One woman’s courage shames a government

Sister’s story: B.C. Liberals apologize after she spoke of researcher who killed himself

For months the B.C. Liberals have been trying to extricate themselves as quietly as possible from a misbegotten decision two years ago to fire eight people from the health ministry over reputed security and privacy breaches.

Their method has consisted of apologies-by-news-release and out-of-court settlements whose common provision was a confidentiality agreement that precluded the victims from speaking out about the train of events that damaged their reputations.

All this accompanied by a near total silence on the part of Health Minister Terry Lake and his colleagues, beyond the mealy mouthed, approved-by-legal-counsel quotes in the news releases.

How did this happen? Who was responsible? What about the other, unredressed wrongs, including the tragedy of researcher Roderick MacIsaac, who killed himself four months after he was fired?

“Couldn’t possibly comment,” the Liberals would say. Privacy concerns. Personnel matters. Cases still before the courts.

Such convenient reticence on the part of a government that had been quick to leak the reasons for the firings, including the reputation-trashing insinuation that all eight were under criminal investigation by the RCMP.

But Liberal hopes of minimizing the political fallout were dashed this week, courtesy of a news conference presided over by Opposition leader John Horgan and featuring a singular display of courage by Linda Kayfish, sister of Roderick MacIsaac.

Kayfish mastered her emotions, looked into the cameras, and talked about a 46-year-old co-op student who was working toward a doctorate in pharmaceutical research, only to be ruined by his own government.

This was not just a story about policy breaches and court filings. Somebody died here, and the government didn’t have the decency to explain what happened, never mind make a proper apology.

There followed a wave of news coverage, generating considerable public outrage and shaming the government into taking action as well.

“Hearing Ms. Kayfish touched us all,” Health Minister Lake admitted to reporters Friday, after ordering his deputy to deliver the long-overdue expression of regret to MacIsaac’s family. “It forced us to really think about the need for an apology.”

He then described the firing, just three days before the completion of MacIsaac’s term as a co-op student, as “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed.” To which one could add a thesaurus-worth of characterizations, from “mean-spirited” to “bone-headed.”

The official apology and explanation will go out over the signature of deputy health minister Stephen Brown. Lake says he is also prepared to meet the family in person.

The Liberals also announced they were bringing in an outsider — Marcia McNeil, a respected lawyer with experience in labour relations and severance issues — to assist departing public service agency head Lynda Tarras in reviewing what went wrong here.

Wise move. Given that agency staffers sat in on the interviews that led to the firings by the health ministry, the New Democrats were preparing to challenge the government selection of the agency to, in effect, investigate itself.

Still, the news release announcing the appointment noted how “the public service act gives deputy ministers the authority to dismiss employees for just cause,” echoing the government line that the firings were largely the work of now departed deputy minister of health Graham Whitmarsh.

Whitmarsh, as noted here Friday, received $250,000 severance when he left government in 2013. The finance ministry confirms he is also in line for a second payout of $180,000 this year, pushing the total severance package to more than $400,000.

Still, some loose ends remain, including the government insistence on an RCMP investigation into this matter, despite no indication of anything remotely active being underway.

The Liberals also persist in misconstruing the June 2013 report on security breaches in the health ministry from Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. She did indeed fault the ministry for lax procedures, as noted here yesterday. She also confirmed three significant breaches of privacy and data security.

But her report did not link those breaches to the firings for one very good reason.

They were found by government and brought to her attention after the fact. The eight individuals were fired in large part for reasons unrelated to data privacy, systemic or otherwise, before the commissioner launched her investigation in September 2012.

Still outstanding are two lawsuits, one from fired researcher Rebecca Warburton, the other from her researcher-husband Bill Warburton. Health Minister Lake was still insisting Friday that the government will see them in court.

He should rather think about the damage done to individuals and to the pharmaceutical research community by the government’s reputation-wrecking, research- trampling misconduct in the other cases. Surely it would be better to settle the remaining two cases and put this mess behind the ministry and the community once and for all.

As for the one victim who is personally beyond redress, Kayfish, on behalf of her brother, asked for no more than an apology. But the Health Ministry could also fund an annual co-op position, to be called the Roderick MacIsaac memorial fellowship in pharmaceutical research.