Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am very pleased to be here on your invitation to discuss our main estimates for 2013-14 as well as our recent achievements. I am accompanied by our Executive Director, Ms. France Duquette.
You may recall that my first involvement with the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner dates back almost two and a half years ago, first as Interim Commissioner and then as Commissioner on a seven-year appointment approved in Parliament in December 2011. The office was created in April 2007 as part of the Accountability Act and I am only the second person to hold this position.
Our dual role under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act is to receive and deal with disclosures of wrongdoing allegedly taking place within the federal public sector and to handle complaints of reprisals sustained as a result of having made a protected disclosure. While public servants may blow the whistle within their own organization, they often come to us as we are independent. However, we are the only ones responsible to investigate allegations of reprisals.
The number of disclosures made to my office has doubled in the last three fiscal years, and I believe that this is attributable to our increased profile, as well as to the growing sense of confidence within the public service—and, hopefully, the public sector at large—as to our professionalism, discretion, and efficiency.
The office currently employs 28 public servants, and we also retain private sector resources from time to time to supplement our expertise. As of now, since the inception of the office, we have received close to 450 disclosures of wrongdoing and over 150 complaints of reprisal. Our current budget is sufficient to meet our workload, but based on intake trends it is quite possible we will one day have to ask for additional resources.
When we receive a disclosure or a complaint of reprisal, my role as commissioner is to first decide whether the case warrants a full-fledged investigation, and after one has been launched and concluded, whether on the balance of probabilities a wrongdoing has been committed, or in the case of an allegation of reprisal, whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that reprisal action has taken place.
In the last 13 months, we have tabled five cases before Parliament following a finding of wrongdoing involving staff at HRSDC, the Laurentian Pilotage Authority, CIDA, CBSA, as well as the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. We have also referred three cases of reprisals to the special tribunal created by our governing legislation. As of March 31, 2013, we were actively investigating 22 allegations of wrongdoing and seven complaints of reprisals, and I aim to complete all of these investigations by the end of the year.
Since my appointment, we have focused on recruiting a sufficient number of competent employees to fulfill our mandate. Our positions are currently staffed with highly skilled individuals, and last year we experienced a perfectly normal rate of attrition. This explains why we were able to complete 38 investigations in 2012-13, as opposed to a total of 22 in the first five years of the existence of the office.
We have recently adopted formal service standards guaranteeing—barring exceptional circumstances having to do with complexity or scope—that we will make decisions whether to launch an investigation within 90 days and no more than 90 days, and that all investigations will be completed within one year of being launched.
It's important that people who come to us, as well as those against whom allegations are made, find out in a reasonable period of time the outcome of our work. I'm sure you can appreciate that blowing the whistle requires a lot of courage, and that being the subject of an investigation is often a stressful experience; hence, the need to act expeditiously but with rigour.
I am proud to have been chosen as leader of a dedicated group of employees who are committed to the implementation of the will of Parliament and to the contribution of the enhancement of public confidence in the integrity of the public sector. I believe we are starting to demonstrate—in conjunction with senior officials across the system—that the act can work. We are dealing with a complex piece of legislation and often with sensitive situations requiring a lot of skills and attention. I hope you share my sense that things have improved significantly over the last two years, as well as my confidence in the future of the office.
Seven provinces have now adopted similar legislation. This is also a recent trend across many nations in the world. The full potential of whistleblowing regimes will only be achieved over time and after several cultural, legal and organizational obstacles have been resolved.
I look forward to your questions and comments.