Collaborative Proposal Creation
Create, improve and sponsor proposals in a respectful, fully bilingual environment. Grow proposals in the "Hothouse", for promotion to the "Workshop", to become official GPC policy.
Proposal text
Bylaw 15 Whistleblowing
15.1 The Party shall establish and maintain an Incident Reporting System that allows incident submitters to communicate anonymously with the Party
15.2 The Party will identify a group responsible for responding to whistleblower claims
15.3 A summary of whistleblowing reports will be made at General Meetings
Type of Proposal
A constitutional amendment to change the constitution or bylaws
Objective / Benefit
The Party has had difficulty responding to a series of crises. One of the problems has been a lack of ability for members to make Council and leadership aware of issues before they grow into public crises.
By lowering the barrier to reporting problems, the Party has a greater chance to respond quickly and early to issues.
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
N/A
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
A whistleblower process has been repeatedly identified as a need for the party.
This proposal follows the successful example of the German Greens, at building self-correction mechanisms for the Party. From the German Greens website (in German: https://www.bkms-system.com/bkwebanon/report/clientInfo?cin=KNy5nc&c=-1)
"This whistleblower system is aimed at people who have noticed or followed facts or tips that indicate actual or suspected violations of laws and/or party guidelines. It is irrelevant for us whether you are a member of our party. With this technical whistleblower system, which enables both named and anonymous reports, we focus on clarifying every reported issue.
Whistleblowers who report in good faith will not be disadvantaged in any way. The system should of course not be used to knowingly provide false or defamatory advice or information.
Bündnis 90/Die Grünen would like to thank each and every whistleblower who can provide information in the interests of the party"
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
N/A
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Unsure or Not applicable (e.g. directives and constitutional changes)
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
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Conversation with John Willson
A well-defined whistle-blowing process is for the submission of evidence only, not for the airing of hearsay allegations, which would not be considered. This is implied by the word "incident", but it could be made more explicit. I'll suggest an amendment with wording to make this clearer, and would love to hear any specific suggestions.
As for the right of the accused facing the accuser, this has not been a value of our governance in the last few years, as there have been people who faced allegations, but were not allowed to know who accused them and were not allowed to know why they were being accused. This is partly why this proposal is needed. Whistleblowing is also needed when a power imbalance prevents less powerful people from reporting known malfeasance of more powerful people, as they may face retribution.
I agree that this makes sense. I don't have any suggestions at this point for a better definition of "incident(s)" Please do take a stab at it and let's see what the collaborative process bears out. - Cheers
Wonderful. I'll submit an amendment, as soon as that function is available. You will automatically be notified of it, if you have "receive notifications" set in your profile, and anyone else can click the "follow" button (on any proposal).
To show a specific example of how this can work within the Green Party of Canada's Governance structure, the Fund Board created a similar process, to ensure any concerns about how the Fund Board operates are answered early and effectively, from anyone in our membership. This process allows for anonymous submissions, managed by the Executive Director. To date, no one has used it to register any concerns, or compliments (which are also happily accepted!): https://www.greenparty.ca/en/fund-board-feedback
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