Sgro Report (en francais)

A Cry for effective Whistleblower Legislation

Given the good spade work started by Angry, I decided to download and read through the entire report on this affair. (unlike many in the MSM it seems). The stats that Angry reported are quite revealing.

One thing struck me though, was the commissioners statements regarding Katherine Abbott, the Minister’s designated staff member, who acted as the liaison between the Minister and the Department of Citzenship and Immigration during the election campaign.

Generally, Ms Abbott was a forthright and very credible witness, and her testimony was very helpful. Unfortunately, in relation to this particular issue, she expressed some uncertainty as to whether or not she had informed the Minister about Ms Balaican’s status as a volunteer. She repeated that she thought she had, but she stopped short at the time of being able to fully confirm it. Perhaps her uncertainty is due to the fact that, by the time the Balaican decision was made, Ms Abbott had (as she suggested in a different but related context) “given up fighting” with Mr Wons over this and other departmental matters. On the other hand, Ms Abbott did indicate that, at the time, she raised the matter with two other colleagues on the Minister’s staff. Unfortunately, neither of them was able to recall her having done so.

While it certainly sounds like some plausible deniability being built in here, there is no doubt there are indications that this Ms Abbott was trying to do the right thing from the very beginning.

Following the federal election campaign, Ms Abbott did meet with Scott Reid of the Prime Minister’s Office in order to express concerns about the handling of some cases by Mr Wons during the campaign. While there is some inconsistency between the testimony of Ms Abbott and Mr Reid as to whether the Balaican case was discussed during their meeting, Mr Reid was satisfied that the Minister had not, in general, intervened inappropriately in the immigration cases.

Yet again, Ms Abbott is attempting to bring to light what should be clearly seen as a conflict, if not on the ministers part, certainly her Chief of Staff. In futher testimony Ms Abbott and another staff member speak of the 'pressure' to get things done because 'we might not come back'. Who was exerting this pressure?

However, upon further examination, Ms Abbott indicated that in relation to the number of permits that were issued toward the end of the election campaign:

“… we were reacting to the temperature in the outside world, and we were also getting a lot of pressure, and…... because were in that short period of time, because there was a thought that we might not come back, there was more of a pressure of just … getting it done.”

It is almost as if the entire issue became electorally defined rather than being understood in terms of the needs of the applicant. As Leigh Lampert testified:

“… I know certainly between … two weeks, three weeks before the election call until
mid-election, there was a significant change in attitude. You are going from a no permit except during emergencies to … I won’t say a “free for all” … but to change of attitude that there are much more forthcoming permits.”

Given the fact that the following is former Minister Sgro's testimony:

With respect to the issuance of Temporary Residence Permits (TRPs), the Minister commented under oath:

“I made people aware of the fact that I was going to be more cautious even than before with >issuing TRPs through an election campaign. That I was not going to be engaged in using TRPs for election purposes or for political purposes through the campaign. I made that quite clear to people. We were going to try to keep ourselves down to the ones that were most urgent.”

How does she explain the veritable 'opening of the floodgates' in the final weeks and days of the campaign. With 24 of the TRP's signed during the campaign having her name attached to them and 19 of them approved in the last 24 hours, the above statement certainly seems like a stretch. With 97% of MP supported TRP's going to Liberals, there must have been some VERY nervous people in the final days of the last campaign.

But I digress.

Apart from all the other facts and figures presented in this report, I'm left with the feeling that had effective Whistleblower legislation been in place, we wouldn't have had to spend $170,000 dollars investigating this mess.

A tip of the hat to Ms Abbot for trying to do the right thing - in spite of everything.