Government Operations Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How would we best follow up then? Is that something we could ask you to double-check on if this is under your...?

[Carl Trottier]

I would need access to a contract.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But you do understand our concern on a $7-billion—

[Carl Trottier]

I absolutely do. My response is that they do have access to an internal process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We have Mr. Weir for seven minutes, please.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much for coming to kick off our review of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. The act of course specifies an independent review every five years, so I wonder why this review has been delayed until now.

[Carl Trottier]

The only piece of information I have is that the review was requested in 2016 by the President of the Treasury Board. Unfortunately, I don't have reasons as to why it was delayed until 2016 for the request.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, you have no sense of the rationale for the President of the Treasury Board not having requested this review years ago?

[Carl Trottier]

Unfortunately, I don't have that information.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay.

I also wanted to ask about the cost of the offices created by the act, specifically the Integrity Commissioner and the tribunal.

[Carl Trottier]

I believe you will be hearing from the Integrity Commissioner. I think that would be an appropriate question for him, because I'm not aware of the costs associated with his office.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Would it be fair to say it would be in the range of several million dollars?

[Carl Trottier]

What would be fair is to ask the commissioner because I am not in a good position to be able to.... We offer support at the office of the chief human resources officer. I know how much our offices cost to run and support the act, but I'm not aware—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

What would that number be then?

[Carl Trottier]

We have a small team that looks at that. It's probably in the range of $125,000 per year.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay.

[Carl Trottier]

About two or three people, on an ongoing basis, support the senior officers, and we deal with the office of the integrity officer on an ongoing basis. That's the extent of our expenses.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks.

You described the scope of who's covered by the act. Could you give an approximate number of public servants who are subject to the legislation?

[Carl Trottier]

I'm told that it's about 400,000.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes, that sounds about right, given that it includes all the crown corporations as well.

If you assume that a significant or at least a non-trivial proportion of those people might witness wrongdoing in a given year, one might expect tens of thousands of cases to be coming forward under the act. Yet that's clearly not the case, based on the numbers Mr. Drouin discussed. If you look at the tribunal process, only a handful of people have gone through it in the whole decade this system has been in place. I wonder how you would explain why so few federal public servants have actually availed themselves of this process.

[Carl Trottier]

I have no data to indicate that there should be tens of thousands, so I'll just make that point right now.

I've mentioned before that this catches what other processes don't catch. The harassment grievance process, the harassment policy, the labour relations disciplinary policy, and all of those other redress mechanisms would catch the tens of thousands that you're talking about, and they do so on a yearly basis.

This in fact catches what those systems don't, and sometimes sends it back to them because it's been identified that this is a harassment case and shouldn't be dealt with through this process. It has a very fine line to it, and it catches those elements of wrongdoing that are not caught in any of the other processes. That explains why the numbers whittle down to what they are.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

In terms of the harassment process that you mentioned, I believe Treasury Board does a periodic survey of employees about workplace harassment. Is there a sense of how much of the harassment might be whistle-blowers, might be reprisals for whistle-blowing?

[Carl Trottier]

Again, we get this information through the public service employee survey. Harassment is defined in there, and it is not defined as whistle-blowing in any shape or form. It is how you're treated with regard to either your manager or your colleagues. That's the essence or texture that harassment is given in the survey.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Could you tell us about the measures Treasury Board has taken to reduce workplace harassment?

[Carl Trottier]

Obviously it's outside of the purview of what we are doing here today, but TBS has in fact been quite active from the senior level to the very bottoms of the organizations, proactively reaching out to employees and proactively ensuring workplace wellness initiatives are put in place. A mental health initiative was one of them, which is binding when it comes to treating employees right and treating them with respect. There are in fact a multitude of examples of initiatives that are under way.