Government Operations Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[Allan Cutler]

Ian, you've done more work on this than I have.

[Ian Bron]

No, I don't think it's necessary. It's helpful in circumstances where there are large amounts of money involved, for example. There's research out there suggesting that small incentives actually discourage whistle-blowing, so it's not always appropriate. It's more about protection and valuing the employees who speak up in cases where, for example, there wouldn't be a huge payout in the financial sector.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

To many, whistle-blowing does carry along with it a stigma, and people don't want to be considered a snitch or to be seen as working against their fellow employees. You're a team. We all know that this contributes to some of the challenges we see today in environmental violations, as you mentioned.

To all three witnesses, do you have any suggestions about what the federal government could do to change the culture and the perception of whistle-blowing?

[Ian Bron]

Allan, do you want to go first?

[Allan Cutler]

I think the first thing you have to do is to have the political levels acknowledge that whistle-blowers are a value and not an impediment to the process. As soon as something happens—the senior bureaucrats are really good at this, by the way, and we could give you examples—they spin the situation. It goes to the politicians. The politicians immediately are saying it's the fault of so and so, or blaming each other's parties.

Phoenix, for example, was a bureaucratic bungle, totally, but they have managed to get the two political parties fighting with each other over it. It's a bureaucratic mess that they created themselves.

How do you correct that? You have to have people who will say, “Come forward. We honour you coming forward.” Maybe it's a special award for the whistle-blower of the year in the federal service, honouring that individual, something that really highlights how important it is and how you value people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Cutler.

If either of the other witnesses has something they think they might add, if you would put it in writing and send it to the committee clerk, that would be appreciated.

Thank you, Mr. Weiler.

We will now go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cutler, Mr. Bron and Mr. Holman, you all said, at some point, that people were afraid, that they didn't trust the commissioner and that they were more likely to turn to you.

Would one solution involve having a body at arm's length from the government be responsible for collecting evidence from whistle-blowers and taking steps on their behalf while protecting their identities in both the public and private sectors?

[Allan Cutler]

I will speak first. I won't go into details, but I will say that's exactly what the Integrity Commissioner is supposed to be. Please note that I said “supposed to”.

[Ian Bron]

Absolutely. That is indeed what the commissioner is supposed to do: keep confidentiality. Of course, there's nothing for the private sector right now at all, so adding that would be extremely helpful.

People need to see results. It's not about just having a system that works invisibly in the background; they need to know that it's going to be effective. If they don't see that, they are not going to trust it.

[Sean Holman]

Exactly.

Right now, in a lot of ways the public service is trapped in a spiral of silence. People don't speak up because other people don't speak up, so the spiral of silence continues. We get this secrecy in the federal government around wrongdoing. It really should be everyone's business, including the public's.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

In short, people don't trust the commissioner because they don't believe that the system is efficient. Is that right?

[Allan Cutler]

I wouldn't use the word “efficient”, but I would agree with your statement.

Ian?

[Ian Bron]

I would agree.

How many years has this law been in place? It has been in place for 14 years now, and the number of cases that have been found to be founded and that have justified disclosures is so low that if you're a person who is working in the public service, you might validly ask, why bother?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Bron. I appreciate that.

We will go to Mr. Green now, for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You know what, fellows and ladies? I'm actually satisfied today, so I'm okay to wrap it up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We're at the end of the day here. Is that right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Yes. We're just finishing up. We have two more questioners.

We will go with Mr. Diotte, followed by Mr. Drouin.

Mr. Diotte.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks very much for the great testimony from the witnesses. It's really, really useful. You folks are real pros in all of this.

Give us all your one or two best points. If we could wave a magic wand right now, what could we do to fix this situation so that the federal government is more transparent?

I'd like a brief comment from each one of you, please.

[Ian Bron]

From the whistle-blowing perspective, I think we need to go back to the drawing board for the whistle-blowing law. We need to extend it to the private sector, and it needs to meet best practices. There are best practices out there. In the EU, there's the government accountability project. You can copy model laws out of, let's say, Ireland or Serbia, as I was saying earlier. Go back to the beginning and start from scratch.

[Allan Cutler]

I'll support what Ian is saying, to go back and start from scratch.

What I will state is, at least at the federal level, to extend it out to every federal agency that's out there, which would include a huge number. Then also, within the federal purview, it could be extended to any firm with a federal contract, under the federal contract. That alone would cover so many people.

[Sean Holman]

To pick up on my colleagues' points, I think we also need to legally mandate the release of broad categories of public records to get it out of the access to information system and simply put it in the public domain.

Another thing is that a lot of these changes shouldn't require enormous amounts of time. Everything that my colleagues have been talking about, that I've been talking about, has been talked about many times before. With regard to Mr. Green's point earlier, we shouldn't need a protracted process to bring in these reforms. We should just be able to do them. There's enough information out there to know what best practice is and what best practice isn't.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks very much, gentlemen. You really are doing a great service to the public. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Diotte.

We will go to Mr. Drouin.

Do you have any further questions?

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

Yes, I have a few with regard to the ombudsperson we've discussed.

I think, Mr. Bron, you brought this up. I'm getting a sense that you.... I'm known from previous testimonies, from the groups of threes, that I call for transparency, but the Integrity Commissioner's office is simply not working out for the current whistle-blowers. I'm curious to find out how the ombudsperson would be different from the Integrity Commissioner's office.