What would have happened is that he would have perhaps felt confident that he could go to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner and that his case would have been investigated. If it were found, for example, that he had suffered reprisals as a result of what he had done, then the people responsible for that could be disciplined, up to and including the point of losing their jobs. That's the theory and that's what our legislation says. But the practice is that our Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, in the past two years, has not found a single case of reprisal against an employee. There's a tribunal that she can bring into action to adjudicate cases when she believes there is reprisal. That tribunal has never sat.
In the U.K., when they established similar legislation some time ago, during the first three years the tribunal adjudicated more than 150 cases. That's more than 50 a year. This is a smaller jurisdiction, but the ratio is infinity—there has not been a single case—and we know from surveys of Stats Canada that more than one in five federal public servants report that they've suffered reprisal, mostly at the hands of their bosses. Our experience is that what will guarantee a reprisal is to try to blow the whistle. We think that close to 100% of those people suffer.