Thank you, Mr. Cutler, for being here. I think all of us are very aware of the struggles you've had, and appreciate your forthright way of addressing them in attempting to assist government, frankly, to work better in the public interest.
I appreciated your remark about the conciliation approach. I think if we look at governance as a system--you mentioned your dispute resolution and negotiation background--you need to have a number of things across a range of government and negotiation dispute resolution. The first and most important thing--to save everybody a lot of time, money, and heartache--is to have an internal system that is open, accountable, and works properly, where problems are illuminated without whistle-blowing, in the sense of someone having to step outside the system.
No system will be perfect, but if you can lay the groundwork effectively for that management system you will shortcut a lot of problems. You'll make sure that people fully understand each other. You won't have an employee frustrated in thinking something is wrong, if they don't perhaps have full knowledge because the cohesion of government may leave some issues out of their knowledge, which had they known they might have felt better about. But it leads to better governance. Then you should always, in a system of dispute resolution, have a conciliation mediation approach, and then a determination--a fact-finding process, whether it's a tribunal, a court, or whatever. But I just want to get your reflection on that.
We're dealing with the downstream stuff, on how to solve it once there's a problem and someone's been pushed to a point of having to blow the whistle. I really think the upstream aspects need a lot of work as well.
I guess if you have a healthy internal system of management you will have processes that should be exhausted first, before someone goes immediately outside, so they might find out more information and not expose themselves to worry or reprisal. I guess when you do step outside, I see in this act--and I appreciate that it's repeated a number of times--that the whistle-blower be in good faith. That to me is sort of a bedrock condition.
I wonder if you might comment on those two issues of internal management structures that might be improved, as well as good faith when one does step outside.