Government Operations Committee on Feb. 21st, 2017

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I have only 30 seconds left, but I want to bring up a final point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have less than 30 seconds, Mr. Ayoub.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

It seems that only one person is responsible for a case being accepted or referred to the tribunal. However, a tribunal normally consists of a number of people who make a decision, which helps prevent situations such as the ones that arose before Mr. Friday's arrival.

[Debi Daviau]

Very quickly, for sure it's a bottleneck, and that's creating a situation in which not enough cases are making their way to the less biased body to be reviewed.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Clarke, you have the floor and you have seven minutes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Korosec, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your courage, your strength, and your action throughout all those years.

Since the beginning of this study, I have been 100% convinced that it's not worth studying if we don't have the presence of at least one whistle-blower. You're the only one who has accepted to come, and this is precious to us. Thank you very much.

I do not have any specific questions, but if you would like to tell us anything else, just go for it, sir.

[Stan Korosec]

Thank you.

Let me say that I did receive a communication from our CFO—who, by the way, had to move from Sarnia to Slave Lake, Alberta, to find a job, and he's still there—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It's a nice community.

[Stan Korosec]

I'm not dissing Slave Lake, but from Sarnia, Ontario, to way up there.... His wife stayed behind. That's what he had to do to find work.

He wanted to participate. He started writing up his testimony, but then he just couldn't get through it. That's how badly it affected him. As well, Cathy Gardiner—she let me use her name—didn't find work. We were fired in March of 2013. She just found work late last year and is working two part-time jobs now. It's been very stressful on them.

I was lucky. I got another job four months after, but I wanted my old job back. In fact, Mr. Joy, our CFO, and I haven't spoken since. It's really hurt the relationship between the two of us.

It's easy to say change this and that in the act, but it's.... You guys don't even know the stress it involves, especially in a small crown corporation. We talked about protecting names. The CEO's office was next door to mine, and the CFO was there. It's a really difficult thing to do, especially in a small crown corporation. Keep that in mind in your deliberations.

Thank you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Ms. Daviau, do you think the definition of wrongdoing is not broad enough? Mr. Rousseau, Ms. Harewood, Ms. Roy, and Mr. Korosec, you can speak up.

We know there are a lot of issues. There were good intentions behind the act, but it's obvious that we need to update it, fix it.

[Debi Daviau]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

One of the things that did come up from the witnesses was that the definition was just too narrow. Do you think that's an issue?

[Debi Daviau]

I think it is an issue, but I don't think it's as big an issue as having the right mechanisms in place to let it play out, when in fact—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We've heard very clearly about the reprisals. I think all of us here have heard it very clearly. It's one of the first steps we have to take.

We've seen that every department has its own bureaucracy to handle complaints, but there are worries like “I don't want to complain to my boss about my boss.” One of the suggestions was to move it to a completely independent office, which would allow a bit more confidentiality and more, I guess, confidence that there wouldn't be a reprisal. Is having a separate, independent office something that you would agree with, in your professional opinion?

[Stan Korosec]

There is a mechanism for that. When we went through our training on disclosure a couple of years before this even happened, either you could have someone within your organization take the complaints or you could go directly. In a small organization, we chose, as management, to go directly there just to avoid that.

[Isabelle Roy]

I think the value of the internal disclosure mechanism in departments is questionable.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's what I'm trying to get at. We spend a lot of resources on that, but we under-resource—

[Isabelle Roy]

We do.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

—other offices that might be better served.

[Isabelle Roy]

I think you need only look at some of the recent wrongdoing findings that have been reported by the commissioner. You'll notice these are akin to harassment complaints. Not to minimize what's happened, but it's really harassment that's being whistle-blown.

For years there has been a policy and a process in place in departments to deal with harassment complaints. Why is it headed to the commission? That's a question this committee should look at, and at whether something is broken internally in departments that leads these complainants to go out to the commissioner to have real resolution to these issues.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You look as if you want to say something.

[Debi Daviau]

Somebody suggested earlier to use the PSLREB or another body that's already set up. We were concerned about that approach because that body is already under-resourced and well behind schedule in dealing with the issues that it already has on its plate. From the perspective of resources and making sure that the proper attention and focus are paid to the protection of whistle-blowers, I think we need an independent or a one-stop shop, if you will, to at least give the Auditor General the ability to oversee these processes. Something is severely lacking.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

One of the other recommendations we heard earlier was about priority staffing. I'm not sure if you were here for the first part. The issue here is...I hate to use “whistle-blower”, but if a party moved to another department—

[Debi Daviau]

Yes. We like that—