The office’s ninth annual report was tabled before the Legislative Assembly today.
New this year, the 2021-22 annual report features articles including one titled Explaining “Reprisal”. Here, we provide a summary of the office’s experience and perspective on handling complaints of reprisal since our office opened in 2013. Another article, Risks of Conflating Whistleblower Procedures with Other Policies and Codes of Conduct advises public entities on the pitfalls of integrating whistleblower protection policies with other internal policies and codes of conduct. We also highlight our business results, the fiscal year statistics, significant investigations and an infographic to assist public sector employees in understanding how to submit a disclosure through our complaints handling process.
The Public Interest Commissioner’s office provides a safe avenue for Alberta’s public sector employees to submit complaints of wrongdoing and reprisal occurring in their workplace. Under the Public Interest Disclosure (Whistleblower Protection) Act (Act), the Commissioner’s office operates independently of government and is legislated to investigate allegations of wrongdoing or reprisal and make the appropriate recommendations. A disclosure to our office can lead to resolution, even without a finding of wrongdoing.
The Act conceives that both the public entity and the Commissioner’s office share a common responsibility to manage and investigate disclosures of wrongdoing in the public interest. The relationship between our office and the public entity’s designated officer is an important one. Accordingly, the Commissioner makes it a strategic priority to provide training and resources to assist designated officers utilize the Commissioner’s office for assistance and advice. In this year’s annual report, we reported on the success of the first Alberta Public Interest Disclosure Conference hosted by our office. Training materials from the event have been posted here and we look forward to our next conference in 2023.
To download a copy of our 2021-22 annual report, visit our reports page here: yourvoiceprotected.ca/resources/publications/