Health minister Terry Lake may not have clued into it yet, but that idea to ask the Office of the B.C. Ombudsperson to investigate the 2012 health ministry firings isn’t flying so well.
Might have flown eons ago – had it been the very first inquiry – but not when it risks simply being the latest inquiry.
It’s a political bind of the government’s own making. Whatever moral authority they thought they had to set the investigatory framework on their own again was lost three or four investigations back.
Simply put: the public doesn’t buy the idea that the government actually wants to get to the bottom of this scandal.
Likely a bit to do with three of the government’s favourite words when it comes to investigating itself: out of scope.
Consider Marcia McNeil’s 2014 terms of reference into the human resources aspect of the health ministry firings.
Out of scope?
“Ministry of Health policies and practices related to research, contracting and data-management at the time the allegations were made; any changes that have been made to those policies and practices in response; the circumstances of any privacy breach or inappropriate data access related to the allegations; and decisions made following the terminations in the context of settlement of grievances and legal claims.”
Which pretty much covers anything of significance related to the scandal.
There was the 2013 review of the multicultural outreach plan headed up by deputy minister to the premier, John Dyble.
Out of scope?
“The review does not include external partisan activities or activities that relate to the use of caucus resources.”
Kind of a critical part to the outreach plan.
Even still – despite conducting 27 interviews, gathering 10,000 pages of documents and directing a forensic analysis of electronic data – Dyble and his team of three deputy ministers didn’t stumble across whatever it was that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor into the outreach plan only seven months later.
Which is telling, given how eager the government was a few months before to claim they had made a make-believe call to the RCMP and provided the police force with make-believe results of an internal investigation into make-believe crimes in the health ministry.
Weird, particularly given that two of the four deputy ministers were also part of the health ministry investigation.
Dermod Travis is the executive director of IntegrityB.C.
