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This situation has a number of parallels with the ouster of Christiane Ouimet, the former Integrity Commissioner who retired in disgrace, her misconduct set out in a damning report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
In my observation, governments seem to have three main strategies for clipping the wings of agencies that might cause them trouble: 1) writing laws that render them toothless; 2) starving of them funding and resources to do the job properly; and 3) putting unsuitable people in charge. Both of these cases seem to be examples of the latter.
In both cases the government put in charge individuals who, it soon became apparent, were quite unsuitable. In both cases the appointees did not do their jobs properly, harassed subordinates, and chaos ensued as staff left in droves. And in both cases the appointees were protected from any serious repercussions. Ouimet got the softest landing imaginable for someone who in effect orchestrated a massive obstruction of justice – early retirement with a $500,000 payout – and now Chotalia too seems headed for a soft landing.
The supreme irony is that now one of these agencies is reportedly investigating the other. This may be good news for Chotalia. Unlike the Auditor General, the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner has a track record of finding nothing amiss: it has found only one case of wrongdoing in five years of operation, and only three cases of possible reprisal against whistleblowers.
Under this arrangement we are not expecting any more dramatic revelations about what has been going on at CHRT.
David Hutton
'Pink slime' in ground beef, mad cow disease, deadly antibiotic-resistant pathogens, melamine contamination: these are just some of the food safety hazards making headlines in the USA (and around the world). It is surprising that we hear so little of them in Canada, since we face the same risks: we eat the same food, produced by the same corporations using the same industrial practices. But Canada's oversight of the food industry is even weaker than in the USA.
It's not as if we haven't suffered our share of tragedies in Canada: 2,500 people were sickened and at least seven died from water tainted with e-Coli at Walkerton in 2000; and 57 people were sickened and 22 died in 2008 from meat contaminated with Listeria. Both tragedies occurred shortly after controversial cuts to the system of oversight, orchestrated by the same people – in Mike Harris's cabinet and then in Stephen Harper's. But these deaths have not slowed the government's headlong rush to abandon any responsibility for food safety.
If the government won't provide proper oversight of food safety, at least it should ensure that employees who see problems can raise the alarm without suffering reprisals. As FAIR testified to a Parliamentary committee in 2009:
Unless we create effective whistleblower protection for people working in the food industry – from the public servants who make policy and oversee the industry, to the managers and workers on the production lines – Canadians will continue to die needlessly because of avoidable failures within the food supply.
David Hutton
More articles about food safety
Even in the USA where they have effective laws to fight misconduct by all who hurt the government including the private sector (the False Claim Act being the best) whistleblowers have a lot to be worried about. It all stems from the fact that no one likes them.
Imagine you have the evidence and first-hand knowledge of misconduct that hurts us all and costs us sometimes billions in stolen money and other damages, you come forward to expose the crooks, they are prosecuted, punished usually financially (jail time rare even in USA) and you feel and know you did the right thing. But no one likes you. Not those who say they are honest and law abiding citizens, not those who are as crooked as the guilty party, not the government, not employers and their employees where you may want to work, not anyone who gets to know you blew the whistle.
Why is this? Are all those who don't like you thus disagreeing with your doing the right thing, on the side of the crooks? Do they agree with those who defraud, steal, lie, cheat etc. etc. even when they themselves would not do such things? Are we pre-wired for dishonesty in a way that either we do the dishonest things or we agree with it and turn the other way but blame those who are not like us and expose the dishonesty via whistleblowing?
So what is the poor, honest and brave whistleblower to do? In my opinion if you are one, go for it if the case is so big that you would come out with a huge reward from the USA government once the crooks are punished. Otherwise you may become a victim without any means of survival. Once you are successful, take the reward and walk away from those who "don't like you" and find a new life somewhere else. It always blows over in the end, and with your reward you will be free.
Unfortunately this is not the case in Canada, thus we practically have no whistleblowers in the private sector and only a few in the public sector. One can imagine the misconduct going on in this country when there is no interest on the part of government or law enforcement to proactively go after the crooks. Wrongdoers carry out their "business" with impunity and only rarely do we have some punished (usually symbolically) who become so careless that even our authorities -- as gutless and toothless they are -- must act..
How fortunate for the crooks and how sad for the rest of us. So next time you "don't like" the whistleblower, think of yourself as part of the problem and partner in crime that you yourself are not willing to do or have no guts to do but wish you had.
Having been through a similar ordeal, I can state first hand that these officials and pseudo processes only convene when they can manipulate the data. Mr. Boshra has done an outstanding job of exposing the lack of integrity that is the hallmark of so called "proper channels".
Having attempted to use whistleblower legislation in my own province, I would not recommend that other provinces hold out false hope of protection with new legislation. Unless there are significant differences to legislation passed elsewhere as outlined by FAIR, there would still be no protection for whistleblowers, and no meaningful consequences for wrong-doers.
In my view, a major limitation in this Ottawa Citizen article is that it provides little exposure and critical analysis of what, I believe, are lawyer Stéphane J. Lalonde possible motives for offering his advice in the manner described in this newspaper.
Anyone who buys into the notion that Lalonde did it only to "help us out" as the Clarence-Rockland municipal councilor Campeau is quoted as saying in that article, strikes me as been rather either naïve and gullible, or significantly misinformed in my view.
In my carefully considered view, factors motivating Lalonde to provide advice to a selected number of councilors, as described in the emails addressed by the Ottawa Citizen article, appear to my eyes heavily tainted by his significant self-serving personal and professional interests in having the municipal council execute his advice. Here are some facts underlying some of those possible motives:
These three legal proceedings confronting the personal and professional interests of lawyer Lalonde against the interests of the city of Clarence-Rockland were ongoing during the period he was providing his advice to selected members of city council in those emails described in the Ottawa Citizen article, and currently under investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police anti-rackets squad.
I believe that these three legal proceedings added to the cloud under which lawyer Lalonde resigned as a municipal councilor of Clarence-Rockland, go straight to the heart of the core factors which really motivated lawyer Lalonde to provide the advice described in the Ottawa Citizen article to selected municipal councilors, such as how to go about getting rid of the city's Chief administrative officer, Daniel Gatien. The word vengeance, pure and simple, comes immediately to my mind to describe what this was all about.
No, I just don't buy that lawyer Lalonde did it out of the goodness of his heart, freely, just to help some new members of the municipal council. In my view, he simply and adroitly used some of them (some quite willingly I reckon) to prosecute his ethically reprehensible agenda. And by gosh, did he ever achieve results, the most spectacular one being Gatien's departure last August.
The charges just laid by the RCMP are the result of a determined effort by a small team of SISO managers to expose misconduct by their bosses. By working together, compiling a mass of compelling evidence, and then sharing it with a trusted police force, they were able to trigger a successful 15-month investigation. They also contacted FAIR at a very early stage for information and advice.
There's a trial still to come, but the whistleblowers are delighted with the outcome thus far and full of praise for the officers that they dealt with from the RCMP and Hamilton Police.
This is a notable example of how 'official channels' can work when competent and trustworthy agencies make proper use of information from honest employees. Regrettably, successes like this one seem rare: in most of the cases that we learn about, the cover-up is successful and the whistleblowers are crushed and silenced. The outcome in Hamilton might have been very different if the alleged wrongdoers had been well-connnected members of the establishment.
As it is, the people of Hamilton have paid a high price, with needy immigrants being denied vital services and 150 SISO employees losing their jobs when the charity collapsed. If only proper laws existed in Canada to protect whistleblowers, they might have been able to act earlier and to stop the misconduct while there was still time to save SISO.
David Hutton
More articles about SISO
CBC news has reported that the manager has retired and secured employment at a Manitoba University. As a Manitoba taxpayer, I am outraged that her career is NOT derailed, and I'm still paying her salary...even as she collects a pension that most of us can only dream of...
Ostracism, demotion and constructive dismissal were my personal experience. I was forced out of a job and career that I both loved and was great at and then unceremoniously forced to pick up the shattered remnants of my life and move on. But, being the type of person that prides themself on being a person of substance and integrity as well as someone that does not believe in surrendering to a bully, I fought. Integrity, standing up to tyranny .... good things right? But what a price you pay. I fought for years, and, worse, I fought blindly.
I made every mistake and wish for all the world that I had contacted FAIR when my ordeal began as the information here may have created a different outcome. At any rate, I fought. I wrote letters, emails, and made phone calls. I was alone and believed that if I could just reach one person at some agency that had the capacity to investigate and act, maybe I could find a remedy, maybe there could be a happy ending. Each time someone agreed to listen, I honestly believed that they might help.
But, I was alone. Did I seriously think anyone was going to rock the boat for me? The people who destroyed my life probably golf with the person that I was asking to investigate, after all, this was Regina. I kept meticulous records of my contacts and never sent multiple messages to non-responsive persons, and never continued to contact any agency that stated that it could not help.
Despite the fact that I did not harass anyone, I was threatened with criminality by a senior government official. This official even had a police officer discourage me from accessing any further options. Would my closest friends even believe this really happened? This is Canada, not North Korea. It was terrifying and my cue to give up. I am simply unable to sustain any more damage.
I still worry about the threat, just as I am mortified at the idea of the bully winning. I want to fight for happy endings.
I am proud of Mr. Parent and his determination not to give up in the face of a rigged game and seemingly impossible odds.
While abuses of power are common in Canada and the realization that proper channels do not work most often come at a terrible cost to those of us who opt to direct the course of our lives with integrity, the pathology of senior public sector officials and cronies sinks to an even lower level than one might expect.