EI whistleblower suspended without pay

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CBC News Posted: Jul 20, 2013

Sylvie Therrien says investigators had to recover $485,000 in EI benefits every year

Canadian EI whistleblower speaks 2:04

A federal fraud investigator has been suspended without pay, after she leaked documents showing that investigators had to cut people off their employment insurance benefits in order to meet quotas.

Sylvie Therrien told CBC News that she and other investigators were given a target to recover nearly $500,000 in EI benefits every year.

"It just was against my values, harassing claimants… trying to penalize them in order to save money for the government. We had quotas to meet every month," Therrien said.

Therrien leaked documents to the media anonymously in the spring showing investigators were ordered to find $485,000 in savings each year by denying claims.

The federal government denied that any quotas were in place, but the opposition hammered the Conservatives on the issue.

"Telling investigators that they each had to find half a million in fraud presumes that there is widespread fraud, that they're all a bunch of cheaters and criminals," said NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair in the House of Commons in February.

• Tories set 'targets,' not quotas for EI fraud
• EI audit manual outlines tips to root out fraud
  

EI investigators were then called in for questioning themselves to find out who leaked the document.

"Witchhunt terminology. It definitely describes what was happening," said Don Rogers, national president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union.

"They were trying to find out who had told the media that there were targets to be achieved."

Therrien was questioned by investigators in May. She admitted she was the source of the leak and was suspended without pay.

"I knew my job was in peril. I knew that, but I couldn't continue. I couldn't sleep," she said.

"I was thinking just about those people… I was going to send them and their children into the street… and now here I am on the street."

Therrien suspects she will be fired, but hopes her union and lawyer will back her up in court.

Human Resources Canada would not give any details about Therrien's case. But in a statement, it says all Service Canada employees are bound by a declaration not to go public with government information.

With files from the CBC's Petti Fong

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Human Resources Minister Diane Finley sees 'performance objectives'CBC News Posted: Feb 25, 2013 3:16 PM ET

Finley on the defensive2:50

The federal government denies it has given civil servants quotas for catching employment insurance fraud — but now says there are performance objectives in place.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley had flatly denied previous reports that EI investigators have been given monthly dollar quotas.

However, government documents obtained by Montreal newspaper Le Devoir show civil servants are expected to find $485,000 each in fraudulent claims each year — a total that corresponds to the previously reported $40,000 monthly quota.

The documents outline performance evaluation expectations that spell out goals that investigators for Service Canada are supposed to meet.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says the Conservatives are treating the unemployed like criminals and contrasts their pursuit of EI claimants with the expense scandal swirling around Conservative appointees in the Senate.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley told MPs Monday that employment insurance investigators have performance objectives in uncovering EI fraud, but said those are not the same as quotas. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Finley told Mulcair that EI investigators do have performance objectives but said there's a big difference between targets and quotas.

Opposition MPs have also objected to a plan the government has instigated to have Service Canada employees go door to door to arrange for randomly selected EI recipients to be interviewed about their efforts to find work.

Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner noted that an Oscar was awarded Sunday night to an actor who portrayed a "ruthless bounty hunter," and if Hollywood didn't pan out, perhaps that person could be hired by the government to "bust down doors, hunt down the people the minister thinks are shiftless, lazy, dishonest seasonal workers whose culture of defeat has become such scourge in this country."

Cuzner was referring to a comment made years ago by Stephen Harper, before he became prime minister, when he said people in Atlantic Canada have a "culture of defeat."

"The department was able to stop half a billion dollars in ineligible payments last year," Finley replied, "but the employment insurance system still lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to fraud. If the Opposition stops us rooting out EI fraudsters, the only people who lose are Canadians who follow the rules."

The union representing the Service Canada employees who conduct the door-to-door inquiries has asked the government to suspend the work in areas of the country where recent EI changes have become an explosive issue.

"The department has indicated that the security of staff is a priority and they have received training on how to appropriately deal with difficult situations," a spokesperson for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada told CBC News in an email. "If an interview is held outside of Service Canada offices and if an employee has any concerns about their safety, he/she will end the interview and leave the premises."

On Monday evening, the department told Radio-Canada that the only place where visits had been suspended for security reasons was Tracadie, New Brunswick. In that region, several hundred seasonal workers angry about the changes to the EI system occupied a Service Canada office in Tracadie-Sheila in December and also organized a series of protests there earlier this month, including blocking traffic and access to local businesses and burning tires.

In early February Finley told opposition MPs that there were no individual quotas for EI inspectors. After question period Monday, NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen, citing the Le Devoir story, rose on a point of privilege to complain that Finley, by denying quotas existed, had misled the House.