Thank you very much.
I want to thank the chairman of the committee for allowing me to speak with you today. It's a great honour.
I also thank you, honourable members of Parliament, for the time to provide input on your important initiative.
My name is Mark Worth. I am the director of the international whistle-blower project at Blueprint for Free Speech, which is an NGO based in Australia and Germany. I'm also the founder and co-coordinator of the Southeast Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection, which is an NGO [Technical difficulty--Editor] board member of the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, which is a new NGO founded last month in Senegal.
We work in many countries around the world, in all regions, promoting whistle-blower protection, promoting whistle-blower legislation, working on whistle-blower cases, investigating cases, and writing about what's happening on the issue in general.
I want to start off by telling a little story. There was a man who worked for a government tax office. In 2013 he reported to the authorities that there was large-scale bribery occurring in the government tax agency, the government tax office, which was permitting companies to pay lower export fees and lower import fees. His disclosure led to the arrest of 53 people, so it had a huge impact in the country in terms of holding the guilty parties to account. He was fired quite swiftly and went to the government authority to get whistle-blower protection. He was granted whistle-blower protection status, which meant he had a right to be reinstated to his position with the government tax office; however, the director of the government tax office would not reinstate him. There's a provision in the law in that country that says that if a director of a government agency does not comply with an order to reinstate a whistle-blower, then that person, that director, is personally liable for fines of up to 10,000 euros. On June 4, 2015, the prosecutor called the director of the tax office telling him to reinstate the whistle-blower or else he would be fined 5,000 to 10,000 euros. The next day the man was reinstated. There was a big party and he got his job back.
This is an example of how whistle-blower laws—if they are tightly written, if there is good enforcement, if people understand the process, if there are penalties for retaliation that are actually levied if need be—mean that the whistle-blower can benefit from these rights.
The story I just told you did not happen in Canada. It didn't happen in the United States, which many would argue has the oldest and best whistle-blower laws in the world. It didn't happen in the U.K., which, perhaps not deservedly, has a very good reputation for its whistle-blower law. It didn't happen in Australia or Japan or South Africa or South Korea or anywhere else that has laws that have gotten a lot of attention. It happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a country that is not known for its success in fighting corruption, but in the case of whistle-blower protection, there have been some good examples.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is ranked 83rd out of 176 countries on Transparency International's corruption perceptions index, in this regard has a whistle-blower law that has very strong features that are better than Canada's, which is ranked ninth on the CPI. I think there is a lot to learn not just from the obvious countries when we talk about whistle-blower protection but from the countries that have provisions that are working in practice and that are actually helping people.
There's a lot of creativity in whistle-blower laws today. When Canada's law passed in 2005, we did not yet have the Transparency International principles. We did not yet have the OECD principles. We did not yet have the Council of Europe principles. We did not have other principles developed by other NGOs and organizations, so I think the review you're doing is coming at the right time. There's been a flurry of whistle-blower laws passed. Just since 2010 there have been about 25 whistle-blower laws passed around the world. There are a lot of lessons to learn, and I hope we're going to get into some details throughout the next couple of hours.
One point I would like to make at the outset is that I do not know the Canadian legal system. I just know the American system, and to some extent, the German system, where I live. I think it is not appropriate for an executive branch agency, the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, to have the power to decide when and if a whistle-blower should have access to a judicial branch agency. I don't want to oversimplify that, but the way I understand it is that the Integrity Commissioner can refer cases to the tribunal. That is not even close to being best practice. I hope that either the law is changed to allow the commission itself to make rulings on reprisal, reinstatement, compensation, and penalties, or give the whistle-blower direct access to a tribunal. For a whistle-blower to have to go to an executive branch agency in order to get access to a judicial branch agency perverts the separation of powers.
Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. I'm looking forward to the other input and to answering your questions.
Thank you.