Thank you.
It's good to see you, Mr. Garon.
First, before I get started, I really want to commend you. I know you had a very high order of precedence for PMB. You had many things you could have advanced, and you put workers first. I really want to thank you for that. That's really important.
I want to thank my colleagues at this committee as well. They also want to advance the discussion around your bill so that we can fix it. We know that workers are going through a difficult time. Inflation is way surpassing their wages right now. People are on the picket line right now. They're struggling to make ends meet. Further exasperating that is the mental health they face when it comes to the challenges around the current whistle-blowing system.
We're really happy about this bill around the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and improving it. It's direly needed. As you've stated, we fall behind our peers in other countries in protecting public servants who disclose wrongdoing, so it's important. If we don't protect public servants who blow the whistle, wrongdoing stays hidden and we all suffer. Again, I want to thank you for moving forward.
Today is an opportunity for us to help strengthen the bill. We've had some time to consult with some whistle-blowers and some stakeholder organizations that advocate for them, and they've raised some concerns about the bill. Obviously, we want to bring them forward to help improve it, if we're to truly have a system that protects public servants who make disclosures.
This is, again, about improving the bill. One thing we heard is the reverse onus. That would mean that, when a whistle-blower goes before the tribunal to prove employer reprisal, the burden of proof would switch to the employer, who would need to show it had good reasons to take action against the employee, reasons that aren't related to, say, the whistle-blowing. This is the foundation of any decent whistle-blower protection act.
In your discussions with stakeholders and public servants, have you heard about this, that this was a priority? Did you choose not to include it in the bill for any reason, or has it posed any concern?