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Whistleblowing And Freedom Of Conscience: Towards A New Legal Analysis, Richard Haigh, Peter Bowal

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Most of us have an instinctive understanding of what “whistleblowing” is: the act of alerting the public to scandal, danger, malpractice, corruption or other immoral or unethical behaviour. For a long time, whistleblowers were treated poorly – today, they are now acknowledged, and sometimes even admired, but there is still some way to go. We believe that a strongly developed and distinct freedom of conscience, as expressed in s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, could go some way towards achieving that goal. In law, however, conscience is often treated as inseparable from religion, without any meaningful …