The Wednesday (November 7th) edition of the Yukon News contained a letter to the editor that sums up the reign of terror that the civil service seems to be living under. From the point of view of the launch of this website, it couldn’t have been better timed. For those of you who missed it, I’m posting sections of it here. The author requested that his name be withheld, and included in his submission a fairly lengthy justification as to why he should wish to remain anonymous. I’d like to congratulate the usually rather docile Yukon News for publishing this, along with the body of the letter itself: I think it makes good reading.
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Editor’s note: Last week, we received this letter on the workers’ advocate firing from a civil servant. The writer despises anonymous letters, and yet he felt strongly he must ask for anonymity.
The reasons for his request said much about the Yukon civil service, both its operation and its state of mind under the current government. And so we’ve printed both.
Fear and loathing in the Yukon civil service
I think anonymous correspondence is the realm of cowards — I have great disdain for it — so let me explain my yellow streak in this situation.
I bounced this off my wife — she said, “Are you walking the plank?”
I bounced this off one guy at work — he said, “These people are criminals and thugs with long memories.”
I bounced it off another guy at work who said, “You are sticking your head up — you risk having someone virtually stand over your shoulder for the rest of your YTG career watching for any slip up — everyone around you can be surfing Facebook all day — but as soon as you go there — BLAM! You are busted!”
I live in a city I want to stay in and all of my non-YTG job options probably pay half the ludicrous salary that I get for the amount of work I actually do. I have at least 10 years to go before I retire and I have a mortgage.
I work in an area where people are carefully selected for promotion and have bullshit jobs crafted for them and then the hiring process carefully managed to ensure they end up in those jobs (PSC may not think it works that way, but if PSC ever came out of their offices they might be very surprised).
The process could be easily reversed.
The primary criteria for promotions seem to be the number of DUIs you have (the more the better). Since I’m not a drinker, my job is already precarious enough. If I keep my head down and shut up they forget I’m there — I get paid every two weeks and everything is cool. But if I get lippy, I can see being out the door in under a year. Two if I have no pride.
I think, realistically, there SHOULD be, and probably is, little risk in me attaching my name to this. But I think there is a little risk and it affects others as well as myself. Sorry. I know where you are coming from. I’d love to put my name behind this — I actually think I did a not-shabby job of writing it (you should have seen draft 1 — that would have got me fired tomorrow!). I just think there is a risk, and I’m too cautious to take that risk at this point in my career/life.
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“Criminals and thugs with long memories”? Our elected officials and senior civil servants?. Truly, we are living in dark times.
Later on in his letter, the author cited the Ombudsman’s office as a possible model for that of the Workers’ Advocate, as a genuinely independent body. Coincidentally, as part of the preparation for setting up this website, I asked for an appointment with the Ombudsman or one of her deputies. When asked what it was about, I explained, “I’m setting up a website dealing with issues relating to accountability in government, particularly with regard to natural resources, and I would like to talk to someone in the Ombudsman’s office about how they see their role, what they see are the major threats and constraints to open government in the Yukon – particularly as it is a small jurisdiction – and also I would like to know whatever happened to the whistle-blower legislation that has been promised by successive governments. Are there circumstances where the public interest trumps confidentiality clauses signed by civil servants?” Very basic, general questions, surely.
This triggered a response of stuttering panic on the part of the Ombudsman’s office. Eventually, a meeting was scheduled, though it was left open as to who was actually going to speak to me. They would call me during the week, they said, to confirm who I would be seeing. That didn’t happen, so on the eve of the meeting, I phoned again and asked. This again was met with nervous vacilation, and I was told they would call back in a few minutes. Soon, sure enough, the phone rang and it was one of the Ombudsman’s deputies. “We’re not sure we would be able to comment on these issues”… “The Ombudsman might be able to say something regarding the Act for which she is directly responsible, but other than that…”, “Have you read last year’s Ombudsman’s report to the legislature?”. The poor woman clearly did not want to talk to me. She said that she was heading to Regina in a couple of days for a meeting, and that she was rather “taken up”, but I had a distinct feeling that being too busy was not the reason. I decided to persist, and she agreed to reschedule the interview for the week after her return from Regina… “In the meantime, I’ll talk again [again?] to the Ombudsman and see where she stands, and if she will be able to comment”.
I fully expect that I will get another phone call next week, to cancel. If not I will gladly eat humble pie and apologize for being so beastly about these obviously nice and concerned people. But what on earth is making them so jittery, and what does all this say about “an independent agency, at arm’s length of government”, whose declared mission is to promote accountability and openness in government? Are these timid folk the firebrands fighting for genuine democracy and open government on our behalf, or have the ‘thugs with long memories’ got to them, too?
So, if there is anyone out there, who works in the Yukon civil service, or any other level of government in the Yukon, who has first hand knowledge of blatant wrong-doing, the anti-democratic pursuit of hidden agendas, abuse of power, corruption, or similar, contact us at Yukon Confidential and give us chapter and verse (and evidence, if possible). No childish whining, please, just facts. We don’t work for the government and are not worried about losing our jobs, so we can get that information out into the public domain. We need you to feed us the info. We won’t divulge our sources. Just make sure you back up your emails and other files of interest stored on YTG servers to a removable storage device before you come to us.
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.”
Judge John Curran, Dublin, July 10th, 1790, in reference to the mayoral elections.
I’m writing this on Friday 9th, just after reading today's Yukon News. I’m rather disappointed there wasn’t a flurry of correspondence in response to the anonymous letter in the previous edition. I hoped for a mix of righteous bluster from the great and the good, along the lines of “How dare this person… disrespect for our democratic institutions… officials’ powers constantly constrained by democratic checks and balances”, and so on, and on the other hand a torrent of examples of abuse of power, woeful mismanagement, bullying and hidden corporate collusion in government. But nothing. The investing of $36Million’s worth of public money in an obviously dodgy enterprise, in contravention of the YTG finance rules, seems to have taken up all the space for now – well, that is a pretty juicy story, so I can't complain.
We haven’t heard the last of any of this, but it is up to you to speak up.
