Respecting Whistleblowers

I respect most people that I meet. The ones I do not respect get the message quickly. One group that I have a lot of respect for is Whistleblowers, whether they be in public or private service. I've gotten to know a bunch of these people through a group called the Canadians for Accountability . These people have more sense of ethics and fairness that any other group of people I have ever met. They protect you and I through their willingness to suffer great personal consequence when they expose waste, corruption or downright illegal behaviour.

Take their president for example. Allan Cutler is not a household name but the corruption that he exposed is part of Canada's recent history. His revelations saw people go to jail, a government fall and an obscure judge rise to national prominence. Any one remember Ad scam or the Sponsorship Scandal?

In 2007, the federal government enacted the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. The intent of this act was to protect most of the federal public service from reprisals for reporting wrongdoing. However, this Act has been extensively criticized as setting too many conditions on whistleblowers and for protecting wrongdoers.

One of Canada's most prominent whistleblowers was not even Canadian. Look up Igor Gouzenko to know the story.

Whistleblowing in Canada goes back to confederation. We do not know the name of the person who exposed the scandal over railway contracts that almost destroyed the career of our first PM, John Eh? MacDonald.

Whistleblowers come in all shapes and sizes but they all have one thing in common; a high level of personal integrity and, of course, my respect.