Whistleblower Legislation - Protection: Cutler & Hon. Diane Marleau-Include RCMP and Crowns

38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION -- Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates -- Hon. Diane Marleau thinks RCMP and Crown Corporations should be included February 3, 2005

Hon. Diane Marleau: Of course, the protection in this bill didn't exist. But when you reported it, you reported it to people above you, and they took no action.

Mr. Allan Cutler: I reported to those above me, and I also went via a parallel chain of command, which is internal audit.

Hon. Diane Marleau: And they did it, and the rest is history.

In a piece of legislation like this what we want is to protect people like you and to make sure that in the end, because you have come forward and done the right thing, you're not penalized in any way, but quite the opposite. How can we do it with legislation? That's the problem we have. That's what we're trying to do here. Yes, we can have an independent body. How do we treat the complainant until it actually gets found out? As you say, a lot of it is very subtle; they won't report it. I've been around for a while and I know what happens, and it's sometimes extremely subtle and very difficult to prove.

Mr. Allan Cutler: I'll turn to Mr. Pieters in a second, but first I would say that what you have to do is change the culture at the top. The ethical standard of the civil service does not start at the bottom, it starts at the top, and that goes, quite honestly, right up to Parliament. You set the bar. The civil service will be no more ethical than the top levels. All the rules I've seen coming out lately say the normal civil servant has to be ethical. That's not where you have to start. You need to have the leadership, and then people will follow.

Hon. Diane Marleau: I also believe crown corporations and the RCMP should be included in this bill. They shouldn't be set aside. So I think you'll see things of that nature occur with this legislation.

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Mr. Selwyn Pieters: I think there should be penalties, and Mr. Martin raised this. For example, in the Pelletier case, there was a firing when the Prime Minister learned that retaliation was being taken against a whistle-blower. The deputy head downwards should be responsible, and if the deputy head is tolerating retaliation against a whistle-blower, if the deputy head is complicit in wrongdoing in the workplace, quite frankly, they should be fired. The senior executives shouldn't even be moved to another organization, because those are the senior people who leave the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and go to another department and carry on the same way they did in the other department. So it's almost incestuous, almost an infestation in the public service, moving these managers around. If they're incompetent, fire them.