More public-sector workers are coming forward with allegations of wrongdoing and reprisals in the workplace - which is continuing a year-over-year trend, reports the public sector integrity commissioner.
Mario Dion's annual report, tabled in the Senate last week, shows a 15-per-cent increase of reports from bureaucrats concerned someone in their office is violating the public trust or public purse.
The commissioner's office argues the numbers show it is making headway in delivering on its task of rooting out wrongdoing in the public service, but it can still improve.
Specifically, Dion's report says that, based on his experiences, the government needs to strengthen the laws designed to keep a complainant's identity confidential.
"While there are many aspects of the system created by the Act that we have yet to fully implement or explore, we will continue to do so through the cases that come to us, dealing with each one seriously, sensitively and on its own merits," the report says.
How much the office improves will be influenced by a five-year review of the legislation guiding its work, the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. The review is to take place this year.
The office already has some ideas on changes to the act, but won't release them until "the right moment," the report says.
Dion's predecessor, Christiane Ouimet, investigated only seven of the 228 allegations she looked at during her 38 months as commissioner and found no wrongdoing.
A damning report from former auditor general Sheila Fraser pointed out flaws in the office and the investigative process. After Dion was appointed interim commissioner, he found problems in 70 of the 228 cases Ouimet had looked at.
In March, Dion reported he had found a manager with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada guilty of "gross mismanagement" - including findings of nepotism and of billing taxpayers for personal massages and flat-screen televisions that were never used.
The report was the first guilty finding the four-year-old office had ever reported. At the time, Dion suggested in an interview with Postmedia News that more reports could be made public by the end of the calendar year.
The public sector integrity commissioner closed the fiscal year with 39 ongoing investigations, more than double the number of cases from the previous year.
Dion's office responded to 300 inquiries in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, including 94 new disclosures of wrongdoing and 43 new complaints of reprisals.