Premier hints at easy culprit in Health firings
Responsibility: As review of aff air proceeds, Christy Clark looks to Public Service Act for guidance
Two years after an extraordinary spate of firings in the Health Ministry, Premier Christy Clark admitted this week her government had overreached itself and mostly got it wrong.
“I’m certain in my own heart that many people were not dealt with fairly,” she told reporters in her office Wednesday. “It was a heavy- handed answer to mistakes that were made.”
The comment followed her remarks on the floor of the legislature, where she offered the “deepest, heartfelt sympathy and apology” to the family of deceased medical researcher Roderick MacIsaac, who killed himself four months after his firing.
Clark’s comments echoed an earlier apology from Health Minister Terry Lake. He has also admitted that his ministry was guilty of a “rush to judgment,” which saw the firings of seven other staffers and contract- workers over allegations of privacy breaches and mishandling of confidential health data.
Lake has presided over a series of reinstatements and out- ofcourt settlements after his deputy minister, Stephen Brown, determined that “some of the employment terminations were unwarranted and/ or excessive.”
But for all the long- overdue contrition, that still leaves the question of what happened and whether anyone will have to take the fall for the damage done to reputations and lives.
The Liberals have tried to make it sound as if they were determined to get to the bottom of things, appointing respected Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil to assist the public service agency in a review of the affair.
The reach outside was necessary because the agency staffers were involved in the investigation that led to the firings. After announcing the McNeil appointment last Friday, the Liberals insisted she would be given all necessary access.
“It is expected that anyone within government will be available to participate in this review, and employees can be directed to participate if necessary,” a statement from the ministry said. “If she finds she is not getting the cooperation she needs, she will raise that with the head of agency, who will ensure, through the deputy ministers, that she gets the cooperation she needs.
“Ms. McNeil will determine if she needs to interview past ministry employees as part of her work. While we can’t compel past employees to participate, we have no indication anyone would refuse to participate if they were asked. If someone declined to participate, that could be stated as a fact in the report.”
Still, like any reviewer (“it is not a judicial or quasi- judicial process” Lake conceded), McNeil will be constrained by her terms of reference. And as the premier herself acknowledged, those “have been written by the head of the public service agency, Lynda Tarras.”
Nor did you need to read too deeply into the fine print of the terms released by the government to discover that Tarras had placed significant limitations on what McNeil could and could not do.
She was confined to reviewing what happened “from the point at which the allegations were received ( in the ministry) through to the point at which the termination decisions were made and executed,” a roughly six- month span ending in early September 2012.
Also off- limits: “The ministry of health policies and practices related to research, contracting and data- management at the time the allegations were made and any changes that have been made to those policies and practices in response to the allegations. The circumstances of any privacy breach or inappropriate data access related to the allegations and how they were subsequently resolved. Decisions made following the terminations in the context of settlement of grievances and legal claims.”
As to what she will be doing, the list of deliverables is as follows: “A review of the decisions and actions taken during the response to the health research allegations. Identification and review of relevant human resource management and investigation policies, processes and practices in place in the public service and whether they were adhered to in this case. Proposals for shortterm actions and long- term remedial approaches to address any actions, practices or polices identified.”
Not much leeway there, as I make it, for fault- finding or blame- placing on individuals. But perhaps the Liberals have already made up their mind on that score, judging from something Clark said in her office this week.
I asked the premier to what degree her own deputy minister John Dyble, as head of the public service, was accountable for all the rough treatment of public servants in this affair.
“Well, as you know, in the Public Service Act, deputies in ministries are responsible for hiring and firing their own employees,” she replied. The deputy minister of health at the time of the firings was Graham Whitmarsh, since departed from government with a severance package in excess of $ 400,000.
Was the premier saying that nobody else was accountable for the firings?
“I’m saying that we will see as a result of the review when the review comes out more detail about that,” she said. “But what I do know is that the Public Service Act sets out that individual deputies are responsible for hiring and firing within their own ministries. Further than that, though, I do not want to prejudge the outcome of the review.”
She doesn’t want to prejudge the outcome. But it sounds to me as if she’s inclined to blame the conveniently departed Whitmarsh, and let everyone else off the hook.