David Hutton’s remarks at media conference

February 24, 2011

Research consistently shows that information from honest employees is the most effective single means of exposing fraud, and that’s why whistleblower protection must be at the centre of any government program of transparency and accountability.

But following Sheila Fraser’s investigation into the former integrity commissioner’s conduct, the credibility of the government’s whistleblower protection system is in tatters.

Christiane Ouimet’s appalling track record – finding zero cases of wrongdoing in more than three years – was aided and abetted by deeply flawed legislation. This gave her far too much discretion and too many reasons to turn cases away.

We should not have any illusions that simply appointing a new commissioner will put matters right – it won’t. There is an urgent need for reforms to the law, and we are calling for the required 5-year review to be brought forward and completed within the coming six months.

We are also calling for the reformed law to be applied retrospectively to the backlog of more than 200 cases that the AG said should be reviewed. If this is not done, many cases that have merit will be rejected again due to the absurd provisions of the current law.

We cannot leave the design of these reforms to government lawyers alone, since they clearly dropped the ball last time. So FAIR has initiated a process to build an informed consensus regarding what changes are required.

To that end we are publishing today our detailed analysis of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, explaining in detail the major flaws in this legislation. We have identified 25 significant problems, falling into 8 broad categories. We believe that our analysis is unassailable, and we have already confirmed that the Integrity Commissioner’s lawyers can see no errors of fact in our critique.

Our analysis shows that this law does not provide the ‘ironclad protection’ for whistleblowers that was promised. It is more like a bureaucratic ‘Temple of Doom’ – a labyrinth of traps and pitfalls that ensure that few if any whistleblowers can ever prevail. It’s also a charter of rights for wrongdoers, ensuring that few if any allegations of misconduct will be properly investigated.

The next steps in our process will be to design solutions that are simple, legally sound, feasible to implement, and which can be navigated through the political process. We will be working with recognized experts in Canada – as well as in other countries including the USA, the UK and Australia, which have much more experience with whistleblower legislation.

We hope that this time the government will pay attention to the experts.

The current law has caused a human tragedy – hundreds of honest public servants who courageously came forward have been betrayed by false promises, denied due process and left facing vicious career-ending reprisals at the hands of wrongdoers. We owe them justice.

We also owe it to ourselves to put in place safeguards so that wrongdoing within the public service can be exposed and nipped in the bud before millions of tax dollars are wasted – or even lives put at risk.

David Hutton, 
Executive Director of FAIR