I would like to go back to Mr. Sabourin, because he endured eight years of harassment and abuse, and he deserves to have some time here on the floor today. There was hand sanitizer in his coffee and were threats to his children's safety before he lost his career in 2016 and almost lost his life. Whistle-blower reports save lives. In 1996, Michèle Brill-Edwards also lost her career after she reported that big pharma was influencing the drug approval process in Canada, endangering Canadian lives.
We put forward amendments. Our amendment to allow whistle-blowers to go to the public or media in specific situations in which, for example, the commissioner isn't dealing with the complaint or decides not to do anything to stop the wrongdoing.... Both the Liberals and the Conservatives opposed this. Now whistle-blowers are at a huge risk if they expose wrongdoing to the Canadian public, and it's because of the Conservatives. I'm going to underline that. Interim relief would have protected whistle-blowers from punishments like termination as soon as they reported wrongdoing. Instead, we're allowing punishments to happen then spending years investigating whether they were, indeed, punished. This is exactly what's going on: reverse onus. Right now, whistle-blowers have to prove reprisal. For example, if they were fired, they have to prove that it was because they reported wrongdoing, which is virtually impossible. This amendment would have forced their superiors to prove that there was a real reason to fire them. That's the amendment the Conservatives defeated.
In other jurisdictions, this brings the chances of success from as low as one in 100 to as high as one in three, but the Liberals and the Conservatives teamed up to vote against it. They didn't support it. These amendments were contrary to the advice of all experts and whistle-blowers who testified and submitted briefs to the government operations committee. This is relevant right now, Mr. Chair, to what's going on right here, because some of our amendments were not voted on because both the Liberals and the Conservatives spoke against them.
We got amendments passed and improved whistle-blowers' access to the tribunal. We did a lot of really important work. However, I want to highlight this, because this is exactly relevant to what Mr. Genuis is trying to say about Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald. If they were really in their corner, they would have supported those amendments to Bill C-290. He also knows full well that, back to the Auditor General's report.... We're waiting for that report. Then this committee can do its final report and include his concerns in that. This meeting is unnecessary. It's the charade. It's costing taxpayers money, which doesn't seem to be a problem when it comes to Conservatives at the public accounts, government operations, international trade and ethics committees. They're doing four different committees, tying them up on this very issue while people are homeless on the streets of our country. I can understand four committees being tied up because of homeless people. It's costing us much more than the economic leakage of ArriveCAN.