For the second time in a week, a government watchdog has flagged an extreme case of wrongdoing among executives in the federal public service.
Public Sector Integrity Commissioner Joe Friday tabled a report in Parliament Thursday morning that details what he calls “gross mismanagement” by Dr. Bruce Archibald, the former president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), and Gerald Étienne, who was once the agency’s vice-president of human resources.
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According to Friday, the two men “purposefully circumvented” their department’s complaint process after three employees filed separate and “serious” harassment complaints about an unidentified senior executive working in the agency in early 2015.
That executive reported directly to Archibald.
“(Archibald and Étienne) undermined the review process by involving the senior executive during the initial assessment of the harassment complaints,” Friday noted.
“(They) then decided not to investigate the complaints, in less than three days, without any written analysis, even though the complaints revealed serious allegations of harassment and abusive behavior.”
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Details of the alleged harassment by the executive were not revealed in the report. The integrity commissioner’s investigation focused only on the agency’s bungled response to the complaints.
After meeting with over 30 witnesses and reviewing documentary evidence, Friday says he concluded that either “the outcome or resolution of the harassment complaints was in fact pre-determined or … senior management was extremely careless.”
Archibald left the public service in October 2016, but Étienne remains at the CFIA as vice-president of operations. It’s unclear if he will face any disciplinary action.
The initial three harassment complaints will be re-examine by the CFIA in the meantime.
Last week, Friday issued a similarly damning report detailing the extreme behaviour of a senior manager at the Public Health Agency of Canada, who is still employed by the government.
That executive allegedly screamed at employees, called them “incompetent,” swore, advanced on people with closed fists, threw files and papers and banged on his desk in anger.
On Thursday, Friday told reporters that two cases is not enough to “support a general trend” of executives failing to implement policies and procedures when it comes to workplace harassment, but “I do think it’s necessary to remark upon the situation at this time.”
“A different set of rules should not apply to senior executive than those that apply to the rest of employees,” Friday said.
“These findings reinforce the importance of senior management’s responsibility to address (harassment) matters as soon as they arise, and in their entirety.”