A former RCMP undercover officer who was fired 25 years ago for blowing the whistle on police leadership’s media manipulation strategy says organizations routinely fail whistleblower investigations because of one critical factor: leadership outrage.
Bob Stenhouse, now CEO of Veritas Solutions, told attendees at the Workplace Law 2025 Talks Conference in Toronto that the biggest risk in whistleblower cases is not legal liability or reputational damage, but angry executives who demand retaliation instead of truth-seeking.
“Somewhere, somehow, some leader making a decision is outraged,” Stenhouse said during his session on Oct. 23. “They’re angry. Who did that? How can they say that? I think I know who it is. And the next thing you know, the narrative starts.”
That narrative, he said, typically focuses on discrediting the whistleblower as a “disgruntled employee” rather than investigating whether their allegations are true.
From undercover cop to terminated whistleblower
Stenhouse spent a good chunk of his career in the 1980s and 1990s working undercover against organized crime and biker gangs. He was one of the leaders on the pioneering team that developed the “Mr. Big” technique, also called the Canadian Technique, where officers posed as gangsters to extract confessions from murder suspects.
In the late 1990s, Stenhouse became frustrated with what he saw as misuse of media coverage of the Quebec biker wars — including the bombing death of an eight-year-old boy — to generate public fear and secure more government funding. He said he was privy to conversations where police leaders, including one of the most senior ones in Canada, discussed using media stories to pressure politicians for resources.
“We need to use the media to put fear in the public, to put pressure on the government to provide us more funding,” Stenhouse said, quoting from internal documents he accessed while working on a funding proposal for Alberta.
Stenhouse had been advocating for internal changes related to internal politics, silos and turf wars, that hindered effective and coordinated investigations.
Frustrated by administrative roadblocks to his own biker gang investigation and what he considered propaganda, Stenhouse provided documents to journalist Yves Lavigne for his book “Hell’s Angels at War.”
“I asked myself these questions: Do I have this duty of loyalty to my employer? Because I do. I swore an oath of secrecy,” Stenhouse said. “But then I asked myself, is what I’m saying here, is it true? Well, I didn’t make up the documents.”
Federal Court overturned termination
When the book was published with the documents reprinted, a top police leader wrote to the RCMP commissioner calling it “the most corrupt act he had ever seen in his police history,” even though there were concurrent cases of officers stealing drugs, engaging in organized crime, and committing murder in his own and other police agencies, Stenhouse said.
After self-reporting within 15 minutes of speculation starting, Stenhouse was eventually terminated. He spent four years fighting his dismissal, conducting seven Freedom of Information requests and spending hundreds of hours in law libraries before the Federal Court of Canada overturned his termination on grounds of procedural fairness.
“When (that police leader’s) letter hit the desk of the commissioner demanding that I get fired, procedural fairness went out the window,” he said.
Most whistleblowers are high performers, not troublemakers
Stenhouse now runs Veritas Solutions, which conducts approximately 300 workplace and regulatory investigations annually across Canada with a team of 30 investigators. He said his experience on both sides of whistleblower cases contradicts common assumptions.
“Most whistleblowers are high performers. They’re conscientious. They’re dedicated, and they’re loyal,” Stenhouse said. “Contrary to the myth surrounding a whistleblower. Yes, there’s always going to be a bad faith and vexatious complaint. There will always be those cases. But they are the minority.”
He said genuine whistleblowers typically struggle with the decision because they love their jobs and professions but cannot support misconduct they’ve witnessed.
“Someone that is actually taking the time to think about should they expose this misconduct has done so very thoughtfully,” he said. “And has done so with this real tension inside of them with respect to their loyalty, their love for their job, their love for their profession, but their desire to say, this is just not true.”
The fork in the road: truth versus retaliation
Stenhouse presented two fundamental approaches, he has assisted organizations with, when receiving whistleblower complaints.
The first path focuses on discovering truth by asking “what if it’s true?” and looking for verifiable evidence, conducting investigations without fear or favor regardless of the accused person’s rank, gathering evidence objectively, and doing “the right thing” based on findings.
The alternative path, which he said organizations more commonly take, begins with outrage, fear and cover-up, focuses on identifying the whistleblower rather than investigating allegations, includes disguised retaliation despite anti-retaliation policies, and leads to expensive legal battles and “mob mentality and group think.”
“Here’s the thing, I would suggest anyone involved in a whistleblower case, whether it be an HR professional, whether it be a lawyer, whether it be a leader, as opposed to getting caught up in the outrage narrative, take a step back and say, wait a minute, what if it’s true?” Stenhouse said.
Recent case study shows common pitfalls
Stenhouse described a recent case where an organization hired him to assess an anonymous ProtonMail complaint containing alleged health and safety infractions and veiled threats. The complaint identified specific incidents and witnesses.
“I did my report up, and so I made my recommendations, and I said, first and foremost, I would look to the verifiable evidence, find out if it’s true. Find out if the infraction happened,” he said.
The lawyer who hired him “didn’t really like my report,” Stenhouse said, because the organization seemed to want him to identify who sent the ProtonMail message rather than investigate the allegations contained in the anonymous complaint.
“It was all about finding who said this, and did this, and the speculation surrounding it, versus actually looking at the evidence, looking for the evidence,” he said.
Risk management through integrity
Stenhouse said the best risk management strategy is simple: do the right thing.
“Inevitably, it gets exposed in the news anyway,” he said, noting that people increasingly use LinkedIn to publicize workplace injustices, posting lawsuits and internal memos publicly.
He cited his work on the Leduc Fire Services case, which involved 15 years of sexual assault, sexual harassment, cover-ups and gender-based discrimination. When the chief administrative officer asked what to do, Stenhouse said he recommended finding a remedy, taking corrective action and helping make victims whole.
“And they didn’t take that advice, and it was in the news for about two more years, playing out as mayor and council were not being transparent” he said.
Practical roadmap for investigations
Stenhouse outlined a framework for handling whistleblower cases:
Prima facie test: Determine whether the allegations, if true, would constitute a serious breach under whistleblower policies or legislation.
Meet with the whistleblower: Try to gain their trust and reassure anonymity while explaining limitations. “We will maintain your anonymity, but you need to know that we will be limited with what we can do with that anonymity,” he said.
Gather verifiable evidence: Investigate whether specific incidents occurred, even without identifying the complainant. “If they say emails exist, find them. If they say memos went out, find them,” Stenhouse said.
Ensure procedural fairness: Inform respondents of allegations and give them an opportunity to respond, even in anonymous cases. “You need to know there was an anonymous complaint about you engaging in sexual harassment. In terms of procedural fairness, we want to let you know about it, we want to give you an opportunity to respond,” he said.
Come to findings: Base conclusions on available evidence while acknowledging limitations when credibility cannot be tested.
Challenges and risks in whistleblower investigations
Stenhouse identified three main risks: employees using hotlines for vendettas or bad faith complaints, disgruntled workers making vexatious claims, and speculative allegations without supporting evidence.
The challenges include inability to provide procedural fairness when whistleblowers remain anonymous, inability to assess the complainant’s credibility without meeting them, and contribution to workplace fear and speculation.
“Your respondent can’t respond to something they don’t know about,” he said, explaining why anonymous complaints make procedural fairness difficult. “We cannot determine the credibility of the person that’s brought forth the whistleblower complaint, depending on how it’s brought forth, and unless there’s verifiable evidence, it’d be very difficult to come to a conclusion.”
However, he said the difference between successful and failed whistleblower investigations comes down to organizational commitment.
“We’ve resolved several. We were able to get the confidence of the whistleblower, we were able to get them to tell us their story, we were able to assess their credibility, we were able to work with our client to make sure that they’re not retaliated against. And the right thing was done,” he said.
Stenhouse also provides pro bono coaching to potential whistleblowers, helping them understand the emotional impact and potential consequences of coming forward.
“Once they come to that fork in the road, there’s no turning back. And it can be very, very scary,” he said.
The presentation was part of the Workplace Law 2025 Talks Conference held Oct. 23, 2025, in Toronto, presented by HR Law Canada and HR News Canada.
