Justice John Gomery's final report says laws giving the public access to government information and protecting whistleblowers from punishment are crucial in cleaning up federal politics.

"Accountability and responsibility flourish more easily in a system that is transparent, where Canadians have access to what their government is doing and where wrongdoings are reported," said the four-volume report, Restoring Accountability, which was released Wednesday in Ottawa.

"Transparency does not guarantee accountability, but it makes it more possible."

The report notes that the federal sponsorship program – whose mismanagement led to Gomery's commission of inquiry being launched in February 2004 – was marked by a deliberate lack of record-keeping, a culture of secrecy and implied threats aimed at civil servants who dared to question its administration.

For example, as Gomery pointed out in the commission's first report released in November 2005, a Public Works employee nearly lost his job after voicing concerns about the federal sponsorship program in 1996.

"Things are done in a secretive fashion if the person who wants to commit irregularities believes there is little chance of those irregularities coming to light," Gomery said at a news conference in Ottawa after his commission's second report was released.

He said that if the federal government implements his recommendations to protect civil servants from political interference, "there's a better chance that they'll speak truth to power, that they'll say no."

By contrast, he said that over the course of the sponsorship affair, "a lot of people didn't say no who should have said no."

Make all federal departments, agencies more open, Gomery says

Many of the recommendations in Gomery's final report specifically aim at curbing government secrecy and protecting whistleblowers, including by:

  • Making all federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations subject to the Access to Information Act, which has been in effect since 1983.
  • Changing the act so that the government has to prove releasing a document publicly will cause real injury (at the moment, there are broad classes of documents that are automatically exempt from release, including papers considered to be providing advice to ministers).
  • Making it an offence if civil servants do not document decisions and recommendations, and punishing them if they later destroy such documents to protect themselves or their bosses.
  • Providing more training about the need for proper paperwork and the proper relationship that should be maintained between political staff and ministerial staff.
  • Guaranteeing that deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers are appointed for a minimum of three years, so that ministers cannot dismiss them for questioning improper decisions and activities.

Gomery's report also said the relatively new federal act offering protection to whistleblowers could be improved.

Among other measures, it said employers should have to prove that an action taken against an employee alleging wrongdoing was not a reprisal.

Whistleblower applauds Gomery report

Allan Cutler, the former Public Works employee who first blew the whistle on the sponsorship program, was full of praise for Gomery's final report.

"I am rather pleased with it: it seems to me that he has addressed accountability very well," Cutler told CBC.ca.

"It's nice to see that the next person who hits my type of situation might be protected," said Cutler, who later retired from the federal department and unsuccessfully ran for the Tories in the Jan. 23 parliamentary election. "I have a lot of respect for Mr. Justice Gomery."

The Canadian Newspaper Association also praised Gomery's recommendations.

"You cannot have accountability in government without records of who did and said what," Anne Kothawala, the president of the association, said in a statement.

"Officials involved in the sponsorship scandal appear to have driven a truck through that loophole."