You’d think it would be a great timing for B.C. MLAs to start a review of the province’s whistleblower protection law, just two weeks after a major scandal involving a whistleblower, leaked documents and a government-directed police investigation into Opposition public safety critic Elenore Sturko.

But you won’t hear a word about it from the all-party committee conducting a five-year review into the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA). Because it turns out, the law utterly fails to apply to that concerning, important, real-life example.

There’s a variety of reasons why, ranging from the absurdly-high threshold of wrongdoing required for protection under the act, to the fact it doesn’t cover law enforcement officers (the government thinks Sturko’s whistleblower may be in policing, but Sturko denies this).

But the main problems are two critical things: The law only covers whistleblowers who come forward to the Ombudsperson (not MLAs, media, other agencies or even cabinet ministers), and almost none of the information shared by the whistleblower ever becomes public, even if it’s legitimate and in the public interest to know.

You might wonder what the use of the........

© BIV