Wrongly fired Health Ministry employees who have had the threat of an RCMP investigation hanging over them since 2012 have been told the ministry is not pursuing a police investigation.
B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake directed his deputy to write to six employees with whom the government has settled wrongful dismissal cases and grievances to say the Health Ministry is not pursuing an investigation by the RCMP.
On Sept. 6, 2012, Margaret MacDiarmid, then the minister of health, said the government had asked the RCMP to investigate allegations of inappropriate conduct, contracting and data-management practices involving ministry employees and drug researchers.
The alleged privacy breach involved large amounts of health data downloaded onto unencrypted flash drives and shared with unauthorized people.
MacDiarmid said the ministry provided the RCMP with interim results of its investigation. Seven drug researchers were eventually fired and one contractor lost his job.
The government has since settled with six employees and apologized for its “heavy-handed” approach, but had left the threat of an RCMP investigation dangling.
“I've asked my deputy to write a letter to the employees with whom we have settled, and to the family of Mr. MacIsaac, to let them know that the ministry is not pursuing any action by the RCMP,” Lake said Monday.
Roderick MacIsaac, a university of Victoria co-op student, killed himself months after being fired. The government has since publicly apologized for his dismissal.
View Royal Coun. Ron Mattson said he learned the government was no longer pursuing the RCMP investigation in an email from deputy Health Minister Stephen Brown on Monday night.
“It’s not so much that there was a cloud hanging over my head,” Mattson said. “It’s just the anger I feel that they did not come out publicly to say there is no RCMP investigation.”
Mattson said it’s frustrating that no one has been held accountable for the botched firings. What the Health Ministry has done in terms of the firings and allowing the idea of an RCMP investigation to linger is far worse than anything the health researchers were accused of doing, Mattson said Monday.
Last week, the NDP presented an email in the legislature showing that more than two years after the ministry said it was forwarding the findings of its 2012 investigation to the RCMP, the police said they had yet to receive the information.
The NDP argued the RCMP reference was nothing more than a political smear by the government.
In an independent review released in December, Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil said "the investigation was flawed from the outset” and that no one in government took responsibility for making the decision to dismiss the employees.
Meanwhile, an investigation the Finance Ministry’s Office of the Comptroller General began in 2012 into procurement and contracting procedures in the pharmaceutical research division of the Health Ministry is ongoing.
Lake said the Office of the Comptroller General is preparing a report that may be forwarded to the RCMP. “It is up to the RCMP to determine if they will conduct an investigation based on the information that they receive.”
Two wrongful-dismissal suits are still before the courts.
