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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 123

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 2, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 123 - Nov/2/22
Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)
Madam Speaker, as pleased as I am to join the debate this evening to speak on Bill C-290, an act to amend the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, I am sad I have to be doing it from my home. I have had to come back to the unceded land of Tseshaht and Hupacasath and the homelands of the Nuu-chah-nulth people to attend the funeral of the Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Muuchinink, also know as Bruce Frank, who suddenly passed away on Sunday. I will be travelling through his Ha-Hoothlee, his territory, tonight to join his family and his community. I will bring greetings from all of us from Ottawa, and condolences to his people. It is a very sad time for the people in our communities and for all Nuu-chah-nulth people. He was a great man who loved his people. I want to thank the hon. member for Mirabel for bringing forward this bill and prompting this important discussion. It is very important, and I really appreciate his work in doing this. When the new Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, was a minister under the Harper government, he brought forth legislation that he repeatedly said would offer “ironclad protection” for whistle-blowers in the federal public service. Instead, after 15 years in force, it is clear this law is a complete failure. I am going to talk about David Hutton, a whistle-blower protection expert and senior fellow at the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. He recently wrote in The Hill Times: After studying this system closely for the past 15 years, I have come to believe that it was never intended to protect whistleblowers. It does not look like a regrettable accident resulting in an ineffective system. In reality, it functions as a highly effective, finely tuned offensive weapon against whistleblowers. It lures them into a trap, where their disclosures of wrongdoing are disregarded and buried forever, the promises of protection made to them prove to be false, and their efforts to obtain justice place them on a treadmill of endless, costly and ultimately fruitless rigged processes. Indeed, after 15 years, the results of Canada’s whistle-blower regime speaks for itself. The Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner has found a mere 18 cases of wrongdoing out of more than 1,500 disclosures from whistle-blowers. While 500 whistle-blowers have submitted complaints of reprisals, the tribunal set up to address these complaints has never once awarded a remedy. In another article, David Hutton wrote, “there have been no happy endings for whistleblowers, who nearly always lose their job, their career, and their livelihood.” The failure of this law does not just cost whistle-blowers. It costs all of us when wrongdoings and mismanagement are allowed to continue unchecked. We see this all the time in procurement, and the failure for whistle-blowers to be able to come forward. I will cite one, which is the disastrous Phoenix pay system. It was supposed to save money, but it has resulted in at least $2.4 billion in unexpected costs so far. It is an example of what can happen when there is a culture of fear in the public service. This started under the Conservatives, and it has carried on under the federal Liberals. It is unacceptable. That culture of fear is reflected in the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner’s own findings. In March 2022, the Office published a report it commissioned entitled “Exploring the Culture of Whistleblowing and the Fear of Reprisal in the Federal Public Sector”. The report was based on focus groups drawn from a selection of departments, and it echoed the findings of similar surveys conducted in 2011 and 2015. This latest report found that fear of reprisals remains a major concern in the federal public service. It also contained some other concerning findings: first, that most workers and managers surveyed did not know of the office’s existence; second, there is increasing disillusionment and cynicism about whistle-blowing; and, third, increased activity around whistle-blowing, such as awareness raising and education, is seen mainly as window dressing instead of actual change. We could make a long list here. It is disappointing to read these findings in 2022. The need for change in how we deal with whistle-blowers has been well known for years. There are serious deficiencies in the existing act, including a narrow definition of wrongdoing and a focus on procedures for dealing with allegations rather than protecting whistle-blowers. In 2017, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates tabled a unanimous report recommending sweeping changes to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. This report was prepared at the request of the Treasury Board to fulfill the requirement for statutory review that should have been conducted five years earlier. It sounds familiar. It has been five years since, and the government has not implemented the legislative changes the committee recommended, and we heard the member for Mirabel talk about it earlier. Instead, in the most recent federal budget, the government committed $2.4 million over five years for the Treasury Board Secretariat to launch a new review of the act. It is a positive development to see the federal government finally acknowledge the need for legislative reform, but I am concerned whether there is genuine political will to move forward and make real changes or if this is simply a face-saving exercise. As the member for Mirabel talked about, the government did not even start this until Friday, just as this bill came up for debate. It reminds me of how the government acts suddenly when private members' bills come up, like my bill, Bill C-216, on substance use. The government did nothing on the Province of B.C.'s request for an exemption for people who are caught with a small possession of substances to not be criminally charged. The government announced that B.C.'s exemption would be granted the day before the vote on my bill. It is just all too familiar. I have seen this happen a lot. To get back to the bill, its latest review was likely prompted by a 2021 analysis by the International Bar Association, which compared countries with whistle-blower protection laws and ranked Canada as tied for last place. This is an international embarrassment. It is about transparency and trust, and it is a clear call for action, yet in September, Canada failed to send any representatives to an International Labour Organization meeting to discuss the protection of whistle-blowers in the public sector. Surely some helpful information could have been gleaned from this meeting to inform the government's new review. It could have gained a lot. Again, I am glad that the member for Mirabel has brought forward this bill, which acknowledges the failure of the current act and will hopefully help generate momentum for much-needed change. My office has engaged with public sector unions regarding the bill. The general sentiment is that this is a step in the right direction, but further changes will be required to truly protect whistle-blowers and the Canadian public. The bill does not address all of the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates in 2017. However, it does propose some significant improvements that are worth noting. The bill would expand protections to more people, including contractors and former employees, and cover more types of wrongdoing, including political interference. I believe the bill has merit and should proceed to committee where members can hear from public service workers and experts and see if there are opportunities for amendments that could offer more protection for whistle-blowers. I will note that I do not believe the Treasury Board's new review of the act should preclude moving forward with improvements now. It is not clear when this review might be completed, but it is clear that Canada's whistle-blower protection regime is broken and is in desperate need of reform to protect brave public service workers and the Canadian public who disclose wrongdoings. In 2015, the Liberals promised that transparency would be a hallmark of their government, but that promise has fallen to the wayside, just like the Conservatives. Under the frequent cloud of scandal, I question whether the government is truly motivated to improve protections for whistle-blowers who could shine a light on government wrongdoing or mismanagement of public funds. In closing, I want to thank the member for Mirabel for bringing the bill forward, and I look forward to engaging in further debate on this issue.
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