Government Operations committee  That's okay with me, but I don't know whether all these people want to stay. Do they have no choice?

Government Operations committee  I have a short opening statement.

Government Operations committee  I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak to you.

Government Operations committee  I prepared everything in English, but I can talk about it in English or in French. I just want to talk about my whistleblowing experience. It was very difficult. You talked about various ways to proceed when making a disclosure. I started out by going through the internal chann

Government Operations committee  Okay. So I don't need to come back to that. I was told that the only way to proceed was to go through the grievance process. That is what I did. Fortunately, I had Mr. Yazbeck to help me, as the experience was horrible. I went through two years of hearings and so forth. It was v

Government Operations committee  Okay.

Government Operations committee  We were approaching the end of the fiscal year, and I realized that there were quotas. Every month, we would receive report cards congratulating us, for example, on having saved $370,000 in employment insurance and we were told that we had to make further efforts. The report card

Government Operations committee  We actually talked about it among colleagues. I also talked about it with my team leader. Sometimes, they would not say good morning to me, but would rather say: “Hey, Sylvie, have you finally put the penalty on this guy?” In reality, there was no penalty to be imposed in that

Government Operations committee  I did not have many friends, given the way I was seen. It was clear that my team leader and my manager did not like me very much. People are afraid to associate with whistleblowers. One day, I was having coffee with one of my colleagues, and he told me that he really refused to

Government Operations committee  I had been there only for a few months.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I worked in programs. We gave grants to community and social organizations to help them provide services to people in need. The Harper government, which was in power at the time, decided to make cuts to those programs. So we were sent to play the role of police officers in e

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely. We had to achieve good savings.

Government Operations committee  It is both. It is refusing claimants' claims. It is the cutting of claims—

Government Operations committee  It was a lot. I don't remember the numbers.

Government Operations committee  Yes, they included turning people down. For example, if a claim that was allowed was $4,000, that would be $4,000 given to that claimant. That was saving $4,000 because we didn't allow the claim, as well as charging a penalty.