The discovery of 3.8 million extra documents — almost 20 times more than expected — could delay until March an independent probe into the 2012 wrongful firings of eight Health Ministry workers.
B.C. ombudsperson Jay Chalke told the legislature’s finance committee on Tuesday that the ministry originally compiled 200,000 “relevant” documents. The total has now ballooned to four million.
“That’s not to say those are all relevant records” or that the province’s estimate describes the same records the ombudsperson’s office was seeking, Chalke said in an interview. “But we still have to go through them.”
The extra documents also require more witnesses to be interviewed, he said.
The number of new documents is “shocking,” NDP MLA Carole James said in an interview.
James, the finance committee’s deputy chairwoman, said a 2014 review of the firings by Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil was hampered by a dearth of government-provided documents.
In that report, McNeil said she was unable to determine who ordered the firings or why, in part because she lacked “the reports, briefing notes, meeting notes or other documents which are frequently prepared in situations where discipline may be contemplated.”
“This just makes a farce out of any investigation they said they did,” James said. “I think overall this is one more insult to the researchers [who were fired] and to the people involved that the government didn’t deal with this well in the first place.”
Chalke’s probe, started in October 2015, was originally projected to take a year, partly based on the number of ministry documents.
Whatever the pertinence of the new documents, they must all be reviewed — “more documents does mean more work for us,” said Chalke. “We’ll complete it as quickly as we can.”
That would put completion of the report on the doorstep of the provincial election on May 9.
The probe was ordered to investigate what led to and resulted from the 2012 Health Ministry firings in which seven employees and at least one contractor lost their jobs, including one who later committed suicide. The ministry has acknowledged the firings were wrong and has settled out of court with the workers.
Chalke said the additional documents will not have an impact on the review’s 2016-2017 budget of $1.1 million. Operating budget for the year previous was $773,000.
He also told the committee that whereas he previously said he had no dealings with a 2012 Health Ministry investigation into the firings, he has since discovered that he was briefly involved.
During a one-week posting as acting deputy attorney general in December 2012, months after the firings, Chalke had a “brief inquiry from a senior deputy minister and made some inquires and left the matter for the deputy attorney general to deal with upon his return [from vacation].”
Chalke told the committee he sought legal counsel and the advice of former B.C. ombudsperson Stephen Owen. Both agreed his momentary involvement “did not impair our ability to complete the investigation.”
