Government Operations Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much. I'd like to go back to your comment and Mr. McCauley's comment.

You stated that you were a little disappointed in the response that you got from the government. Here I'm reading Minister Brison's report:

I agree with the opinion of the Committee and its witnesses that improvements are required to the disclosure and protection regime under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. We will move forward to implement improvements to the administration and operation of the internal disclosure...

Which part of it was disappointing? When he's taking the report...you came before the committee, we tabled the report, the report had recommendations that incorporated a lot of things, and the minister is agreeing to it, so what was disappointing? Since the minister is coming before us, we would like to pose some questions to him, which should be logical.

[Joe Friday]

The first basis for my disappointment was timing. First of all, this was a five-year review of the legislation, and it happened in 10 years.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

It was not during this government's mandate.

[Joe Friday]

That's right.

I was quite eager after 10 years to get the five-year review done. I thought our proposals were achievable and implementable. I fully accept that my priorities as commissioner of a micro-organization are not necessarily the priorities of a government or any government, or my legislative priorities may not be the government's or anybody else's legislative priorities.

There was the timing issue. I was really hopeful that the proposal to have a reverse onus of proof at the tribunal level could be something that could be implemented. That was substantive, substantial. Every witness agreed, and we have many examples from other countries.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But the minister is not saying that he doesn't want to implement it.

[Joe Friday]

No, but the second sentence of the letter, “We will move forward to implement improvements to the administration and operation of the internal disclosure....” That has nothing to do with my 16 proposals, and that has nothing to do with the tribunal.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But the internal process is what the minister is also concerned with, isn't it?

[Joe Friday]

That's his responsibility, but he can introduce legislation to implement my proposals as well. I can't. I don't have the status to do that. I would have to do that through the Treasury Board minister.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Have you written to the President of the Treasury Board after this report was released and his response was given?

[Joe Friday]

I have not written to him directly after this letter.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I think that would be a good idea because then at least there is a communication going on.

[Joe Friday]

Absolutely. As I've said, I do believe that the communications between the external regime, for which I'm responsible, and the internal regime, for which Treasury Board is responsible, do exist and that we have good relationships. Again, I am an external body that does not have the authority under the act or in our system that Treasury Board has.

I assure you, I have no difficulty in expressing my concerns or my thoughts or my opinions or suggestions at any time to the minister.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

That is good because I was under the impression that he just dismissed our report, which he hasn't, and he has taken the report into consideration. He says it was thrown in the bin. It wasn't. There is evidence that he accepted our report, and he has to work through different regimes. You may not be his priority, but he has other priorities like balancing the budgets and the estimates.

[Joe Friday]

It hurts me to say, but I guess I can accept that I'm not the priority.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

The alignment is there, and that's fine.

I have a last question for you. From the external perspective there were some whistle-blowers who came here crying because they were being penalized and blacklisted. They were contractors who weren't paid, who were unlawfully.... There were things against them. Have you had any external ones complaining to you? Have you had to deal with things like that, contractors, probably?

[Joe Friday]

Yes, the 147 disclosures we get cover every aspect of the very broad definition of whistle-blowing. The act does specifically provide for protection for contractors. Whether or not that's sufficient is something that I think would be really interesting to discuss in an ongoing review of the legislation. After last year's review, I can say that I think it only helped publicize the existence of the regime. I've had discussions with media, with schools. I was at Queen's Master of Public Administration school a few weeks ago talking about legislative reform of the whistle-blowing act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, I think we're fine. I don't have anything else, but thanks very much. We look forward to Mr. Brison explaining in detail how much he's done to bring in the unanimous report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

That will bring us to Mr. Jowhari for five minutes, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Friday, I'd like to ask two sets of questions: one is budget-related and the other one is process-related. I'm a number-cruncher, and I always look at percentage increases, percentages, and the correlations. Let me start by asking you a question. Do you believe there is a correlation between disclosure of wrongdoing, investigation, and reprisal cases? Have you seen a pattern that x number of, let's say, wrongdoing translates to this number of investigations, which translates into this number of reprisal cases?

[Joe Friday]

No, I don't think there's a correlation. One reality of our work is that we're dealing with an extremely broad definition of wrongdoing, which deals with anything from the breach of an act to gross mismanagement to endangering life, health, and safety.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's a great segue to my next question. What were the top three issues or top three wrongdoings that were brought up as part of the 147 this year?

[Joe Friday]

If I can try to contextualize a little bit for you, it is very unusual for us to get a disclosure of a single allegation of wrongdoing. The vast majority, more than 50% of them, have a number of the boxes checked, in terms of the definition. That actually informed how we went about designing our online questionnaire. I think it's human nature to think that, if I'm going to complain about wrongdoing, and I see there are eight different kinds, I'm going to check them all, because it's up to me to determine.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

They're going to go for all of them.

[Joe Friday]

The three, if I can put it this way, most popular heads of wrongdoing are gross mismanagement in the public sector, which is not defined by law so we've defined it in our own approach, in our case reports; the serious breach of a code of conduct; and the breach of a federal law or a provincial law.