Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to speak on this important issue, whistle-blowing during the COVID pandemic.
The group that I represent, along with Mr. Cutler and Mr. Holman, was made up of a range of Canadian experts in transparency and whistle-blowing, who were brought together to seek solutions to a problem: how to detect and correct wrongdoing in both the public and private sectors during the COVID emergency. I've also been researching whistle-blowing in Westminster governments for several years.
At the start of the pandemic, there were numerous stories of shady deals for PPE, not just in Canada but all over the world. Later, I heard of employers failing to pass on the emergency wage supplement to their workers and of employees being too afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs.
In Ontario, Ashley Jenkins was fired for speaking up on conditions in a long-term care home. Nurses in Quebec complained of similar reprisals. You may also recall that the Canadian Armed Forces sent in medical personnel to assist in long-term care homes in Ontario. The horrifying details of what they found were leaked to the media, revealing just how badly provincial oversight had failed.
These cases represent only a tiny fraction of employees who have observed wrongdoing. Research shows that only about half of employees will ever report serious wrongdoing, and that only about 10% ever disclose outside of the organization, usually when internal disclosure has failed. Less than 1% of them will ever approach the media. This implies that there are hundreds of cases of COVID-related wrongdoing across Canada that we know nothing about and that may be ongoing.
Transparency, as my colleague Mr. Holman will attest, is one part of the solution. Making whistle-blowing safe is another. Study after study has confirmed that insider tips—whistle-blowing—are the most effective way of detecting misconduct in organizations, beating out audit, management review, law enforcement, and everything else.
Despite the value of the information they provide, whistle-blowers in Canada are not adequately protected. Even internal whistle-blowing is punished, partly to send a signal to other workers and partly to head off external whistle-blowing to a regulator or the public.
Employers carry out reprisals, because they can get away with doing so. The most comprehensive whistle-blowing laws in Canada, which cover only the public sector, don't really work. I know this because my colleagues and I have been comparing them with best practices for years. Most private sector workers have no protection at all, outside of common law, which is a difficult and expensive route to take. A few laws exist in different sectors, but they're disconnected, ineffective or just unused.
For this reason, Tom Devine, one of the world's foremost experts on whistle-blowing, called Canadian whistle-blowing law “a tissue paper shield”, meaning that it is utterly useless and deceptive. In fact, as Mr. Drouin and Mr. McCauley may recall, he said so to OGGO almost four years ago as part of the review of the federal whistle-blowing law. That review led to a unanimous report recommending changes. Unfortunately, none were adopted. This sets us apart from many other jurisdictions, such as the EU, which has just recently required all member countries to implement new and better whistle-blowing laws.
To try to address both the short- and long-term challenges, our group arrived at three recommendations related to whistle-blowing: one, that a COVID ombudsperson be appointed to receive disclosures and inquiries, to direct concerned Canadians to the right avenues and to help resolve disputes; two, that an awareness campaign be launched to inform Canadians of their rights to speak up, and of the disclosure avenues available to them; and three, that existing whistle-blowing laws be rewritten to meet best practices and expanded to include both the public and private sectors.
In closing, I will say that nobody is served by the current state of affairs: not whistle-blowers, not the public, not organizations or the government. The key point is that protecting whistle-blowers ensures that wrongdoing can't be swept under the carpet. As the long-term care tragedy painfully illustrates, unchecked problems metastasize and can cost lives. Effective whistle-blowing systems allow problems to be identified, competently investigated and more quickly corrected.
Accordingly, we ask this committee to recommend immediate action to advise and protect whistle-blowers now and in the future.
Thank you.