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Evan Vokes v. TransCanada
An Ethical Dive into the Act of Whistleblowing
Evan Vokes is a metallurgic engineer who began his career worked at TransCanada, one of
North America’s leading pipeline manufacturers. While at the company, Vokes had become
aware of structural inconsistencies with its pipelines and was faced with a troubling situation:
either take up his concerns with the higher-ups within the company and risk his job or follow
TransCanada’s suit and brush the issue under the table. Vokes ultimately chose to address these
concerns first with TransCanada and then with the National Energy Board. Although he was
aware that he would most certainly be fired by the company, Vokes determined that the potential
loss of life due to the company’s self-centeredness was to be more valued than TransCanada’s
prosperity.
Kant’s Moral Theory was adopted by Immanuel Kant, who summarized this theory that
“nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good,
without qualification, except a good will (Peterson 47).” Kant believes that to come to an ethical
decision, one must first use an a priori method to analyze the of a moral requirement, or a duty.
In order to conclude about the moral value of a duty, we must think of ourselves as “rational
agents with autonomy of the will (Hill Jr 312).”
In order to give autonomy to this idea of a good will, categorical imperatives were introduced
that apply to all people, regardless of circumstances, and subsides any egotistical idea of the will.
In order to correlate the will to an act, Kant coins the term maxim, which is subjective to the
person and defines the rule on which the person is acting. Kant believes that according to the
categorical imperative, any person’s maxim on which the person is acting on could become a
universal law that everyone is expected to follow. In addition, Kant offers a second formulation
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to his moral theory, which emphasizes that it is morally incorrect to treat people as a mere means
to an end, which is summarized in Kant’s words as follows: “Act in such a way that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means to
an end but always at the same time as an end (Hill Jr 321).”
For the case of Evan Vokes, the categorical imperative of this situation could be an
engineer’s duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. If an act is associated with
the duty to comply with the categorical imperative that can be universally applied to all people,
according to Kant, the act is said to have been the ethically correct decision. Thus, as Vokes acts
in accordance with an engineer’s duty to address the inconsistencies of TransCanada’s pipeline, a
Kantian theorist would that that Vokes’ act of whistleblowing is ethically sound. This is because
Kant’s Moral Theory emphasizes a person’s duty to society, rather than the furtherment of their
desire-based ends. Additionally, while the definition of an engineer is likely subjective to each
person, it can be conceived that creating or improving products in the world universally
improves the community’s well-being. Otherwise, would be the point of spending resources on
such a task?
With the autonomous will of engineers to act on their universal duty to protect the wellbeing of their operating communities being consistent with Vokes’ selfless act, we can analyze
his situation through the second formulation of Kant’s theory. In an interview with CBC, Vokes
questions the integrity of pipeline inspection regarding the safety of the public: “There is an
inherent conflict when a prime contractor does his own inspections […] because the consequence
could be greater since it relates to public safety (Rusnell, Sawa and loiero).” Although the safety
of the public is a serious concern for Vokes, they are not a means of an end to his act of
whistleblowing because TransCanada is violating the integrity of an engineer’s duty. Vokes’
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goal is to give light to the malpractice on TransCanada’s behalf of constructing and maintaining
its pipelines and seek change from within the company to address these concerns, with which the
public offers no means of providing for this desired outcome.
Rule utilitarians believe that ethical decisions should be evaluated by a specific set of
rules which are characterized by being accepted by the vast majority of the public. This theory
can be opposed by act utilitarianism, which gives moral preference based only on any particular
act. Common among both kinds of utilitarianism is the emphasis on the net positive
consequences of an act dictating its ethical worth. It may be worth noting for the case of Vokes
the distinction between actual and expected consequences, where a utilitarian may evaluate an
act based on predication of net utility that the expected consequences might produce, then
observe the actual consequences as a means of reflection on the act. Utilitarians, however, do not
place special emphasis on either of these kinds of consequences.
A rule utilitarian would evaluate Evan Vokes’ act of whistleblowing by first choosing a
rule that is in line with Vokes’ behavior and would be widely accepted by society. Following this
theory, the acting rule for Vokes’ case could be to not be compliant with an employer’s
malpractices. Vokes’ interview with Fox confirms that he was acting according to this moral
rule, “If you’re basing your construction practices on risk, then you put people in a corner when
it comes to compliance (Vokes).” In this interview, Vokes claims that TransCanada puts all its
engineers in an ethical dilemma identical to his own. While a rule utilitarian may argue that this
rule of noncompliance is widely accepted as the norm for working in larger corporations, act
utilitarians may claim that such an act of whistleblowing may not produce optimal positive
utility. This is what makes this distinction so important because the actual consequences (the
pipeline exploding, in this case) is never guaranteed to occur. However, a rule utilitarian would
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still agree that Vokes abided by a widely accepted rule which ultimately produced positive
change.
Although Kantian and rule utilitarian theorist differ in their ideals about ethics, both
would agree that whistleblowing is the morally correct response when a company is
noncompliant. A Kantian theorist would say that Vokes acted according to an engineer’s
perceived duty to prioritize the wellbeing of the public with his work. A rule utilitarian would
argue that, in accordance with the widely accepted rule of not being compliant with a company’s
wrongdoings, Vokes was ethically correct in his decision to address TransCanada’s dishonesty
with the operations of their pipelines.
References
Hill Jr, Thomas E. Kantianism. Blackwell Publishing, 2013.
Peterson, Martin. Ethics for Engineers. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Rusnell, Charles, Timothy Sawa and Joesph loiero. "Whistleblower forced investigation of
TransCanada Pipelines." CBC News 2012.
<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/whistleblower-forced-investigation-of-transcanadapipelines-1.1146204>.
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Vokes, Evan. Whistleblower Accuses TransCanada of Poor Pipeline Practices Fox Business. 14
June 2013. <https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2477701059001#sp=show-clips>.
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