Mr. Speaker, good managers welcome whistleblowing. Good managers want to know what is really going on in the enterprises over which they have control, and it is only people with something to hide who resist the introduction of whistleblowing protection measures.
As a way of introduction, the red book of 1993 specifically promised legislated whistleblowing protection, stemming from the outrageous scandals of the Mulroney government where a cabinet minister a week seemed to be hauled off to jail. In this case it was a Liberal government promising measures so that public servants could feel protected in coming forward with information about wrongdoing, and that was 11 years ago.
Now we have the minister with the gall, the temerity, to introduce Bill C-25. Then the Prime Minister in his latest ad scam, which are the television ads now running, has a banner running along the bottom of the ads stating that whistleblowers have legislative protection. It is misleading the public to think that whistleblowing legislation, as they contemplate it, will protect civil servants. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The bill should be called an act to protect ministers from whistleblowers, not an act to protect whistleblowers. It should be called an act to plug leaks, an act to stop civil servants telling what they know about what the government is doing with public finances. If there were any honesty associated with the bill, that is what is should be called.
The minister has a lot something to stand up and tell us today that he is sincerely committed to protection for whistleblowers. The bill blatantly contradicts the recommendations and findings of no fewer than three recent task forces, including the Keyserlingk task force. These are some of the most knowledgeable people on this subject in the country. The leading authorities in the country on whistleblowers have spoken and everyone of them unanimously have said whistleblowing protection will be meaningless unless the whistleblower commissioner or officer reports directly to Parliament.
If nothing else is clear in the bill, it should have been that the newly commissioned whistleblowing protection officer has to report to Parliament. To report to or through a minister, as is the language in the bill, is reporting to the executive of government. It is a 180° contradiction from what was unanimously recommended by no fewer than three independent task forces on the subject, which they have ignored. It is contradictory to no fewer than 12, I believe it is, private members' bills that have been put forward in good faith by members of all parties in the past 11 years, since the Liberal government promised this.
Everyone agrees that there has to be that arm's length independence to give confidence to civil servants who may have knowledge of the maladministration of funds or wrongdoing.
This is a travesty, and it is so clearly just an illusion. This is smoke and mirrors so the Liberals can say to the people of Canada, “We embrace real whistleblower protection,” and they can honestly say to the public, “We have introduced legislation regarding whistleblowers.” They cannot say that they are offering whistleblowers in the civil service true legislative protection because that would be a lie. What they are saying is that they have introduced whistleblowing legislation.
I can tell the Canadian public that this whistleblowing legislation is so flawed that public servants are better off with no legislation than with this bad legislation because it gives the illusion of safety. In actual fact, with the narrow prescribed route that whistleblowers would have to take, they would be better off with no protection at all. They would be better off with the status quo than with this flawed bill. There were so many models from which to choose.
In 1996 a member from the Bloc Quebecois put forward a very good private member's bill on whistleblowing protection. His name escapes me. His model was borrowed from a previous private member's bill. Subsequently, a member from the Alliance and myself both introduced whistleblowing legislation modelled after the same essentially agreed upon process that the leading authorities are now point out was the correct way to go.
Therefore, we did not need another bill to protect ministers from whistleblowers. They enjoy that already. However, now we are given this busy work to keep our committee occupied in trying to craft garbage into something useful. I do not think it can be done. We are not Rumplestiltskins. We cannot weave gold out of straw. We do not have time. This Parliament is in its twilight hours, and frankly it is unnecessary because we all know what needs to be done.
Ask Mr. Keyserlingk, ask the leading authorities around the country how to craft good whistleblowing legislation. They can tell us clearly in 10 minutes. Read any national newspaper in the country. They have done assessments, and in the narrow confines of a simple one column article, they have pointed out everything that is wrong with this bill and everything that could be done to fix it.
I encourage the minister to have his staff read the Regina Leader Post, The Ottawa Citizen, Globe and Mail. Every one of the authorities who have reviewed this legislation point out that it is so fatally flawed it is not only meaningless, it is actually harmful. It is actually detrimental because civil servants will be worse off. It excludes the RCMP.
I think my colleague who will speak later will point out some of the flaws there. We know there are whistleblowers waiting within the RCMP with information that they wish to bring forward, but they do not feel safe under this bill or under the status quo.
I lived through the Radwanski scandal, as a member of the government operations committee. It really drove the message home to me the need for comprehensive whistleblowing legislation when the good people who came forward with information about Radwanski, who came to our committee, showed up with their lawyers.
Honest civil servants in the public service, who come forward and do the right thing by sharing their information with the committee of members of Parliament, feel it necessary to bring their own privately hired legal counsel with them for their own protection. That is so fundamentally wrong. It just breaks my heart to think that is what we have stooped to around here.
Here was a golden opportunity. Finally there was an opportunity to flesh out and to give meaning and definition to what we have been calling for so long. The minister has chosen not to in the most cynical of ways. Not only has he failed to introduce meaningful legislation, he is trying to mislead the Canadian public in the television ads that are running in the country. In the ad the Prime Minister is talking to a group of people in some kitchen. Along the bottom a little banner, like CNN has, says “Whistleblowers now protected by legislation”. That is not true.
The bill will not pass in this Parliament. Even if the bill did pass, whistleblowers would not be protected by legislation. In fact the inverse is actually true. It is a ruse. It is a well orchestrated deception. It is electioneering. It is smoke and mirrors. It is anything but legitimate whistleblower protection.
If the minister is being honest, he will withdraw this bill. He would listen to the Canadian public and to all the authorities across the country who have the answer. He could frankly take good legislation right off the shelf, introduce it and table it before the end of this Parliament, if he were serious.