More on whistleblower protection in Canada – My conversation with David Hutton

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been watching the WikiLeaks issue(s) with great interest. What has been causing most of the chatter lately is the July 25 release of files in a document set called “Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010”. Included in this is the now famous – and huge – file called “Insurance”.

WikiLeaks says no one will be able to decrypt it. Experts believe that the U.S.’ National Security Agency probably can. The Pentagon demands the cancellation of new posts. WikiLeaks says that’s an “obnoxious threat.”

You have to wonder what the U.S. government can or would do, on a legal, technical or even military basis.

To get a more local perspective, I spoke yesterday with David Hutton of FAIR. You can see his comments on the status of whistleblower protection in today’s featured video section (or, just click here. )

He was a wealth of information on what goes on in Canada in terms of whistleblowing and protection. Something that we weren’t able to include in the video was David’s summation of the legislative aspect of this. You can hear his comments here: David Hutton on Canadian whistleblowing legislation or read the transcript below.

The most significant development in the past few years was that there was whistleblowing legislation introduced as part of the Federal Accountability Act and when the present Conservative government first came to power. That was introduced with a great deal of hoopla and claims that this would provide ironclad protection for whistleblowers. Then the surveyor told the Senate that it was the Mount Everest of whistleblower legislation – in other words, towering above all other countries.

But while the legislation was being debated in parliament, we presented to the parliamentary committee and we could see lots and lots of problems with the legislation. We thought it was just full of loopholes. It was stacked against the whistleblower and we didn’t think it worked. In fact the Senate agreed with us and introduced about 16 or so amendments that would have fixed a lot of the problems that we were pointing out but those were all rejected. So what we got was some legislation – this was three years ago – that superficially looked quite impressive. It had some very strong features – there’s an Agent of Parliament called the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner who has an office, substantial budgets and substantial staff. She also has all of the powers of the Inquiries Act, so she has very substantial powers to subpoena people, to demand evidence and so on. She’s an Agent of Parliament which means she can’t be fired by the Prime Minister – she reports directly to parliament and her tenure is seven years.

So all of that looked very good, but when you look at it more closely, you find all kinds of problems with the law. What has happened is that our concerns have proven to be justified. This system has been in place for a little over three years and the Integrity Commissioner, her third annual report will be tabled shortly and we’re interested to see what’s in that but we kind of already know. For example, if she finds any wrong-doing, she’s obliged to report it to parliament. What we expect to learn when her report is tabled in parliament next month is that for three years running, she has not found a single case of wrong-doing in the entire federal public service and that she has also not protected a single whistleblower in the entire federal public service.

That’s the state of protection for federal government employees and if you look beyond that to the provinces or the public sector, there’s virtually nothing in place. It’s a pretty dangerous business to be a whistleblower in Canada because there’s really nothing there to protect you from reprisals from your employer.

What do you think about all of this? From WikiLeaks to whistleblowing to whether or not you’d ever blow the whistle (and what would it take? An ethical issue or a criminal one?), there are probably hundreds of ways a discussion like this can go, but let’s give it a shot.

-Julie.