National experts say Alberta’s whistleblower legislation needs an overhaul, while the province’s Public Interest Commissioner says only small changes are necessary..The Alberta legislature’s Resource Stewardship Committee heard conflicting testimony as it reviewed the effectiveness of its Public Interest Disclosure Act..David Hutton, of the Centre for Free Expression (CFE) at Ryerson University, told the committee the legislation fell far short..“Overall this law not fit for what you want it to accomplish. It falls short in most categories of the criteria, and some of these shortcomings are particularly serious – any one of them would render the entire system ineffective,” Hutton said in his submission to the committee..“There’s substantial evidence that whistleblowers are indeed suffering reprisals, and the track record, in terms of uncovering and fixing serious wrongdoing, is almost nonâexistent – just one case in 7 years.”.The CFE scored the current legislation on a scale of 0 to 5 in five categories. Four categories got 1 and the category of “Protection of the Public” was zero..Although the Public Safety Commissioner had more than 50 people complain of reprisals at their job for reporting on government wrongdoing, only two had formal investigation reports..According to Hutton, the commissioner has not allowed anyone to have a hearing before a tribunal, so no one has ever been formally protected under the act..Public Interest Commissioner Maryanne Ryan told the panel he CFE was misinformed and the law was working well in adherence with international standards..Hutton wrote commission chair David Chanson to ask for a chance to reappear before the committee for a rebuttal, and wrote an op-ed in the Edmonton Journal to make the case there as well..Hutton told the Western Standard Canada’s whistleblower legislation is woefully inadequate. The leading NGO on such legislation, the Government Accountability Project, recommends 20 components of such laws. Of these, Canada’s federal and provincial legislation have only one: they review such laws every five years..“They want to be able to say that they’re protecting whistleblowers, but they don’t actually want the reality of that,” Hutton said in an interview..“I’m not aware of any case in Canada where…the whistleblowing laws have been successful in protecting the whistleblower, getting the problem fixed, except for a few very minor ones.”.Hutton’s familiarity with the failures of Canadian whistleblower laws began roughly 15 years ago when he tried to intervene at a publicly-funded research institute..“This local organization was being run like a private club on public money with people squeezing out, competent people, replacing them by their buddies and living high on the hog,” Hutton said..“We gathered a lot of information that showed that there’s a problem, and we presented that to the people who ought to take action. And what followed was just a complete cover-up and I was stunned.”.Hutton subsequently started a charity to help whistleblowers with their complaints before he moved on to the CFE. He said the complaints of most whistleblowers fall on deaf ears and don’t make the news..“Only a very tiny handful of whistleblowers ever go to the media even when everything else has failed. Some research studies say it’s only one or two per cent. So what that would mean is that for every scandal we hear about exposed by a whistleblower where the public gets to hear about it, there could be 50 or 100 others that we haven’t heard about.”.Cameron Hutchison, a law professor at the University of Alberta, also condemned Alberta’s whistleblower protections in a report published in December by the Parkland Institute..“There have been only three successful findings of wrongdoing since the legislation was enacted in 2012. All other employees who reported wrongdoing to the PIC did not receive protection. Even where wrongdoing is found, the legislation requires an employee to prove a connection between it and a workplace reprisal by the employer – something that is notoriously difficult to do,” Hutchison wrote..Hutton regards whistleblowers as heroes because they spoke out at personal risk to save taxpayer dollars and even lives..“The whistleblowers are the people who have put their own livelihoods and their own wellbeing at risk to protect the public, and they’re the ones going down in flames. And they didn’t have to do that; they could have kept quiet and just kept things the way they are.”
