Government Operations Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Sylvie Therrien]

Okay. So I don't need to come back to that.

I was told that the only way to proceed was to go through the grievance process. That is what I did. Fortunately, I had Mr. Yazbeck to help me, as the experience was horrible. I went through two years of hearings and so forth. It was very difficult. Hearing horrible things said about me severely affected me on a psychological level. The employer has a lot of resource, doesn't it? It has a lot of our resources. It has many lawyers and a host of people whose goal is to find all sorts of flaws, to destroy us and our reputation. That is what the employer does.

The hearing with the grievance arbitrator was terrible. The process lasted two years. He concluded that, as the issue did not fall under his jurisdiction, he could not render a decision.

I also turned to the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada. In the beginning, I was told that the organization was there to protect whistleblowers. But the process was very complicated. I had to fill out forms, and everything was so complex.

At first, people didn't really know what it was about. I didn't know that there was an integrity commissioner. When I finally filed a complaint, I was told that too many weeks had passed, and the complaint was inadmissible.

Fortunately, Mr. Yazbeck was there. Thanks to his knowledge, he resubmitted my complaint to the integrity commissioner, and it was accepted.

Finally, they decided that the fact that I had lost my job and my security clearance and was suspended without pay did not constitute reprisal. Yet that was the important point I wanted to make—that the government, in reprisal, had fired me to shut me up. It used my example to deter other whistleblowers who may have wanted to talk. I was a good example of what shouldn't be done.

I have said a lot already. I don't know whether I should continue.

I am now in limbo, sitting on the fence. On the one hand, the arbitrator does not want to make a decision because the matter supposedly does not come under his jurisdiction; on the other hand, Mr. Friday is waiting for the arbitrator to render his decision. We almost wonder whether they are talking to each other to make my case slip through the cracks and ensure that it will not be resolved. One is waiting for the other to make a decision, and finally nothing happens.

On the one hand, I am asking this committee to review the act and the policies in order to properly protect whistleblowers. The statutes must focus on the whistleblower. It is very important to protect whistleblowers, and not to protect those who are already in power.

On the other hand, I am wondering whether your committee could, in some way, tell Mr. Friday that he does not have a choice, that he must refer my case to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal, since the situation is ridiculous and there is no need to wait anymore. Your action would very clearly indicate that you defend whistleblowers. Your committee would show that it is serious about this issue. It would show that your committee does not just talk, receive briefs and produce reports. It would be a move that would say a lot.

Then the act should be reviewed. It's not just for me. It's true that it would help me, as personal consequences were huge in my case. I am no longer employable, I have no money and I am in debt. It would help me, but it would also be for....

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Madam Therrien, we're going to have to cut it off there. We'll go to the votes, and we'll be back probably in about 30 or 35 minutes.

We'll be back with many questions for you, I am sure.

[Sylvie Therrien]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll be back as soon as we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We will reconvene.

Thank you, witnesses, for your patience.

Colleagues, Mr. Yazbeck has been classified as a witness. Should any of our committee members have questions, he is available to answer them.

Ms. Therrien, thank you for your opening statement.

Colleagues, I think we'll start with the full seven-minute round of questions. If there are additional questions after that, we can continue, but let's see where seven minutes each gets us.

Monsieur Drouin, we have you up first, for seven minutes, please.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Therrien, thank you very much for being here today. Your testimony has definitely shed some light on this issue.

I would like to come back to your experience, if I may.

When you found out about the quotas and all the surrounding issues and you made the decision to disclose, what was the process? Did you immediately feel some sort of belittlement from your employer or your supervisor?

[Sylvie Therrien]

We were approaching the end of the fiscal year, and I realized that there were quotas. Every month, we would receive report cards congratulating us, for example, on having saved $370,000 in employment insurance and we were told that we had to make further efforts. The report cards came from a very senior manager somewhere in Edmonton, a very highly ranked official in charge of everything. He would send us report cards to congratulate us on our good work, as we had saved a certain amount of money for the government, and he would tell us that we had to increase the savings achieved in employment insurance to $500,000. Those report cards clearly indicated what was expected of us. Each investigator had to achieve savings of $40,000 a month, or $485,000 a year. It was very clear.

As it was the end of the fiscal year and they wanted us to save a great deal of money quickly before the year was out, we received weekly emails reminding us to identify cases involving penalties or violations. We were told that, if we found any such cases, we had to send the information as soon as possible, so that it would be recorded before the end of the fiscal year. It was a race for savings. It no longer had anything to do with a service we provide to Canadians who apply for employment insurance. It was no longer a matter of ensuring that they met the criteria, but rather of figuring out whether they were trying to defraud the system. The main concern was to determine how much money we could help the government save.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

When you made the decision to blow the whistle on the situation you felt was wrong, did you bring it to your supervisor or did you check how the internal process worked?

[Sylvie Therrien]

We actually talked about it among colleagues. I also talked about it with my team leader. Sometimes, they would not say good morning to me, but would rather say:

“Hey, Sylvie, have you finally put the penalty on this guy?”

In reality, there was no penalty to be imposed in that case. That is what I would hear instead of good morning.

At some point, the team leader told me that I had to refuse benefits to an individual who had applied for them, under the pretext that he had not really looked for work in accordance with the criteria. The individual was an aboriginal who lived in a remote village with only one store. He worked in the fishing industry. Since he was a seasonal worker, he was out of work.

Finally, we talked about some cases in the office. During those conversations, the people around me saw that I was against the way we were processing the files. Do you understand? That is how it came about. In our daily work, it was a matter of case-by-case observation. When I felt that an individual was entitled to employment insurance benefits and I should grant them those benefits, I was told not to do it.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I assume you had some friends in your workplace. How did they feel about the situation?

[Sylvie Therrien]

I did not have many friends, given the way I was seen. It was clear that my team leader and my manager did not like me very much. People are afraid to associate with whistleblowers.

One day, I was having coffee with one of my colleagues, and he told me that he really refused to see unemployed people as criminals.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

How long had you been you in your position?

[Sylvie Therrien]

I had been there only for a few months.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Before you had that job, did you work in another area?

[Sylvie Therrien]

Yes, I worked in programs. We gave grants to community and social organizations to help them provide services to people in need. The Harper government, which was in power at the time, decided to make cuts to those programs. So we were sent to play the role of police officers in employment insurance.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You really felt that you were pressured to constantly reduce the benefits paid, correct?

[Sylvie Therrien]

Yes, absolutely. We had to achieve good savings.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

After that, once....

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Francis, you have 20 seconds.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If that's the case, I may as well yield the floor to my colleague.

Thank you very much, Ms. Therrien.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks for bearing with us while we had to run to vote.

I was an EI appeals chairman for several years. When you talk about savings, are you talking about overpayments, or fraud savings, or...? You talked about, I think, $400,000 a year or $500,000 a year. What would that cover, when you say “savings”? It's not from turning people down; it's from decisions, overpayments, and so on. Can you fill me in exactly?

[Sylvie Therrien]

It is both. It is refusing claimants' claims. It is the cutting of claims—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Could I stop you there?

When you say refusing a claim, if a claim is denied because.... For the sake of argument, in Edmonton it was 599 hours that were needed. If they worked 580 and they didn't qualify, that's not savings. How are they trying to define “savings” when someone wouldn't have been eligible to apply under the EI Act?

I understand savings if they're going after people who were overpaid, or who left the country to go down to the States. There are always clawbacks. I'm just trying to figure out how they came up with this dollar value for savings. It can't be for turning people down, because the savings would have been in the hundreds of millions.

[Sylvie Therrien]

It was a lot. I don't remember the numbers.