OTTAWA – Leaked documents detailing the conditions surrounding the departure of the government’s now-disgraced public sector integrity commissioner show she is walking away with approximately $130,000 beyond the $407,000 she received in severance pay – all of which the opposition Liberals have labelled "hush money."
The additional funds, which are in addition to the severance amount Postmedia News reported earlier this week, represent 28 weeks pay for accrued and unused vacation.
Christiane Ouimet resigned last October, just weeks before the auditor general released a report slamming her for failing to do her job properly.
The conditions of her departure were signed by Ouimet and Wayne Wouters, who as Clerk of the Privy Council is the government’s top bureaucrat. The document, signed within the first two weeks of October, stipulates that Ouimet cannot say or do anything that may "impair the reputation" or "be otherwise detrimental" to either the office she once held or to the Government of Canada.
That favour is returned in a clause of the document that says, "the parties shall not engage in any criticism against each other, personally or through another person including media representatives, on any matter in which Christiane Ouimet was involved during her appointment."
Those clauses, said Liberal MP Navdeep Bains, signal that government is trying to keep the former commissioner quiet.
"This clearly demonstrates she had a gag order," Bains said. "It shows how far the prime minister is willing to go to keep her quiet."
Ouimet was appointed commissioner in April 2007 and tasked with protecting government whistleblowers seeking to disclose wrongdoing in the federal public sector.
She abruptly quit her post in October 2010, four years before the scheduled end of her term, while Auditor General Sheila Fraser was investigating the office.
Fraser’s report found the office – which has an $11-million budget – investigated only five of 228 complaints filed during Ouimet’s three-and-a-half-year tenure.
Ouimet also berated, intimidated and yelled and swore at her staff, the report said.
The office of the public sector integrity commissioner is one of several watchdog offices whose heads are supposed to report to Parliament, not the government.
The House of Commons committee on which Bains sits has been studying the affair since Fraser released her report in December.
Almost immediately after the release of the report, the public accounts committee sent invitations for Ouimet to appear and testify. The repeated requests were ignored, prompting the committee to ask the Privy Council – the public service agency which serves the Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet – to release all documents and communications between the public sector integrity commissioner and the agency.
Some of the emails were released at a committee meeting this week, but the severance agreement was kept confidential at the request of the Privy Council.
Some emails in the file of released communications show email threads and letters between Ouimet and the Privy Council, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and President of the Treasury Board Stockwell Day.
There are also emails between Mario Dion, appointed by the Conservatives as interim commissioner in the wake of Ouimet’s departure, and Privy Council.
"They are accountable to Parliament, but with some of these emails their independence is being questioned," Bains said.
Lawyer Ivan Whitehall contacted the chair of the public accounts committee last month on behalf of Ouimet. She is expected to appear at committee March 10.
A call to Whitehall’s Ottawa office was not immediately returned late Friday afternoon.
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