Our Newfoundland and Labrador Cultural Heritage

From the Bow-Wow Parliament on Monday:

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: I thank the minister for his non-answer again. It is a pretty straightforward question: Can we get it now or not? You have just indicated that there are lots of templates in the country you can use. It is not rocket science to take one of those and adapt it to our situation, I would suggest...

Mr. Speaker, there remains a culture of secrecy within the health care system. People are afraid to speak out because of punishments they may receive from administrators. We haven’t seen the promised whistleblower legislation which was promised some two years ago.

I ask the Premier: What is government going to do to protect the people who want to bring attention to issues in our health care system and other parts of government? When will we see the whistleblower legislation?

MR. T. MARSHALL: In our party’s blueprint in the last election we did indicate that in our second term we would develop whistleblower legislation, and we are in the process of doing that. Of course, we already have a form of whistleblower legislation. All members of this House joined in the passing of what I call the Green act which is the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act which provides for protection for those public servants who might disclose information about wrongful activity on the part of a member of this House, an officer of the House, or an employee of the House.

The next step is to move to extend that protection to those who disclose information, who see any wrongdoing about general civil servants.

[...]

MR. KENNEDY: What I would say, Mr. Chairman, despite the comments by the Opposition House Leader, there is no culture of secrecy. What we are doing is that we are out there talking to people, saying: How can we help you? What is it you would like to know about the way government operates? That is what these pre-Budget consultations allowed us to do, Mr. Chairman. More importantly, Mr. Chairman, or perhaps most importantly, what these pre-Budget consultations allowed was for a human face to be given to the needs and requests of various people.

[...]


MR. KELVIN PARSONS: The interest clock. The clock got a lot of interest, I will say that too. We never heard much about that this year, the interest clock. I do not know if they have it put in storage or what happened to the interest clock. With a new minister, I guess a new broom sweeps clean. Anyway, we did not see much of the interest clock; that was put away.

Another comment the minister did mention, and I would like to mention, he made reference to this member referring, in Question Period today, to a culture of secrecy. Folks, there is, whether you want to believe it or not, there is a culture of secrecy. Of course it is pretty common for the persons who are in power to always say there is no such thing. Anybody who wants to speak out in this Province has the right to speak out, the ability to speak out, and they ought to have no fear of retribution for speaking out, that no such thing would ever happen.

Well, I had a little experience today. We often - in Opposition of course you get the brown envelopes they call it. You often get brown envelopes from somebody who is disgruntled with government or disgruntled with some minister or some department, but we have been getting a lot of brown envelopes. We are going to have an interesting session in the spring of 2009 when we get to open up some of the brown envelopes.

You talk about the non-existent culture of fear. I had an experience today when a public service worker called us today, whispering in one of the washrooms in Confederation complex, about a certain issue and did it because he was afraid to do it any other way. Now, that is not a false statement. That is an absolutely true statement - passed on some information, passed on the concerns, and they will be followed up on in due course. So let’s not talk about the non-existent culture of fear. This person, a long-time member of the public service, is so fearful about what is going on, and the fear of retribution, that they had to call from a bathroom stall, whispering – but it will not be held in secret. That is why we ask for things like the whistleblower legislation, so we can protect some of these people. They do not have to fear that there will be some retribution.

So there is legitimacy and we will unfold some of that as time goes on, between now and when the House closes this spring sitting. We will see then if the words, no such thing as fear, exist. We already saw how the government reacts, and the Premier reacts, to somebody who dares disagree.

The Leader of the Opposition alluded to a certain individual in Central who had the gumption to speak out. Mr. Griffin had the gumption to speak out about what he thought about what was unfolding in Central Newfoundland. God forbid, he is a traitor. He is a traitor, he was told.