Evidence of meeting #72 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was commissioner.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
I have a couple of questions.
Ms. Daviau, you talked about how much work is being contracted out. Do you have any statistics on how much that would represent?
10:40 a.m.
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Overall, we think it's about $11 billion a year. At least $8 billion of that is not intergovernmental, but rather contracted right out to the private sector, often even offshore.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
That's interesting.
I have a question, then, to Mr. Rousseau and Ms. Harewood. What about wrongdoing within the union framework? Is this an issue? How do you treat it, and would the unions be willing to come under PSIC under a revised mandate?
10:40 a.m.
Executive Vice-President, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
We're not part of the public sector, of course; we're private sector. We're representing public sector employees. In terms of wrongdoing on the union side, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are—
10:40 a.m.
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
It's already covered off under a current bit of legislation, under the PSLREB. If unions either wrongfully discipline their members or do not properly represent their members, members already have an avenue of complaint that is independent from us.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
We're just trying to manage the loopholes.
Throughout this study my concern has been the funnel, the woefully few number of inquiries, let alone disclosures or findings or corrective action, across the board. As someone who has been in management, I can say it's gold to get that kind of information. You want to find out what's going on on the floor so that you can do something. At the most benign, it's a management tool enabling you to make some corrections, and of course at the most serious, it involves corruption and unsafe conditions for employees.
What would you think is the one thing that would most help to open up that funnel? We've talked about different measures. What would be the one thing that would most contribute to that?
10:40 a.m.
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
We think reverse onus is probably the one most important thing here, because we heard from Mr. Korosec the kind of terror that a person goes through, as if they're a convicted criminal. A convicted criminal is innocent until proven guilty, but if you're a whistle-blower, you're guilty until proven to be right.
10:40 a.m.
Executive Vice-President, National Capital Region, Public Service Alliance of Canada
When the water is ice cold, people just don't go swimming. There are the legal fees, as well. I mean, $1,500 for legal fees just isn't going to cut it.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Once again, I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. Your testimony has been extremely helpful. Mr. Korosec, as Mr. Clarke indicated, you're the first and perhaps will be the only whistle-blower to appear before us, so we very much appreciate your testimony.
To our colleagues, to our friends from both PIPSC and PSAC, there's always going to be an adversarial situation between unions and management, but everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the difference between right and wrong. It seems to me that a piece of legislation that was designed to protect whistle-blowers but ends up punishing them is just quite simply wrong. Your pointing out many of these examples to this committee has been extremely helpful as this committee continues its deliberations.
Thank you so very much for being here.
The meeting is adjourned.