Case for whistle-blowing legislation in Canada.

• Author: Kinsella, Noel A.

On 31 January 2001, Senator Noel Kinsella introduced Bill S-6, the Public Service Whistle-blowing Act. It is virtually identical to a Bill introduced in the previous Parliament but which died on the Order Paper with the dissolution of Parliament. The purpose of the Bill is to establish a mechanism for dealing with the reporting of wrongdoing in the federal Public Service. On February 22, 2001, the Senate agreed to send the Bill back to the Committee on National Finance where it was at dissolution. This article is based on remarks by Senator Kinsella in the Senate on December 14, 1999 and in testimony to the Committee on National Finance on April 5, 2000.

The Bill speaks to a contemporary, professional public service that we are fortunate to have here in Canada. Indeed, the Public Service of Canada is second to none in the world.

A report entitled A Strong Foundation was commissioned by the Clerk of the Privy Council a few years ago, chaired by the late John Tait. The purpose of A Strong Foundation was to help the Public Service think about and, in some cases, rediscover and understand its basic values and recommit to and act on those values in all its work.

Some of the issues and problems identified as concerns of public servants of Canada include evolving conventions about accountability; tension between old values and new; ethical challenges emerging from new service and management approaches in the Public Service; and leadership and people management in this time of great change.

My Bill addresses the need to provide for a framework to deal with the matter of whistle-blowing within this new context of ethics and values as a strong foundation of our Canadian Public Service.

As indicated in the Tait report, an ethics regime is not a single initiative but rather a comprehensive series of initiatives, mutually supporting and complementing one another.

One element of an ethics regime which has particular importance is the establishment within public service organizations of suitable recourse mechanisms, counsellors, or ombudsmen for public servants who may feel that they or others are in potential conflicts of interest or other ethical difficulties, or may feel that they are under pressure or have been asked to perform actions that are unethical or contrary to public service values and to the public interest. One refrain that we have heard from public servants is that there is no point in asking them to uphold public service values or to...