Legislature ouster likened to firings at Health Ministry

‘My heart goes out’ to Lenz, James

Health Ministry researchers, found to be wrongly fired and yet to be paid out for their public dismissal in 2012, say the treatment of two B.C. legislature officers this week appears similar.

Ramsay Hamdi, a 28-year Health Ministry health economist, said he and his seven colleagues were assured what happened to them in 2012 wouldn’t be repeated.

But when legislative clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz were escorted by police from the B.C. legislature in front of fellow MLAs and the media on Nov. 20, Hamdi saw more similarities than differences.

“The only difference is they are getting paid with benefits and we weren’t,” Hamdi said. “We were castrated, we lost everything. Financially, we were pushed off the boat.” Hamdi is waiting for a payout that includes six years worth of lost salary and a pension top-up.

“My heart goes out to those two,” he said. “If they have done anything, to hell with them. But if they haven’t, they are in the exact same boat as we were. I don’t know what to believe.”

James and Lenz were suspended last week pending the results of a police investigation regarding their administrative duties. The clerk oversees the running of the legislature, and the sergeantat-arms is in charge of security.

Two special prosecutors have been appointed, but no charges have been laid and no details of the allegations have been released.

James and Lenz have said they have not been interviewed by the RCMP.

They say they don’t know the allegations against them, maintain they have done nothing wrong, and that they have been “deeply humiliated” and their reputations irreparably damaged.

Vancouver lawyer Mark D. Andrews said in a letter on behalf of his clients: “As the ombudsperson detailed in his report titled Misfire, it was only six years ago that a rushed decision, guided by suspicion and a flawed investigation, led to the wrongful termination and public humiliation of seven employees of the Ministry of Health, with tragic consequences.

“We respectfully suggest that it appears that those mistakes are being repeated in the hasty and unfair decisions reached to date regarding Messrs. James and Lenz.”

Hamdi called knowing the details of the allegations “the hard part.”

The Health Ministry researchers were accused of privacy breaches and contract irregularities.

“To this day I’ve never really been told what we did [wrong],” he said. “They were lines in the sand and they kept moving,”

Hamdi was at home when he was fired in 2012.

“The other guys — like those two poor people [James and Lenz] — were in front of their friends and colleagues and were frogmarched out of the building,” he recalled.

Ron Mattson, one of those Health Ministry employees wrongly fired, said he thinks the suspension of James and Lenz “should have been handled more discreetly.”

“It’s impossible to walk back such a public suspension,” said Mattson, a View Royal councillor.

Roderick MacIsaac was a University of Victoria co-op student just days from completing his term when he was fired. Months into the investigation, he killed himself.

B.C. Ombudsperson Jay Chalke wrote in his 488-page Misfire report in April 2017 that the ministry acted wrongly in firing the researchers. And despite what the government said, there was never an RCMP investigation.

Interim monitor Supreme Court of Canada Justice Thomas Cromwell recommended settlement terms of reopened grievances for the three unionized employees who were fired — Dave Scott, Ramsay Hamdi and the estate of Roderick MacIsaac. Non-union Health Ministry employees took the government to court and sued for damages.

A year after MacIsaac’s death, his family received a cheque for $482.53, pay for the days remaining in his co-op term. Cromwell has rectified the settlement amounts as advised under the ombudsperson’s recommendations, but sister Linda Kayfish said she has yet to receive payment.

She hopes the process doesn’t drag on for Lenz and James as it did for the Health Ministry researchers.

“Let’s hope they can resolve this in a much more timely fashion.”