Yet last week a federal judge “slammed the investigative work” of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada. Justice Anne Mactavish recently criticized the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner’s Office in the reprisal complaints of whistleblower Charbel El-Helou, saying the office lacked both fairness and thoroughness and ordered the office to re-investigate two of the whistleblower’s complaints.
Regrettably, this wasn’t news to us: Canadians for Accountability was already aware of this situation. Furthermore, this is just tip of the iceberg.
Through our work with whistleblowers, we have heard many stories like this. With permission, here are some details from whistleblowers who tried to work through the Integrity Commissioner’s Office.
Don Garrett reported alleged wrongdoing to PSIC in March of 2011. He tried volunteering additional information but was told that, although he was the one reporting alleged wrongdoing, as he was not a civil servant they could not discuss his own report with him. Finally, in frustration, in August 2012, he emailed Dion. On Aug. 17, 2012, Dion wrote, “Your disclosure of wrongdoing is still under active investigation…” Garrett was promised a ‘preliminary’ report as soon as all relevant interviews had been completed and all required evidence collected. We wonder why, 17 months after Garrett submitted his complaint, not even interviews had been finished.
In an even more revealing case—one that involved the theft of the Ebola virus from a Canadian government laboratory—Cecilia Basic sent us an email which said that “…when I last spoke with [the Office of the Information Commissioner]… my disclosure was sitting on the desk of [a] disclosure analyst.” This sounded hopeful. But, she then wrote, “Our conversation on Thursday, however, revealed another story…my disclosure was no longer on his desk because it had been sent back to the disclosure manager, and is still waiting to be assigned despite having previously been assigned to him.” So she was back to where she started, with no commitment on an end date.
To make matters worse, Basic was told that reprisal complaints receive priority over any other type of disclosure and all other disclosures drop to the bottom of the priority list. She was informed that it could be up to a year before they look at her situation.
This contradicted what she had been told when she first came forward. At that time, she was also told that her disclosure contained information about potential criminal activity and would be taken to the RCMP by the Office of the Information Commissioner. Since then, she has been told that she has to go to the RCMP directly. This means that there has been time for the alleged perpetrator to cover up the situation. When she tried to get more information, she was—incredibly—told that the office has a very limited information tracking system so nothing could be found. In an investigative body such as this, it strikes us as the grossest negligence and incompetence.
Basic also had to provide the supporting documents regarding the total monies involved in order to get the commission to pay attention. She researched and found these documents on the Internet. Why the commissioner’s staff was incapable of conducting this basic research was never explained. Basic advises, “it is a lesson learned for any discloser [myself included] to always focus on the monies spent in addition to the alleged wrong-doing” in order to get the commission to pay attention. This places many whistleblowers at a disadvantage as many complaints are about issues not involving money—such as health, illegal practices, and abuse of power.
And there are other cases—that of Sean Bruyea being prominent—in which the commissioner has simply refused to investigate at all. In Bruyea’s case, officials at Veterans Affairs Canada were found to have circulated his medical records in an effort to depict him as unstable. The goal was to discredit him as a critic of the department. Nobody was ever punished in any meaningful way. Despite this, Dion argued that Bruyea’s legal settlement with Veterans Affairs closed the matter—apparently uninterested in the ongoing problem affecting the public interest.
Returning to my original question of whether anything has changed, it appears not. Why else would we have to wait for a judge to slam the investigative work of the commission? And why else are taxpayers paying for Dion’s defence of this disgraceful situation?
So these three cases show that we are beginning to see a repeat of the disgraceful performance by Ouimet. All parties approved Ouimet’s appointment and all parties agreed they bore responsibility for her and should have been more diligent. The question now, then, is whether they will be true to those words.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: ALLAN CUTLER
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