Government Operations committee  Sure. This also probably answers your other question. What we really need as an agency is the power, the reputation, and the leadership of the Auditor General, but focused on whistle-blowers, so that when wrongdoing is reported to them, they do a thorough, impartial, and proper

Government Operations committee  It's the—

Government Operations committee  Yes, but this is a whole separate system. The heart of this is PSIC, and the Integrity Commissioner is an agent of Parliament. He's supposed to be completely independent of the bureaucracy, but he's not. It would be very easy, with significant changes to the law and staffing, t

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. There's no question in my mind. It would have been stopped years ago, long before any rollout was attempted. A few senior people would have egg on their faces, quite justifiably, but the problems would have been so public and so clearly laid out that everything would

Government Operations committee  Can I—

Government Operations committee  I'll build on what Allan has said. I have a letter here written by Dr. Keyserlingk, who ran the Public Service Integrity Office, the predecessor to PSIC, who did a bang-up job. He did a wonderful job with very limited resources and authority. He campaigned aggressively for a str

Government Operations committee  Surely, and when—

Government Operations committee  I'll respond initially. The issue here is secrecy and keeping information hidden. One thing that is very interesting about the PSDPA is the extraordinary lengths it goes to make sure that nothing will ever come out of the allegations that whistle-blowers make. That information i

Government Operations committee  It's very simple. Phoenix is a classic example of what can happen when there's a serious problem that's widely known, but everyone is terrified to talk about it. I believe that there were very serious problems in the original demonstration project, which claimed to be such a wo

Government Operations committee  I think one of the things you need to do is to make it dangerous to take reprisals, and we're not even close to that. Other jurisdictions do that. Other jurisdictions allow for injunctions to be issued very quickly to put a whistle-blower back in his job and to prevent any furthe

Government Operations committee  Ireland would be a good one. There are a number of countries that have excellent laws that are much better than ours. The law would also establish personal liability for taking reprisals against someone, so all kinds of bad things could happen to the people who take the reprisals

Government Operations committee  I would assert that whistle-blowers in Canada are significantly worse off now than they were 10 or 15 years ago. That's happened in three stages. The first was with the Public Service Modernization Act. There is a section in there that strips public servants of the right to sue t

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Please signal me when I'm running out, and I will respect that.

Government Operations committee  First of all, I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to testify. People like me have been beating on the doors of Parliament for more than 10 years and asking for the opportunity to explain what's really going on with this law and this agency, and up to now we've been