I'd like to respond to my colleague's concern that things are really dysfunctional in the public service. That's not the case.
What I'm trying to say is that the proposed section is not going to make things easier for whistleblowers. On the contrary, it will call for higher-level legal criteria, which will complicate matters if they are subject to reprisals. We do not want to make it harder for them; we want them to have a solution available as quickly as possible, using lower-level legal criteria. That's why we have a commissioner.
We all agree on the need to ensure that the Commissioner does their job, that we change the nature of their work and that they get some support. That's one reason why we agreed with a number of the proposals in this bill. For example, it will now be possible to designate more than one person who can receive complaints. In addition, we have reduced certain thresholds.
Instead of saying has probable reasonable grounds, we tended to say, on the basis of.... I forget the wording that we had, but we changed it, placing it in good faith, a reasonable understanding.... If somebody can make a reasonable case, they could bring it forward. We brought that threshold down.
We want to see changes, but what we're doing now is opening the door to more cases going to a higher threshold that will take longer to resolve, and I don't think that's helping out the whistle-blower.