Canada’s public sector integrity watchdog says her office is drowning in whistleblower complaints, with hundreds of cases stalled because of a shortage of investigators.Blacklock's Reporter says Integrity Commissioner Harriet Solloway told MPs her office is facing “a surge of submissions” alleging misconduct and corruption by federal managers. In a letter to the Commons government operations committee, Solloway said her staff can no longer keep up.“With the current caseload and resources, most cases are being delayed at the initial submission stage before assignment to an analyst,” she wrote. “A large number of cases are also not being immediately assigned to investigators as they are already working at full capacity.”The Commissioner’s Office currently employs 8 staff lawyers but needs 22 to deal with the flood of complaints. The backlog has reached 283 cases..Whistleblower cases are investigated under the 2007 Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, a law meant to protect public servants from retaliation when exposing wrongdoing. It was passed after the 2006 sponsorship scandal that revealed widespread fraud in the Department of Public Works.Despite promises of reform, cabinet has ignored recommendations from 2017 that would strengthen the law and expand protections to federal contractors. The International Bar Association called Canada’s law “nearly entirely dormant” in a 2021 report titled Are Whistleblowing Laws Working?.A 2022 federal study found many government employees are afraid to come forward. “The reality is the workplace culture is dominated by an attitude that no one should ‘rock the boat,’” the report said. Participants in focus groups described government whistleblowing programs as “virtue signaling” and “window dressing.”Many said they had become “more cynical,” “less bright-eyed” and “more disillusioned” about the process over time. While few denied misconduct happens, nearly all said they feared reprisals for speaking out.The report said those reprisals often include being shunned, overworked, reassigned, or closely scrutinized — and sometimes being pushed out of a job entirely. “Reprisals are usually not so brazen as outright termination,” the study found, “but that cannot be excluded because they might include looking for reasons to terminate a whistleblower.”
