Judge cleared air on clinic visits verbally, not with files

The confidential medical records of a Supreme Court of B.C. judge who’s presiding over the private versus public health care trial were not accessed to find out if he had a potential conflict of interest in presiding over the marathon trial, B.C. government lawyer Jonathan Penner said Monday in a letter to the opposing lawyer.

The judge, Justice John Steeves, merely gave lawyers for both sides verbal assurances that he didn’t go to the Cambie Surgery Centre for his sinus operation a few years before the trial began, Penner said. And after first disclosing the information during pre-trial conferences, the judge provided other information upon request, such as who paid for his surgery. Steeves said he didn’t pay for it privately because Vancouver Coastal Health did. Under such contracts, a clinic is paid a per diem amount for a bundle of cases.

Contracting out is meant to expedite long-waiting day surgeries when operating room time in hospitals for such non-emergency cases is elusive. Such contracts are not in issue in the trial; only cases in which patients pay out of pocket to have expedited surgery. Federal and provincial statutes prevent doctors and clinics from extra billing, but the plaintiffs in the Dr. Brian Day trial, as it is often referred, contend that such laws violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The trial is on a hiatus because the plaintiffs have run out of money to pay their legal fees and are fundraising through the Canadian Constitution Foundation.