Canadian whistleblower Marc Mayrand is in the fight of our lives. As Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, Mayrand blew the whistle on Bill C-23, the Harper government’s grossly misnamed Fair Elections Act. In testimony to a House of Commons Committee in early March, Mayrand detailed numerous controversial features of the proposed Act, including its potential to make it very difficult for hundreds of thousands of Canadian citizens to vote. The Bill would also impede Mayrand’s ability to investigate future electoral “dirty tricks,” like the thousands of misleading robocalls during the 2011 election.
The Harper Conservatives are intent on ramming the bill through by June.
In the past, Bill C-23 would have been reviewed by the Justice Department to ensure that it complies with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights. All proposed federal bills, by law, are supposed to be examined by Justice, and if they could potentially violate the Charter, the Justice Minister is obligated to notify Parliament.
But in December 2012, another Canadian whistleblower, Edgar Schmidt, filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada (who is also the Minister of Justice) for failing to take adequate steps to verify whether proposed bills violate the Charter. As a Special Advisor in the Justice Department, Schmidt alleges that the Department “does not identify and report on legislation that the department itself considers almost certainly to be illegal and unconstitutional.”
Schmidt was suspended immediately without pay and barred from his office “for violating his duties as a lawyer and public servant.” Pre-trial motions in his lawsuit, sceduled for April 4, were postponed.
While Schmidt is only one of many Canadian whistleblowers under the Harper government (see sidebar), his case raises profound questions about the legality of much of Harper’s legislation, including the cancellation of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Omnibus Crime Bill, the Omnibus Budget Bills C-38 and C-45, which wiped out environmental legislation and impinged on First Nations treaty rights, various anti-labour bills, and now the Fair Elections Act.
Kent Roach, constitutional law professor at the University of Toronto, told Canadian Press (March 20), “The Department of Justice Act requires the attorney general to report if any government bill is inconsistent with the Charter. That’s never been done.”
That leaves it up to individuals and organizations to make a Charter challenge, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and drag on for years.
The Fair Elections Act would also move the Elections Commissioner away from Elections Canada and under the Director of Public Prosecutions. According to Ontario MP Frank Valeriote, this would make the Commissioner “accountable not to Parliament, but to the Attorney General” (Peter MacKay as of July 2013) in the Justice Department – the same department that apparently has not been vetting proposed legislation for its Constitutionality.
Left Under Duress, or Axed – A Shortlist
Adrian Measner: Dec. 2006; Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) president/CEO fired after disagreeing with then-Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl on maintaining the CWB’s single-desk marketing.
Jeff Monaghan: May 2007; Staff member at Environment Canada (under John Baird) fired after he leaked the government’s Green Plan proposing to back out of Canada’s international legal commitment to the Kyoto agreement.
Dr. John O’Connor: 2007; Alberta doctor who called for a thorough health review of the Fort Chipewyan community (located in the tar sands region) after he documented several rare cancers there, raising concerns about a link with tar sands development. Health Canada doctors lodged four complaints of professional misconduct against O’Connor, threatening his medical license. Later in 2007, Dr. O’Connor was cleared of all charges except “causing undue alarm” in the community. He relocated his medical practice to Nova Scotia, but has continued to work with his Alberta patients through the internet and visits. In Feb. 2009, an Alberta Cancer Board study found higher-than-expected rates of rare cancers in Fort Chipewyan, and eight months later Dr. O’Connor was cleared of the remaining charge. On March 24, 2014, an Alberta Health Services survey found that “the overall cancer rate in the community is not significantly higher” than in the rest of Alberta.
Linda Keen: Jan. 2008; Head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission fired after
refusing to re-start the Chalk River nuclear reactor because of safety concerns. Keen was replaced by a pro-nuclear advocate, and in 2012 Harper appointed Rumina Velshi (mother of Alykhan Velshi, founder of Ethical Oil and now director of issues management in the Prime Minister’s Office) to the Commission.
Deanna Allen: Feb. 2008; Vice-president of Communications for the Canadian Wheat Board fired by Ag Minister Gerry Ritz after defending the CWB. Although 60% of farmers wanted to save the CWB, the Harper government passed Bill C-18, phasing out the organization. The recent $5 billion crisis for Western grain farmers – who have a large wheat crop but no trains to get it to market – is seen by many as the result of the dismantling of the CWB. The Canadian Wheat Board Alliance reports that as of Jan. 2014, five grain companies (Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bungee, Louis Dreyfus, and ConAgra) made over $1.6 billion in “excess profits” on Canadian wheat since the dismantling of the CWB, while the farmers’ share of the grain cheque went from 84% to 41%.
Louise Arbour: June 2008; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was denied Harper government support for a second term after she criticized both the US and Israel.
Luc Pomerleau: July 2008; Staff member of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) fired after giving his union a copy of an internal document on plans by CFIA (at the time, part of Agriculture Canada) to replace government food safety monitoring with industry self-regulation. Since autumn 2012, the Harper government has axed more than 200 jobs at CFIA, now part of Health Canada.
Richard Colvin: Nov. 2009; Canadian diplomat whose testimony implicated the Canadian military in the torture of Afghan detainees has had his diplomatic career stalled. After the government refused to release documents indicating the number of detainees involved, Harper prorogued the House of Commons in 2010. In March 2014, Canadian Press reported newly obtained government documents reveal more than 1,000 detainees were handed over by the Canadian military to Afghan jailers.
Paul Kennedy: Dec. 2009; Head of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission whose term was not renewed after he filed several reports exposing RCMP misconduct.
Peter Tinsley: Dec. 2009; Chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission had his
appointment terminated just as his commission began investigating the Afghan detainee transfers scandal.
Steve Sullivan: April 2010; Ombudsman for Victims of Crime whose term was not renewed
after taking issue with Harper’s Omnibus Crime Bill.
Munir Sheikh: July 2010; Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada who resigned after the Harper government replaced the long-form census and suggested he had agreed with that decision.
Martin Cheliak: Aug. 2010; Head of the RCMP’s Canadian Firearms Program fired for championing Canada’s long-gun registry, which was then axed.
Pat Stogran: Nov. 2010; Canada’s first Veterans Ombudsman whose term was not renewed after he advocated better pensions, services and benefits for veterans. In 2013 Harper cut Veterans Affairs by $35 million and closed 8 offices across the country.
Andrew Frank: Jan. 2012; the Forest Ethics communications manager issued an Open Letter stating the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had warned Tides Canada it could lose its charitable status for funding ForestEthics’ opposition to tar sands pipelines. He lost his job at Forest Ethics because he “violated the confidence” of the organization. Ziporah Berman, co-founder of Forest Ethics, said a lot of donors are getting scared that giving will result in reprisals.
Evan Vokes: May 2012; Staff engineer for TransCanada Corp., who alerted the company’s top executives about inadequate pipeline welds before finally filing a formal complaint with National Energy Board (NEB). Within days he was fired by TransCanada Corp. A safety audit by the NEB (Feb. 2014) found that TransCanada Corp. – the company behind the proposed Energy East and Keystone XL pipelines – is noncompliant in four areas, including pipeline inspection.
Edgar Schmidt: Jan. 2013; Justice Department lawyer Schmidt discovered that his department was not reviewing (as required by law) federal draft bills to ensure they comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Having been warned against pursuing this issue by departmental superiors, Schmidt launched a lawsuit against his department. He was suspended without pay.
Scott Vaughn: April 2013; Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development resigned two years before the end of his term, having produced several hard-
hittingcritiques, which were ignored by the Harper government. Vaughn is now head of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a public policy research group hoping to manage the Experiment Lakes Area (whose funding was axed by Harper).
Dr. Fred Kibenge: June 2013; After Dr. Kibenge found ISA virus in BC salmon and testified at the Cohen Commission, his lab at the Atlantic Veterinary College in PEI was stripped of international certification at the request of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Confirmation of the ISA virus threatened the BC fish-farm industry.
Sylvie Therrien: July 2013; An Investigator for Employment Insurance, Therrien was fired after revealing that EI investigators had to meet a quota: denying EI benefits to applicants in order to save $500,000 per year.
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Joyce Nelson is an award-winning freelance writer/researcher and the author of five books.
Primary Sources: canadians4accountability.org; voices-voix.ca; Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR)
