A sweeping review of Canada’s federal whistleblowing legislation is urging the government to extend protections to military personnel and spy agency employees, while warning that the existing system has left public servants too afraid to speak up about wrongdoing.
The newly released review of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act puts forward nearly three dozen recommendations, with one of the most significant being the call to bring the Canadian Armed Forces, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and the Communications Security Establishment Canada’s cyberspy agency under the umbrella of the law for the first time.
Currently, those organizations operate outside the regime, instead relying on internal reporting processes. Proponents of the exclusions have long cited national security sensitivities and, in the military’s case, its distinct chain of command as justifications. But the task force found those arguments unconvincing, concluding it is “neither necessary nor appropriate” to shut any federal organization out of the system.
The law, which has been on the books since 2007, allows federal employees to bring forward disclosures of wrongdoing or file reprisal complaints with the public sector integrity commissioner. In theory, it offers a clear path for public servants to hold institutions accountable. In practice, the review paints a far more troubling picture.
Improvements are “urgently needed,” the report states, and the legislation “must be revised at the earliest opportunity.”
Perhaps the starkest findings concern the attitudes of public servants toward the law itself and toward coming forward at all.
Survey responses gathered for the review reveal a workplace culture where speaking out feels more like a professional gamble than a civic duty. One respondent put it with blunt candor: “If you keep your mouth shut, you can just deal with it in therapy and the workplace boat is not rocked… I just want to do my job.”
Another, a manager with 17 years in the federal government, admitted they had never even heard of the legislation.
Those sentiments capture a broader problem the task force identified: widespread ignorance of the law, deep skepticism that disclosures actually lead to meaningful change, and a persistent fear of retaliation. The report is direct in its conclusion the act, as currently administered, fails to create the sense of security necessary to build a genuine culture of integrity across the federal public sector.
Beyond expanding who is covered, the review recommends a top-to-bottom rewrite of the legislation to make it more readable and easier to navigate for ordinary public servants. The current text, critics have long argued, is dense and difficult to parse a problem that may be contributing to the widespread unawareness the review uncovered.
The report also calls for the law to clearly define the responsibilities of chief executives, senior disclosure officers, and supervisors when it comes to reporting and investigating potential wrongdoing. The absence of such clarity, the task force found, has led to inconsistent handling of cases and left employees uncertain about where to turn.
Additionally, the review pushes for mandatory publication of information on reported misconduct and the responses taken, with appropriate privacy safeguards such as anonymization, so that Canadians and public servants alike can see that disclosures actually lead to consequences.
The review task force, established in 2022, brought together senior public servants, academics, union representatives, and experts with experience in provincial and municipal whistleblowing regimes. Members held meetings both in-person and virtual from March 2023 through March 2025 before releasing their findings publicly on Friday.
As of the report’s release, the Treasury Board Secretariat offered no indication of whether the government intends to adopt the recommendations. For the thousands of federal employees who shared their frustrations with the review panel, that response or lack of it may feel all too familiar.
