A bitter footnote to the long-running controversy over the 2012 firing of eight health researchers emerged in the legislature Tuesday.
The seven employees and one contractor were terminated over a breach of protocol on how data from the health ministry was being used. It’s now acknowledged to have been an over-reaction with tragic consequences. Co-op student Roderick MacIsaac took his own life four months later.
After announcing the firings and saying the RCMP had been called in to investigate, the health ministry spent the next two years retreating and negotiating settlements and reinstatements. Premier Christy Clark and Health Minister Terry Lake both made full apologies.
There was one more detail to apologize for Tuesday. Despite the fact all the survivors have either settled or been reinstated, their pictures were kept on file at the front desk of the ministry’s Blanshard Building as possible security risks until this week.
Under questioning from NDP MLA Adrian Dix, Health Minister Terry Lake confirmed the photos were just removed Monday night, after Dix raised the issue.
Enhanced security measures for dismissed employees have been standard practice since a triple homicide in a Kamloops government office 13 years ago, Lake said. But leaving the health researchers’ pictures there long after the entire case against the group was abandoned was an oversight.
“I can, on behalf of the ministry, apologize today that they were not removed earlier … It’s something we should have done.”
Another vignette Tuesday illustrated how uncomfortable the government is with the issue.
Dix, who has repeatedly denounced how the government smeared the employees by involving the RCMP in the case, asked Lake whether that was a decent thing for government to do.
The question was asked at 2:03 p.m. For the next nine minutes there was … crickets. Nothing. That’s how long it took Lake to confer with staff and construct an answer. The answer was that it was considered a significant data breach and the government felt an obligation to call the police.
Earlier, Dix engaged with Finance Minister Mike de Jong on how a half-dozen former and current deputy ministers handled the case over the past three years. Dix said the current head of the Public Service Agency is giving briefings on the fallout from the independent review of the firings, done by outside lawyer Marcia McNeil. The entire group was cited by McNeil for not acknowledging their own roles in any decision-making, he said, and the PSA was deeply involved in the “shameful” handling.
“Part of the problem with the McNeil process … is people didn’t tell her the truth in the sense that she would not be able to identify who was responsible.”
De Jong described the firings as “a pretty dark chapter.” The PSA briefings are about a checklist on how to fire staff with due process.
Dix asked: “Why is the public handling of such a situation not part of the PSA’s seminars on this question … when the PSA and the government acted so reprehensibly on that aspect of the issue?”
The RCMP involvement was leaked to the media in advance of the firing announcement, in what Dix said was an attempt to buttress the government’s case by smearing the employees. The police never got any further information from the ministry and never started an investigation, but the idea that they were somehow actively involved was allowed to linger for two years or more.
De Jong said there were serious gaps in the whole process. One of the issues now being addressed is that public communications relating to firings are co-ordinated and take place fairly.
It’s striking how far and how deep the botched terminations have reverberated through government. And it’s equally striking how responsibility was spread so evenly back and forth that no one wound up being held responsible at all.
