Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.

We met on a rainy day in the Market, the street people, with their wrinkled, walnut faces and greying braids, looking like Willy Nelson without the money.

It was a fitting day to meet a man who has a whole chapter of the official inquiry into the worst political scandal in modern Canadian history — the ad sponsorship fiasco — devoted to him.

Years after a nondescript public servant wouldn’t play ball with institutional sleaze (and became a national hero in the process), Allan Cutler still has Canada on his mind. He is as troubled now as ever he was when Jean Chretien had his name embossed on golf balls to keep Quebec in Canada.

“I had hoped after Gomery that things would change. If anything, it has gotten worse. We have an epidemic of corruption at the federal level. Whistleblowers are even more unwelcome now than they were then.”

As we sit and talk, someone on the street recognizes my table-mate through the plate glass window and snaps a picture with their cellphone. Cutler flinches away from the echo of fame that still travels out from his days as the mouse that roared. Very little of what happened to him before then-prime minister Paul Martin called an inquiry into his own party’s dirty work has ever been made public.

“I am grateful to Paul Martin. He may not have made the right political decision, but he made the right ethical call. I was ruined inside the government at the time. The inquiry by Judge Gomery saved my reputation. I thought I was destined to retire in disgrace, fade away and have no reputation.”

Before Martin called the inquiry that many believe tore the hull out of the Liberal Party of Canada, Allan Cutler toiled in the Department of Public Works under one of the principle scoundrels of ‘Adscam’, Chuck Guite. While the people around Cutler bent to the prevailing winds, and prospered, he doggedly insisted that the things that crossed his desk be done properly. It was not a good career move to go against the wishes of a man whose connections ran all the way up to the Privy Council and perhaps beyond. If Cutler wouldn’t sign what he believed was an illegal document, it was kicked up to the next desk. That desk belonged to Chuck Guite.

“I still remember the day Guite called me into his office and read me the riot act. He told me in a very loud voice that if I didn’t stop ‘getting in the way’, I would be fired. He was standing up and I was sitting there, catching hell. Just like today, government was downsizing and I was told I would simply be declared surplus.”

What Guite, who later went to jail for defrauding the government, wanted Cutler to do that day was backdate a printing invoice. That practice, by which civil servants spend public money without proper financial authority, was widespread, entrenched, and to Cutler unacceptable. In fact, he thought it was administrative malfeasance. He refused to sign — and paid the price.

“For three months, they let me rot. Every working day, nothing to do and no one would take my calls. I spent the mornings writing numerals on a pad — 800, 801, 802 … and then crossed them out in the afternoon. I was literally crossing out time. I played out chess openings in my mind. They wanted to nail me for insubordination, so I remained silent. They were watching everything so I didn’t even read a book. They were listening to everything so I never made a personal call. I went home with blazing headaches and ended up on stress medication.”

Cutler, by then a seasoned veteran of the public service who had trained civil servants on the proper way to do things, was told that if he wanted access to documents at Public Works, he would have to get the key to locked files held by a temporary employee. No one spoke to him and his office telephone never rang.

“You know, at times like that, you look at what saves you from collapsing. For me, it was a combination of things, including volunteer work. I was respected in that world. But most of all, it was my wife Linda. She backed me 100 per cent and we kept it from the kids. She was my rock.”

Eventually, Cutler won his game of chicken with Guite and the federal department in the eye of the adscam storm. His name was circulated in the public service and an old friend, a director general in a science office, rescued him from the cesspool that in those days was Public Works. The frazzled bureaucrat, worn down but not defeated, kept trying to get the word out that something terrible was happening inside the system.

“I knew that it would all come down to proof. I was so worried about the documents I had that I hid them in places outside my house. Linda was the only person who knew that. I had six copies of all my electronic records. I had duplicates of the hard copies. I was afraid that someone would try to destroy the evidence.”

After the vindication of the Gomery Inquiry, Cutler had a brief career in politics, running as a Conservative in Ottawa against powerful Liberal incumbent David McGuinty. Then-Opposition leader Stephen Harper told Cutler that he was “amazed” that the Liberals had not approached him to run.

Tory rainmaker Doug Finley persuaded Cutler that it was his one and only chance to put his issues to the country on a national platform. Although Cutler got more votes than Conservative heavy John Baird did in his Ottawa seat, he lost to the smooth, professional machine of the McGuinty clan.

“They pulled all their resources from other ridings and went to war. Royal Galipeau, (Conservative MP for Ottawa Orleans) thanked me after the election because all the Liberal workers from his riding were sent in to help McGuinty. More Liberal workers came from Queen’s Park.

“In the end, it didn’t matter. Even if I had won the election, I would have been an independent in a few months. And I would have lost the next election.”

After his defeat, Cutler eventually was offered a “six figure” salary to work for John Baird as a policy advisor. There was, however, a condition: Allan Cutler, a man of the people behind the scenes, had to agree not to advocate for anyone in public. He turned the job down.

These days Cutler makes his living in the integrity business. He gives speeches and seminars on a subject he thinks is much talked about but little practised — honesty in government. Occasionally, there is a rude reminder of how all organizations work.

“I was hired by the RCMP to give a speech on whistle-blowing. Then I was told that because the ‘Brotherhood’ was more important than public policy, I was not to criticize the force. After my speech, I was never invited back.”

Cutler also does pro bono work for whistleblowers with a story to tell about the federal public service that government won’t investigate. In fact, he was told about the shortcomings of former Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet long before the ex-public servant was blasted by then-auditor general Sheila Fraser. Based on what he’s seen, Cutler is not optimistic about the public service.

“I think things are actually worse now than they were back then. I have seen evidence of decisions on billion dollar contracts that were decided at meetings where no minutes were kept. I have seen evidence of helicopter maintenance contracts that were moved all around North America to increase the costs.

“In any organization there will always be corrupt people. But the system still protects them and that is wrong. Deputy ministers have a legal obligation to report to the Privy Council when a minister interferes in their departments. They never do. And even if they did, there is no penalty for such interference.”

According to Cutler, the answer to the crisis of public integrity is an empowered ombudsman like the one in Ontario, armed with the statutory stroke to investigate anything with the power of subpoena and reporting to the public, not Parliament. Beyond that, Cutler cocks his head to one side and adds this critical point:

“None of it works, though, if the average person doesn’t care about public conduct. When it comes to safeguarding public integrity, there can be no bystanders.”

The balding, bespectacled man in the ski jacket looks out the window as his coffee is freshened. When he starts talking again, his voice is slow, deliberate and full of wan regret. He has taken his stories of alleged malfeasance to every federal political party and found indifference. He has written to the provincial Conservative party in Ontario and asked them to open a discussion on public service integrity. He has gone to the media. The answers he’s received are not encouraging.

“The Harper government isn’t interested. The Liberals are obsessed with their leadership issues. And you know what the NDP said to me? ‘Find a journalist.’ As for my request to the Ontario Conservatives, this is what they told me. ‘Wait until after the election.’ Even the media just doesn’t seem to have the time these days to look into anything complicated.”

As Cutler sips his second cup of coffee, and watches the rain fall, I ask him about the wages of whistle-blowing, the consequences of bellying up to the bar of public integrity. In the United States, the IRS just awarded a former banker, Brad Birkenfeld, a cheque for $104 million after he turned in thousands of offshore tax cheats. While there is no big cheque in the mail for Allan Cutler, what about an Order of Canada somewhere down the road for the man who blew the whistle on big-time corruption in this country?

“Where they put my Order of Canada would be hard to find and painful to pull out. But I am the one that gets asked to speak on public integrity, not the ones who looked the other way, got promoted and are enjoying their pensions — with their heads down.”

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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