In a recent documentary, CBC’s The Fifth Estate highlighted yet more problems with Canada’s record on enforcing airport safety rules.

The story stemmed from a student’s discovery of a computer memory stick in a coffee shop. On it were warnings from a government security inspector that officials are compromising public safety in favour of “profit and convenience.”

But besides shedding light on a safety issue that would disturb most Canadians, the report drew attention to yet another problem in our laws: the lack of adequate protection for whistleblowers who report wrongdoing.
That’s because the inspector who issued the warnings wouldn’t talk about them.

He feared reprisals for what he had done and told reporter Hana Gartner that he knew of other government employees who had suffered badly for coming forward with problems. In the end, he instructed her never to call him again.

His reaction isn’t surprising, of course, but it is troublesome given both the gravity of the safety issue at hand as well as the fact that the federal government was supposed to have addressed the reticence of whistleblowers to come forward in the wake of the sponsorship scandal several years ago.

Obviously, changes by the former Liberal government to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and later amendments to it under the Conservatives’ Federal Accountability Act aimed at making it easier for bureaucrats to report problems haven’t worked.

In assessing the legislation, in fact, the organization FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform), includes this warning to government employees on its web site: “Public servants who are considering making a disclosure under the new legislation should first pause and make sure that they fully understand how it works before they entrust their fate to this deeply flawed process.”

Among the problems, according to FAIR, is that the legislation doesn’t provide ironclad protection for workers who report wrongdoing. So, if they feel they’ve suffered retaliation for their actions by a manager, for example, they can make a complaint to the public sector integrity commissioner, Christiane Ouimet.

She may then start an investigation but, FAIR says, procedures for doing so are problematic for three reasons: employees have just 60 days to file a complaint; they have little legal support compared to the government; and they face the onus of proving their problems at work were the result of retaliation. In other countries, laws provide for a reverse onus that requires the employer to show the adverse treatment wasn’t due to whistleblowing.

The Conservatives, of course, can justly argue that their Federal Accountability Act brought in useful reforms. But the reaction by the airport security inspector shows government employees are still very fearful of reporting wrongdoing.

Canadians deserve better. That would require changes to our laws, but until the public speaks up, we’ll depend on lost memory sticks in coffee shops to find out what’s really going on within our government.