SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Member of the Government Operations and Estimates 
Committee:

Effective, comprehensive whistleblower protection is key to
transparent, ethical, law-abiding and accountable government.  The
many illegal and scandalous activities of Canadian individuals,
governments and corporations in the past decade have made it clear
that strong whistleblower protection is needed to prevent further
waste of the public's money and many other abuses.

Unfortunately, Bill C-11 will not create effective,
comprehensive protection for anyone who reports wrongdoing.  In 
fact,
Bill C-11 is designed mainly to hide wrongdoing from the public and
to discourage whistleblowers.

Please change Bill C-11 in the following six key ways to
ensure that anyone in Canada who reports wrongdoing will be 
protected
from harm, and the public will be fully informed about wrongdoing
across Canada:

1. anyone (not just bureaucrats) who reports wrongdoing by
anyone (not just by some people in some government institutions) 
must
be protected from harm;

2. everyone must have the right to report wrongdoing
anonymously and directly to an independent whistleblower watchdog
agency (without having to identify themselves or complain first to
their bosses);

3. the proposal to have the Public Service Commission (PSC)
act as the watchdog office must be changed because the PSC is not
independent of the federal government (instead, the new Ethics
Commissioner office should be the whistleblower watchdog agency, 
but
to be fully independent the Ethics Commissioner must be approved by
the opposition party leaders, not chosen only by the Prime Minister);

4. the whistleblower protection agency must be required to
report the number and topic of ongoing investigations, and to report
publicly the results of any investigation (including the identities
of all wrongdoers);

5. the whistleblower watchdog agency's powers must be
increased to include the power to penalize the wrongdoers, to order 
a
clean-up of the wrongdoing, and to penalize anyone who resists or
delays cleaning up the wrongdoing, and;

6. everyone must have a clear right to appeal the rulings of
the watchdog agency to court.

Please let me know in detail by reply letter whether the
Committee has made these changes, and if not why not.  I will be
deciding which party to vote for in the next federal election based
in part on what each party does to ensure a strong whistleblower
protection system is created.

I hope to hear from you that the many flaws in Bill C-11 have
been corrected, and that the bill has been passed by Parliament.

Sincerely,
J. Citizen