Government Operations committee  There are already a number of jurisdictions in Canada that offer protection to contractors who come forward with concerns consistent with what's in Bill C-290. The best practice standard is that you protect any person, any worker, who comes forward with a concern. We've heard some concerns about jurisdictional issues, but to me this is a bit of a red herring.

Government Operations committee  One thing that can happen in a whistle-blowing case that goes sideways is that you will get an energetic investigator or recipient of a disclosure who insists on bringing the issue forward for the discloser. Management may not like that, so they'll start taking action against the investigator or the recipient of the disclosure to try to shut them up.

Government Operations committee  You have to start by understanding what the objectives of the law are and the steps you're going to have to go through to get there. Once you have an idea of how the law is supposed to work, then you need to develop some sort of performance framework. This pertains to what it is important that the law accomplish, how it helps people and whether it is going to be timely.

Government Operations committee  If I could intervene.... I always find this question to be a bit of a dog whistle. It suggests that whistle-blowers are a problem, that they need to be managed, and that's not the case. There are very few people, as David said, who are going to put their heads into the mouth of a lion.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Hutton has already spoken to one, and that is the interim relief. If you can intervene to stop any disciplinary processes, that is certainly one. The other one is to have avenues for redress that are easily accessible and that serve as a kind of deterrent to people who might make reprisals.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it does. There was, at one point for the PSDPA, a primitive logic model and performance framework. It was developed in 2008 and then promptly abandoned. You need to know where the weaknesses are in this system if you're going to fix them. That just doesn't exist. Nobody collects any meaningful data.

Government Operations committee  If I could add anything, it would be that, if you want to improve the culture at the top of the public service—and I'll agree with the previous witnesses that this is where it probably needs to happen—you would want to also have a look at the way they're socialized. You would want to look at how they're hired, socialized and incentivized because, as it stands right now, senior public servants are mainly rewarded for making problems go away and not for fixing the problems, necessarily.

Government Operations committee  Are you asking for a specific list of fixes?

Government Operations committee  I'm going to echo what was said by previous witnesses. The reverse onus is probably the most important and easiest fix, but I also think that this committee can do a lot by amending the law so that there's a mandatory review every five years, using meaningful performance measures and tying the government into a continuous cycle of improvement.

Government Operations committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to speak. I've studied whistle-blowing for over a decade, but just as importantly I was a whistle-blower in 2006. A former naval officer, I joined the federal public service after the 9/11 attacks. I quickly rose to be chief of transportation security regulations at Transport Canada.