When Scott Campbell decided to blow the whistle, he used every mechanism at his disposal — except New Brunswick's whistleblower legislation.

The former Opportunities New Brunswick employee, fired in 2020, ended up filing complaints under five different provincial laws as well as a civil lawsuit in the Court of King's Bench.

The one legal tool he did not use was the one designed for his situation: the Public Interest Disclosure Act, also known as the whistleblower act.

"We do not have a safe and responsible system for disclosure in this province," Campbell said in a Jan. 24 interview. "The legislation for the most part is broken.

"The whole situation is extremely skewed in the government's favour."

Law is 'window dressing,' says researcher

Whistleblower legislation is intended to increase transparency and accountability.

New Brunswick's law is supposed to allow civil servants to go to a supervisor or a designated person in their department or institution to disclose wrongdoing by a colleague or superior, without fear of reprisals.

But the law, first passed in 2007 and updated in 2013, has been criticized as weak, difficult to use and poorly understood by many senior civil servants responsible for complying with its provisions.

"It's kind of a nothing law," said Ian Bron, a former federal whistleblower and a researcher and instructor on whistleblower legislation at Carleton University who recently wrote a report on the New Brunswick law.

"It's window dressing, is what it...

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