Government Operations Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Carl Trottier]

I asked that yesterday, and the answer was no. We are quite on the cutting edge of what needs to be done with regard to this. I was hoping to get a pearl of wisdom out of that, but obviously some good work went into the creation of this act at the front end.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So if any of the provinces are watching CPAC, we should be telling them, “Up your game to the feds”.

[Carl Trottier]

Up your games.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Trottier.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. McCauley.

Go ahead, Madam Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry that I stepped out earlier for just a few minutes, so if I'm asking a repetitive question, just keep it short.

I'm concerned about that new employee. It could be a young employee, maybe somebody transferred in from somewhere else, who is just getting an idea of how the department works. How is orientation plotted out for new employees, so that they have an understanding of where they need to go if they see something that concerns them?

[Carl Trottier]

Every employee now has mandatory training at the Canada School of Public Service from the get-go, which will give them the orientation they need. They have the code of values and ethics that comes with their letter of offer, which they are compelled to read also so that they have an understanding of what the behaviours expected in the public service are with regard to employees who are arriving.

Beyond that, it is left up to the deputy heads to go bigger and give more orientation, but that is the basis of what all employees are receiving right now.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Do you think there could be some improvements based on the results you've seen to date, comments you've had, feedback you've had from employees who have made disclosures? Do you think there could be some improvements made to that process?

[Carl Trottier]

We're always evergreen, always willing to improve, but I believe that the mandatory training is something that is quite robust right now with regard to, “You don't have a choice; you have to go. Here is the orientation, and this is what you need to know.” No employee goes without that right now, so that's actually quite a robust approach to take.

It's also quite robust to be able to put one of these little booklets in their hands and say, “This is your code. You need to abide by this, so when you sign this letter you agree that you're going to abide by this.” That's pretty robust too, so I'm feeling pretty confident.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

That is very helpful, but here's just one word to the wise. Examples are very helpful to people, too, to sort of put that code of conduct into concrete scenarios that people can understand.

I'll just switch out a bit. Now I'm thinking about non-employees, outside contractors, because the act does apply to them. Can you give us any examples of outside contractors who have made disclosures or inquiries and how that was treated? We don't see that in the numbers.

[Carl Trottier]

That would be an excellent question for the commissioner. The disclosures would have gone to the commissioner, and he will be in a position to give you examples. Obviously, he won't be sharing names, but he'll be sharing examples. They don't come to us, so I just don't have the information to share with you.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Okay. Your point is well taken.

Just as a final thing, some of the recommendations that have been made in the past to improve the act would be to make the list of wrongdoings an open list and to make the list of forbidden reprisals an open list. Do you have any comments on that?

[Carl Trottier]

With the list of wrongdoings as an open list, we're going to run into a problem where other means of redress also address items on those open lists, certain items that would now fall into that, and you would have conflicts in legislation, so it is important to try to capture only the elements that are not already caught by other redress mechanisms.

That would be my response to that, but we do welcome the committee's views on that and we do welcome the recommendations that the committee might have.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much.

Could you comment on the reprisals, then? That's where I think there are things that we haven't conceptualized that could happen to people, for example, if somebody suffers a reprisal and was not the whistle-blower to begin with, but was actually just caught in the crossfire.

[Carl Trottier]

Okay, that's a bit of a different question. Your second question as I understood it was, can you open the definition of reprisal? It's currently very broad. It captures just about anything that's done to it.

Your third question, which I understand is, what happens when someone isn't the wrongdoer, but has been—

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

The whistle-blower.

[Carl Trottier]

Sorry, the person isn't the discloser, but reprisal is happening.

[Mary Anne Stevens]

You're right. Currently the act does not protect someone who is not either the discloser or a witness in the process, so if someone mistakenly believes you're the discloser and takes a reprisal against you, you have no protection through the act.

[Carl Trottier]

Again, we'd welcome the views of the committee on that also.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Weir, you have three minutes, please.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Trottier, you mentioned the Treasury Board had undertaken a comparison of Canada's whistle-blower regime with other countries. I'm wondering if that's a document you could submit to this committee.

[Carl Trottier]

We have that, and we can share it with the committee.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes, we would really welcome that.

[Carl Trottier]

I'm told it's two or three years old.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay.

We've had a fair bit of discussion about the act protecting whistle-blowers from reprisal, and in practice it can be very difficult for a whistle-blower to prove that a disciplinary measure or the lack of a promotion was a reprisal for the whistle-blower. I wonder if you think it would make sense at some point in the process to reverse the onus and require the government as the employer to prove that the action was not a reprisal.