The uneasy silence
after whistleblowing
By Gundi Jeffrey
When Allan Cutler, arguably Canada’s most high-profile whis- tleblower, refused to go along with the infamous sponsorship scandal in the late 1990s, he was effectively demoted and told he had no future in the federal public service. Later on management reinstated Cutler with an apology, and the sponsorship scandal tuned out to be one of the major Cana- dian political embarrassments of the decade.
Justice John Gomery, who led the inquiry into the affair, warned in his final re-
port that “if whistleblower legislation is to have any meaning, it must protect public
servants from the kind of retaliation to which Mr. Cutler was subjected.”
“For the most part, whistleblowers in Canada are unprotected by statute,”
Cutler says. “This is a shameful state of affairs. There should be protection in
law for all whistleblowers — in industry, government or the private sector — with
strong penalties for those who retaliate against whistleblowers.” To help remedy
the situation, three years ago, he launched the non-profit organization Canadians
