Just briefly, in terms of flawed legislation, I would like to suggest that everybody here knows what effective legislation looks like. You have access to international experts. You have the work of the 2017 committee. It just remains for you to do it and to do what needs to be done.
There's no rational reason, from my perspective, that Canadians should not have all 20 best practices in the law. Why should we just stick with the eight that are there now and the three or four more that are really imperative if we want to be able to hold our heads up and at least be at some kind of a level status with other countries, our peer countries, other democracies around the world? That is what I have to say there. Please don't stop. As many best practices as possible are needed.
In terms of implementation failure, as has been mentioned here today, we need to provide adequate internal and external disclosure mechanisms, which provide the necessary functions for success. That includes advisory, internally and if they decide to go to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. That includes awareness-raising training, legal support, psychological support and all of those things that have been mentioned.
The investigation of wrongdoing and reprisals should be included internally as well. As has been mentioned, adjudicative supportive action, protection of the disclosure and prevention of harm should all be part and parcel of what an internal disclosure mechanism looks like. It doesn't exist right now.
It means that people need to learn how to actively listen. They need to become aware of the invisible forces driving reprisals, the psychological and unconscious forces, such as conformity in groups, obedience to authority and how we behave when we perceive threats. Our automatic response that we're often not aware of is to destroy the threat. It's a holdover from our days as cavemen. We're trying to survive, so we fight.
Then, in terms of uncommitted and ineffective leadership, leaders need to lead the change, and that's been the problem. They need to be a visible part of the behaviour-change communication plan. That's the next step. It's not just legislation. That is essential to culture change. There should be no gap between what a leader says and what a leader does. There have been huge gaps. The leaders say one thing....
We have this wonderful law, but when it came to ensuring that all the things that the law says should be done to ensure that we have a workable mechanism were done and that the law was being translated in the public service, we didn't follow up. Those things did not take place. There was no training, no awareness raising and no leadership, really. If there is a gap, what that signals is insincerity, and trust will be lost again, leading to failure.
Political and administrative cultures that stress control over information—