Public Sector Integrity Commissioner

23 June 2008Public Sector Integrity Commissioner? How did we miss this somewhat Orwellian title? Not that we don’t believe whistle-blowers’ allegations should be investigated and they protected from retaliation. But,  according to David Kilgour et al:
The Harper government’s constantly-repeated mantra is that they have provided ‘ironclad’ whistle-blower protection.
However the facts suggest that:

• The complicated and costly whistle-blower protection system created by the Accountability Act has been a complete failure
• Whistle-blowers are being persecuted just as fiercely under this government as they were in the past.

A bad month for honest public servants
By David Kilgour, Brian McAdams, Michele Brill-Edwards and David Hutton
(HIll Times) This has been a bad month for public servants who want to do their jobs honestly, without fear of reprisals for telling the truth or respecting the law. Two recent events suggest that such employees are more than ever in grave danger.
May 28th saw the publication of the first annual report by the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner [Christiane Ouimet], the new whistle-blower protection watchdog created by the Federal Accountability Act. Her job is to investigate whistle-blowers’ allegations of wrongdoing within the public service, to report the results to Parliament, and to protect the truth-tellers from reprisals.
Remarkably, in her first year of operation, with a staff of 21 people and a budget of $6.5 million, the Commissioner has found not a single instance of wrongdoing.