Free trips don’t mix with government work

One might think talk of public employees taking free trips from suppliers would be a last-century thing.

Yet here we are, talking about former ehealth employees flying to events like the Professional Golf Association championship in North Carolina on the dime of companies doing business with government.

Government has to step up with a consistent, no-nonsense policy, unequivocally stating no Saskatchewan public servant gets trips and freebies from private-sector companies wanting to do business with government. And notwithstanding their grave-sounding tones, both Health Minister Jim Reiter and Premier Scott Moe are offering too many nonsense justifications.

We learned this week, courtesy of a Geoff Leo CBC story raised in the legislative assembly by the NDP, that three ehealth employees were fired for taking “unapproved” trips paid for by Lexmark Canada, WBM Office Systems and Dell Canada, all companies awarded ehealth contracts.

Conflict of interest guidelines are there to avoid such perceptions of undue influence. According to ehealth annual reports, Lexmark contracts were $1,671,680 in 2015-2016, $489,439 in 2016-2017 and $494,766 in 2017-2018. WBM contracts were $590,050 in 2015-2016, $662,031 in 2016-2017 and $764,465 in 2017-2018. Dell Canada had a $69,639 contract in 2017-2018.

The employees of ehealth, which handles vital statistics for the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), were given vendor-paid trips to Las Vegas, the aforementioned PGA Championship in Charlotte, N.C., and the Indianapolis 500 — all timed with business-related conferences. Interestingly, most were actually approved by ehealth management, which is where the problem may begin.

There has been significant, still-unexplained upheaval in ehealth’s management ranks.

In fairness, Moe and Reiter noted at the legislature the three were dismissed from their government jobs (although a fourth appears to have left for another publicsector job just prior to action being taken). Also, there is no evidence successful contractors received preferential considerations, and both ehealth and the ministers stressed there is no evidence of misappropriation of taxpayer money.

But there is a big perception problem when a private company supplying a Crown corporation with its printing-related supply needs is doling out hotels, meals, flights and tickets to the August PGA Championship to ehealth employees involved in procurement of those contracts.

This was not — as Moe tried to initially spin to the NDP Opposition and later to reporters — the equivalent of a vendor company paying the flight and tuition credits for training radiation therapists to operate a linear accelerator the government was purchasing. (Later Thursday, Moe’s staff issued a “correction” noting that it was actually the “Saskatchewan Cancer Agency that paid for travel and accommodation, while tuition credits for training radiation therapists was built into the contract.”)

These were, by anyone’s definition, junkets — sometimes unapproved and against policy, but sometimes not. And just because some people were fired or because the events were investigated by outside legal counsel doesn’t necessarily mean the problems have been fixed. There is still ambiguity and policy inconsistency across the public sector as to who accepts what and when.

For starters, Leo’s story disclosed the individual who resigned just prior to the firing admitted to taking a couple of vendor-sponsored trips each year to locations like Las Vegas, Orlando and Austin — all of which were signed off on by ehealth’s CEO after the individual returned from the trip.

Evidently, this wasn’t just one rogue trip in violation of policy.

Moreover, while ehealth’s “official” policy forbids vendor-paid junkets, the old Saskatoon Health Region had no such qualms in its stated policy. And it is known that health region officials accepted vendor-paid trips to attend some of the very same events attended by the ehealth officials that lost their jobs.

Now, the SHA is justifying the old Saskatoon Health Region policy, saying not all vendor-paid trips can be considered a conflict of interest because some are for “educational” purposes.

When tax dollars are in play, vendors can’t be footing the bill for junkets. The Saskatchewan Party government needs to fix this.