Government Operations Committee on Feb. 9th, 2017

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

As recently as March we had the DM talking about opening champagne bottles for it.

[David Hutton]

Right. Exactly.

Now, I knew in 2013 that Phoenix was a disaster. I'm not going into why it.... A lot of people in this town knew. No one came forward and nothing was done. If we had additional whistle-blower laws in place, many whistle-blowers would have come forward, not just one or two. They would have gone to an agency that is a bit like yours—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you think just a better whistle-blower system...?

[David Hutton]

Yes. They would have gone to the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Let me move on with that. What can we do? We'll hear a lot more, but it sounds like what Mr. Drouin brought up about reporting on a gang member. I've seen it in private practice as well, where you basically end up losing your job.

Is it a matter of taking this completely away from the government? We chatted with Health Canada earlier, and it's as if you had a Health Canada problem and you reported it to Health Canada. I would want to get away from them and go to a completely independent system, away from the government or away from the department. Would that help or...?

[David Hutton]

Well, basically—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can I have your Coles Notes version? We don't have much time.

[David Hutton]

Sure.

This also probably answers your other question. What we really need as an agency is the power, the reputation, and the leadership of the Auditor General, but focused on whistle-blowers, so that when wrongdoing is reported to them, they do a thorough, impartial, and proper investigation and then they write a report to Parliament.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Would you take it completely out of the departments?

[David Hutton]

It's the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It sounds like every department has its own little keystone—

[David Hutton]

Yes, but this is a whole separate system. The heart of this is PSIC, and the Integrity Commissioner is an agent of Parliament. He's supposed to be completely independent of the bureaucracy, but he's not.

It would be very easy, with significant changes to the law and staffing, to make this into an agency that would be as effective as the Auditor General—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It sounds like—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we're out of time.

Mr. Weir, please, you have seven minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Hutton, I heard you on the radio this morning making the connection between whistle-blower protection and the Phoenix pay system. Mr. McCauley has touched on this, but I just want to confirm this with you. In your view, if we'd had a better whistle-blower protection system, could the Phoenix boondoggle have been avoided?

[David Hutton]

Absolutely. There's no question in my mind. It would have been stopped years ago, long before any rollout was attempted. A few senior people would have egg on their faces, quite justifiably, but the problems would have been so public and so clearly laid out that everything would have stopped until all those technical problems were fixed, before any kind of rollout was attempted. We would not be sitting here discussing this incredible train wreck that the bureaucrats seem incapable of fixing.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

You and the other panellists have been quite critical of the existing whistle-blower protection regime. I wonder if the solution to that is to change the act, or whether it lies in the appointment process for the Integrity Commissioner.

[Allan Cutler]

I was going to say both. I think you need to rewrite the act almost completely. The other thing is that I think your appointment process needs to be redone. The first commissioner was appointed by the Privy Council. They found her in a department. They got her appointed. With regard to the second one, David here and I were both together talking to Mario Dion when he was interim commissioner. We had with us Duff Conacher at the time. Mario told us we could rely on his integrity because he'd never be the permanent commissioner. He became the permanent commissioner. Mr. Friday has been in that office continually. They went through a competitive process to select him, but my contacts within the Privy Council told me he was going to be selected before they did the competition, so there were no surprises when he got the job.

We have a concern. The Auditor General is an outsider who sits there and looks at things, and has, I'll call it, the outsider's viewpoint. The present commissioner and the other two commissioners are insiders who have colleagues, and they don't want to make waves because they're going to end up dealing with their colleagues in the future.

[David Hutton]

Can I—

[Allan Cutler]

Go ahead, David.

[David Hutton]

I'll build on what Allan has said.

I have a letter here written by Dr. Keyserlingk, who ran the Public Service Integrity Office, the predecessor to PSIC, who did a bang-up job. He did a wonderful job with very limited resources and authority. He campaigned aggressively for a stronger system, and that's why we had the PSIC put in place.

I have the letter here, which was written to Pat Martin, a former chair of the committee. It's a six-page letter. It's very carefully thought out. It makes three strong recommendations to the committee. This was written after the Christiane Ouimet fiasco, when they were looking at the next appointment. It makes three recommendations.

The first one is to employ someone who's respected and established outside of the bureaucracy, not someone who's grown up inside the bureaucracy. The second one is to make the appointment process much more public and transparent. Imagine the U.S. appointment process. You can see who's applying. You can hear what their qualifications are, and you can see how the decision is made. The third one, regarding the mandate of the commissioner, is to make it much clearer that the commissioner's mandate is to expose wrongdoing. That's their job.

That recommendation is in this letter because Christiane Ouimet came up with the idea that her mandate was prevention. She would not concern herself very much with looking at existing wrongdoing; she would send people out to educate people and raise their understanding so that everyone could understand that wrongdoing is a bad thing and we shouldn't do it. That was basically her approach. That was a smokescreen that she created while essentially doing nothing for whistle-blowers.

I'll provide this letter to the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, sir.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you very much.

You mentioned, Mr. Hutton, that you'd also provide the committee with a witness list. I wonder if you'd like to say a little bit more about the types of witnesses you think we should be hearing from, as well as any particular individuals.

[David Hutton]

Absolutely.

By the way, I didn't just cook this up myself; I've had a lot of consultation with colleagues.

I think the important thing is to get a variety of perspectives, mostly from outside of the people who are running the system. There are four categories. I suggest you call at least one witness from each.

The first is people who are anti-corruption professionals, such as certified fraud examiners, because they deal on a daily basis with situations in which there's serious wrongdoing. They have a lot of knowledge. Their professional body does a lot research. They understand the prevalence of corruption, the impact of it, and how it can be exposed. For example, they will explain to you how research demonstrates that whistle-blowing is the number one strategy you need to avoid and expose wrongdoing. It's much more effective than anything else.

You need to speak to former PSIC clients. These are whistle-blowers who have been through the system. You've heard some names here. We've suggested three different people here.

[Allan Cutler]

One of them is sitting in the back here.