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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 240

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 26, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 240 - Oct/26/23
Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)
Madam Speaker, I know that in committee there was an amendment that dealt with the matter of subcontractors. I would like my colleague to comment on that.
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Context: House Hansard - 240 - Oct/26/23
Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-290 and the importance of better whistle-blower protection in Canada. Canada has a reputation, unfortunately, of being one of the places in the world among those with the worst whistle-blower protection, so obviously there is a lot more that we can do. We depend on whistle-blowers to be able to identify across a very large government with a large budget where things are not going well. Of course, there is no substitute for the folks who are actually doing the work every day to be able to understand where problems arise and how things are going wrong. We need to be able to create a culture where people feel a lot more comfortable coming forward when things are not going well in their workplace. We can all appreciate that it is a difficult decision. Indeed, there are a lot of stories of folks who have had the courage to come forward and not only have not been rewarded for that but have been punished; in some cases losing their employment, in some cases losing their home or their families and indeed in the worst cases losing their lives. It is a very serious issue. We should be grateful that there are folks in the public service who are willing; and are dedicated enough to doing the right thing that they are willing to come forward. We need to create a culture that rewards folks for showing that courage, instead of setting examples for others of why they should not do that because they know that it did not work out very well for a colleague. The beginning of that culture change has to start with legislation because there have to be adequate protections in place for folks to feel that they have recourse. It is not just the legislation, though. We also need to create workplace cultures where folks in positions of influence know that people who do blow the whistle are going to be well protected enough that people should follow the appropriate workplace policies and procedures and conduct their business in the way that we all expect them to, which is to a high standard. How do they do that? I want to just survey some of the work that my colleague from Courtenay—Alberni did with the sponsor of the bill in order to improve this legislation. One is allowing increased access to the tribunal. We know that over time the commissioner who was set up to hear complaints about whistle-blowing only referred, in 16 years, nine cases to the tribunal. The idea behind that amendment, which I am glad to see passed, was to make it easier for workers who did come forward but did not feel they were getting satisfaction through the commission to be able to access the tribunal. There was also an amendment that passed to create a survey metric so that when whistle-blowers have gone through this process, it would allow getting some feedback from them on how it went and whether they were satisfied with that. Of course, there were other suggestions and amendments put forward in conjunction with the sponsor of the bill that did not go through. Liberals and Conservatives at committee decided not to put them in. One of the really important provisions was a reverse-onus provision for cases of reprisal. Right now, the onus is on the person who is the victim to show that it was in fact reprisal for their whistle-blowing activity. That is a high burden of proof and it usually comes with a pretty expensive legal bill for somebody who, if they are experiencing reprisal, may well not have any employment income at all or may already be under a lot of stress due to harassment in the workplace as a result of blowing the whistle. Therefore, this just multiplies that effect by causing a lot of financial distress as well as a long, drawn-out legal process when really it is the employer who has the resources who should be in a position of having to show that whatever workplace discipline may have occurred was not a reprisal for whistle-blowing and that it was based on something unrelated. I understand that in jurisdictions that have made this change, it has altered the chance of success for whistle-blowers from one in 500, showing that they were in fact the victim of reprisal, to being as high as one in three. When we talk about changing workplace culture and instilling in employees the confidence to be able to come forward, numbers like that show that, even with the improvements that the bill represents, there is a lot further to go if we want to create the legal foundation for a healthy workplace culture that rewards people for coming forward and naming wrongdoing in the workplace rather than creating a chill and a culture where people are afraid of that. Another way, which is not technically a reverse onus but I think it is of a kind, would have been to protect whistle-blowers from termination automatically, and instead of allowing them to be terminated right away and then having to spend a long time figuring out whether it was the right course of action or not, having some immediate protections upfront would also make a difference in increasing people's comfort to come forward. Likewise, sometimes people go to the commissioner, as I said, and do not get satisfaction. While having some kind of ability for them to then be able to go to the media or go public in some other way, if they are not getting satisfaction through the normal process, is another way that folks could have been encouraged to bring their concerns forward. It was unfortunate that, again, the Liberals and Conservatives conspired at committee to defeat those amendments because it means that, in the context of a country that is notoriously behind when it comes to protection of whistle-blowers, this important moment to make significant advances in whistle-blower protection does not take us as far as we could. Hopefully, it will not take as long to get to the next set of improvements as it did to get us to this one because Canadian workers deserve better than to have to wait that long to get protections that are already afforded workers in other workplaces. I thank the sponsor of the bill very much for his good work on the bill and for his co-operation with the member for Courtenay—Alberni to improve the bill, as much as Liberals and Conservatives, the coalition, if I may be so bold, would allow in this case.
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