44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 9, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/9/23 2:09:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Bhavana Varma, an outstanding citizen and community leader from my riding of Kingston and the Islands. Bhavana has just announced that she will step down from her position as CEO of the United Way of Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington at the end of August.
Since 1999, Bhavana’s leadership has inspired record annual fundraising campaigns and successful local initiatives. A true community partner, Bhavana has been a leader in addressing complex issues like food insecurity, poverty reduction, addictions and mental health and homelessness.
With Bhavana at the lead, the United Way's impact has grown significantly in our area, providing funding support to a substantial network of agencies that deliver vital programs and services. The United Way helps thousands upon thousands of people in our region on an annual basis.
As the member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands, I want to express my deep appreciation for all that Bhavana has accomplished over the past 24 years. I have no doubt she will leave the agency in good hands and will continue to be a positive force within our community.
I wish Bhavana the best of luck in her future endeavours.
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- Feb/9/23 3:03:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the COVID‑19 pandemic, our Canadian athletes have been asking more and more for support and resources for their mental health.
Can the Minister of Sport and Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec tell the House about the initiatives she put in place recently to help Canadian athletes?
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Madam Speaker, what a great bill.
I wondered which member had come up with this brilliant idea, and then I found out that it was the member for Mirabel, an inspiring member. How did he come up with this brilliant idea?
Unfortunately, people often mistakenly accuse us of looking for a fight, and yet we have plenty of solutions to offer all the time. The member for Mirabel had this fantastic idea to introduce a whistle-blower bill, after talking to people who had things to say to us, as one of the Mirabel member's look-alikes would put it. Anyone who watches Infoman once in a while knows what I am talking about.
After talking to people who had things to say to us and unfortunately perhaps felt uncomfortable saying those things, he came up with the fantastic idea of introducing this bill. I know that he spared no effort to move his idea forward. The bill we have today should reflect a consensus. I am under the impression that our NDP colleagues, our Liberal colleagues and our Conservative friends will be in favour of this, which shows that when members have good ideas, as is often the case with the Bloc Québécois, they can bring people together. It is fantastic to be able to bring about change.
Those were my congratulations. Now let us look at the issues at hand.
Only one person within the machinery of government is in a position to see the wrongdoing, illegal acts, instances of abuse of power—that, it must be said, still occur frequently—and, worse still, the political interference that often plays into decisions that should rest solely with the public service, not with partisan people. This means we have to live with the fact that, behind closed doors, public servants are often the eyes and ears of the people. The most important principle underlying democracy is access to information to make decisions. If mistakes are made from time to time and the information is not available, democracy as a whole suffers.
When I say that public servants are the eyes and ears of democracy when it goes on behind closed doors, that is contradictory because there is another principle of significant importance to public servants: the duty of restraint. We know they must obey a hierarchy, that loyalty and allegiance to authority cannot be challenged and discretion is necessary. Public servants are asked to remain politically neutral. That falls under their duty of restraint, their honesty, their impartiality and the absence of conflicts of interest.
None of these very essential principles is questioned in the bill that my colleague is introducing. What needs to be questioned is a situation where the search for public good is obstructed by public servants invoking the duty of restraint for sometimes questionable reasons such as covering up wrongdoing.
This bill is incredibly timely. Looking at the current context, we can see a phenomenon in federal politics that may have existed before, but that is now growing quite significantly. Private enterprise is replacing the state. Members probably know where I am going with this.
I am thinking among other things of McKinsey, a private company that becomes a substitute for the state and writes public policy. We are no longer in the realm of strategic advice or expertise that is obtained externally. We are purely and simply watching a private company replacing us as elected officials. If we had good politicians, and I include myself in the criticism, they would be able to introduce bills and define interesting guidance for the public service, and that would make us move forward. Today, the state apparatus is trying to move away from politician- and public servant-led initiatives and relying more frequently on private firms.
This is quite troubling, especially when it comes to immigration. Personally, I must admit that the Century Initiative frightens me.
Some people have spoken to us about this. Some public servants who receive and see these communication plans or development ideas come in think that this in no way applies to their reality, even though they are the ones who know best how their department works. Still, the Liberals continue to invest a lot of money in this and in these consultants.
Of course, these public servants' superiors could listen to them. They have means at their disposal, but when things become too intense or if they go against the common good, there must be a way to alert the public and the media to get the word out.
That is the purpose of the bill introduced by my colleague from Mirabel, a bill to protect public servants who disclose wrongdoing. The bill has two objectives that are fairly simple but can have a significant impact. The first objective is to protect public servants who disclose wrongdoing in the public service, which can take many forms. The second objective is to establish a process for investigating the wrongdoing and help put an end to it.
The bill would create a mechanism of sorts that would allow a public servant to report wrongdoing while remaining anonymous. This person would be protected from reprisals, such as being fired or demoted. Even private companies that receive government contracts could be covered and protected from the non-renewal of their contract. That is good.
I was thinking about this today, and it occurred to me that maybe we should look back at some questionable, not to say controversial, actions taken in the past by the government, actions this bill might have allowed us to get more information about.
Since I am a sovereignist and that will never change, the first case that came to my mind was the sponsorship scandal. Allan Cutler, a.k.a. “Ma Chouette”, was working for the Department of Public Works in 1995 when he sounded the alarm and started communicating with journalists. He was demoted that same year.
If we take a close look, the objective of the sponsorship program was, to use a vulgar phrase, to grease friends' palms with generous subsidies while trying to sabotage the sovereignists by burnishing Canada's image. The scandal that was brought to light resulted in the demotion of a public servant in 1995, a person who would have been protected under this bill.
I am also thinking of public servants like Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gérard Lambert, who reported health risks associated with bovine growth hormone and the government's inadequate measures to prevent mad cow disease. In 2004, all three were fired because they had had the audacity and courage to blow the whistle on a situation that could have had considerable impacts on public health.
I am also thinking of Sylvie Therrien, who was involved in the employment insurance quota affair. Members will recall that, in 2013, the Conservative government imposed quotas on EI officers to ferret out “repeat EI claimants”. Ms. Therrien also incurred the wrath of the government because she had good intentions and wanted to raise a matter of public interest that made her work highly questionable.
I am also thinking of the University of Toronto's Centre for Free Expression, which said that the Phoenix scandal would probably have been brought to light much faster because several people wanted to be heard, but, once again, they feared the wrath of the public service and stayed quiet.
We could say the same thing about the Government of Quebec.
I will conclude by saying that it was high time such a bill was introduced. Based on a report by the International Bar Association, which compiled a list of 50 whistle-blower protection laws—
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