Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. I want to thank the chairman of the committee for allowing me to speak with you today. It's a great honour. I also thank you, honourable members of Parliament, for the time to provide input on your important initiative. My name is Mark Worth. I am the dir

Government Operations committee  I have not seen a provision in the law that distinguishes rampant, systemic, or across-the-board workplace problems like discrimination, unsafe conditions at work, or bullying from individual employee grievances. Certainly, individual employee grievances should be excluded, as Jo

Government Operations committee  I wanted to mention that according to the website of the commissioner, there have been 653 disclosures under the act in the past eight years. These might not have all been related to the disclosures, but there have been 215 reprisal complaints during that period. That's a ratio o

Government Operations committee  Please, let me finish. In the U.K., the average case takes 20 months, so I think the big change you need to make is to get rid of this tribunal system completely, unless it's like an emergency backup in case the executive branch doesn't work, like the man from Democracy Watch sa

Government Operations committee  Thank you, sir. I was going to say that whistle-blower retaliation is a workplace hazard. If you have a factory where there's an unsafe bulldozer or an unsafe forklift, the labour inspector can go in and have it fixed immediately or if they don't have it fixed, they shut it dow

Government Operations committee  The one difference between the public and private sector is that in the public sector you want to have, for every agency or institution, a dedicated person regardless of how big it is. In the private sector many laws say, okay, if a company is over 50 employees, or 100, or has x

Government Operations committee  The idea is to get the information out there, not to limit—

Government Operations committee  I think you can have a contact point, but you have to have a dedicated whistle-blower institution at the federal level or national level to enforce the rights. That way you avoid the conflict because the rights are enforced by a dedicated whistle-blower institution. However, I wo

Government Operations committee  We actually do have data that we can forward to you on the breakdown of reports made in countries like the U.K. and certain countries in eastern Europe that have whistle-blower institutions in place. I don't want to generalize about whether it's mainly women or mainly men. Certa

Government Operations committee  It is absolutely essential. Actually, you do have some data on your website about the number of disclosures and reprisal complaints and so forth. What's helpful—and John pointed this out in Ireland—is the reason that reprisal complaints were denied or disclosures were ignored,

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Is that question for me?

Government Operations committee  I think you can ask Tom. I know that in the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, issues press releases when a worker is retaliated against and is reinstated, and on how much back pay the person gets. These press releases are very detailed. Maybe

Government Operations committee  Yes, this is the biggie. I mentioned Bosnia earlier. In Bosnia, the anti-corruption commission is accountable to a three-member parliamentary committee that has one member from each of the parliamentary factions. I don't know about the Canadian system, I am very sorry, but I am a