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     Canada and New Zealand

This page considers whistle-blowing incidents in Canada and New Zealand, providing a perspective on practice in Australia.

It supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding whistleblowing principles and legislation.

    RCMP

Whistleblowing inside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 2003 resulted in belated departure of senior executives after punishment of staff who spoke out against corporate misbehaviour and inaction by those who should have supported the whistles.

RCMP human resources employee Denise Revine alerted superiors to improper spending in the force's pension fund, with Canadian Auditor-General Sheila Fraser later substantiating those claims in reports that found C$3.4 million had been improperly spent on non-pension items but later repaid and that C$1.3 million went on hiring employees' relatives or for services that provided little or no value.

Revine's post was declared surplus. Her boss, Chief Superintendent Fraser Macaulay, was reassigned when he brought her revelations to the RCMP chief executive. An internal investigator, Staff Sergeant Mike Frizzell, was ordered off the case.

In 2007 an independent report by David Brown QC - A Matter of Trust: Report of the Independent Investigator into Matters Relating to RCMP Pension and Insurance Plans - recommended that Revine, Macaulay and Frizzell receive commendations. Brown concluded that the RCMP's management is "horribly broken", finding that former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli was an autocratic leader who punished whistle-blowers in the force's pension fund scandal and dragged his feet on launching criminal investigations. Critics alleged that executives in charge of the fund, were allowed "soft landings", being relieved of their duties but kept on the payroll "long afterward" and otherwise assisted.

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