Employment insurance whistleblower still seeking justice three years later
Sylvie Therrien considers herself a “bit of a rebel” — someone who doesn’t like being told to keep quiet when she disagrees or feels an injustice is being committed.
So when she was asked to help the government squeeze EI payouts, she refused to quietly play along.
Claiming she was forced by her employer to meet aggressive savings quotas aimed at reducing employment insurance benefits paid to some Canadians in 2013, the EI fraud investigator blew the whistle. And as a result,
she lost her job with the federal public service.
In February of that year she leaked information to Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper showing that she and her colleagues in Service Canada’s Vancouver office, as well as others doing similar work in the department’s western region, were expected to find up to $45,000 each in monthly savings — up to $540,000 each per year.
Her information set off a firestorm in the House of Commons as the NDP and Liberals accused the Conservatives of a witch hunt against EI recipients.
The Conservative government denied the claims, but quickly backtracked, saying the dollar amounts were objectives or “targets” rather than rigid quotas.
Amid the controversy Therrien gained nationwide notoriety.
She received a whistleblower award from a national non-profit group in 2014. Later that year, she was aggressively courted to run for the federal Liberal party.
But nearly three years after coming forward, she’s struggling to pay her bills and fears she may soon have to file for bankruptcy. She has taken a huge financial hit from losing her full-time job. And the divorced single mother (her son has graduated from university) worries she’ll have no savings to support herself when she retires.
As a federal investigator, Therrien made more than $60,000 annually. Now she’s working on call as an education assistant for the francophone school board in B.C.; last year she earned about $25,000.
Therrien lost her job after Service Canada accused her of breaching her employee code of conduct. Service Canada says she wasn’t authorized to divulge protected information, policies and guidelines, or other administrative details to the media or public.
“It was a big shock, being suspended without pay and then losing my job afterward,” she says. “I felt powerless, and in a way betrayed by the system.”
Intrigued by her elevated profile, both the NDP and Liberals approached her in the summer of 2014 with the idea of running in the federal election the following year.
She met several times with Pablo Rodriguez, Quebec co-chair for the Liberals’ 2015 election campaign and the candidate for Honoré-Mercier, a seat he now holds. Rodriguez is close to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, having run the Quebec wing of his leadership campaign.
According to Therrien, Rodriguez told her in a July 2014 meeting that she’d make a great candidate, and that she should run in La Pointe-de-l’Île against the Bloc Québécois’s Mario Beaulieu. Therrien told Rodriguez she saw little chance of success in the Montreal riding, as the Bloc has a strong presence there and Beaulieu (who went on to win) is popular.
Therrien met Trudeau that month for more than an hour at Trudeau’s Montreal office.
He applauded her bravery in the quota case. She explained why it was a bad idea to run in La Pointe-de-l’Île. Trudeau said he understood and that he’d look into a riding switch, she says.
The next day, when she called Rodriguez, he told her he was no longer involved in recruiting her.
According to Therrien, Rodriguez was very angry she’d gone over his head and pressed her case with Trudeau for a different riding. Her dealings with the Liberals abruptly ended.
In an interview, Rodriguez confirmed he spoke to Therrien at the time but said details are confidential. In a statement to the Star, Olivier Duchesneau, a PMO spokesperson, declined to comment specifically on her statements as her dismissal case is before the federal labour board.
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Employment insurance whistleblower still seeking justice three years later | Toronto Star
