Government Operations Committee on Feb. 7th, 2017

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Sorry, I thought that was 2015-16.

[Carl Trottier]

In 2007, there were 234.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay, so it's fairly steady.

[Carl Trottier]

It's fairly stable. It goes up and down slightly, but not a lot.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks for joining us this morning.

This follows up a tiny bit on Mr. Drouin's comments. Do you have the metrics, or have you polled the public service to gain an understanding of the level of confidence that they have in the act? The reason I ask is that we have the act, which, on paper, should be protecting public servants. I'm going to refer to the Phoenix issues. We've seen it again and again, repeatedly, and we hear the same story, “We're afraid to come forward.”

I read in this morning's news about the pay fiasco involving overpayment. One public servant said he had $40,000 extra in the bank. “He spoke to CBC News on a condition of anonymity, because he [was] worried about his job.”

We've been dealing with Phoenix for a long time. We've heard this repeatedly. We've seen it repeatedly in the media. It strikes me as quite concerning that so many people are afraid to come forward for their own paycheques, much less serious wrongdoing.

I'm trying to gauge the level of confidence that our public servants have in the ability to be protected by the act and in the ability to come forward without reprisals.

[Carl Trottier]

I can't speak to Phoenix today, obviously, but in terms of—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, I'm not asking about Phoenix. I'm saying that if the public servants are so afraid to even come forward about their paycheques, I'm not getting a strong level of confidence that they feel comfortable coming forward to report wrongdoing. That's what I'm getting at. How are you measuring, or are we measuring, some kind of confidence? Do you believe public servants have confidence in the act? Are they confident that they're going to be protected if they come forward?

[Carl Trottier]

In terms of the fear of reprisal, there's anecdotal...that it is out there, but it's very hard to assess. It's hard to assess who has withheld the desire to disclose a wrongdoing. That's something difficult that we should all be thinking about: how to better assess that.

The data that we do have, though, indicates a very constant number of disclosures of wrongdoing, which isn't an unhealthy thing. It's actually quite a healthy thing in terms of having anywhere from 234 to 291 wrongdoings being brought forward per year. There is a sense that there is a willingness to show. Now if it were 17, 18, or 19, we'd be saying that we have a problem here and that there's obviously something that's not working.

It's hard to grapple with people's intentions and their not wanting to follow through with their intentions.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Should we be doing more in that regard? I recognize that it's anecdotal, but again, if you follow the news, every other day there's another Phoenix disaster. CBC, the Post, the Ottawa Citizen, it's always the same line: staff are afraid to come forward. They've come to the media. Is there a much bigger problem? I realize again that, unless it's reported, you don't know, but it strikes me as quite concerning that so many people see complaining to the media as their only outlet, as opposed to coming forward on other issues.

[Carl Trottier]

In the absence of being able to know what an individual has thought but decided not to share with us, we primarily promote the protection aspect of the act and how an employee can trust in the act. We work with the senior officers in departments to train them, create meetings with them, and allow them to share that information with employees in their departments. From that perspective, we want to reassure employees that they, in fact, will be protected should they come forward. Hopefully, that's going to encourage them to move forward.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I realize this is oversimplifying it, but is there any mechanism to reach out to our public servants saying, “Is there a reason you're not coming forward, or are there issues that are preventing you from coming forward?”

[Carl Trottier]

Yes, we do that—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

This could be employee opinion surveys asking, “Are you comfortable with that? Why not?”, etc.

[Carl Trottier]

We do that with the public service employee survey. Every three years we go out, and 2014 was the last time that we went out. I don't have the results of it here, but it is the means by which we measure a certain degree of comfort and reassurance they have with that. That is the main tool we use.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I just want to move on.

Recently with the Super Hornet jet procurement project there were over 120 public service employees, DND employees, who have been banned for life from talking about the procurement process with the non-disclosure papers they signed off on. How are we protecting those 120 people who have been banned for life from discussing a $7-billion probable procurement fiasco that's coming up? How do we protect those people?

[Carl Trottier]

They don't form a part of this.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How do they report wrongdoing?

[Carl Trottier]

Are these members of the Canadian Forces?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, these are National Defence, Public Works—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

They've taken them from all communities. There are a number of employees, as reported in the media, who have signed non-disclosure agreements. For various reasons—I won't get into that because I don't know—those non-disclosure agreements prevent employees from speaking on any aspect of the project on which they're working, which Mr. McCauley points out might prevent them from coming forward with an issue or a case of wrongdoing.

How do you protect those people who are forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement?

[Carl Trottier]

They still have access to the internal process. I'm not privy to the agreement that was signed, but my guess would be that you don't disclose it externally. The process exists internally. Your immediate supervisor, or the commissioner, or the senior officer—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is it your belief that they can still access this?

[Carl Trottier]

Without being privy to what the agreement is, if it is to not disclose externally, they still have access to an internal process. Their supervisor is aware of this information already. They just want to share with their supervisor, saying that they're aware of a wrongdoing.