada, knowing what has gone on.

The intention is another important context. What is the intention of the government in introducing the bill? Is the intention to have a fundamental cultural shift, almost a psychopathic culture toward the promotion of patronage, of taking care of friends and ensuring that the flow of money from the trough always arrives at people who are most supportive of the government of the day? Is it the intention of the government, to reform itself from within? It is a speculative question with a deeply held suspicion as an opposition member, having watched the goings on in the government from an arm's length.

I take a small example of the many patronage appointments. The Prime Minister promised to fix this process in the last election, another promise broken. It is the appointment of Mr. Murray, a failed Liberal candidate, to the National Round Table of the Environment and the Economy. He is very nice, commendable fellow of sorts and a very strong mayor in Winnipeg. He was appointed to an environmental portfolio at a very important time in the history of Canadians, particularly when it comes to the environment. We are facing dire predictions for our future. We have a government that has failed to reduce the amount of pollution and smog, with another smog day for Toronto and many other cities across the country.

The obviously loyal member of the Liberal Party of Canada came before a committee to present his credentials. He was found wanting. He was found to be in absence of some of the basic understandings of the issues facing our environment today. It was a patronage appointment that led to a lack of confidence in one of our most important bodies, a fully funded body from the national taxpayers' roll, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. This further eroded our confidence in the government's ability to manage and steer this ship.

The Information Commissioner, Mr. Reid, through a number of disclosures to Parliament and in the press has talked about the almost addiction to privacy that the government has maintained. Legislation was passed to create the position of an officer of this House who would report to the House and keep the government in check, when it came to access to information. It also provided other key tools that the Canadian public and their representatives, us, could use to access the government's work to ensure that there was accountability and the much looked for openness of government. This officer has told us repeatedly that the Liberal Party needs to fundamentally shift its culture away from this addiction of secrecy and seek the openness and transparency that has been talked about but not fully acted upon.

Once again we are asked to have faith and confidence that the words which exist within the bill will match the actions that are forthcoming. These include a sincere commitment by the government to reverse the culture of protecting minister at all costs, of protecting one's immediate superior in the bureaucracy. It is a commitment to a culture in which we can appreciably learn from our mistakes, a culture in which we can understand that mistakes in a bureaucracy the size Government of Canada will be made and certain expenditures will not be the most prudent. It is a culture that accepts that fact and will improve upon the mistakes rather than cover them up as we have seen over and over again. Only through the exposure of the work of the opposition parties in this place and the media were we able to gain access to find out what went wrong with policy or spending of tax dollars.

The governing party of the day is looking for praise in the introduction of this. The best way to negotiate at times is while holding the gun. Putting the government's back against the wall, with certain dire electoral predictions, is a way to motivate it, after more than a decade of words but no action, to finally produce a bill that has some merit and some weight. That accountability must now take us to the next step to see what the ramifications and actions will be.

Will the culture shift? Will the Radwanskis no longer appear? Will the patronage end? Will the trough be closed down for a small period of time to allow Canadians some restoration of faith in the decisions that come out of this Parliament?

The Prime Minister has often talked about the democratic deficit, yet when promises have been made with respect to electoral reform, of fundamental accountability, the government has stalled, dragged its feet and has not come forward with its promises.

What comes next? Will the patronage machine continue? Will failed Liberal candidates seek the high positions and the gravy train they have come to expect? Will former ministers have extravagant expense accounts and no accountability or will the government finally take charge and change its fundamental culture? I remain doubtful.

Canadians expect the protection that is offered by strong whistleblower legislation, the protection of their food, of their medicines, of their tax dollars. They need this. They expect this bill to have teeth. They expect the enactment of this bill to be sincere.

The New Democrats' position is that we will hold the government's feet to the fire, hold it to account on this and the many other promises that have been made through legislation. We will ensure that Parliament begins to function rather than the mudslinging that is so supported and relished by the official opposition, which dare I say barely has the reputation to hold the name.

Within the context we now have, we have an opportunity to get things done, as the New Democrats did in the spring by providing a better balanced budget for Canadians. We will continue to work hard and diligently for Canadians.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's speech was constructive, particularly with regard to advising the House and Canadians that we did hear from whistleblowers. We heard their stories. I can assure the member that the committee was quite moved by the real life examples that have gone on over a number of years.

He will also celebrate the fact that the new commissioner will be in a position to receive alleged wrongdoings and those kinds of matters not only from members of the public service, but also from suppliers and others. There is also the opportunity to bring forward some matters which were of a whistleblower nature prior to this legislation coming into force.

The committee had a great opportunity to shape this legislation by having it after first reading.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on the matter his colleague from Winnipeg Centre raised about how important it is going to be to shepherd the implementation and communications plan to ensure a good start with regard to Bill C-11.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to participate in the debate on Bill C-11. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

This bill is an act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose those wrongdoings. That is the long title of the bill. The short title is the public servants disclosure protection act, but I think we all know it as the whistleblower legislation.

Today we are on the verge of passing this legislation. In fact, we may finish the debate today and finally see this important legislation move through the House of Commons. That would be an occasion to celebrate. It has been a long time coming. Many people in this place have worked very long and hard to see the accomplishment of some whistleblower legislation. This legislation is not perfect, but it has been long needed. Today if we get the bill through the House, it will be an accomplishment indeed.

I want to pay tribute to my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, one of the people who have worked hard on this legislation. He has worked hard on this legislation from the very moment he arrived in the House back in 1997. His first private member's bill focused on the whole issue of whistleblowing and the need for an accountability mechanism that would allow public servants to raise important issues of wrongdoing in government and not suffer the consequences for their courage in raising those issues.

That came from my colleague's background in the trade union movement. For many years he represented workers and the difficulties they faced in the workplace, not the least of which would be how to deal with wrongdoings on the part of an employer. His work and initiatives which started back in 1997 have contributed to where we are today on this issue.

Members from other parties have contributed as well. We have heard today that the Bloc Québécois back in 1996 introduced a significant private member's bill on this issue. This was an important contribution and included important principles that have finally seen the light of day in the legislation we are debating today. We have also heard of attempts from the Conservative side of the House on this issue.

We are taking an important step to finally get a bill through the House. This kind of legislation is a crucial part of any government's approach to ethics in government, accountability in government and a response to wrongdoing in the conduct of government. Even though there are still some problems with this legislation, it will take us to a new level of accountability. It is something we can all celebrate.

In the past there have been other attempts. Bill C-25 in the last Parliament was an extremely flawed bill. It was so flawed that some folks came to believe it was an attempt to protect ministers from the disclosures of whistleblowers and that it had nothing to do with the protection of people who took that strong step and made the commitment to expose wrongdoing in government. It is a good thing that is behind us.

I think it is because there is a minority government situation in this Parliament that we have been able to make progress on this issue. The government has been convinced of the importance of proceeding along these lines, perhaps egged on by some of the other scandals that face the government today.

Whistleblowing is not an easy thing to do in any workplace, particularly a government workplace. We know the power dynamics of the workplace. Workers often feel they do not have the resources and huge power that managers and the people who are in authority over them have, which often puts workers in a terrible position.

There are huge risks involved in whistleblowing, such things as the loss of jobs and relationships people build in organizations and the workplace. There are subtle reprisals people can face, such as changes in holiday times or access to other benefits in the workplace. We have also heard in the past of concerns around frivolous complaints that might be made because of other disputes in the workplace.

When the Canadian Labour Congress appeared before the committee, it talked about many important issues and cited a study from the October 2004 issue of Policy Options . Researcher Donald Rowat highlighted a study done in the United States on the fate of whistleblowers. This was before the U.S. had strengthened disclosure law.

Mr. Rowat studied 161 workers who had made a wrongdoing disclosure. He found that 62% of them lost their jobs, 18% were harassed or transferred, including being subject to isolation tactics and character assassination, and 13% had their responsibilities or salaries reduced. In addition, many of them experienced mental breakdown and family breakup. Those are very high prices to pay for speaking out on wrongdoing in government.

I am glad that we have finally made progress on this and that we are taking steps to ensure good management and to encourage public servants to make this kind of disclosure, to encourage government to engage in the problems that have been raised, and to encourage action to resolve those problems.

Bill C-11 almost died in this Parliament. It took the hard work of many opposition and government members to keep it on track. We have ended up with a piece of legislation that is a good attempt at addressing these important issues. It is a good example of how a minority Parliament can work.

We have worked hard in this Parliament to ensure fairness to see that not only the interests of the government are addressed, but also the interests of opposition parties, of Canadian citizens and of the workers in the public service. We successfully reached a conclusion of which we can be proud. It took a minority Parliament to convince the government of the need to move in this area. Clearly, the earlier attempts had been unsatisfactory and in some cases extremely disappointing.

Bill C-11 saw some major changes from that which was introduced originally by the government. Those changes have enabled the bill to go forward. Those changes include an integrity commissioner who would report to Parliament and not to a minister. That is a significant improvement to this legislation.

Changes have been made to the list of exempted organizations of government. Significant deletions were made from the long list that was originally part of the legislation. All crown corporations, agencies and institutes are now included. Those that are not included are those that have clear measures around wrongdoing and whistleblowing already in position.

Many whistleblowers have lost their jobs because of that, including a number at Health Canada who are very important to this whole process. This legislation is a tribute to the risks that they took and the punishment that they received. I am glad that we are on track with this legislation. I look forward to its final passage.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to address Bill C-11. As a former public servant for 22 years, I and many of my colleagues laboured in the trenches without any protection whatsoever. I saw firsthand the kinds of things that unscrupulous management can do if the rank and file do not have support and protection. Therefore I am very glad to address Bill C-11. Although it is flawed legislation, it is a step in the right direction.

I would like to make some observations. First, the Conservative Party has always called for protection for public servants who expose corruption. We have seen so much corruption recently from the government that thank God we are finally enacting legislation to protect the people who care enough to expose this corruption.

In its original form, the bill would have done more harm than good because it was the same old, same old. It was the government controlling the agenda. Now, with the amendments we have made, the Conservative Party has finally convinced the government and the President of the Treasury Board to agree to have an independent commissioner in charge of whistleblowing. Although the legislation is flawed, none of the flaws are fatal and we can work with the legislation. The bill lays important groundwork on which we can work further when we, the Conservative Party, form the government in the not too distant future.

The bill was amended at committee and at report stage to ensure that the bill created a truly independent commissioner to hear and investigate disclosures of wrongdoing from public servants and others and protect those making disclosures. We heard witness after witness at committee, long term public servants with 20, 25 and 30 years of loyal service, and because they were just doing their jobs of exposing what they thought was a wrongdoing to their superior, they ended up losing their careers and suffering years of emotional distress. These people did not even realize they were whistleblowing. They thought they were doing their job and that was the thanks the government was heaping on them. They were fired from their positions after long, loyal service.

The bill includes most crown corporations and the RCMP. I have to thank the member for Nepean—Carleton for insisting that we include the RCMP. He led the charge and we were able to convince the government to include the RCMP under the legislation. The bill still excludes military personnel, CSIS and the CSE. It includes several other government agencies and crown corporations listed in the schedule to the bill but the cabinet, unfortunately, may add or delete from the schedule at any time after the bill is passed. We have some concerns about the fact that the cabinet will be able to remove certain agencies from that.

One of the nice features about the bill, which again is because we worked so hard in committee, is that we now have legislation where whistleblowers may report directly to the commissioner instead of having to report internally first. The government's original piece of legislation was totally ineffective. At one stage of the process the committee was trying to decide whether it should scrap the whole bill and start over again. However we worked on it clause by clause and we think we have come up with pretty decent legislation that requires a heck of a lot more work, but it is a big first step.

In closing, the public servants of Canada, people who have served this country loyally for years and have worked day in and day out and have done such a good job for the country, deserve the respect of Parliament. I believe this bill starts to give a little bit of Parliament.

[Gurmant Grewal, Conservative, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the hon. member's question has nothing to do with the whistleblower legislation, Bill C-11. This is simply a ranting from a different point of view.

I would like to highlight that the worst corruption record in Canadian history is from the current Liberal government, for patronage appointments, for corruption, for mismanagement, for wrongdoing and for the things I mentioned earlier.

The Conservative Party of Canada believes in appointments based on merit and on transparency.

What the member should have asked is why Bill C-11 is not very effective legislation. Even though it is a step forward in the right direction, I would like the bill to be much more effective so that it would really protect the whistleblowers. In fact, any whistleblower legislation should protect the public interest that it serves and, when applied, should be free to expose the mismanagement, waste, corruption, abuse and cover-ups within the public sector without the fear of retaliation or discrimination.

With this bill, the government has blown a golden opportunity to have effective whistleblower legislation. It could have implemented real protection and meaningful reforms that the Conservative Party has been asking for, and the opposition parties in general. However what the government has done is it has given us a half-baked, half-measure kind of bill.

Bill C-11 is a step in the right direction but it is not at the point where it will actually protect all whistleblowers for the wrongdoing they expose with the corrupt Liberal government and other corrupt governments.

[Gurmant Grewal, Conservative, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise again on behalf of the constituents of Newton—North Delta to participate in the third reading debate on Bill C-11, an act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings.

It has taken more than a decade for this weak government to fulfill its promise and produce this whistleblower legislation. Canadians have had to endure the tainted blood scandal, the HRDC boondoggle, the ballooning gun registry, and the sponsorship scandal, not to mention the numerous other smaller scale spending scandals which have been regularly occurring in this mismanaged government and which have emerged on a regular basis since the government came to power in 1993.

In each and every case, the existence of effective whistleblower legislation could have made a significant difference, but the government has not been interested. It lacks the political will. The Liberals have been more interested in protecting their own reputations than in ensuring good government and the careful handling of taxpayers' money.

It took the sponsorship scandal for the Liberals to finally make good on their 1993 campaign promise, coupled with the pressure from members of the opposition and the Conservative Party. However, even now it is obvious that their hearts and souls are not in this legislation. Up to now, it seems that the Liberal government's policy has been to control occupational free speech rather than permit it.

Rather than rewarding whistleblowers, like governments do in the United States and many other countries, the Liberals have bullied whistleblowers, intimidated them, harassed them, fired them, and ruined their professional and personal lives. The Liberals have always believed in secrecy, confidentiality and cover-ups rather than transparency, accountability and corrective actions.

Let us take a moment to remember some well publicized whistleblowing cases. Bernard Dussault, the chief actuary of the Canada pension plan, reported that he was asked to modify numbers to paint a more positive state of the CPP. He was fired from his job.

Michèle Brill-Edwards, senior physician in Health Canada's prescription drug approval process, was pressured to approve medication that had caused deaths in the United States. She went public. She had to resign from her job.

Joanna Gualtieri, DFAIT portfolio manager for Latin America and the Caribbean at the time, blew the whistle on waste and lavish spending on diplomatic housing and embassies. The inspector general and the Auditor General later supported her allegations. She was harassed and marginalized within the department. Finally she had to quit and go through the expenses of court, her career completely ruined.

Marilla Lo, senior analyst at the Treasury Board, claimed abuse and harassment, including discrimination for promotions, layoffs, and abusive management practices. She was ultimately fired from her job. Of course she later won a wrongful dismissal suit, but was then forced into retirement.

Brian McAdam was a 25 year veteran foreign service officer, an honest officer in Canadian diplomatic missions in the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. In 1991 he documented evidence of corruption at Canada's foreign mission in Hong Kong, real evidence, which I have mentioned in my earlier speeches. He was demeaned and ostracized by his colleagues. He finally gave up and had to take early retirement.

Michael Sanders, a financial analyst with the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, blew the whistle on the absence of sufficient safeguards to protect taxpayers against the collapse of major financial institutions. His fate was to be fired from his job.

Dr. Shiv Chopra, a senior veterinary drug evaluator in Health Canada's therapeutic products and food branch, blew the whistle on the drug approval process for bovine growth hormones, saying that human health concerns were being completely ignored due to pressure from drug companies. His fate was to be fired from his job.

There are many other cases, including those of Corporal Robert Reid of the RCMP, Dr. Margaret Haydon of Health Canada, Bob Stanhouse, again of the RCMP, and Dr. Barry Armstrong of the Canadian armed forces. The list goes on and on, but my time is limited.

Canada is well served by professional and independent public servants, who are often the first to spot problems such as those in the sponsorship scandal. They know when their department has been told to suppress test data. They know when someone is submitting inflated travel expenses or phony invoices or when the work is not being done but the invoices are being submitted. They know what laws they are supposed to enforce and they know when they are not being enforced.

However, federal public servants who disclose wrongdoing in the workplace have little or no recourse if their manager chooses to retaliate against them. Bill C-11 proposes an improvement over the status quo, but it is far from protecting the real whistleblowers and it is not nearly as effective as legislation in other countries.

Five years ago, in the face of government opposition, I introduced legislation to protect bureaucrats who reveal wrongdoing in the workplace. In 2003 the Liberals refused to vote in support of my private member's bill because they did not have the political will to introduce any effective whistleblower legislation. They simply lacked the political will, and that is well reflected in Bill C-11.

When I blew the whistle on whistleblowing, the Liberals had their ears plugged. My private member's bill, Bill C-201, was debated in the House. It was written with the assistance of real-life whistleblowers, many of whom I have named before. They have suffered harassment and reprisals for doing what was right, for doing what was in the best interests of this country but not the Liberal Party.

One whistleblower, Joanna Gualtieri, was of great assistance. She founded the institution called FAIR. Ms. Gualtieri has highlighted a number of points that must be included in whistleblowing legislation if it is to be effective. The following points were included in Bill C-201 but are not found in Bill C-11.

First is full free speech rights. Protected whistleblowing should cover any disclosure that would be accepted in a legal forum as evidence of significant misconduct or would assist in carrying out legitimate law enforcement functions. There can be no loopholes for this one.

Second is to permit all disclosures of illegality and misconduct. Whistleblower laws should cover disclosures of any illegality, gross waste, mismanagement, abuse of authority, substantial and specific danger to public health and safety, and violations of policies, rules and conventions. They are missing from this bill.

Third is the duty to disclose illegality. It is also missing from the bill.

Fourth is that the coverage under the bill should extend to all personnel and affected communities. This is also missing.

Last, and of course, there should be safety from harassment after blowing the whistle.

Bill C-11 serves more as a tool to manage whistleblowing and rein in potential whistleblowers than it does to encourage disclosing wrongdoing. We need effective legislation that would really protect whistleblowers.

The Conservative Party deserves kudos. It is through our efforts that we have these amendments, such as whistleblowers now reporting to an independent commissioner rather than to the president of the public service, the commissioner reporting to Parliament rather than to a minister, the RCMP being included in the group of whistleblowers and the Access to Information Act restrictions being reduced to five years from twenty years. In fact, there should be no restrictions. However that goes to the Conservative Party's credit.

Similarly, there is the amendment on the removal of government bodies. The government had the arbitrary authority to remove certain bodies from coverage of whistleblower protection, such as the public service commission, the pension commission, CPP commission, Bank of Canada and many others. Compensation should be given by the commissioner and the penalties against reprisals should be given by the commissioner, not by anyone else.

All those things were the accomplishments of the Conservative Party.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Newton—North Delta.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of the constituents of Fleetwood—Port Kells to speak to Bill C-11, an act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings.

Canadians have been waiting for a long time for effective whistleblower legislation. Countries around the world have had whistleblower legislation for decades, protecting public servants who take their oath of protecting the public interest seriously.

Indeed, one wonders that if there had been whistleblower legislation years ago, we may not have had a sponsorship scandal. Who knows how much taxpayers' money could have been saved. Instead, it ended up in the coffers of the Liberal Party.

Unlike the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party has always supported effective whistleblower legislation for public servants who expose wrongdoing, corruption, waste and mismanagement.

Bill C-11 fails on a number of levels, including its enforcement apparatus, its procedural scope and its transparency mechanisms. Before voting to support this bill, I would like to see amendments made to correct these glaring deficiencies in the bill.

First, as it stands, the bill's creation of an independent commissioner to oversee whistleblowing complaints is flawed.

As was the case with the previous Ethics Commissioner, the independent commissioner will report to a minister and not the House of Commons. Past experience with ministerial reporting has not endeared anyone to the process. In fact, in the case of whistleblowing, which could easily implicate political appointees, party workers and/or elected government officials, there is nothing worse than having the commissioner report to a cabinet minister who is often beholden to these interests. An enforcement apparatus must be put in place that avoids reporting to cabinet.

This is clearly a case of the fox guarding the hen house. An independent commissioner reporting to Parliament would be freer in his or her assessments and also more likely to avoid the subtle and structural procedures and biases of cabinet and ministerial authority. Why after 12 years of Liberal rule would we trust a system that furthers ministerial power over whistleblowing?

Rather, we should be making every attempt to make the independent commissioner's office truly transparent. Quite frankly, why should Canadians trust these Liberals to guard themselves, when in the past, they have proven themselves so capable of being untrustworthy?

Second, an independent commissioner responsible to Parliament would further decentralize power from the Prime Minister's Office. As we saw in the sponsorship scandal, power concentrated in one area tends to be abused. Or as Lord Acton most famously said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Lord Acton's words are just as applicable today as yesterday.

Part of the need for whistleblowing legislation is that power has been centrally concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office, leading to cronyism and control. By having the independent commissioner report to the House of Commons, we can further erode the incredible power of the Prime Minister's Office, promoting greater transparency, accountability and democracy.

However, democracy has not been this government's strong point. In fact, the Prime Minister came into office promising to slay the democratic deficit. We have seen in this House the exact opposite: confidence votes ignored, excessive nannying of the Prime Minister's Office, appointing Liberal hacks to the patronage appointments and absolutely no movement on democratic and electoral reform.

Bill C-11 furthers this trend by not prohibiting reprisals against public servants who bring their complaints through procedures other than the ones spelled out in the bill. Those who go through the media, police or Auditor General all face the possibility of disciplinary action under this bill. Far from opening up government, this aspect of the bill places undue restrictions on public servants and could continue a climate of secrecy in the public service.

A Conservative government would provide broad protection for civil servants in all areas of disclosure, including the media. The media's role in any democratic society is to act as a check and balance against excessive government authority and control. While we would all think that at various times the media has failed in its role, by eliminating the ability of public servants to go to the media we further erode the checks and balances of a free and democratic society. Accountability and transparency demand that public servants be allowed media disclosure.

There is nothing to keep politicians more accountable than the prospect of headlines screaming scandal and corruption, as the former head of Canada's Mint has recently discovered. Accountability through the media is a key component of any whistleblowing legislation and a Conservative government would ensure that it was included in the bill.

Transparency is further eroded by the scope of the bill, which excludes several crown corporations. There is simply no excuse not to include all government agencies. As we saw at the Mint under former Liberal MP David Dingwall, crown corporate heads often feel themselves outside the purview of Parliament and end up spending taxpayers' dollars wildly. We cannot allow this to happen by excluding certain agencies.

Transparency is also jeopardized by the time allowance for departments to refuse to release wrongdoings for over five years. Frankly, five years is too long. With such a provision in place, the sponsorship scandal would still have taken place even if it had been reported by dutiful public servants. The Liberals could have continued to keep a lid on the scandal while claiming to be ethical in government.

Such a scenario is completely unacceptable. It seems the Liberals have learned nothing about ethics in government over the last two years. While the Prime Minister is good at ethics rhetoric, when we look below the surface we see the same Liberal solutions to Liberal-made problems. It is not surprising that the solutions turn out to be no solutions at all.

Whistleblowing legislation is an important component to any reform agenda. However, it is one piece of the puzzle. Well crafted whistleblowing legislation provides transparency and accountability, but it does little to address the systemic and structural problems inherent in our present parliamentary system. For that we need a clear focus on system-wide reform measures, such as parliamentary confirmation of judges and heads of crown agencies, electoral reform, and Senate reform.

What we clearly need is leadership on both democratic reform and ethical government. We have had leadership on neither issue from the Prime Minister and I fear we never will. The only way to truly bring honest government to Canada is by implementing a broad range of democratic reforms, something a Conservative government will be more than happy to do in the not too distant future.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I actually like Conservative scandals better than Liberal scandals because with the Conservatives they do not seem to be afraid to fire people and put them in jail. When Brian Mulroney was prime minister, a cabinet minister a week went down. He would fire them. He would not just prop them up month after month. I am with my colleague. I prefer all of the scandals of the Progressive Conservative Party to the ones that we have lived through with the Liberals.

Clause 55 is meant to be very narrow in scope and application. There is some comfort we can draw from the fact that our committee at any time could amend and change Bill C-11 if we find there is a real problem with clauses. We do not have to wait for the five year mandatory review of the bill. There is nothing stopping us from correcting irritants as we go. I believe the application of clause 55 will be very rare and narrow as it pertains to the Access to Information Act.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of quick points in response to an observation from my colleague on the definition of the largest political scandal in Canadian history. He mentioned the Devine government in Saskatchewan.

I would point out to the member that the total amount of money that was stolen by members of the Saskatchewan Conservative Party was far less than the amount stolen by Mr. Coffin in one example of abuse in the sponsorship scandal. Yet Mr. Coffin, it appears, gets to lecture on the university circuit while others in Saskatchewan, as the member rightfully points out, did go to jail. I would suggest that if we are looking at the scale of theft, this is by far, in terms of monetary terms, the largest scandal in Canadian political history.

The member mentioned in his remarks that it was worth the time it took to present this bill, and the years that it took in development to get it right. There were a couple of points that my colleagues and I have raised that this bill still needs some refinement in terms of clause 55, which refers to the five year period in which information can be withheld.

If a department head chooses to do so based on the fact that he or she may feel the disclosure of that information would ultimately lead to the identity of the individual, I feel that is somewhat restrictive and onerous on the Canadian public. It would allow department heads to arbitrarily say that they are going to withhold the information because they believe the identity of the whistleblower might be revealed and, therefore, the information itself cannot come forward.

Second, does the member believe there should be exemptions for crown corporations and others or should all arms of government be treated equally inasmuch as they should all be under the same umbrella of Bill C-11 as every line department or should there be exemptions as this bill suggests there should?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would concur that it was the efforts of opposition party members who forced the issue until it reached such a critical mass that the government could not ignore it. I recognize my colleague from Newton—North Delta was very aggressive in his pursuit of whistleblowing legislation.

I read the bills he introduced on this subject. They are very similar to mine and the one introduced by the Bloc Québécois in 1996 in the 35th Parliament. It had it right from the beginning. The whistleblower officer should be an independent officer of Parliament. In the incarnation from 1996, it suggested the Auditor General. My private member's bill also said that we should use the office of the Auditor General, only because we knew the Auditor General had the confidence and respect of the public servants and that her office was an independent office that reported only to Parliament and not to a minister of the Crown or to government.

Therefore, the opposition parties knew what they wanted nine or ten years ago. It was echoed and reinforced by significant efforts made by my colleague, myself and others who put forward private members' business.

Again, it is an example of the advantage of minority Parliament when we are advancing some of these soft issues, non-monetary issues, issues that advance and elevate the status of the working conditions of public servants. I think it is going to be a different world. As soon as we pass Bill C-11, the culture and the morale in our public service will elevate.

[Gurmant Grewal, Conservative, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I highly appreciate the efforts and the comments by the member for Winnipeg Centre. Quite some time ago he had a private member's bill to protect whistleblowers. I improved upon that bill and introduced a bill in the early part of my political life. That bill did not get to see the light of day in the House of Commons. I reintroduced it in the House and it was debated.

It was surprising that the Liberals did not support either of these bills or the efforts of other opposition MPs to introduce protection for whistleblowers. I would conclude that the Liberal Party did not have the political will to introduce any meaningful, effective whistleblower legislation. Only when the government was ridden by scandal after scandal and only when the corruption became very evident to all Canadians, were the Liberals forced to bring in whistleblower legislation, and they came up with a half-hearted approach. That was after 12 years in government.

I compliment all opposition parties that have worked significantly hard and effectively in committee to improve upon Bill C-11. Finally we have legislation that is better than before, although not perfect yet.

Does the member for Winnipeg Centre believe that the Liberal Party did not have the political will right from the beginning and that it was the efforts of private members in the House to force the government to come up with meaningful whistleblower legislation?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with some satisfaction that I rise on behalf of the NDP to speak to Bill C-11 at third reading. It has been eight long years that I have been seized of this issue and trying to develop some satisfying amendments regarding the protection of whistleblowers. It looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel. By the end of this business day in fact we may pass a significant, satisfactory whistleblowing bill. It is very gratifying for me to address this one last time, I hope, in my career.

I emphasize the words “a bill for the protection of whistleblowers”. I should point out at the outset that that in itself is progress. The original bill that we dealt with in the previous Parliament, Bill C-25, a bill which my colleague from Mississauga South touched on in his remarks, was all about putting in place a system by which people could blow the whistle on wrongdoing. It made very little mention of and had very little emphasis on the protection of the person who blew the whistle on wrongdoing. It struck me that the emphasis was all about protecting ministers from whistleblowers, not about protecting whistleblowers. We were critical of that from the outset. We raised it a number of times. It would seem that our presentations on that issue resonated because we now see that Bill C-11 is titled “an act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings”.

In a perfect world I would even reverse those points and say that this is an act to protect whistleblowers. Without going into the technical details of the bill, the biggest challenge we have now is to convince the public sector that it is going to be okay. Somehow we have to mitigate a century of distrust on the part of the public servants. The empirical evidence to them has been that if they open their mouths and blow the whistle, they are putting their jobs at risk and nobody can really protect them. That has been the prevailing wisdom, well deservedly I am afraid.

As a former trade union leader, if I were a union leader in the public sector and one of the people I represented came to me for advice saying, “I have evidence of a wrongdoing here; I am tempted to go forward and blow the whistle”, my advice would have had to be, “Keep your mouth shut because I cannot protect you. Your employer may persecute you, discipline you or make your life difficult as a result of your coming forward and blowing the whistle”. My advice would have had to be not to do it.

Even though I am well aware of the legal obligation to report breaking the law, there are other things that can be categorized as wrongdoing. Employees may be made aware of maladministration of funds that fall short of criminal behaviour, just fundamentally silly activities.

We hope to learn a great deal after this bill is in place, but as I said, our first challenge and the issue I am seized with now that I am confident this bill will pass, and where I am directing my attention is on how we can get the message out there to assure the broad spectrum of public servants that they are safe now, that they can come forward with the confidence that they will not suffer reprisals just for doing the right thing. That is what it boils down to, doing the right thing.

With any kind of luck, this new officer of Parliament that we are putting in place by virtue of this bill will be like the Maytag repairman and maybe will not get a lot of business. That would be everyone's first hope.

Let us put this in perspective. This whistleblowing legislation should be only one element in a series of bills in a suite of legislation that will augment and enhance the accountability, transparency and openness, and the freedom of information that are the characteristics and earmarks of a western democracy that we can be proud of.

If we had true open government, if we had better access to information and freedom of information laws, there would not be the corruption that whistleblowers would have to report because the government would be operating in the light of day. It is the culture of secrecy that allows corruption to flourish. That much we have learned, and we have learned it the hard way in my years in the House of Commons.

In the context of the current culture of secrecy for which the government is famous, we need whistleblowing legislation. There are activities going on in the shadows without the scrutiny and oversight of Parliament, much less the general public. We would not have unearthed any of the recent corruption scandals were it not for the courage of whistleblowers who came forward at great personal risk and without any personal benefit. I do not know of a single whistleblower case, and I have studied many, where the whistleblower was motivated by self-interest. That is just not the motivation. The motivation is values, morals, ethics and knowing the difference between right and wrong.

I want as an employee the type of person who cannot sleep at night if he or she knows of a wrongdoing in his or her working environment. That tells me we have a decent person. Someone who is decent enough to feel bad about wrongdoing is the kind of employee that we want, that we want to reward, and ultimately that we want to protect.

Here we are in this chamber all of us speaking in lofty language about values, integrity and ethics, but we have been derelict in our duties to not protect those very values within the public service and not to reward those values. If anything we have cut those people adrift and have not given them the support they have needed in recent history. Until the advent of this bill they were on their own.

I have cited this example before. My colleague from Mississauga South, the vice-chair of the government operations committee that developed the bill, will remember it well. During the Radwanski scandal, we would never have known about the wretched excess and the abuse of privilege that was George Radwanski without whistleblowers. The most significant thing and the thing that still bothers me to this day is that those whistleblowers who had clear abundant evidence of wrongdoing within Radwanski's office did not feel comfortable in coming forward to a standing committee of the House of Commons without their lawyers present.

It was at midnight in the East Block behind closed doors at an in camera meeting and they still did not feel comfortable about talking to us. They insisted on bringing their legal counsel with them to defend them. As soon as they left that room they were vulnerable people. That is atrocious. Honest people who were doing the right thing felt they needed legal counsel to be able to report gross misuse of funds.

That illustrated to me more than ever the urgent need for whistleblower protection but as I say, as an interim measure. I am optimistic that within a short period of time the pent up demand may abate. There may be a number of wrongdoings of which people have knowledge. The floodgates may open briefly for the first year or two years, but in the fullness of time as we develop other complementary legislation about access to information, freedom of information and transparency, there should not be a great deal of need for the whistleblower officer. I hope his or her phone does not ring off the hook because we will have a self-correcting regime. Sunlight is a great disinfectant and when we shine the light of day on an issue, it is the natural enemy of the culture of secrecy that allows corruption to flourish. That is the next logical step for those of us who are interested in this issue.

It is not hard to see where the justifiable apprehension about coming forward came from within the public service. I came across a research paper in October 2004 which talked about the United States. Prior to it passing similar legislation, a survey was done of 161 workers who were disclosed wrongdoings. Of those 161 workers, 62% lost their jobs, 18% said they were harassed or transferred against their will, including being subject to isolation tactics and character assassination, 13% had their salaries and the terms and conditions of their employment reduced and many experienced a mental breakdown or family break up. Those people sacrificed an enormous amount to report wrongdoings. Granted, this is an American study, but it is a recent study. I think it is a snapshot of the experience in Canada.

We heard heart-rending testimony from a number of prominent whistleblowers who came before our committee. They could not even hide from the spotlight on this issue.

Ironically, the very week that the latest incarnation of the whistleblower bill was introduced, the three most prominent whistleblowers in Canada were fired, three officials at Health Canada who blew the whistle on the bovine growth hormone. They were under pressure by industry and by Health Canada to approve the agricultural nutritional supplement for milk in cows. However, because they were not satisfied it was safe, they blew the whistle on it.

These individuals went through five years of misery. They went through all the things outlined here today. They were transferred to different offices farther from their homes. They were transferred to places where there were no computers. Imagine a scientist being asked to work without a computer. The department could never seem to get them hooked up. They were denied meaningful work and given only insignificant work. All of a sudden holidays were not available when for years they took their holidays at a certain period of time. This was punishment by subtle harassment. It does not have to be as overt as firing somebody.

Before I run out of time, I caution the government about another thing. In the earlier incarnations of Bill C-11 we were very critical of the government's language which spent more time and attention contemplating punishing those who would make a false report or a complaint that was not in good faith, a malicious or vexatious report. There was very clear, specific, harsh, swift discipline for those who would do that, but there was no corresponding language to punish a manager who might impose punishment upon a whistleblower. It seemed completely out of balance. The government clearly stated that it would not tolerate false or malicious complaints.

Some people say that whistleblowing could be used as a form of industrial sabotage. For example, if people hated their bosses, they could blow the whistle on them in false ways. That was dealt with in Bill C-11, but there was no corresponding discipline contemplated if management was just mad that somebody blew the whistle on it and disciplined the employee. The only recourse for employees would be to file a grievance with their union, wait in line at the Canada Industrial Relations Board to have their grievance heard, and two years later they may or may not achieve satisfaction. That is not good enough.

We now have it clearly stated that punishing a whistleblower is in and of itself a wrongdoing and an individual may be disciplined or fired for doing that if it can be demonstrated. We are comforted in some way that balance has been reintroduced into the bill. However, I caution the government in the application of this bill once it becomes law. Far greater attention and resources should be dedicated to ensuring that managers do not discipline employees wrongly rather than employees wrongly reporting mischievous grievances.

Those are some of the cautionary notes I point out to the government.

We should use these final moments of this debate at third reading to reflect on two things.

It takes enormous courage for a worker to come forward with evidence of wrongdoing. Inversely, it takes a lot of courage for a government to introduce meaningful whistleblowing legislation. I think that is why governments, and not just this one, around the country and the world are reluctant to allow true whistleblowing legislation to come into force. In fact, when we pass this bill, we will be the eighth developed nation, of which I know, that will have meaningful whistleblowing legislation. That is not very many. It is an act of courage on both parts. It is an act of courage on the part of the whistleblower and on the part of the government.

The fact that we are debating this much improved Bill C-11 today is evidence of a minority government situation working as it should. This is a graphic illustration of the advantage to ordinary Canadians of minority parliaments. We saw the type of whistleblowing legislation introduced by the majority Liberal government. Every witness who came before our committee rejected it out of hand. I believe there were 14 leading authorities, from university professors, to union leaders, to people who studied this issue from one end to the other. They rejected it unanimously. That is the kind of bill we get from a majority government. As soon as it was a minority situation, things started to open. Log jams were broken. All of a sudden things that we were told were impossible were in fact possible, and we have a better bill as a result.

I believe it is a case study for the advantage of minority governments, especially as it pertains to issues that affect the general population. Minority governments are good for ordinary Canadians. That is my point and I stick to that.

It was worth the time it took to get the bill right the first time. As opposition party members, we could have said that we were getting half a loaf with Bill C-25, that at least it was a bill about whistleblowing and that was better than nothing. We could have voted for it and had it introduced by now. However, we did not. We stuck to our guns and said that it was not good enough, and I am glad we did.

Nobody could have used a crystal ball to foresee this, but that party lost its majority status as a government. All of a sudden we had some influence. All of a sudden there was consultation and cooperation. All of a sudden my phone would ring and a minister would ask me what it would take for me to support this kind of thing. That did not happen in the majority situation. Believe me, nobody cared what we thought about then, no matter how relevant and valid our contributions could have been.

It is interesting to go back and think about the money we could have saved and the quality of administration we could have enjoyed had we had whistleblowing legislation quite some time ago. Maybe we would not have had to endure the terrible sponsorship scandal that is ripping the country apart.

My Saskatchewan colleague from the Conservative Party said that the sponsorship scandal was the biggest scandal in Canadian history. I disagree with him somewhat. When the dust settles, it may earn that position in the history books. However, to this point in time, the biggest scandal on record, dealing with the malfeasance of politicians, is the Conservative Party government of Grant Devine. Most of its cabinet ministers were not only charged but convicted and sent to prison in massive numbers.

Until such time as the last Liberal is led away in handcuffs, the Devine government in Saskatchewan is holding the record for malfeasance, and I presume that scandal was revealed by a courageous whistleblower.

We are proud to support Bill C-11. We are proud of the role we played in it. I take great satisfaction and some pride in the fact that we will have a bill under which public servants will be protected and feel comfortable in telling us what they know. We will ensure that no one harasses them or persecutes them for doing the honourable thing.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, this bill is a big step forward. Make no mistake, the members worked hard in order to reach agreement on this bill. Be that as it may, the fact remains that every member of every party on the committee had to be able to speak as one—particularly with regard to a bill as sensitive as this one.

In my opinion, this bill was essential. It is unfortunate that, today, we cannot predict its impact. However, I am quite hopeful that it will give public service employees who witness wrongdoing and want to disclose it the confidence to do so. We will see if this bill and its provisions are effective over time.

However, I am concerned—my colleague from Repentigny raised a point earlier. Parallel with this bill, I also introduced Bill C-360 to protect victims of psychological harassment. Despite the extensive protection we are able to offer public servants who disclose wrongdoing, psychological harassment will always be the aftermath.

This morning, I received three e-mails from former public servants who followed yesterday's debates. They congratulated me for being the only one who dared lift the veil on what would come after. I greatly appreciate the fact that my colleague from Repentigny has just revisited the aspect of protection and the legislative framework of the bill. The three e-mails I received said more or less this: “Ms. Bourgeois, after the famous 60 days of protection, what will happen if we are transferred to a new place, moved to another department? Then what will happen? Even if people do not know the name of those who make the disclosures, people will end up knowing, or thinking they know, because everything eventually becomes general knowledge. The public service is a closed microcosm.”

That reminded me of something I said here in the House yesterday. I said that the bill is a huge step forward but that there was a little something lacking, and that was iron-clad protection for public servants who make disclosures. That is something that I am proposing along with my bill, but I would also ask that this bill include someone competent who would listen to federal public servants and those covered by the Canada Labour Code. This independent commissioner could be the same one as proposed in Bill C-11, but that person would have to have a staff mandated to deal with public servants subjected to reprisals. These staff members would be able to act even 60 or 120 days after the fact. According to the bill, unless I have misunderstood—and I would like to be told so, if that is the case—the complaint may be filed after that 60-day period if the board deems this appropriate under the circumstances.

With all these “mays” and “ifs” anything is possible, but we are not necessarily resolving the problem. That is what public servants are worried about because they do not have this iron-clad protection. The workplace is merciless toward public servants who blow the whistle. A public servant might be exposing the practice of a government, or, just as likely, the actions of a superior.

I want to close by saying that there is no guarantee that the public servant disclosing wrongdoing can be protected from intimidation, abuse of power, isolation or everyone ganging up on him. I thought that was what the President of the Treasury Board realized yesterday when he nodded in agreement with me that there was a little something missing.

I am not sure there will be as many disclosures as we hope. This bill shows transparency. It goes far beyond any political party. I have heard it said the game here in this House is power. Of course there is criticism. Nonetheless, it goes beyond any political party since it will allow public servants, honest workers, to say, “I am doing this because I do not accept the situation. If I want to sleep well at night, then I will disclose this wrongdoing.” This bill is good, but it needs to go a little further and supplementary protection needs to be added to it.

I now want to ask my colleague why the Canadian Forces were excluded from this bill. He touched on this, but I would like him to elaborate. I want him to explain it again. Many disclosure, harassment and intimidation cases come from National Defence or the Canadian Forces. Of course we trust them. They have their own way of managing and processing complaints as they see fit. Nonetheless, I have some reservations.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak on Bill C-11. When all the members of the House decide to join forces to ensure the success of a bill, we see that things can be done quickly. I last spoke on this bill less than 24 hours ago, so it is possible to move quickly when we want to.

Since people's comments and speeches often lose sight of the main objective of a bill, I will start by reading the title of Bill C-11: An Act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings.” The purpose of this bill is to establish a procedure for disclosure and to protect those making disclosures.

I have listened to, and read, the speech by the President of the Treasury Board. I too would like to draw attention to the invaluable work done by the members of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, including the permanent members, among them my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, and the other members, both occasional and semi-permanent. We were always extremely glad of their helpful suggestions.

I would also like to thank certain colleagues, among them the hon. member for Mississauga South, who has shown a marked interest in Bill C-11 since yesterday, as has my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville. I also congratulate her for introducing a bill in complementarity to Bill C-11. I use that term, but I am sure there are more appropriate words in a dictionary of synonyms. The bill in question is Bill C-360, the purpose of which is to help the victims of psychological harassment and to recognize the harmful effects of such harassment on federal public servants.

My congratulations to her, and my thanks for her interest in Bill C-11, now at the third reading stage. I know that yesterday she questioned the President of the Treasury Board on the repercussions and also on the complementarity of bills C-11 and C-360. The President of the Treasury Board has shown some openness to meet with my colleague in order to see how these two could work together, how they could be dovetailed.

Many normal, relevant, important questions on Bill C-11 were raised by hon. members in this House and I am sure that those who sat on the committee on a regular basis helped us to clarify our thinking or realize that in fact we could have better defined or taken into account certain aspects of the bill, which naturally can be improved upon.

In my opinion, every bill presented in this House can be improved upon, and it is in listening to our colleagues and their suggestions that we see just how this can be done. Nonetheless, we must be careful when we consider the bill or when we make suggestions, because we must look at what is already included in the bill. I will come back to that a little later.

Some aspects of the bill also deserve to be acknowledged and repeated, even if hon. members have already repeated them. In my opinion, it is highly important to repeat them for the public servants watching us, those who worked on developing the bill, and also to respond to clause 4 of the bill, which stipulates:

The Minister must promote ethical practices in the public sector and a positive environment for disclosing wrongdoings by disseminating knowledge of this Act and information about its purposes and processes and by any other means that he or she considers appropriate.

Yesterday, I ran out of time to finish my speech. I will spend more time today talking about raising awareness and disseminating information.

The hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent pointed out earlier that this bill is not a panacea. We will not fix every problem in the federal public service or in Canada with this bill. Nonetheless, this bill is certainly a step in the right direction for improving working conditions and relations and ultimately for moving toward sound management of public funds.

When this bill is given royal assent, it will be highly important for the government, through the Treasury Board, to run an awareness campaign to inform public servants covered under the legislation of the important tool parliamentarians will have given them.

I have been entrusted with multiple mandates here in the House, and if there is any bill that I am proud to see become law, it is this one. I talk about it in my riding whenever I can—as well as about my role as a member of the opposition. I had the opportunity to do so recently at my nomination. If any bill makes me proud of the work we can accomplish, together and with rigour, in this House, particularly under a minority government, it is Bill C-11. I know that it will protect public servants, ensure they benefit from healthier working conditions and encourage disclosure whenever wrongdoing occurs within their working group or their immediate work environment.

I hope that the President of the Treasury Board and the government will be able to provide adequate information so that public servants can be made aware of the important tool they currently have at their disposal, a tool that will ensure they benefit from better working conditions.

Further down in the bill, subclause 5(1) indicates that “The Treasury Board must establish a code of conduct applicable to the public sector”. Then, in subclause 5(3), we read, “Before the code of conduct is established, the Minister must consult with the employee organizations certified as bargaining agents in the public sector”.

During discussions and comments on how to improve this bill, Nycole Turmel, representing the public service union, was consulted and worked closely with parliamentarians in order to have a bill that takes public servants into consideration and best meets their expectations.

A code of conduct must, then, be tabled by the President of the Treasury Board. However, this code of conduct must be established in cooperation with the public service union. Obtaining this degree of collaboration was extremely important to us. The collaboration that existed within the committee is now needed to develop the bill.

I repeat that we also defined wrongdoing. One of the questions that we were asked yesterday was extremely relevant. Paragraph 8( c ) mentions “a gross mismanagement in the public sector”. I had asked the question in committee as to why use the word “gross”, when it could have simply read “a mismanagement in the public sector”. This gives public servants and the integrity commissioner the freedom to determine what constitutes gross mismanagement.

I am convinced that others share my view that the integrity commissioner must not be inundated with trivial matters. Granted, each dollar paid in taxes by Canadian citizens has to be administered in a serious and rigorous manner. But in any business, be it a corner store, a general store or a pharmacy, man will do what man will do, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, there are dishonest individuals who doctor inventories or numbers. The whole government, with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars, cannot therefore be expected to ever be made 100% perfect.

On the subject of trivial matters, for our listeners, $1,000 or $5,000 do not represent trivial amounts of money; these are large amounts. In other cases, other realities, other places, employees who observe mismanagement in their immediate work surroundings may complain to their union steward or immediate supervisor. In reference to relatively small but nevertheless significant amounts, instead of describing them as “trivial”, it would be more appropriate to talk about relatively small but nevertheless significant amounts.

When a really significant situation arises, however, employees ask themselves if it constitutes gross mismanagement in the public service. They determine on their own whether there was indeed gross mismanagement, in which case they make a disclosure, a complaint, to the integrity commissioner, who may agree that there was gross mismanagement. They get to exercise their freedom of choice and think for themselves. Rightly or wrongly, we have agreed in committee that this was one way of handling or dealing with this kind of wrongdoing and its definition.

Further on in the bill, the text addresses the protection of those making disclosures. Clause 19 reads: “No person shall take any reprisal against a public servant.” Further on, there is mention of the person's horizontal transfer without loss of benefits or seniority.

I have listened carefully to the comments, criticisms and suggested improvements to the bill, and find them overall totally legitimate. For that reason, we have included a five-year review in the bill, somewhat along the lines of the one in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I feel there ought to be similar provisions in the Official Languages Act as well. Unfortunately, there has been no review of that act and it is beginning to collect cobwebs. I do not know whether Official Languages Commissioner Dyane Adam would agree with me, but I feel that legislation dating back to 1968, with a revision in 1988 and nothing since, might well be expected to need reviewing, considering the way society has changed. That is what Bill C-11 does.

Bill C-11 gives the government the benefit of the doubt. Initially, there will be an integrity commissioner appointed. We know how well known the Auditor General and the Commissioner of Official Languages are today for their exemplary and rigorous work. We can only hope that the man or woman appointed as public sector integrity commissioner will be equally well known, but not for having brought major scandals to light. We hope there will be no such scandals. We hope that the management of public funds and the working people's money will be done efficiently.

Should there be a sufficiently high number of complaints requiring public servants to meet with the commissioner, as my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent has just said, there ought to be a climate of trust in place.

Certainly the first two or three people to disclose will be afraid, as they are today, of being identified, of being the victims of reprisals, of being involved in the trial runs of a new system. The commissioner and his or her staff will have to ensure that the first complaints set an example to other public servants who see wrongdoing taking place, so that they will also feel free to disclose.

Between the first and second draft, we included RCMP officers and we have now excluded various positions, such as positions with the Canadian Forces. I am also thinking of CSIS, in terms of telecommunications.

These groups have been excluded for reasons related to national security. They appeared before the committee and told us that, for national security reasons, they did not want this bill to apply to them.

These groups told us that they agreed, on the condition that these institutions have a similar measure allowing employees of these institutions to lay a complaint. In five years, or even earlier, we will be able to see if those who asked for protection for national security reasons kept their promise to comply with these conditions.

Earlier, I was talking to a Radio-Canada host. I told him that Radio-Canada is not subject to Bill C-11. However, the committee learned that Radio-Canada already has a similar tool in place for its employees. As a result, this crown corporation is excluded from Bill C-11, because it has an equivalent measure in place for its employees.

So, the entire public service benefits from adequate, professional and rigorous protection. Those who do not must have a similar and comparable measure that shall be subject to the approval of the Standing Committee on Governmental Operations and Estimates. Those who are not protected by Bill C-11, but who already have a similar measure in place, will have to test how well it works with regard to any future complaints.

The integrity commissioner will now be an independent officer, which was not the case in the initial version of the bill. We think the definition of wrongdoing will not leave any room for a series of frivolous and vexatious complaints. I believe the terms “frivolous” and “vexatious” were dropped from the initial version—I will have to verify that—to prevent the bill from being used as a pressure tactic during the negotiation of collective agreements. Public servants must not use Bill C-11 to go against its philosophy, its intent and its initial purpose, which is to protect public servants and provide them with a legal framework.

All these corrections were made to the bill in light of comments by witnesses, including Mr. Keyserlingk, who was the integrity officer for a while and who asked the government to give the rules or existing policy a legal framework. The existing policy was inadequate and did not have the necessary authority or tools to defend public servants properly. All this work was accomplished because of everyone's cooperation and good will.

We in the Bloc Québécois, like my colleagues from the Conservative party and all the other parties, believe we have come up with a bill that, although imperfect in some parts, responds to the expectations resulting from the sponsorship scandal, the goings-on of the privacy commissioner, Mr. Radwanski, and the current case involving Mr. Dingwall at the Royal Canadian Mint. Just this morning the papers reported that some ministers in this government, including the former president of the Treasury Board, broke Treasury Board rules and travelled on private jets instead of taking commercial flights, which would promote sound management of public funds.

Public servants who witness such wrongdoings could disclose them. Certainly, ministers and deputy ministers will be more careful. Exemplary public servants could disclose wrongdoings in the same way Allan Cutler disclosed the sponsorship scandal, despite the enormous pressure dissuading him from doing so. According to comments made in committee, this public servant would have been a little more comfortable had the bill been in place, although he still would have been afraid.

Time will tell whether the bill will meet all its objectives.

It would be my pleasure to answer any questions.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-11. I will be speaking in support of the bill. I would not say that I do so grudgingly, but let me say that I will be supporting the bill because I agree with and support the spirit of the bill. There are elements of the bill which still need some cleaning up. I think a change of government would go a long way toward effecting those positive changes that need to be made to the bill to make it a better bill than it is now, but generally speaking, the spirit of the bill is something I certainly can support.

I want to talk about that spirit and give a couple of examples. If this bill had been in effect years ago, some of the things we have experienced over the last decade or so might not have surfaced. We might have had a better government. We might have protected the taxpayer more. We might have seen the kind of Parliament that worked in the way most Canadians wish it to work.

The spirit of the bill is to effect two things, that is, to protect the identity of those individuals within the public service who wish to come forward to inform someone of wrongdoing, of criminal wrongdoing, perhaps, of illegal activities that are occurring within their particular sphere of influence, within their government department or within their agency, and not only protect them when coming forward, but protect their identity from ever being disclosed.

They need to be protected, obviously, because if any public servants felt that by coming forward they would be punished, the amount of information coming forward would be greatly lessened. If any members of the public service feel they have a true and legitimate fear of reprisal, retribution or punishment, obviously they will be very reluctant, to say the least, to come forward with any information that might point the finger at one of their superiors.

I think we have no better example to look at than what has been commonly referred to as the biggest political scandal in Canadian history, the sponsorship scandal, and what happened over the course of the last decade and what might have happened had this bill been in effect.

I think most Canadians now are familiar with the elements of the sponsorship scandal, but I want to dwell on them again just for a moment, because I think the information bears repeating. Generally speaking, what happened was the following. Over the course of three consecutive federal elections, there seemed to be, there was, an orchestrated plan perpetrated by members of the Liberal Party of Canada to take taxpayers' dollars that were part of the sponsorship program and funnel that money illegally back to the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec, to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada, to assist the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec with election activities. Clearly this is of great concern to all Canadians, because not only it is highly illegal, it is reprehensible on a moral basis as well.

Let us just think for a moment about what might have happened if we had had Bill C-11 in place a decade ago. During the Gomery commission investigation into allegations of misuse of taxpayers' dollars in the sponsorship scandal, one of the things we learned was that two directors general of the Quebec Liberal Party testified that they in fact took money from the sponsorship program and delivered that money to organizers, to individuals within the Quebec Liberal Party, to assist these people to perform election related duties during federal elections. In other words, they laundered money back to the Liberal Party of Canada to allow the Liberals to try to increase their political profile and to increase their election readiness, preparedness and that type of thing.

I can assure the House that if legislation like this were in place, that might not have occurred. Just for clarification purposes, in provinces outside Quebec the term “director general” refers to a position mostly commonly known as executive director. I have some knowledge of the role of an executive director of a political party since in a former life that is the position I held with two political parties in my home province of Saskatchewan. I was the executive director of the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan. I was also the general manager of the Saskatchewan Party. “General manager” was a term that we equated with executive director.

I can assure members that had anyone in our party in Saskatchewan at any time suggested that we concoct some sort of money laundering scheme similar to that of the sponsorship scandal and asked me in my role as an executive director to help implement this scheme by funnelling money to one of my political operatives, I would not have done that without at least a very serious, honest and frank discussion with other members of my party.

I can assure members that, at least in my opinion, the directors general who testified before the Gomery commission would not have carried on this activity without getting approval from someone else, someone higher up the political food chain. There is no director general and no executive director in Canada, in my opinion, who would carry on illegal activities such as this on his or her own accord. In my opinion, someone higher in authority than the directors general of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada authorized this type of illegal activity. They were told to do these types of things.

My point is that someone, or perhaps many other people, knew of this activity. They knew of this plan. They knew of this scheme. Why did no one come forward? Was it that every member of the Liberal Party in Quebec was corrupt and every single member who was privy to this information and privy to this illegal scheme agreed with it? Was it that they said, “Let us flaunt the law, let us money launder and steal money from Canadian taxpayers. It is okay. We are Liberals”. Perhaps they did. Perhaps every single person who was aware of this activity agreed with it, condoned the activity, and thought that it was perfectly normal and legitimate to do because of course as Liberals they were above the law.

Although I have spoken of this type of activity before, perhaps, and have made suggestions that all of these members who were complicit in this activity were on the same page, I honestly do not think that would be the case. I think there would be some people who were aware of these activities and who did not agree with them, and who thought this would be absolutely unconscionable and reprehensible, not to say highly illegal, but they did not come forward.

Until the Auditor General started seriously investigating the activities surrounding the sponsorship program, no one came forward internally from the Liberal Party of Canada to say, “I think something is amiss here. I think there are some problems”. Why did they not come forward? I can only guess about this. Perhaps they did not because there was no protection for them to come forward.

Certainly, a scandal of the size and scope of the sponsorship scandal, as we have seen, would have prevented individuals from coming forward. If they felt that their jobs were in jeopardy, that their future livelihoods and incomes were in jeopardy, they would not have come forward.

This bill goes a long way toward preventing that type of attitude from employees. Now, hopefully, with Bill C-11 in place, they would feel assured that they could come forward with information which would be both informative and salient, and they would not be punished and their names would not be released. They would feel that the information they provide to someone, and in this case hopefully it will be the independent commissioner, would result in preventing this type of illegal activity from occurring again, and those individuals involved with these types of schemes would be punished but the individual who came forward with that information would not be punished.

I think that if we had had had Bill C-11 in place a decade ago, there is a reasonable chance that the sponsorship scandal would not have occurred, or at least it would not have gone down the road as far as it did. After all, and I will just repeat myself, the sponsorship scandal occurred over three consecutive federal elections.

This program was not an isolated incident. This scandal occurred successively over three federal elections. Most Canadians I have spoken with have asked, “How in the world could they get away with this?” How in the world could anyone perpetrate a scheme this large without someone knowing, without someone coming forward and saying, “This is wrong, stop it, this is absolutely reprehensible”. Perhaps the reason no one came forward is that they were afraid. They were afraid of what might happen to their careers if they came forward.

Bill C-11 is an extremely important piece of legislation in that regard. It allows individuals who see wrongdoing, who see activities that should not be condoned, to come forward without fear of reprisal or retribution or punishment. That is the spirit of the bill and it is certainly something that I totally agree with. It is something that should have happened a long, long time ago, but as the saying goes, better late than never.

Not only do I agree with the spirit of the bill, but I agree with one of the other comments that my colleague from Mississauga South mentioned earlier. He was giving credit to committee members who worked on the amendments to the original bill to get it to the state that it is in now. I want to make a comment for all my colleagues here. I think that as parliamentarians we should all be concerned with only one thing, and that is the fact that collectively we need to bring forward legislation, regardless of subject material, in a cooperative manner that brings forward the best possible legislation for Canadians.

Quite frankly, as an individual I do not care if it is a Liberal initiative, a Conservative initiative, or a Bloc Québécois or NDP initiative, as long as the end result is something that provides good government and good legislation. With that fact, I totally agree with my colleague from Mississauga South that the committee should be applauded for the fine work it did.

I also have to give a bit of a partisan plug here. It was the Conservative members of that committee who drove many of the amendments from the original bill that are now contained in the current Bill C-11. Some of those amendments were not only extremely important but extremely timely.

The member for Mississauga South spoke of the intent of clause 55 and why it was put in. This is one clause that the Conservative members on the committee were very much opposed to, because it states that information disclosed from a whistleblower can be withheld from the public purview for a period of five years.

Here is where we Conservative members differ in opinion from the member for Mississauga South. He suggested that this is a good clause because the primary function of the bill is to protect the identity of the whistleblowers. He said in regard to any head of any department that if he or she legitimately believes the information being released could possibly lead to the identification of the whistleblower, this gives the head of that department the right to withhold information for up to five years.

I would humbly suggest to the member for Mississauga South that any department heads of any crown corporations or agencies or line departments in government could make the argument that they could not release the information because they believe that the information, once it is public, could perhaps lead to the identification of the person who provided that information. Therefore, they would say, that would be a legitimate reason to withhold it for up to five years. That destroys the intent and the spirit of the bill.

Yes, we must protect the identification of the whistleblower, but even more important is the fact that the information the person wants to release to prevent illegal activities from occurring should be provided and should be made available to the public, to the Auditor General, to Parliament in whole, without anyone arbitrarily determining and choosing to withhold it for five years because it might lead to the identification of the person who provided that information, or the whistleblower.

I and most Conservative members believe that clause should be eliminated and when a Conservative government is elected that clause will be eliminated from the bill. The current information officer, another officer of Parliament, agrees with our take on that clause, which is that it should be removed, as should any reference to special exemptions for crown corporations. If we really want to make this truly effective, this legislation should apply equally to all arms of government, whether they be crown corporations, line departments or agencies.

The spirit of the bill is to ensure that Canadians and Canadian taxpayers are protected, that individuals with information about wrongdoing by superiors in government can come forward without fear of reprisal, without punishment and that their identities would be protected. While I agree with that wholeheartedly, should that not apply equally to all arms of government? Why should there be exceptions? In my humble opinion there should not.

I also want to speak briefly to the new position that we hope the bill will result in and that is an independent information officer who will report directly to Parliament as opposed to directly to a minister. I heartily approve of this portion of the legislation. The original bill, as I am sure the House is aware and most Canadians are aware, according to the legislation drafted and presented by the government, was that individuals would report to a superior or to someone perhaps in their own department and, ultimately, it would go to a minister of the crown and then perhaps that information would be made public. I think there are too many ifs in that. There are too many variables to really suggest that the information would protect the identity of the whistleblower and protect the whistleblower from political reprisal.

Allowing the office of an independent commissioner to be established to deal with these issues is absolutely a right step and a correct step.

I would suggest, however, that if we want to go one step further we should give more powers to that independent commissioner. We would like to see the power to grant more generous compensation to whistleblowers who have been reprised against. Frankly, something that is still a concern of mine is that, regardless of this legislation, I am somewhat fearful that in the future any government, whether it be a Liberal government, a Conservative government or any other government, might still choose to take actions against those individuals who came forward to give information that might be considered politically damaging or, at the least, embarrassing.

I would like to make sure that in the future we take whatever steps that might be necessary to provide even more protection and perhaps even compensation for those whistleblowers.

This is a long overdue piece of legislation. Once again, I applaud all members of the committee who came to some agreement on amendments to the bill. It is something that I hope in future will prevent the type of actions that we have seen, like the sponsorship scandal and the Dingwall case, from ever occurring again.