The gatekeepers of Canada’s prisons, borders and tax system are suspended and fired for misconduct and incompetence more than any other type of federal employee.

Their cases are among at least 2,000 firings and suspensions handed down by the federal government over the past decade.

A taxman in St. John’s used the Canada Revenue Agency computer system to embezzle nearly $700,000. A prison guard in B.C. viciously date-raped a 21-year-old woman. At least three border guards have been accused of using their influence to help smuggle cocaine into Canada.

A Toronto Star investigation has found that public servants in positions of power over others committed serious offences, some of them criminal.

More troubling, the Star found a number of cases in which those convicted of crimes were allowed to return to their government jobs.

The federal government does not want you to know who the offenders are or what they did. Secretive officials in Ottawa refused to provide details of misconduct firings, saying they must protect the privacy of those who abused their influence.

Using court records, police reports and other sources, the Star found many cases of misconduct along with a flawed employee grievance system that softens the punishments handed down by the wardens, border post supervisors and other government managers trying to protect the public from bad employees.

This same flawed system allows a repeat offender like Fort Erie border guard Terry MacArthur to victimize the public he is supposed to serve.

In 2008, MacArthur was demoted after he was convicted of seriously injuring a motorcyclist while driving drunk then fleeing the scene. MacArthur appealed his punishment and got his job back.

In April 2011, MacArthur was arrested again and charged with two drunk driving-related offences.

“How many second chances can he get?” said Henry Grau, the motorcyclist MacArthur hit and abandoned in the middle of a road with a shattered hip and two snapped bones protruding from his left leg.

The federal service is enormous, with 280,000 employees. Incomplete records released to the Star deal with 2,000-plus firings and suspensions in the past decade. What is shocking is the type of federal employee involved in these disciplinary actions, raising questions about how well the federal government is screening those it hires.

The worst offenders include Canada Revenue Agency with 171 firings, Correctional Service Canada with 107 and the Canada Border Services Agency with 46.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada is also high on the list. An HRSDC official refused to provide details of employees the agency fired and suspended.

Meanwhile, most other federal departments had fewer than six terminations during the same time period.

Canada Revenue Agency also tops the list of suspensions, with 391 since 2008. Officials there will not say why, though a spokesperson for Gail Shea, the minister of national revenue, said Shea “takes the protection of taxpayers’ information very seriously, and her expectation is that the Agency strictly enforces their Code of Ethics and Conduct to ensure Canadians are well-served and protected.”

Kurt Fagan, the Canada Revenue Agency employee in St. John’s who used government computers to embezzle nearly $700,000, manipulated 87 taxpayers’ personal income tax accounts to trigger a refund in their names. He then changed their addresses to one of three postal boxes he set up in his name. Once the cheques had been mailed, Fagan went back into the computer system and corrected the taxpayers’ addresses.

Fagan reported none of this embezzled income and evaded taxes of $178,000. He was fired in 2008, pleaded guilty to fraud and to an income tax offence in 2010 and is serving a four-year prison sentence. He refused an interview request.

At sentencing, Fagan said he stole to support a gambling addiction. The court fined him $178,000 and ordered restitution paid to the CRA in the amount of $100,000, an amount equivalent to his share of a pension.

An internal investigation found border guard Ghyslain Laplante was involved in a 2004 plot with his brother to help smuggle 150 kilograms of cocaine across the Quebec border while he was on duty. The RCMP foiled the Quebec scheme with the help of a U.S. federal agent posing as a cocaine supplier, part of an international sting code-named Busted Manatee.

Laplante has always maintained his innocence and unsuccessfully appealed his firing. The criminal charges of attempting to import cocaine were withdrawn after Laplante pleaded to a lesser offence under the Customs Act. He was given a conditional sentence and served no jail time.

“They did not have proof,” he told the Star, adding that if not for the stress the case put on his family he would have tried to exonerate himself in court.

The Canada Border Services Agency has fired employees for various acts of misconduct, including fraud, smuggling, misusing electronic networks and having criminal convictions, among other reasons. (The Border Service, unlike the CRA and the Correctional Service, provided such descriptions of misconduct leading to firings.)

“CBSA employees are held to a very high standard,” said Luc Labelle, a spokesperson for the agency, which oversees 15,000 employees. “Regrettably, no organization is completely immune to acts of misconduct. Actions of a very small minority of employees however are not a reflection of the professionalism, dedication and integrity of the balance of the workforce.”

The Star found the following cases in which federal staffers were fired:

• A CRA employee auditing a tanning salon grabbed a salon employee’s breasts and tried to kiss her.

• A CRA employee in Toronto tried to solicit bribes from three corporate taxpayers, an internal agency investigation found.

• A Quebec prison guard accepted a sponsorship to play in a Las Vegas poker tournament, the money coming from an individual known to police for having ties to the “criminal world.”

Though it is not known how many federal workers like border guard Terry MacArthur are allowed to return to work after a conviction, the Star did find several cases. One prison official suggested it is not uncommon.

In 2006, a senior manager of the Correctional Service testified that employees have been convicted of serious crimes — including a manager convicted of spousal assault — and still kept their jobs.

One reason is the federal Public Service Labour Relations Board, which hears grievances from government workers. The hearings, or tribunals, often pit the fired or suspended worker against his or her boss.

The board’s adjudicators are often former lawyers and experts at mediation. In several cases in which federal employees were criminally charged or convicted, the board ruled their bosses treated them too harshly and ordered the government to take them back.

In one case, a prison guard charged with sexual assault did not tell his boss he was being investigated and allegedly misled police. He was indefinitely suspended in 2006. The tribunal overturned the indefinite suspension.

The government appealed that decision to the Federal Court of Canada, where a judge ruled the adjudicator made a “serious” error and ordered a new tribunal hearing.

Amid the squabbling over his suspension, the guard, Balkar Basra, was found guilty of violently date-raping the 21-year-old victim. Though he was sentenced to a jail term of two years less a day, the legal fight over his suspension is ongoing. Attempts to reach Basra through his lawyers were unsuccessful.

The labour relations board said it would not discuss this or any specific cases; nor would it make adjudicators available to answer questions about their decisions.

In another case, psychologist Fred Tobin — a deputy warden at Kingston Penitentiary and a program director of the Female Behaviour Unit — was fired after he pleaded guilty to threatening conduct toward a woman with whom he had an affair. She was a volunteer at Kingston Penitentiary, supervised by Tobin, when the relationship began.

The initial six-count indictment included allegations of uttering death threats, unlawful confinement, intimidation on a highway, criminal harassment by watching and besetting and sexual assault.

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As his job was to modify behaviour, “to get inmates to change and become better people,” Tobin was fired for discrediting the prison system and because employees in his position are supposed to serve as law-abiding role models for inmates.

A judge gave Tobin a suspended sentence and 18 months probation. Tobin appealed his firing.

The labour relations tribunal, which concluded Tobin’s crime was not serious and that there was no evidence it brought disrepute to the prison system, said his firing was too harsh a penalty. It reinstated Tobin without loss of pay or benefits and ordered any reference to his firing stricken from his record.

Contacted by the Star, Tobin, who no longer works in the prison system, declined to be interviewed, saying the incident involved “a great deal of shame and a great deal of dishonour that I have caused to many individuals.”

The Federal Court of Appeal ruled the decision to give Tobin his job back was flawed, in part because the adjudicator was wrong to characterize Tobin’s crime as not serious.

Does allowing those convicted of crimes to keep their jobs undermine the credibility of prisons, border posts and audit offices?

When asked that question, a prison guard in B.C. — who was fired after pleading guilty to assaulting his common-law wife, given a conditional discharge and then reinstated — told the Star: “That’s a good point.”

Then he ended the interview, saying he needed union permission before talking further.

In several tribunal hearings reviewed by the Star, the bosses who do the firing and suspending have repeatedly made it clear that their employees must appear unimpeachable. After firing the auditor who groped a tanning salon employee, the CRA manager told the tribunal that the tax system is based on voluntary compliance. Taxpayer trust, she said, is the key to the agency’s success.

The federal judge in the Tobin case put it another way. He said the conduct of employees such as prison guards is likely of greater public concern than that of government workers who “administer poultry marketing … because (prison) employees who work with inmates are in a dominant power position, and their personal conduct … must reflect adherence to the highest standards of responsibility.”

Spokespersons for unions representing corrections officers, border guards and Canada Revenue employees refused to discuss specific cases while they defended their battles with management over misconduct firings.

Jason Godin of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers said unions are obligated to defend their members in labour grievances, regardless of what they have done.

“We’re completely obligated under the Public Service Labour Relations Act to represent our members,” Godin said. “Our goal is to make sure the rights of our members from a labour standpoint are represented. The union can’t judge. We don’t have a choice in such matters.”

He also notes that the total number of corrections firings and suspensions are not alarming given that there are thousands of departmental employees nationwide, the dangerous environment in which they work — “we’re constantly in the line of fire” — and management’s tendency to discipline before having all the facts.

Robert Tello was fired within months of becoming a prison guard. He wanted to be a police officer, and after trying out for the OPP and getting “really close,” he started a year-long, probationary contract at maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary in 2008.

A Correctional Service investigation found Tello, driving a silver sedan while off duty, flashed white-and-amber lights mounted behind his front window and pulled over a driver who turned out to be a plainclothes detective.

The cop got out of his vehicle to talk to Tello, his employer found, and the 43-year-old prison guard flashed his Correctional Service badge to “gain an advantage in the situation.”

Less than two months later, a Kingston Police investigation found, Tello had a confrontation with another motorist and allegedly flashed his badge and told the driver he was a federal agent.

Tello pleaded guilty to careless driving and paid a $325 ticket. He did not tell his supervisor at Kingston Penitentiary that he had been charged with the Highway Traffic Act offence.

Tello, a Mississauga native, appealed his firing and told a labour relations tribunal that both incidents were misunderstood and that he did no wrong.

Tello, who was a Kingston Police volunteer, said he thought his flashing lights were legal and that it was a female passenger who turned them on without him noticing. He said he did not show his shiny gold badge to intimidate the second driver. He said he paid the careless driving fine because he felt threatened by police.

While it found the prison’s investigation of Tello was “deeply flawed,” the tribunal said the Correctional Service nevertheless broke no rules by firing him and that his use of a badge “could be perceived by a member of the public as an abuse of power.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Tello told the Star. “What happened here *was unfair.”

Data analysis by the Star’s Andrew Bailey

Jesse McLean can be contacted at 416-869-4147

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