| A Letter In Anticipation of Nothing! I posted the following this morning in anticipation that this is the letter I will be leaving with a Ms. Vienneau this afternoon. Officialdom, in this case Mario Dion, not Ms. Vienneau, is so lacking in initiative, or perhaps imagination when the problem to be solved is an old one and the opposition to its solution formidable, that I doubt very much I will have to issue a retraction. As one recently retired diplomat so eloquently put it, I had accused his father, a former ambassador, and his colleagues of being thieves. The current generation was not about to let that go, even if the accusation had merit. I could go to Hell. He may get his wish sooner than he thinks. ... Ottawa, Ontario ... December 20, 2011 Ms. Geneviève Vienneau Manager, Intake and Inquiries Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada 60 Queen Street, 7th Floor Ottawa ON K1P 5Y7 Dear Ms. Vienneau, Thank you for your call asking me to come to your office. After more than a quarter of a century, you are the first and only public official to meet with me to talk about “it”. It is much appreciated, even if it was to inform me that your boss, Integrity Commissioner, Mario Dion, will do nothing. It was not unexpected. Why should he be any different? Unless I can find a public or elected official with the power and the courage to do the right thing, the protagonist of Shooting the Messenger and his nemesis, that is the Canadian Foreign Service will both be losers. As you are probably aware, if you visited my website, what I write about in a forthright and candid manner is not without its risks and it may only be a matter of time. I may get some measure of justice then, but it is not the justice I seek. Sincerely Yours ORIGINAL SIGNED BY BERNARD PAYEUR _______________________ Bernard Payeur -------------------- My letter was bang on. I did not need to change a single word. Dion will do nothing because, unlike Ms. Ouimet, as is my understanding of Ms. Vienneau's explanation, he does not see his role as mediator, even when a dispute impinges on the integrity of the Federal Public Service; but simply as an administrator of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. The Act does not explicitly specify what he can do for the situation I find myself in, a situation which Parliament could not have anticipated, therefore, I am out of luck. Justice be damned! A respect for rules may identify Mario Dion as an honest man, and honesty is one definition of integrity, and I am sure the Prime Minister would not appoint a dishonest man as Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada. However, an undue respect for rules is not always the mark of an ethical man, quite the opposite. The most extreme example of this was given at Nuremberg where some of the defendants sought to justify their actions saying they were only following orders; the rules said you did what your superior told you to do. Ethics is mostly about doing the right thing. Did Mr. Dion believe he was doing the right thing, not only in dismissing my complaint of egregious breaches of the public trust and abuse of the person, but almost four hundred others? FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform) and the other groups say that, out of almost 400 complaints that have been filed with the Integrity Commissioner’s Office, Mr. Dion has not found a single case of wrongdoing, and he has referred only two cases of reprisal to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal. Globe and Mail, December 9, 2011 I would like to think that Mr. Dion is both an honest and an ethical man, even if FAIR, in its denunciation of him becoming permanent Integrity Commissioner, reminded us that he is a veteran of the oxymoron that is the Federal Justice Department. How can the government claim to be revitalizing Christiane Ouimet’s discredited agency when it appoints another career insider – and not just any insider but a veteran of the Justice Department, which has a fearsome reputation as the scourge of whistleblowers. Bernard Payeur, December 20, 2011
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