Ryerson CSR Institute Session: Whistleblowing Systems - A New Canadian Guide

A recent study suggests a strong positive correlation between shareholder return and a “speak-up culture”, one in which people feel comfortable and safe raising their concerns and ideas for improvement in the workplace. Whistleblowers are often a unique and indispensable resource for improving organizational effectiveness.  The purpose of this guide is to assist organizational leaders seeking to establish internal systems for handling reports of suspected wrongdoing, mismanagement, and unethical conduct in their organization. Reporting such suspicions is often called “whistleblowing”, and some international research suggests that reports from whistleblowers provide the most effective mechanism for detecting wrongdoing that can harm an organization. For reasons such as these, Canadian private and public organizations are increasingly looking for proactive ways to encourage whistleblowing and make appropriate use of information obtained in this way. This guide addresses the issues that experience has shown to be most critical in developing an effective whistleblowing system, including the challenge of protecting whistleblowers from reprisals that punish and silence them, and deter others from speaking out.

This event is co-sponsored by the Ryerson CSR Student Association, the Ryerson Commerce and Government Association, and the Ryerson Law and Business Student Association.  This event is supported by the Canadian Standards Association and the Trade Commissioner Service of Global Affairs Canada.

Mr. Sandy Boucher is a Senior Manager at Grant Thornton, a co-convenor of the CSA process for the development of Whistleblowing Systems – A Guide, and is a specialist in fraud and corruption investigations, background due diligence enquiries, asset tracing and recovery, managing major investigations and security. Mr. Boucher works on detecting and preventing fraud and corruption and divides his time between investigating such cases and advising organizations on how to prevent them from occurring. He has led and conducted a wide range of investigations including a number of high level corruption probes and has testified around the globe in both civil & criminal courts. Sandy heads the Grant Thornton national investigative research, and anti-corruption practices.  Mr. Boucher has over 33 years of experience as an investigator including 12 with the Royal Hong Kong Police and 21 in the private sector.  He has been with Grant Thornton for seven years.