Government Operations Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Joe Friday]

We have from my office. I don't want to sound overly defensive, but as a micro-organization with 30 people, I have three full-time employees working on education, as well as parliamentary relations, to try to get those messages out.

I mentioned the video, for example, and I mentioned that the Treasury Board has the statutory obligation to disseminate information and create a more positive climate, so I would be interested to hear this afternoon's testimony. However, we've provided, under tab 3 of the binder that was originally provided to the committee, a list of the activities that we currently undertake.

This is something that we continue to do. I think if you look at, for example, the OECD report on whistle-blowing in which Canada's system is described, they identify communication as one of the overall best practices. This is not something you do once; communication is a daily challenge for us.

People don't want to get up in the morning and the first thing they think of is, “Gee, where's the whistle-blowing commissioner?” It's more like we use the fire station analogy. If they see something wrong, automatically they should know who to call: us or their senior officer, who know about the regime.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

[Joe Friday]

That's an ongoing challenge for us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Friday, I will come back to you to follow up a bit more with what Mr. Peterson started with on the contractors.

I'm wondering—and this is maybe more an opinion going forward—how we can best protect the contractors. The government is obviously the largest customer in this country for pretty much everything, and not necessarily the issue that Ms. Ratansi was talking about, but also including that. How do we protect whistle-blowers? How do we also protect their staff, from not just an asbestos safety issue, but bad government practices? How do we protect their companies from being blacklisted from other work? It had been suggested that maybe it would be the procurement ombudsman, but I'd like to get your opinion on how we can properly protect outside the public service as well.

[Joe Friday]

I was going to mention the existence of a procurement ombudsman.

I can't speak on behalf of that office, but my understanding is that office was specifically put in place to add a layer of protection and a faster way of resolving procurement disputes, conflicts, questions, problems.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I've read the report. There is almost nothing regarding whistle-blowing, if there is anything, period.

[Joe Friday]

I think the provisions in our act with respect to contractors are probably not well known even by many contractors. This goes back to the question about ongoing communication and education. It didn't come up with other witnesses as far as I can see, that those provisions actually exist in the law. That's why I wanted to raise them in my opening remarks this morning.

The act does touch on a number of important things, such as protection of contractors. Now, under the current system, a contractor would have to come forward and seek their remedies through the criminal justice system.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm not just thinking of the contractor, but of people working for the contractor, whether it's exposing waste, corruption, whatever it might be, with the contractor they're working for or dealing with the government itself.

[Joe Friday]

This also—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm looking for suggestions and thoughts about going forward on how we can build it in, because obviously we're going to have some major changes.

[Joe Friday]

The act currently does allow any member of the public, not only a public servant, to come forward, which I think is a really compelling and important part of our act. Any member of, for example, that contracting company, any employee, could come forward with an allegation of wrongdoing.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm just worried because, again, we've seen the government go after people and destroy their lives, destroy their companies. I'm just looking for an opinion and I'm not making judgment, but how do we go forward and say we're going to protect these people and ensure that the government continues to deal with the company without trying to destroy them for exposing wrongdoing?

[Joe Friday]

One possibility that comes to mind as we're discussing this point—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The reason I'm bringing this up is that any contractor sitting at home watching this on CPAC is going to look and see how we've destroyed lives and say, there's no way in the world I'm going to....

[Joe Friday]

A contractor wouldn't have access to the tribunal for reprisal under the current system. Maybe access to the tribunal would be a means of addressing that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

[Joe Friday]

Regarding access to the tribunal, with its attendant issues, for some people when we did our focus group testing—the results of which we've shared with you—one thing that came out loud and clear was that when they saw that after an investigation we bring them to the front door of a tribunal with the associated formalities, even though every honest and good effort is made to keep things as informal and as expeditious as possible, the very fact of being brought to the front door of an adjudicative process can be very intimidating. We got direct feedback on that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I can imagine.

[Joe Friday]

On the issue of the tribunal, it's wonderful that we have an adjudicative body to deal with something as important as reprisal. However, from my perspective, and it goes to my reverse onus provision, how do we simplify the front-end process, which is my office, so that people have easier access or even direct access to the tribunal?

I think that's an issue that bears a lot of interesting discussion—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

[Joe Friday]

—because we have wonderful people at the tribunal waiting for a file.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

Continuing on with the procurement ombudsman, do you reach out to them, or do they reach out to you for advice or instructions, and say, let's get this information out to people, or are they in their silo and you're in your silo?

[Joe Friday]

As an independent agent of Parliament, I don't share any responsibility with anybody else. I have sat as an outsider, for example, on the previous procurement ombudsman's initiative to do an internal audit. If someone calls us or makes a disclosure that we feel is properly, or more properly, dealt with by the procurement ombudsman, we would advise that person in writing of our decision to not do something; or we'll do it.

Many contracting issues can be looked at under our legislation, under gross mismanagement, for example, or an abuse of public funds or the breach of an act, or the serious breach of a code of conduct.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Good.