The Ethics Behind Transcanada’S Whistleblower Evan Vokes

Spanning from western Canada to the gulf coast of Texas, the 2010 commissioned Keystone Pipeline System is one of the largest crude oil pipelines currently being built in North America. Owned and operated by TransCanada, the five-phase pipeline has at times been the center of attention in the media due to environmental concerns over climate change and oil spills. On “November 17, 2017 the pipeline leaked what the company claimed was 210, 000 gallons of oil onto farmland near Amherst, South Dakota”. Unfortunately, TransCanada’s negative spotlight didn’t stop there. Evan Vokes, a five-year employee with TransCanada, was let go from the company in 2012 after he spoke out about “the competency of some pipeline inspectors and the company’s lack of compliance with welding regulations set by the National Energy Board (NEB)”. Vokes claims that he informed these concerns to various project managers, vice presidents, and even the CEO before filing the formal complaint with the NEB. In response to the accusations, TransCanada has claimed that every complaint made by Vokes was taken seriously and that all rules and regulations were being adhered to. In this analysis, Voke’s decision to whistle blow is morally justified through the use of Kantian duty ethics and rule utilitarianism.

The first way to view the TransCanada whistleblower case is through the use of Kantian duty ethics. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in 1724, established the moral theory of Kantian duty ethics while being an avid opponent to utilitarianism. The theory behind Kantian duty ethics describes that an act is in good moral standing, if and only if, the act is preformed with good intentions despite the consequences it may bring. In other words, a person’s act has moral value if the person’s will is aligned with their duty. First, the “will” describes what a person intends to do or what they desire. The “duty” however, defines what should be done in the particular situation. The maxim is the subjective principle that governs a person’s action and can also be considered the intention in which that person acts with. This element is subjective since Kant believed that the principle of the maxim should be established on an individual level and used to justify the individual’s actions only. For an action to be deemed “good”, one must follow Kant’s five basic rules. First, Kant’s categorical imperative describes how “all actions are moral and good if performed as a duty”. Second, also known as the universalizability test, when the actions are applied to all of mankind, the resultant should always be good. Third, the actions themselves should never be deployed if used as a means to an end against another. Fourth, the actions should not force another person to go against their own moral judgment. And Finally, all actions and decisions deemed good through the first four rules can be constructed as a set of laws for all of mankind to follow in peace. All of these Kantian elements come together when analyzing the TransCanada whistleblower case of Evan Vokes. First, Vokes’s reason behind his decision to file the formal complaint with the NEB was to report TransCanada’s neglect towards the federally regulated welding codes and to ensure the public’s safety. The maxim in this situation, due to Voke’s reasoning, establishes that an individual is required to report the wrongdoing of a company, when the wrongdoing applies to federal standards or codes set by the company, if the public’s safety is at risk. Next, this maxim is applied to Kant’s universalization test. A world where everyone follows this particular maxim would in fact become a safer world and is therefore logical under Kantian duty ethics. This makes Evan Vokes’s decision to whistle blow a “good will” altogether. Finally, Kant asks that people deliberating on their actions to determine if they are acting for a mere means to an end. Evan Vokes could have ignored the issues he was observing and would therefore be using the public’s safety as a mere means to an end in order to keep his job and save the reputation of TransCanada. Because he did not do this, his will is justified under Kantian duty ethics again.

Another ethical viewpoint that can be used to justify Evan Vokes is that of utilitarianism. Utilitarians believe that an action is morally right and should be preformed if and only if the resultant of the action induces a surplus of good consequences that outweigh the amount of bad consequences. More specifically, rule utilitarians believe that people should act according to a set of rules that would produce optimal consequences if accepted by a majority of mankind. These consequences come in the form of happiness, pleasure, or humanity’s wellbeing, and is the result from following a rule of conduct. In the case of TransCanada and Evan Vokes, a rule utilitarianist would most likely follow a rule that states “never violate a set of federally regulated engineering codes. ” Since this rule would lead to optimal consequences if accepted by a majority of mankind, Voke’s decision to whistle blow would be deemed ethical from a rule utilitarian’s perspective. Rule utilitarians would also confirm that the amount of happiness induced by the decision, in the form of the public’s safety, outweighed the bad consequence of Vokes’s termination from the company.

In all, Evan Vokes’s actions are morally justified under the viewpoint of rule utilitarianism. Kantian duty ethics and rule utilitarianism are two ethical viewpoints in which the Evan Vokes TransCanada whistleblower case can be analyzed from. Rule utilitarianism believe that Vokes’s decision relied completely on the consequences alone while followers of Kantianism view his actions as serving his moral will. With either approach, Evan Vokes decision to whistle blow is justified and proved to be morally correct. The morals, courage and persistence that Vokes presented through this situation should be an example for all current engineers and engineering students around the world.