FORMER DEPUTY MINISTER CALLS FOR INQUIRY,
Former deputy minister says full public airing of facts is needed
VICTORIA — A top government official at the centre of a scandal into fired health researchers is calling for a public inquiry.
Graham Whitmarsh, the deputy minister of health at the time eight researchers were fired in 2012, told The Vancouver Sun on Thursday that a full public airing of the facts is needed after revelations the government failed to provide information to the RCMP and publicly portrayed a criminal investigation into the case when none existed.
Whitmarsh holds key insight into what happened, which has never been made public or been part of any review in the case.
“Given the recent disclosure regarding the government’s handling and representation of the activities of the RCMP, I believe a full, independent inquiry is in everyone involved’s best interests,” Whitmarsh said in a statement.
“I continue to support a genuinely thorough, substantive and independent review in which I would participate. The government’s refusal to acknowledge the role of key individuals in these events is deeply disappointing.”
Whitmarsh’s comments come after The Sun obtained internal RCMP emails that show — despite repeated claims by government officials — the Mounties never conducted a criminal probe into the fired researchers, because government failed to provide promised proof of criminal wrongdoing.
RCMP records show the government was told when police closed the case file in mid-2014, though it wasn’t until seven months later that Health Minister Terry Lake publicly admitted he no longer expected police to pursue the matter.
The Opposition NDP, affected researchers, and the family of one researcher who committed suicide after being fired, have all called for a public inquiry.
Whitmarsh had legal responsibility for the firings and signed the termination letters.
But he refused to participate in an independent lawyer’s review last year, saying the terms of reference were too narrow, the timeline rushed, and he feared being made a scapegoat when there were many other senior officials also involved.
Whitmarsh had also complained about a conflict in the review, because Premier Christy Clark’s top deputy minister, John Dyble, helped craft the terms for the review even though Dyble was part of the firings. Whitmarsh has said he briefed Dyble numerous times before the firings.
Whitmarsh was fired after the 2013 provincial election.
He has since said he was surprised to read about flaws in his ministry’s investigation, after lawyer Marcia McNeil concluded in her review that the government’s investigation was badly botched, unfair to the accused and improper according to government’s own internal practices.
“I’m disappointed to hear there were flaws,” he said at the time. “I would have been concerned if I had known it at the time, but it was never brought to my attention.”
Calls for a public inquiry are built partly on the fact that McNeil concluded she was unable to obtain written records from senior officials on the termination decision, and that those senior officials most likely to have been involved all pointed to someone else. The government said in a statement Thursday that the health firings were not handled properly, but that the province has improved its processes since the McNeil report.
The family of Roderick MacIsaac, a PhD co-op student who killed himself three months after being fired in 2012, has also called for an inquiry in order to make accountable the government officials involved.
“For me it would be some answers, more or less as to why they would have proceeded that way,” said Linda Kayfish, MacIsaac’s sister.
“Why bother bringing up the RCMP when they weren’t going to give them any information, and continue that route?”
Kayfish’s husband, Doug, accused the government of lying to the public about the police investigation.
“For me it’s that they have been allowed to misbehave very badly in this, and I don’t see how anything is going to stop them from continuing to do this stuff unless people stand up and make them answerable for this,” he said.