“By bringing employees from research universities and WorkSafeBC under the protections of PIDA, we are making sure that employees in the public sector feel safe and are protected should they need to report serious wrongdoing,” said B.C. Attorney General, Niki Sharma, according to the release
PIDA, which was enacted in 2019, protects employees in the public sector by providing a system for employees to report serious wrongdoing to designated officers within their organization or to the Office of the Ombudsperson.
The inclusion of research universities and WorkSafeBC marks the final scheduled phase of implementation of PIDA, which now covers approximately 320,000 employees across 197 organizations.
The Act applies to individuals in government ministries, independent offices of the legislature, tribunals, Crown corporations, provincial health authorities, Providence Health Care, BC Emergency Health Services, public K-12 schools, certain public post-secondary educational institutions and select agencies, boards, and commissions.
Whistleblowers and those who participate in PIDA investigations are protected from reprisals, including demotion, termination of employment or other measures that negatively affect their work conditions.
“The act also ensures that investigations are conducted fairly and promotes transparency by requiring organizations and the ombudsperson to annually report disclosures received and the results of any investigations,” the release noted.
The province noted that PIDA was passed in response to a report published by the ombudsperson, which found that flawed investigations by the government had led to eight Ministry of Health workers being wrongly dismissed in 2012.
The ombudsperson had called for public interest disclosure legislation that would establish a clear process for handling whistleblower complaints.
“The report made 41 recommendations that the province has fully implemented,” the release noted.
In a November 2022 report on PIDA, the Centre for Free Expression (CFE) at Toronto Metropolitan University gave it a failing grade on all major criteria necessary to protect whistleblowers.
The CFE report found the legislation lacks broad definitions of wrongdoing and reprisal, diverse reporting avenues and methods, a means to escalate disclosures to the public when they are not dealt with properly, and a duty to proactively protect whistleblowers from reprisal from the moment they make a disclosure.
“We are pleased that the B.C. Ombudsperson has expressed a commitment to continual monitoring, review and improvement of the law in practice and hope this commitment will be shared by the current or future British Columbia governments,” CFE director James L. Turk said at the time.
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