Public service whistleblowers have a new
integrity commissioner who says he’s committed to moving his beleaguered office forward, but critics and the official opposition maintain he’s too closely associated with its failures and that an outsider is needed to protect whistleblowers.
Joe Friday was confirmed last week as Canada’s new public sector integrity commissioner, a position he had held on an interim basis since the start of the year, after appearing before the House Operations and Expenditures Committee and the Senate’s Committee of the Whole.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper nominated Mr. Friday, formerly the deputy commissioner, on March 23. The commissioner, an officer of Parliament, is responsible for investigating wrongdoing in the public sector and helping to protect whistleblowers from reprisals.
Created in 2007, the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner has been embroiled in controversy in its short existence and critics of Mr. Friday’s nomination said someone without a history in the office or from outside the public service altogether is needed for it to be effective.
The first commissioner, Christiane Ouimet, retired abruptly in 2010. Her office investigated seven of the 228 cases brought before it and found no instances of wrongdoing or of reprisals for reporting wrongdoing. Then-auditor general Sheila Fraser found Ms. Ouimet “failed to properly perform her mandate,” that she berated and marginalized her staff and did little to help federal employees who complained to her office of wrongdoing.
Mario Dion initially took over the commissioner role on an interim basis following Ms. Ouimet’s departure before being formally appointed a year later. He announced his resignation for “personal reasons” last summer, partway through a seven-year term set to expire in 2018.
Mr. Friday joined the office in 2008, where he served as general counsel under Ms. Ouimet before taking on the deputy commissioner role in 2011. The office staffs 26 people.
Last year, Auditor General Michael Ferguson found that Mr. Dion and Mr. Friday were guilty of “gross mismanagement” in their handling of two whistleblower complaints that originated during Ms. Ouimet’s tenure and were handled with excessive delay.
Mr. Friday told the committee on March 26 that the office was a “different organization” from Ms. Ouimet’s time at the helm, with safeguards to ensure “Parliamentarians and Canadians that what may have happened in the past simply cannot or will not happen again.” Meanwhile he gets paid.
He said in an interview that he had learned from his experiences in the office, “both difficult and pleasant,” about the leadership the organization needs, and that his promotion should be viewed as a sign of his commitment.
“The reason I’m still here is that I believe in the importance of the work and I believe in the mandate given to us by Parliament,” he told
The Hill Times.
But whistleblower advocates said the appointment would mean more of the same from the office.
“I think the primary objective is just to keep the waters calm,” said Ian Bron, a former naval officer and a director of Canadians for Accountability, an organization that assists whistleblowers and advocates for government accountability.
Mr. Friday is too close to the failures of the previous commissioners, Mr. Bron said in an interview, and someone “not solidly locked into the Ottawa bureaucratic community” is needed in the role.
David Hutton, who served as executive director for six years of whistleblower group FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform), said the public service culture works against someone steeped in it from being an effective watchdog.
“People don’t progress in the public service as bureaucrats unless they very quickly realize that their main job is to protect the higher-ups, to protect the senior bureaucrats, and protect the minister above all,” he said in an interview.
“When there’s a conflict between that and serving the public or doing the job honestly, then they have to finally rationalize that set of priorities. So someone who’s been in the bureaucracy for any length of time and been successful and climbed the ranks doesn’t need to be told that’s the priority.”
Mr. Friday said his public service experience—22 years of it—was of “essential importance” to the role.
“You have to understand the machinery, you have to understand the culture,” he said in an interview, adding that his background was “less problematic” than others’ since he had only worked at the Justice Department before moving to the office, where he’s been for seven years.
During that period he’s been distancing himself from his public service background, he said.
“I don’t think it would necessarily be appropriate for me to act as if I was part of the regular public service when I’m working in an agent of Parliament external watchdog capacity.”
He also said the job, which comes with a seven-year mandate and an opportunity for renewal, would likely be his last position in the public service.
“I think it would be difficult to reintegrate into the regular public service,” he told
The Hill Times.
Mr. Friday was questioned at the House Operations Committee about the number of complaints the office receives. It averaged about 80 per year before dipping to around 50 last year, which isn’t a significant number given the 400,000 workers covered under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act.
“There was an expectation, I think, that when we finally beefed up the Office of the Integrity Commissioner through the Accountability Act, that there would be a windfall of whistleblowers coming forward, there would be a flurry of wrongdoing exposed in the public sector. And we really haven’t seen that,” said NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.), who chairs the committee.
“Either there isn’t a great deal of wrongdoing going on, or whistleblowers still don’t feel confident that they can come forward and tell their story without fear of reprisal.”
Mr. Friday told the committee that trust in the office dealing with complaints was needed for people to report wrongdoing and that it’s reaching out to the public service, outlining the options for whistleblowers. The permanent challenge facing the office is ensuring whistleblowers feel safe and confident coming forward, he said.
“[The act] has not fully addressed the issue of fear, of confidence, of—I don’t know if it’s institutional culture or it’s human nature—but it is something that we accept as a permanent feature of our professional landscape and it’s something that we have to continue to address to the extent we can, through our communications, through our decision-making process, through the [external] advisory committee,” he said.
Mr. Friday told MPs that he would like to see changes to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act—a review of which is long overdue—including allowing his office to acquire and use evidence held by people in the private sector or by retired public servants.
He also talked about his desire to remove the word “whistleblower’s” negative associations, often connected to disloyalty. And he described his office’s mandate as acting on behalf of whistleblowing, rather than individuals.
“We don’t represent whistleblowers. I’d like to say that we advocate on behalf of whistleblowing, we don’t advocate on behalf of individual whistleblowers. We don’t represent a party,” he told the committee.
The House Government Operations and Expenditures Committee’s Conservative majority supported Mr. Friday’s nomination, as did Mr. Byrne, the lone Liberal at committee, while the two New Democrats, Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac, Que.) and Tarik Brahmi (St-Jean, Que.), voted against it.
Conservative MP Chris Warkentin (Peace River, Alta.) told
The Hill Times that Mr. Friday has the qualifications to move the office forward.
“He’s demonstrated that competency during the time he’s served as interim commissioner,” he said.
Mr. Byrne said that he made the distinction between the office’s previous conduct and Mr. Friday, whom he said would make an excellent commissioner, but Mr. Ravignat said the appointment sends the wrong message, even if Mr. Friday is well qualified.
“We’re talking about an insider. It sends the message to whistleblowers in this country that this government is not serious,” he said in an interview.
A “robust commissioner” would need to be found outside the federal public service, he said.
Mr. Bron said the position needed someone like Ontario ombudsman André Marin.
“No deputy minister wants an aggressive integrity commissioner coming in asking hard questions in his department. The Prime Minister sure doesn’t want a scandal coming up. PCO, Treasury Board—nobody wants this to be effective. Every now and then you get an André Marin or a Kevin Page, but it always sort of catches them off guard,” he said, referring to the former Parliamentary budget officer who was often challenging the Conservative government.
“If they want to avoid that they picked the right guy.”
Allan Cutler, president of Canadians for Accountability who applied for the commissioner position, said a change of culture is required in the office and that it’s up to Mr. Friday to prove that he’s accomplished it.
“I can hope that things will change but I don’t see any reason to believe that things have changed or will change. This office was set up to smother whistleblowers the way it has operated,” he said in an interview.
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