INDEPTH: WHISTLEBLOWER
Whistleblower legislation
Bill C-25, Disclosure Protection
CBC News Online | April 28, 2004
The Liberal government introduced Bill C-25 – the Disclosure Protection legislation commonly known as "whistleblower" legislation – in March 2004. The bill was introduced in response to the sponsorship scandal in which the auditor general accused the government of squandering $100 million in bogus payments to several Quebec advertising firms that allegedly did little or no work for the money.
Denis Coderre
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The proposed law, introduced by Privy Council President Denis Coderre, is intended to protect people who speak out about problems in the government's bureaucracy. The proposed legislation says that it is "part of the government's broader commitment to ensure transparency, accountability, financial responsibility and ethical conduct." It's the first time bureaucrats have been offered legal protection against reprisals for reporting government wrongdoing.
Complaints will be investigated by the public service integrity commissioner, who in turn will report to a cabinet minister and not directly to Parliament. The commissioner will also make recommendations on corrective measures.
Bill C-25, which covers all federal public sector workers and Crown corporation employees, requires heads of federal organizations to establish an internal disclosure mechanism. It calls for a code of conduct and is intended to provide protections in law from reprisals.
Whistleblower legislation is not extended to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment and uniformed members of the RCMP or the Armed Forces. These agencies are required to create a similar code of conduct and reprisal protection for employees.
How it works
1. Each deputy minister or chief executive officer in the federal public sector must establish an internal disclosure mechanism including the appointment of a senior officer to take disclosures and investigate possible wrongdoings.
2. To ensure that there is an additional avenue for disclosures when necessary, a public sector integrity commissioner will be appointed. The commissioner will be independent, appointed by the governor-in-council on approval by both the Senate and the House of Commons.
3. The commissioner will be able to investigate alleged wrongdoings and make recommendations to chief executives and deputy heads on his or her findings.
4. The commissioner will report to Parliament through a minister designated by the governor-in-council.
5. The commissioner will have the ability to make reports to ministers of departments or to the boards of Crown corporations when the deputy head or chief executive officer is not responsive to the recommendations. The commissioner may also make special reports to Parliament if needed.
Criticism
Critics of the legislation are troubled by the reporting process, saying it is not truly independent because the integrity commissioner does not report directly to Parliament. This was the focus of strong criticism that came from some of the Liberal party's own members as well as from the public service union and the opposition.
Liberal MP Pat Martin said the bill does a disservice to public servants who, in the past, have risked their careers by speaking out about government wrongdoing. Martin said that in the case of the sponsorship scandal, a whistleblower would have had to report problems to the same government that was implicated in the scandal.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which represents 150,000 government workers, also expressed concern that an employee would have to go through an internal process before having access to a third party. The union said this is wrong.
"We believe they should have immediate access to a third party where confidentiality could be guaranteed so that people will come forward and feel free to express issues of concern to them," said PSAC vice-president John Gordon in March 2004.
Cases of whistleblowing:
Myriam Bédard and the sponsorship scandal
Myriam Bédard
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Former Olympic athlete Myriam Bédard said in February 2004 that she had been fired from her marketing job at Via Rail after questioning invoices for advertising work by Groupaction, the main company wrapped up in the sponsorship scandal. Bédard said she wrote to Prime Minister Paul Martin when she saw him on TV urging Canadians to come forward with whatever information they had about the sponsorship program.
Via Rail chair Jean Pelletier was later fired for calling Bédard a "pitiful, single woman," saying she was trying to draw attention to herself with the allegations.
As the sponsorship inquiry got underway in March 2004 Bédard appeared before the Parliamentary committee looking into the scandal and made some shocking allegations:
- That Canadian racecar driver Jacques Villeneuve was secretly paid $12 million from the sponsorship fund to wear a Canadian logo.
- That her domestic partner Nima Mazhari persuaded then-prime minister Jean Chrétien not to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
- That then-Via president Marc LeFrançois told her Groupaction was involved in drug trafficking.
Whistleblowers sue Ottawa for $33 million
In 1998 two bureaucrats at the Foreign Affairs Department accused then-minister Lloyd Axworthy and several of the highest-ranking bureaucrats in his department of wasting over $2 billion on Canadian ambassadors' living quarters and operations between 1986 and 1998.
John Guenette, a 17-year veteran of the Foreign Affairs Department and colleague Joanna Gualtieri said they noticed that ambassadors and Foreign Service officers were wasting the money in countries such as Ireland, India and Japan (the bureaus Guenette worked with) between 1986 and 1998.
Guenette and Gualtieri claimed the bureau seemed not to care, that their bosses harassed them for raising the concerns and that they were given dead-end jobs after coming forward.
Both bureaucrats went on stress leave.
The case was thrown out of lower court in 2001, which said they should have handled their complaints through in-house arbitration and that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
Alliance MP John Williams, who is now head of the Parliamentary committee looking into the sponsorship scandal, said at the time that the case proved the need for whistleblowing legislation.
The lower court decision was overturned in 2002 by the Ontario Court of Appeals, which ruled that the government's arbitration was biased against the whistleblowers. The case still hasn't been settled.
Gualtieri eventually founded the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR) to promote an employee's right to speak out about unethical behaviour.
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