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.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
If a person wants to file a complaint regarding an issue with a department's internal process, a solution would be to do so directly with PSIC.
Conservative
Alupa Clarke Conservative Beauport—Limoilou, QC
First, it's inevitable.
When people decide to submit complaints to your office after proceeding through the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, do you systematically accept the complaints?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
No.
As I said, over the years, we've received 27 complaints from various public servants. In some cases, the people simply wanted us to review the commissioner's decision.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That isn't part of our role. Our role is simply to determine whether PSIC used the appropriate process when it reviewed a complaint and made a decision. The issue is that many complaints we've received in the past concerned the final decision.
Conservative
Alupa Clarke Conservative Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Mr. Ferguson, I've read a few of your reports and I've noticed that your office excels at determining whether a certain process was properly followed or whether a particular process was necessary.
Let's look at what I call the internal avenue, in other words, the disclosure process within departments. Would it be good and reasonable to consider eliminating this avenue in order to enhance PSIC's or your office's avenue and make available all the resources at the departments' disposal?
The committee members have noticed that public servants often fear a department's internal avenue. The public servants must deal with people who have committed wrongdoing. Do you think this avenue could be closed to enhance PSIC's more independent avenue?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We haven't conducted any audits on this matter.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Obviously, a number of people have concerns about the current process. However, I can't make comments because we haven't reviewed the situation. Our role isn't to make comments on policies, but simply to give our opinion on how the government's policy is implemented by the departments. We can make comments only on how the legislation works, on how we operate and on our role under the current legislation.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Mr. Stetski, welcome to our committee. I should say anyone with a “ski” at the end of their last name is always welcome to this committee.
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you. I appreciate being here.
I spent my career as a public servant, working with initially the federal government, then the Province of Manitoba and the Province of British Columbia, both as a union member and then in management. This topic is very much of interest to me.
Mr. Ferguson, I guess I'll start with you.
You had two options for a way in which you thought this situation could be improved. One was expanding your mandate, and the second was to appoint an independent investigator.
Do you have a preference between those two, if one were going to be implemented?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, I think it's simply a matter of our saying that there are some limitations. There are limitations concerning people who are bringing forward complaints of reprisals against PSIC and there are limitations in our ability to get access to information.
We think those two things need to be fixed. They don't necessarily need to be fixed so that they are done by us. The mandate could be removed from us and done by some sort of independent investigator as well.
Really, I'm not suggesting one or the other. I think the work that we have done under the investigations we have done well, but we are limited in what we can do. Anything that expanded our mandate would, as I've said in my opening statement, have an impact upon our resources.
If people from outside the public service were able to bring complaints about PSIC's work to us or if we were able to get reprisal complaints from PSIC employees, it doesn't necessarily mean that we would end up doing more investigations. It would mean, however, that we would have to assess more complaints, and all of that takes time.
Similarly, though, if Parliament decided to put in place some sort of independent process, there would be a cost to that as well.
I'm thus not advocating one or the other. I would be happy to work within whichever framework Parliament decides they want us to work in. I think, though, there would need to be a recognition that if we were asked to do more, there would be an impact. Right now the only way we could get the resources to do this would be to reduce the performance audits that we present to Parliament.
NDP
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Absolutely. That's why we put forward those two options. Right now, the way it works is that if PSIC employees themselves want to bring forward a reprisal complaint, they have to bring it forward to the PSIC commissioner, so they need an avenue, just like all other public servants have an avenue, to bring forward a reprisal complaint in an independent way.
Similarly, we run into issues when an individual has gone through the whole process—has made a complaint to PSIC, and PSIC has investigated and made a decision. The individual may not be satisfied with the way PSIC conducted that investigation, but often by that time the individual may already be retired, so again there's a limitation on whom we can receive information from and on investigating that information. I think that fixing those two things is important. Whether they are fixed by changing our mandate or by having a complete mandate exist somewhere else is really for Parliament to decide.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I guess the second part of this, to me, is broader in nature. It would appear, and I think it's true, that in some departments there is a culture of fear of reprisal for whistle-blowing.
Mr. Ferguson or Mr. Chamberlain, what are your thoughts on the appropriate training, let's call it, of management, and on setting a culture that does not, in essence, include a fear of reprisal? How important might that be? Have you ever seen examples of management being held accountable for that culture of fear?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I'll answer quickly and then pass it over Mr. Chamberlain.
Certainly training, I think, is critical in any of these types of things, so that the organization understands the importance of treating these things respectfully and in the right way, by believing people who are coming forward and doing a thorough and appropriate investigation. I think setting that tone and that environment is critical.
Have we seen any situations? We did turn the three complaints that we got from PSIC employees themselves in 2010 into an audit of PSIC. I think that there were repercussions for the commissioner of the day, at that time, as a result of our audit.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Chamberlain to answer your question.
Director of Labour Relations, General Counsel, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I think training is not as important as making these changes to the act. Most public servants receive training, inboarding training. I think we've heard that from some of the departments. I think it's not very effective because most members assume that they are not going to have that problem, so it goes in one ear and out the other.
Right now our union has a pilot project with PSIC in terms of educating the union officers on the value of PSIC. Then we in turn are doing some outreach to our members. If they hear it from the union, there's a basis of trust there. If they hear it from the department, I really don't think it's very effective.
I know PSIC has spent a lot of time on outreach to try to improve its reputation, which was tarnished quite badly early on, but I think outreach and training has to be one part of a much broader approach. I've explained the process to the same member twice, years apart, and it's not something that people tend to retain. I think outreach and training are valuable, but it's only one small piece of the solution.
Conservative
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
I want to expand a bit on the culture issue. I want to understand your role, Mr. Chamberlain. You mentioned that you often advise those who come forward with complaints not to go through the process. If I put myself in my shoes, it might mean denouncing a friend. There's a friendship environment that happens there, and if there is corruption or wrongdoing, it can be hard for people to step forward. All the onus is on them to prove it, and then they have to suffer the consequences of that. How is that you advise employees to move forward, and what's the breaking point for saying, “Okay, now's the time to go to PSIC”?
Director of Labour Relations, General Counsel, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
It's a little bit more nuanced than I put it.
When someone calls in and says, “I have this problem”, they don't know if it's an integrity issue or it's wrongdoing; they just know they're getting issues in the workplace. We put before them all their options: grievances, human rights complaints, PSIC. At one point in time, we weren't telling them about PSIC, because we just weren't using the process. We had lost faith in it. However, we put all the options to them, and they usually ask us about the repercussions of these options. They're always worried, even if they're filing a grievance about reprisal. I don't tell them they shouldn't file; I tell the member the most likely outcome if they file, and they make the decision not to.
Only a small part of changing that culture is about training. It's more about making sure that they can see examples out there of people who've blown the whistle and haven't suffered dire consequences because of it. They can look at that model.
In my union right now, we use the example of the one member who came forward at the human rights tribunal and was successful. I still tell them that it took a terrible toll on the person, but they were successful.
The change point you're asking about occurs because those people are particularly brave and they say, “Damn the consequences; it's not right.”
Often my members have designations. Perhaps they're accountants and they're being asked to do things that are against their professional ethics and against their personal ethics. When they go forward, they're going forward at their own peril, and they know it, generally. They're just particularly brave people.
I don't blame the people who don't go forward. I think protections need to be in place to encourage more people to go forward. That's the difference between someone who chooses to go forward and someone who doesn't. It's just someone who's particularly brave, in my mind.
From the outside, when we look at whistle-blowers, we all say, “Oh, that's a great thing they did”, but it's not like that on the ground. I call it the Serpico effect. I don't know if you know the New York City police officer who disclosed the corruption in the NYPD and got a bullet in the head for his trouble.
Even good people tend to go along with the harassment and the isolation of whistle-blowers because they didn't say anything. They want to believe that they didn't do anything wrong and that the whistle-blower must be crazy. There's a tendency for people closer to the whistle-blower to isolate them. That's just a reality.
The Serpico reference was not hyperbole. I have a close colleague in Quebec with the SPGQ, and he had a member who committed suicide with a memory stick in their pocket about corruption in the construction industry in Montreal. The stress of whether to blow the whistle or not, and the repercussions on their life, caused them to take their own life. This is serious business for some people.
There are a lot of people out there who have decided that when they have a person telling them to do something unprofessional or unethical—maybe the person sends them an email ordering them to do it—they're just going to cover themselves, and that's the way it gets resolved. That's not right.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thanks for that.
You mentioned that one of the recommendations is for reverse onus and you expanded on this with Mr. Peterson, but are there any other jurisdictions in your experience where they've adopted that specific practice?
Director of Labour Relations, General Counsel, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
Yes. In the Province of Quebec, they've just brought in their whistle-blower legislation for the public service, and it includes a reverse onus for reprisal. Bear with me; it's in my notes, in our briefs.