Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to present my experiences regarding the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act.
My understanding is that it is in its 11th year and we are now commencing the five-year review. The fact that it has taken so long to do the review, and the short period of time for the review, to me is a strong indicator that there is little interest in protecting civil servants who witness wrongdoing.
Something needs to be done. I deal with these damaged individuals continually because nobody else will. I'm past chair of Canadians for Accountability. We are now the only organization in Canada trying to help whistle-blowers. We have no power. All we have is knowledge and the ability to sympathize and empathize.
In brief, the act completely fails to protect those it's designed to protect or that it says it's going to protect. It's designed to protect senior bureaucrats, not the ordinary public servant. I'm going to give examples of the act and its failure, but I want to give some highlights of the history of the act, because not all of you will be aware of the background history of some of the events that have taken place in these 11 years.
The act came into force on April 15, 2007.
By the way, the gentlemen here can correct me if I misstate anything. I'm not a technical expert. I'm dealing with people.
The Conservative Party promised it would bring in legislation that would enable whistle-blowers to come forward without fear. The act as written is not what was promised. If you give public servants guidance to write an act to protect people exposing wrongdoing done by public servants, the public servants will make certain that they cannot be criticized and that they are protected. As written, the act was flawed right from its beginning.
It's also worth pointing out that it's part of the Federal Accountability Act. In that act, the deputy ministers of departments were designated as accounting officers. They're accountable for ensuring that measures taken to deliver programs are in compliance with policies and procedures and that effective internal controls are in place. However, a fundamental problem with that legal requirement and that act is that there is no consequence if you don't, and what has happened? A good number of them have ignored the law because there's no reason to follow it.
There have now been two Auditors General investigations on this office. The first took place October 2010 and ended with Christiane Ouimet resigning for allegedly intimidating employees and engaging in retaliatory action against them.
An internal whistle-blower blew the whistle on the whistle-blowing office. Madam Ouimet was paid about $500,000 to leave—not a bad payment. Mr. Friday, the present commissioner, was the legal counsel at that time and appeared before this committee and testified he had seen nothing done wrong by her in that office at any time.
The second investigation was done in 2014 as a result of two complaints by external whistle-blowers about the treatment they received from the integrity office. Mr. Mario Dion was then the commissioner, and Mr. Friday had become the deputy commissioner.
To quote from paragraph 54 of the Auditor General’s report of 2014:
On the basis of the information gathered during this investigation, we concluded that the Deputy Commissioner committed a wrongdoing as defined in subsection 8(c) of the PSDPA by grossly mismanaging the oversight of the investigation file.
The Auditor General's report also stated that on the basis of the information gathered during the investigation:
We found that the actions and omissions of PSIC senior managers (the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner) regarding this file amount to gross mismanagement.
Mr. Dion accepted the findings of the report. It was tabled on April 15, 2014.
This is an admission by the commissioner that either he is completely incompetent or the act is extremely flawed. You can't have it both ways, and I don't happen to believe Mr. Dion was incompetent. I think he was working under an act that caused him to appear to be incompetent. Subsequently, he resigned early and was appointed to a five-year term as chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.
The third commissioner, and the current one, is Mr. Friday. At best, he has the same problem as Mr. Dion, either the act is extremely flawed or he was guilty of gross mismanagement as reported in the Auditor General's report and as accepted by the commissioner of the integrity office at that time.
Having given you a brief background—I could have given you a lot more depth into things that went on in that office and with that office—I want to give you some actual cases that involve the office. For some, I can use the name, but sometimes I can't due to confidentiality.
The first case I'm going to speak on very briefly is that of Dr. Imme Gerke and Dr. Jacques Drolet, a husband and wife who worked for Health Canada. They were recruited by Health Canada and were involved in global regulatory strategies. What they discovered was an inability to do their job and tremendous resistance when they tried to implement the changes.
They made at least two attempts to get together with PSIC, but unsuccessfully. The end result of their story...? They resigned from Health Canada. They sold their home. They moved to Germany and are very happy, gainfully employed, and accepted as professionals in Germany.
The next case is that of Don Garrett, a contractor in British Columbia. He reported wrongdoing by PSIC in 2011. What should be of concern is that the complaint involved asbestos. It took him years, with no help, to find that the asbestos report existed—though denied by the government—and he had no support from the office.
Another employee who reported wrongdoing was fired in retaliation and went to PSIC for help. What they were told was that they were not a government employee anymore. The act states that reprisal includes termination of the employment of the individual. However, the office told them that they were not a public servant so they couldn't be helped. That was dismissed by the office.
Then there's the case of Sylvie Therrien, who I know is going to be mentioned again. She has spent four years trying to have her case looked at. Why has it taken four years? Because she's been fighting the integrity office for four years. The office that should help her is the office that has been abusing her and fighting her, and she's had to have legal representation. As of January 17, the Court of Appeal stated that the commissioner violated her rights and fairness rights. I'll let David Yazbeck speak more on that.
If a person who wants to report wrongdoing faces retaliation and has to fight the people who would be expected to help, why would they do it?
There are a couple of other ones. I've put down why.... I'm going to conclude because I've been signalled that I have one minute. That's fine.
I'm going to conclude with a direct quote from a whistle-blower who has experience with PSIC. This is a written quote he actually gave me through an email. He said that in every case where an employee has spoken out against wrongdoing in government, he has been the one to be beaten up and has been treated very poorly by the employer and in most cases the employee has not been able to return successfully to his job.
That's the experience of whistle-blowers. Nothing has changed with the new law. Nothing has changed with the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. It's just as bad as it ever was, and I end up getting the phone calls and dealing with them after they have tried the office and been turned away.
On that point, I'll make one final point. The worst part of the act is that the burden of proof is on the whistle-blower. If I go to you and tell you there's wrongdoing, my management has all the documents and the ability to vet the documents and clean them up before you even go to me, because the act lets PSIC contact them and say, “In 48 hours, or a reasonable time, we want to go in and look at the documents.” Do you really think those documents aren't cleaned?
On that note, I'll say thank you and I'll pass it to my colleagues.