Let public see findings

The provincial Liberal government is right. Answers are needed, quickly, about what happened at Northwood this spring that led to 53 deaths there due to COVID-19.

The pandemic’s second wave could hit this fall. Understanding and correcting shortcomings that may have contributed to the tragic loss of life at the Halifax-based long-term-care facility is crucial and urgent.

Health Minister Randy Delorey and Premier Stephen Mcneil are also right that those involved — including Northwood staff and management, government and Nova Scotia Health Authority officials, family members and others — must feel free to speak openly, without fear of legal repercussions, about what they know.

However, the method announced Tuesday by the government to accomplish the above — a review struck under the Quality-improvement Information Protection Act — conveniently also allows Mcneil’s Liberals to operate as they seem to prefer whenever possible, behind closed doors.

Citing the act’s provisions, specifically the requirement to keep personal health and other information private, Delorey announced that only the twoperson quality-improvement review panel’s recommendations, expected by Sept. 15, would be made public.

The government cited the need to move quickly as justification for going this route.

First, it’s questionable whether only recommendations from the quality review committee — infectious disease consultant Dr. Chris Lata and former B.C. associate deputy minister of health Lynn Stevenson — could be made public, as government contends.

The legislation, though complicated, seems to allow for disclosure of information apart from recommendations, as long as personal health and other information is kept confidential. Surely, government has the ability to ensure the committee’s broader findings have identifying personal information removed before release.

Fifty-three families, as well as many others with loved ones now in nursing homes or anticipating that scenario in future, want to know what happened at Northwood, and why.

To fully understand any recommendations from the quality review committee, the public should also see the information those recommendations were based on, with, of course, all personal health and other identifying information removed.

A second review within the Department of Health and Wellness will look at infection prevention and control in all long-term-care facilities.

The government has faced tough questioning on why, instead of a quality review, a public inquiry was not called into both Northwood and the larger state of the long-termcare sector.

Public inquiries can also protect those who testify from facing legal consequences for what they say, and — with robust terms of reference calling for a preliminary report within a designated time period — findings and recommendations by mid-september would theoretically be possible, as well.

Government spokeswoman Heather Fairbairn said Friday that inquiries can “take a long time to initiate and complete, and are designed to meet other objectives than the review announced this week.”

The government, having struck this committee, is unlikely to change course.

But they can do two things. First, revise their plans to make more than just the committee’s recommendations public.

Second, commit to holding — at a later date — a full public inquiry into the state of longterm care in this province.