Health-firings lessons came with heavy cost

Next time some wrongheaded zealots whip up a frenzied inquisition against government staff wrongly perceived to be corruptly breaking all the rules, it might be a different story.

The last time this happened, in the notorious firing of various health researchers, the witch hunters ran amok before common sense finally returned to the ministry and officials started having second thoughts about what had been done.

That was after a worthwhile drug-research program was ravaged by the suspicions, innocent people were fired and one of them committed suicide over his mistreatment.

That led to the biggest ombudsperson investigation in history, by Jay Chalke. He laid out the whole bizarre tale and made dozens of recommendations to prevent it from happening again.

This week, he issued an update on how those safeguards are being implemented. Reading it will reassure many, as he is mostly satisfied with the progress. But it also rekindles the astonishment over how badly ministry “investigators” ran off the rails, and how far the crazy train ran before sanity was restored.

There’s also a sense of amazement that such a major overhaul of policies and protocols is needed in this day and age.

Government workers have a lot of protection of their rights built into their jobs.

There are pages of manuals about how to treat one another and how due process for everyone is one of the workplace fundamentals.

But it wasn’t enough to stop the mostly unfounded suspicions from reaching full boil and turning into heavyhanded investigations. Those resulted in the firing of all the researchers and assorted other repercussions.

So the extra, more elaborate layer has been built in since Chalke released his “Misfire” report 18 months ago. Also underway since then is a comprehensive makeup effort to everyone involved.

The reparations to the individuals involved were so complex the government had to hire a former judge to oversee the process.

Beyond the apologies and the ex gratia payments to individuals that added up to more than $1 million, the internal report that started the whole thing has been more or less expunged from the record.

It’s the various changes to investigation standards and suspension and dismissal procedures that might bar any repeat of the disaster.

Chalke found a loose understanding of conflict of interest and recommended it be refined and policies be tightened up. This week, he confirmed that has mostly happened, although there is still work to do in cases where government employees are working for more than one employer.

Internal investigations are also more rigorous now in observing fairness requirements. There is more seniorexecutive oversight of such probes.

The government watchdog office flunked its first attempt to upgrade the investigation standards, but is now on track.

One of the key aspects of the health-firings scandal was the referral of the matter to the RCMP, and the erroneous claim that it was “under RCMP investigation.”

There are new standards now for sending suspicions to the police. Senior staff have to be more involved in making that decision, and extensive training has been offered.

Firing employees for cause looks to require a lot more due diligence than previously.

A written legal opinion is required on the grounds being used for such dismissals. Labour-relations experts have to be fully briefed and concur.

The deputy minister involved has to review the whole case.

The same standards apply to suspending people without pay.

There’s also new public-interest disclosure legislation — a whistleblower law — that lays out how complaints about wrongdoing within government should proceed.

The drug review field in which the fired employees worked took a serious hit, and Chalke found it was a worthwhile program that should be restored. He said this week that work is underway.

Apart from the loss of a life, the whole six-year ordeal also came with a considerable financial cost.

The million dollars in makeups to the employees is just a start.

The ombudsperson review cost about the same. And his report lists numerous consultants, outside experts and other reviewers who didn’t come cheap.

B.C. gets a much more robust framework for internal investigations out of the whole affair, but at an enormous cost.