OTTAWA – A federal review report says members of the military and key spy agencies should be able to expose wrongdoing and file complaints through the government’s whistleblowing regime.
The recommendation is among almost three dozen suggested changes in the newly released review of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act.
The law, which came into force in 2007, allows federal employees to make a disclosure of wrongdoing or file a complaint of reprisal with the public sector integrity commissioner.
The report says improvements are “urgently needed” and the law “must be revised at the earliest opportunity.”
The Treasury Board Secretariat had no immediate comment on whether it would adopt the report’s recommendations.
The Canadian Armed Forces, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s cyberspy agency, are currently excluded from the system.
These organizations are required to have an internal process available to allow public servants or military members to report wrongdoing.
Review task force members heard that the exclusions from the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act are due to national security concerns or, in the case of the Canadian Armed Forces, its unique chain of command.
But others told them that all federal public servants should have the option to make a disclosure internally or to the integrity commissioner.
The review report says it is “neither necessary nor appropriate” to exclude any...
A person in his 30s who demanded compensation for alleged foreign substances in cup noodles and the absence of meat in stir-fried pork was sentenced to prison in both the first trial and the appel...