Sask. union: Province suspends whistleblowers.

This doesn't sound good. We will have to wait and see what happens next.


Province suspended 'whistleblowers': union
Last Updated: Thursday, April 5, 2007 | 5:54 PM CT
CBC News
The Saskatchewan government has suspended "whistleblowers" who raised the alarm about alleged financial irregularities, a government employees union says.

On Wednesday, the Community Resources Department said it has disciplined two unionized managers and a third, non-union manager in the wake of discovering about $26,000 in missing money.

One employee in the department's finance branch has been fired.

According to Community Resources deputy minister Duncan Fisher, the managers were disciplined for "insufficient monitoring of controls and oversight to ensure controls were in place and processes followed."

However, Saskatchewan Government Employees Union president Bob Bymoen said Thursday the two unionized managers are "whistleblowers" — the very ones who brought the missing money to the attention of the department.

It's ironic that the government has accused the managers of not following procedure while not following its own rules when it disciplined them, he said.



The employees were asked to answer questions, but were suspended before they had time to answer, Bymoen said.

The government said it won't discuss this case publicly, adding there are rules in place for dealing with labour disputes such as this and it will follow those procedures.