Foot-dragging on health firings inexcusable
Unanswered questions: Government hides behind lawyers as calls mount for public inquiry
Responding to myriad calls for a public inquiry into those botched firings in the health ministry, cabinet minister Terry Lake said Friday he is exploring ways to respond more fully to the unanswered questions in the affair.
“I have been pressing to get more information out,” the health minister told me in a telephone interview. “I am trying to satisfy public thirst for more information on this file.”
But Lake cautioned that any further release of information “will depend on the legal advice we get.”
Government lawyers have been asked to examine what could be said publicly about the firings and subsequent fallout without compromising the privacy or employment rights of public servants.
Such scruples, one can’t help noting, were not much on display back in September 2012 when the Liberals placed eight drug researchers under the twin clouds of a public firing and a supposed RCMP investigation. However, Lake said that the concern this time is to avoid any repeat of the rough treatment at the outset of the affair.
The government is also seeking guidance from the lawyers regarding two wrongful dismissal suits arising out the affair, which are scheduled to go to court next year. Plus there are legal considerations arising out of the recently completed review by the comptroller general into alleged irregularities in the awarding of drug research contracts. That report has been referred to the RCMP.
For all that, Lake insisted he understands the public “frustrations” about the lack of answers and shares them. He hopes to have some definitive guidance of what can be released “within a few days.”
Still, it doesn’t sound as if the Liberals are seriously considering the option of any kind of public inquiry, meaning one headed by an independent commissioner with the power to take testimony under oath and subpoena documents.
When I put that to Lake, he said only that they are looking at “options.” Pressed for an example, he cited the possibility of a review by the independent auditor general.
Interesting choice. The initiating whistleblower in this affair, Alana James, was a staffer in the health ministry who took her concerns about contracting irregularities in research contracts to then auditor general John Doyle. Doyle relayed the material back to the ministry of health, triggering the internal investigation that eventually led to the firings.
The option of re-enlisting the services of the office of the auditor general was raised last year by former deputy minister of health Graham Whitmarsh, as Lake noted in talking to me Friday.
No surprise that the minister would be thinking about that connection. Whitmarsh this week added his voice to the swelling number of calls for some sort of public inquiry into the firings, citing the recent disclosure that the RCMP investigation into the allegations never really went anywhere for two years.
“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 an email Thursday to Rob Shaw of The Vancouver Sun. “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.”
Those key individuals, according to Whitmarsh, include some senior public servants still in the government. His claims have elicited denials and indignation from the government side, including the suggestion this week that the ex-deputy had overplayed his hand in calling for a public inquiry, because the firings happened on his watch and he signed off on each of them.
But the government pushback serves to underscore the significance of Whitmarsh’s call for a public inquiry. He’s long suspected the Liberals of trying to pin the blame for the firings on him and him alone.
By announcing his willingness to be put under oath, Whitmarsh is effectively challenging the Liberals to put the other key players under oath as well. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” says the would-be scapegoat to his accusers. “Do you?”
He’s a divisive figure in and out of government, given his central role in some of the most controversial Liberal government initiatives, including the carbon tax, the harmonized sales tax and the out-of-court settlement in the BC Rail case.
Whitmarsh now works as a management consultant.
But in arguing for a public inquiry, Whitmarsh is aligning himself with the Opposition, the public sector union, and a growing number of pundits and media outlets, including this newspaper, which published a powerful front-page editorial to that effect on Friday.
There are almost as many reasons for those calls as there are calls themselves. But they can be boiled down to a need to clear the air on a uniquely vicious and unexplained episode in the modern-day history of the public service.
Every day, those of us covering the story hear from folks who “know” for sure why this happened. A bureaucracy run amok. Sheer incompetence by the managers and the politicians. A hit job by Big Pharma. And worse.
To which one has to reply that if the public knew for sure what happened here, then there would be no need for an independent inquiry. Instead, the need is compelling.