New federal whistleblower office off to slow start in first year on the job
By Jim Brown, THE CANADIAN PRESS
May 28, 2008

OTTAWA - A new federal office set up to field complaints of wrongdoing from public service whistleblowers received more than 200 inquiries in its first year of operation - but found that most fell outside its legal mandate.

The office launched only a handful of formal investigations between April 2007 and March 2008 and discovered no evidence of wrongdoing in any of them, says the first annual report from Public Service Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet.

The office was established to oversee legislation brought in by the Conservative government to encourage civil servants with evidence of wrongdoing to come forward, and to protect them from reprisals if they do so.

It was billed as a key component of the Federal Accountability Act and has been described by Treasury Board President Vic Toews as providing "ironclad protection for whistleblowers."

But critics have been skeptical of whether the law is strong enough to achieve its goals.

Ouimet acknowledged in an interview that the first year's results indicate she has some work to do in educating both rank-and-file public servants and senior executives about the nature of her office and the extent of its powers.

"It is ground-breaking legislation, it's brand new," she said. "I'm very committed to investing heavily in the outreach and education."

She likened the situation to the early years of the Access to Information Act, when it took time for all the implications of the legislation to become clear.

The report, tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, listed 206 preliminary inquiries from would-be whistleblowers but noted "the vast majority" either turned out to be under investigation already through other channels or didn't fit the definition of wrongdoing in the legislation.

There were 59 allegations of wrongdoing that merited further scrutiny, and 22 more complaints of reprisals that got a second look. But only three cases of wrongdoing and two of reprisals got to the stage of full-fledged investigation.

None of the investigations found the claims of wrongdoing to be well-founded, while the two investigations of possible reprisals haven't been finished yet.

Details were sketchy, but the report noted that in one case there was a claim of an "imminent danger" to public health and safety through unspecified "regulatory shortcomings." The follow-up investigation concluded there was no actual threat, and the concern resulted from a misunderstanding rather than wrongdoing.

Ouimet apologized for the "cryptic" nature of the report, noting that the legislation requires confidentiality for both whistleblowers and those accused under most circumstances.

If she finds actual wrongdoing, Ouimet is required to file a formal report on the specific case to Parliament. But even in that eventuality, she cautioned, "it would be a balancing act" to weigh the contending principles of public disclosure and confidentiality.

The Canadian Press, 2008