Madam Speaker, this is the first time you have been in the chair when I have been up on my feet. Let me congratulate you on your appointment. It is good to see you there. We hope we can provide you with the cooperation you deserve, and which the Speaker generally deserves, from this end of the House. We wish you well in your endeavours in trying to provide us with some guidance in the coming months.
I am taking this opportunity to speak to the bill because Canadians have to appreciate the significance of this type of legislation to the public service in Canada. It is not for no reason that the bill has been brought forward.
In the last Parliament we had a litany of incidents where, had the public service felt comfortable in coming forward, a great deal of the scandal and abuse that went on in a number of areas would have been dealt with at a much earlier stage. Perhaps we have the right to believe, if not hope, that those incidents would never have taken place had we had a regime where the public service felt comfortable in coming forward. People thought they could get away with the type of conduct we saw in the Radwanski affair and the sponsorship scandal. That type of conduct, if considered, would have stopped before it ever got off the ground. If the culprits knew in advance that they would be exposed, they would not have felt comfortable conducting themselves in that way.
We also have to appreciate the fear that is within the public service. Look what has happened to staff within the public service, the Department of Health and more recently in the Department of Agriculture, who have dismissed out of hand. They did what Canadian citizens would expect them to do, and that is protect us from an abusive process. The last three employees in particular, the professional staff in the Department of Agricultural, were dismissed. How that could happen in light of what we have experienced in the last three of four years is impossible to imagine. The senior level of government felt they had the ability to get away with dismissing those people for the exposure they made about GMOs. There is no explanation for why that can happen. It should not have happened. What will we now be faced with, lawsuits? None of that needed to happen. We badly need this type of legislation, but not this one.
I want to speak for a moment about the reality of how the legislation got to the stage it has, which is not far enough in our minds. We would not even see the amendments in the legislation from its last incarnation in the last Parliament if it were not for the fact that there is a minority government. It is quite clear the minister and the government were quite prepared to work the legislation, which was of no use whatsoever in protecting the public servants if they felt compelled to come forward with abuses.
When that bill was put forward in the last Parliament, somebody conducted a survey of the public service in Ottawa. Over 75% of the people in the public service said that they were less likely to go public with their complaints or raise concerns around abuses than they were under the old system. That new legislation would have inhibited further public servants coming forward.
Admittedly in this bill we have seen some improvement. I do not want to deny that, but it does not go far enough. It is quite clear again, I believe, that if we took that survey of the public service we would still see a majority of them saying, “I am not comfortable. I do not feel protected by this legislation”. They say to us, “I know there is abuse going on but I am not comfortable in coming forward because I will not be protected. That is my belief”. Those are the kinds of statements we get from public servants when we talk to them now. In light of this current bill, those are the discussions we have had in the last few days with them.
Clearly, the NDP as a party is going to be looking for substantial improvement in the bill. We are signalling quite clearly that we are not satisfied it goes far enough. My colleague from Winnipeg, who will be responsible for this bill, made that very clear in his opening address earlier today. That is a clear message from the party. It is interesting to hear the same thing from the other opposition parties.
I hope and expect that at the end of the day we are going to see improvements so that when we next speak to the public service in this country, we will hear them say,“Yes, we are satisfied that the bill now protects us. We are satisfied that we can speak out without fear of repercussions to our career and to our well-being as public servants in this country”.
I want to echo some of the comments we heard from the last member who spoke for the Conservatives. I as well sat in and listened to Mr. Cutler when he testified. I could not help but think that in this new millennium in a democracy like Canada's this person should not have suffered the consequences he did. We should be well beyond that in terms of protecting the people who work for the citizens of this country. We had a man whose career was severely curtailed and we were not there. By “we”, I mean this House and the government. We did not have a system in place to protect him. He suffered the consequences. That should not happen.
If nothing else, we as a party are going to do whatever we can to see that when the bill gets to its final stages a man like Mr. Cutler will in fact be protected, will feel safe in coming forward and will feel safe that he will be protected by the system.