I agree with you that Mr. Pomerleau seems to have been simply doing his job, and it's regrettable that he was dismissed. I think it's very telling that he has never claimed to be a whistle-blower. I don't believe he has approached our Public Sector Integrity Commissioner's office. In his position I wouldn't either, because he won't get any protection there.
Basically, public servants, regardless of what kind of legislation and claims we are making, are not protected. What happened to Mr. Pomerleau for a very innocent and, in my mind, very appropriate action is typical of what happens to people. We have people coming to us all the time telling us about the harassment they're receiving for much smaller actions than that. So it's very regrettable.
We wrote an article that appeared in The Hill Times saying that it's possible that this crisis could have been averted if we did have proper whistle-blower protection in Canada. First of all, the plans could have been made public much earlier so that we could have debated them. Secondly, we could have heard from inspectors in the field when they were having difficulty with the implementation of these plans. And thirdly, we could have heard from people in the food industry about what's actually going on, what's common practice. We had a failure in one of the biggest and most well-known organizations in the country. What's happening elsewhere? Are we not running risks elsewhere? We won't ever know unless these people are protected.