BC Liberals Forced to Reinstate Wrongly Fired Therapeutics Initiative Employees

Even though the BC Liberals have restored funding to Therapeutics Initiative (TI) and has reinstated two of its wrongfully dismissed employees, while another committed suicide who had his PhD and career blocked, the Liberals continue to play hardball with other TI employees, even with one has been elected city councillor. The Liberals are using millions of dollars in government funds to fight lawsuits over these dismissals in the hope that they can financially exhaust these employees. By tying this up in the courts, the BC Liberals are following the same strategy they used with BC Rail - we can't say anything because it's before the courts. 

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A city councillor in Greater Victoria is headed to court confident his name will be cleared after his job was axed as part of a mass firing by the B.C. Health Ministry. Coun. Ron Mattson of View Royal says the government has no evidence against him. "I am confident the trial will exonerate me, hopefully in time for the municipal election this November," Mattson said.

Last week, the B.C. government announced its second out-of-court settlement after the Health Ministry fired seven employees after a probe in May 2012 into allegations of conflict of interest, inappropriate conduct and data mismanagement in its pharmaceutical services division. Two other contractors lost their contracts as a result of the investigation. ...

B.C. Opposition health critic Judy Darcy said Tuesday the government should admit the mistakes made in its investigation and settle all of the outstanding wrongful dismissal lawsuits. "They ought to accelerate the process and settle up with the people whose reputations have been ruined and whose personal lives are in shambles," Darcy said.

Mattson's trial is scheduled for 10 days beginning Oct. 20. Defence lawyer Chris Siver said the government has failed to show "one scintilla of evidence" that his client did anything wrong at any time. "What Ron wants is to be exonerated," Siver said. "If we do that through a trial process, that has the possibility of exposing the investigation to be not completely competent, then that will be the government's choice."

The government on Friday re-hired distinguished drug researcher Malcolm Maclure as a consultant on research and evidence development and, in an about-face by the provincial government, praised him for his work in health-data privacy research. In turn, he settled his wrongful dismissal civil suit.

In March, Robert Neil Hart, the ministry's former director of data access, research and stewardship, was also rehired as a "demonstration of the government's continuing confidence in him," according to an agreed statement of facts.

In the remaining wrongful dismissal lawsuits, the government is defending itself. Nothing has been proven in court. University of Victoria professor Rebecca Warburton is suing the B.C. government and health minister for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract. In its counter-claim, the government says she was fired with cause. Warburton shared a codirector of research title with Maclure within the Health Ministry. Warburton does not yet have a court date, but said she has been willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement all along. The government can't prove a wrongdoing that never happened, she said.

"They delay at every stage at every chance they can in the hopes we'll run out of money and go away," said Warburton, Tuesday. "I'm confident I'm going to be exonerated - I'm not confident about when," Warburton said. "When this gets to court, this will be very bad for the government. If they were smart, they would try to keep it out of court."

Three of the fired Health Ministry employees - senior researcher David Scott, senior economist Ramsay Hamdi and University of Victoria co-op student Roderick MacIsaac - were members of the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union. The union will not comment on how their grievances were resolved. According to other researchers, Hamdi now has a contract to analyze data for UVic's Alzheimer Drug Therapy Initiative.

The third union employee, Roderick MacIsaac, committed suicide in January 2013. He was evaluating the safety, effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the smoking-cessation program for the government. He was let go three days before his co-op term ended.

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=6c5be414-9c88-4409-b8b3-c268ae197b29

You know that when a government announces something on Friday afternoon, it means the announcement reflects badly on them and it hopes that the story will die over the weekend. One employee will definitely not be reinstated. He was so badly mistreated he committed suicide.

The bad news story for the BC Liberals involved their having to reinstate "Malcolm Maclure as an evaluator of pharmaceutical drugs, two years after it trashed his reputation" because the Liberals faced the prospect of losing lawsuit involving him and other employees of the Therapeutics Initiative. 

Another employee, Bob Hart, had already been reinstated and more are likely to be reinstated. However, unfortunately, one of the wrong employees, Roderick MacIsaac, who was only three days away from completing a co-op program as a PhD student with Therapeutics Initiative, committed suicide, when the dismissal resulted in the end of any prospects of completing his doctorate or finding employment. 

The BC Liberals had originally planned to close the Therapeutics Initiative, originally set up by the NDP government in the 1990s, when they came to power because it helped identify the lowest-cost pharmaceuticals that were as effective as the more expensive brands. With major funding from the drug industry, the BC Liberals wanted to reward their financial supporters by eliminating this source of low-cost drugs. However, they initially ran into much opposition to ending Therapeutics Initiatives. Many speculated that the firing of many of its employees for alleged wrongdoing was another way of accomplishing their goal. 

The Health Ministry statement emphasized that

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“Dr. Maclure is renowned for his expertise in use of data for evidence-based evaluation, and is engaged by the ministry as a confidential consultant … on research and evidence development,” said the statement from the ministry.

“I feel exonerated,” said Maclure, who’d sued the ministry for wrongful dismissal in 2012 after it dumped him and a half dozen others over allegations of conflict of interest, wrongful sharing of confidential data and other misconduct. “I am happy that my collaboration of more than 20 years with the Ministry of Health has been renewed and that all the issues which led to my lawsuit against the ministry have been resolved.” Indeed, the ministry paid tribute to Maclure’s previous contributions to “improvements in health data privacy protection,” demolishing the notion that he’d somehow been negligent in that area.

Ironically, news of the reinstatement came three days after Finance Minister Mike de Jong paid tribute to the Health Ministry for its contribution to balancing the budget by reining in spending on pharmaceutical drugs. Maclure, through long involvement in the independent evaluation of pharmaceuticals, was one of the architects of the Therapeutics Initiative, the university-based drug vetting program that is as loathed by private drug companies as it is admired by big pharma’s critics everywhere. ...

Brown earlier this year reinstated one of the other victims of the mass firing, senior civil servant Bob Hart. He got 18-months back pay and a statement that cited “the government’s continuing confidence in him, as a loyal and dedicated public servant.” Hart, like Maclure, had filed suit against the government. Speculation abounds that the Liberals will settle other outstanding suits arising out of the firings. But I’ve also heard that they are driving a hard bargain, a reminder that deep-pocketed government can ruin people financially as well as by reputation.

Maclure, Hart and the others endured serious strains on their personal lives, not just loss of earnings and reputation. But some of the damage from this affair is beyond settlement at any price.  PhD candidate and researcher Roderick MacIsaac was working as a co-op student in the pharmaceutical services division when he was fired in September 2012. The dismissal, just three days before the completion of his co-op, effectively terminated any hope of obtaining his doctorate. Four months later he killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. ...

The search of his computer also determined “he was working on a document he had created related to the events that were causing him significant stress.”

Family members say the document was a lengthy airing of his frustrations about the Health Ministry’s treatment of him. “He just couldn’t believe anyone could get away with doing something like this in this day and age,” MacIsaac’s brother in law, Doug Kayfish, told Cindy Harnett of the Victoria Times Colonist.

Back when this case first broke, the then minister of health Margaret MacDiarmid was only in her second day in the portfolio. Later she promised a fuller accounting. None was forthcoming before she was defeated in the general election.

Right after the election, her deputy throughout her time as minister, Graham Whitmarsh, was terminated with $250,000 in severance. Readers may recall that during an earlier stint as deputy minister of finance, he waived repayment of legal fees for the two ex-Liberal aides who pleaded guilty in the BC Rail case.

The Liberals gave no reason for the Whitmarsh firing, saying only that it was a “personnel matter” Ironically, that excuse was also the refuge taken by the Health Ministry Friday in explaining why current minister Terry Lake couldn’t possibly comment on the reinstatement of Maclure.

That justification is as inadequate as it is outrageous.

This affair damaged several lives and, arguably, destroyed one of them.

By the government’s own account, it began with an anonymous accusation, relayed to the Ministry of Health from the office of the auditor general. It included a lengthy investigation, some of it undertaken by people still in government, costing $3.4 million.

It raised questions about whether Maclure and the others were targeted for their involvement in the independent evaluation of pharmaceutical drugs in general and the Therapeutics Initiative in particular. By taking refuge in the excuse of this being “a personnel matter,” the minister fuels suspicions that he’s providing cover for something more sinister.

The cone of silence won’t do. The public is entitled to a full accounting of what happened, who among those still on the public payroll is to blame, what it is costing to settle and how to make sure it never happens again. Anything less looks like a coverup, plain and simple.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Vaughn+Palmer+Health+Ministry+some+ex...

Even though two of the seven fired Therapeutics Initiative employees have been reinstated, but only after two years and the suicide of a third who lost not only his job but any chance to complete his almost finished PhD, the BC Liberals have achieved their goal - a chill, not only on which drugs combine equivalent efficacy with low cost and which was hated by big pharma, it sends a chill to all research that runs counter to the Liberals interests. 

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The provincial Health Ministry looks to be trying to mend fences with drug researchers and close the book on a scandal that’s dragged on for almost two years. A July 18 media release boasts that the department has rehired a “renowned” medical-data expert. 

But one academic told the Straight a “chill” remains over pharmaceutical investigations in B.C.

“Things will never go back to the way they were,” said Alan Cassels, a drug-policy researcher affiliated with the University of Victoria. “There is probably almost two dozen people who I think have been affected, whose research projects have been shut down, who have been blacklisted, who have had data access denied. So in my opinion, this fixes almost nothing.” ...

“The government has proven itself perfectly capable of shutting down important public-interest research,” he said. “If they’ve done it once, they can do it again.”

The Ministry of Health refused to grant the Straight an interview on the topic, as it has done for roughly the past 18 months.

Adrian Dix is a long-time champion of UBC’s Therapeutics Initiative, one of the academic bodies that was caught up in the ministry’s clampdown. In a telephone interview, the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway argued the public remains without an explanation for why the ministry reacted so severely to alleged misconduct that the province’s information and privacy commissioner deemed relatively minor.

“The damage at a personal level has been great; the damage to the system of drug evaluation, though, has been even more,” he told theStraight. “There was significant drug-evaluation capacity within the Ministry of Health and that has been permanently damaged by this.”

http://www.straight.com/news/690591/drug-policy-researcher-warns-chill-h...

The BC Liberals have been involved in a three year long series of lies with regard to the dismissal of these employees that has only been revealed through Freedom of Information requests as the following article shows. 

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RCMP officers were blindsided by the B.C. government’s claim that they were investigating eight fired Health Ministry researchers, and never conducted a criminal investigation because the ministry never provided any evidence of wrongdoing, internal records show.

Mounties weren’t warned that Margaret MacDiarmid, who was then the health minister, would announce she had sent the case to the RCMP at the Sept. 6, 2012 press conference where she announced the employee firings, newly released emails show.

Despite claims from MacDiarmid’s ministry that its had “provided the RCMP with interim results of an internal investigation,” RCMP emails show the ministry simply gave “high level explanations of the allegations,” and that “the province’s investigation had not reached any conclusions that could support a criminal investigation.”

RCMP investigators tried five times over almost two years to get more information, but received none of the reports the Health Ministry had promised into what it had publicly billed as one of the biggest privacy breaches in B.C. history.

The Mounties closed the file on July 16, 2014, and informed the province. But it wasn’t until seven months later that the government publicly admitted it no longer expected police to pursue the matter.

The records, obtained by The Vancouver Sun through the federal Access to Information Act, show that the B.C. government repeatedly pointed to an RCMP investigation over several years, while at the same time doing virtually nothing to inform police about the case and failing to provide any evidence of a crime.

“Despite inferences in the media that the RCMP has undertaken an investigation or received information from the Province, this has not been the case,” wrote Const. Dean Miller from the RCMP’s Federal Serious and Organized Crime section, in a late 2014 report. “No tangible evidence or reports related to the allegations have been handed over. As such, no investigation has been initiated.”

NDP critic Adrian Dix said the documents “show a government that not just misled the public but misled the police. And it’s a very serious thing.”

The government “smeared” the reputation of the researchers by repeatedly lying about a police probe it knew did not exist, said Dix.

One of the researchers, co-op student Roderick MacIsaac, committed suicide after he was fired and it was suggested he was under police investigation.

An independent legal review last year concluded ministry staff botched the internal investigation, leaped to conclusions not supported by evidence and were unfair to accused employees.

The internal documents show the RCMP was reluctantly dragged in and wrestled with how to explain its role to the public.

Meanwhile, politicians kept mentioning the supposed police probe. At one point, the government even used the RCMP “investigation” as a reason to withhold public documents from a Freedom of Information request.

“Informing the RCMP of the matter was, I think, a responsible thing to do,” Health Minister Terry Lake told media, after announcing an apology to the MacIsaac family on Oct. 3, 2014. “It then falls upon the RCMP to look at it and see if it warrants further investigation.”

 But the RCMP had no information to review.

“At this point, we have stopped asking for the information and have concluded our file,” Sgt. Duncan Pound, an RCMP spokesman, wrote in an email to colleagues the same day as Lake’s comments. “To continue implying we are in contact with and potentially assessing the matter from a criminal perspective would be less than accurate.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/RCMP+probe+fired+health+workers+never...

In 2013, one of the fired Therapuetics Initiative employees launched a lawsuit claiming the the BC Liberals, who had received $600,000 in party donations from drug companies, fired these employees in order to halt the research they were doing into drug safety because the research could have cost the pharmaceutical industry a great deal of money

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The B.C. Liberals, which received “major” political donations from pharmaceutical companies, suddenly halted drug-safety research that could have meant big financial losses for drug companies, alleges a new lawsuit filed Monday against the provincial government.

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria by William (Bill) Warburton – the fifth person to sue the Ministry of Health over a scandal in its pharmaceutical services division. Last year, seven people lost their jobs and several researchers – including Warburton – lost access to key health data, which was used to investigate possible harmful side-effects from some prescription drugs.

Four of those fired health employees – including Warburton’s wife, Rebecca – have filed wrongful-dismissal lawsuits. Two union employees have filed grievances. The seventh person, a PhD co-op student who was fired three days before his work contract ended, was found dead in December. ...

Bill Warburton’s lawsuit goes further than the other four in alleging a link between powerful pharmaceutical companies and the termination of the employees.

“Warburton’s research ... included investigation of harmful side-effects, including mortality, and risk assessment of drugs purchased by the Province through its programs, and had the potential of disrupting financially significant payments to large pharmaceutical companies,” says the lawsuit. The allegations have not been proven in court.

“The Liberal Party was receiving significant contributions from these drug companies, and the Province was eliminating drug safety programs that could cause restrictions on sales of the products of these drug companies ... and these actions includ[ed] ending drug analysis programs such as that of Dr. Warburton and of the Therapeutics Initiative at the University of British Columbia.”

The NDP has made the Therapeutics Initiative an election issue, by making a campaign promise to bring back the drug-review agency if elected to form government. ...

Warburton’s lawsuit denies the ministry’s claims that he attempted to obtain improper access to certain provincial data.

He claimed the ministry’s investigation was “flawed” and conducted by “inexperienced investigators,” and that press releases issued by the ministry about the scandal were defamatory.

“The Province’s acts against Dr Warburton are part of a bad faith program by the Defendants to end the investigation of harmful effects of drugs which risk leading to diminishing payments to their political contributors, and constitute misfeasance in public office as the Defendants were aware that their deliberate acts against Dr. Warburton were illegal and would likely harm him,” the document says.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Liberal+government+halted+drug+safety+r...

Here is the Paul Webster article in the Vancouver Observer, which reveals that the internationally respected Therapeutics Intiaitive was saving the BC Liberal government $500 million in pharmaceutical costs and the lowest average drug cost in Canada while the Therapeutics Initiative program only cost $500,000 annually. No wonder the drug companies were putting pressure on the Liberals to shut it down before it spread elsewhere. 

The five page article goes into even more detail on this betrayal of BCers, patients, taxpayers, and Therapeutics Inititiative employees by the BC Liberals.

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As word circulates the BC government is gutting the province’s ability to hold drug companies accountable if they sell risky, overpriced pills, questions are piling up.

There are lots of bottom-line reasons for people to care. BC taxpayers spend more than a billion dollars a year on pills purchased by PharmaCare Plan, and the average citizen spends a further $575 out of pocket on them. That means BC’s drug industry – the legal one, that is -- is similar in scale to the forestry industry. And unlike our forests, the number of pills popped in the province is growing about 10 per cent every year. BC government spending on PharmaCare -- which pays for drugs for seniors and people with disabilities -- has increased roughly 30 percent since 2005.

So controlling drug costs is clearly crucial -- both to the government and the public at large.

Given all this, it this seems strange that over the past year the government has spent well over a million dollars on a legal campaign to investigate and fire its very own team of experts on probing how best to ensure drugs are both safe and affordable.

These were the people – researchers skilled in using data to probe drug safety and effectiveness -- who stood up for taxpayers, the elderly and the ill in the face of pressure from the famously aggressive, powerful international companies presiding over the trillion-dollar global pharma industry. Just weeks ago, these experts released a study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry revealing an “exponential rise” in antipsychotic drug prescriptions for youths issued by BC psychiatrists, family physicians and pediatricians for conditions these drugs are not intended to treat. “This is of great concern” the study warned, given “serious metabolic side effects that may predispose these youth to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.”

Picking which drugs to include within the provincial drug plan, and how much to pay their manufacturers, is a tough task for officials facing competing pressures from pharmaceutical companies, physicians, patients, and numerous public watchdog groups. Their ability to do it stems in good part from the 1996 creation of thePharmaNet database, which researchers use to help guide government healthcare policies, British Columbia has one of the most thorough (and under-appreciated) drug safety systems in the world.

The biggest endorsement of the PharmaNet data resides in the fact B.C. has the lowest per capita drug costs in Canada. Based on data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, B.C. has succeeded in reducing spending on pharmaceuticals by as much as $500 million a year since 2008. A good deal of this massive restraint on payments to pharmaceutical companies has been guided by the revelations scientists tease from PharmaNet. ...

The TI is estimated to have saved the province an estimated $500-million in unnecessary drug expenditures. All for a cost of about $550,000 annually. But last September, the Ministry of Health told the Therapeutics Initiative to stop work pending the outcome of the government’s drug data investigation – despite the fact its probe never involved anyone working with the TI. In October, the government stopped making contract payments for the TI. ...

Even before it stopped funding the Initiative, the ministry blocked TI researchers from accessing data in PharmaNet, the provincial database is widely considered to be North America’s best repository of drug data, containing comprehensive information from patients, clinicians and pharmacists throughout BC. Colin Dormuth, the scientist who serves as lead investigatorwith the initiative, says the ministry’s maneuvers all amount to a government attack on “important research into drug safety.”

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/life/health/playing-pharma-team-christy...

Today's article by Vancouver Sun columnist identifies many of the people from Premier Christy down who need to be questioned in a broader public inquiry than the sad joke the BC Liberals foisted on the public dealing with the firing of the Therapeutics Initiative employees.

However, it also tipifies the MSM's approach of looking only at individual politicians and bureaucrats and avoiding any questioning of the pharmaceutical industry's $600,000 in donations to the BC Liberals and its lobbying of the government to shut down, or if not possible then curtail the Therapuetics Initiative examination of drugs in terms of comparative costs to cheaper alternatives and in terms of the saftey of the drugs. 

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 For all of Premier Christy Clark’s promises to “get to the bottom” of those botched firings in the ministry of health, the review she launched late last year was not likely to get anywhere without the cooperation of Graham Whitmarsh.

As deputy minister of health back in 2012, Whitmarsh initiated the internal investigation into drug research contracts that led to the decision to fire eight staffers and contractors and call in the RCMP.

He then presided over the fallout from the unprecedented firings, including a spate of wrongful dismissal suits, until his own forced departure from government with more than $400,000 in severance.

His successor Stephen Brown reversed direction, settling out of court with most of those who were fired, and reinstating some of them.

Still, when the premier later launched a review into what went wrong with the firings, Whitmarsh initially professed a willingness to cooperate. ...

But after a lengthy back and forth, Whitmarsh balked at co-operating with the review headed by Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil. Not out of any objections to McNeil — he characterized her as a “credible professional in a difficult position” — but rather because of the government-imposed limitations on her terms of reference.

Those limitations were very much on display in McNeil’s report, issued in late December of last year.

“This case is lacking in the reports, briefing notes, meeting notes or other documents which are frequently prepared in situations where discipline may be contemplated,” she wrote, drawing on her own legal expertise in matters of employment law and terminations.

The gaps in the record, combined with the lack of co-operation from officials fearful of being scapegoated, meant she was unable to determine who made the decisions to dismiss and what factors were considered.

“Two of the most difficult questions I considered during my review were who effectively made the dismissal decisions and what factors were considered,” she wrote. “Those questions remain unanswered.”

They remain unanswered to this day. And in light of last week’s revelations about the non-existent police investigation, there’s more need than ever for an inquiry to determine what happened and why. ...

Either way, the list of witnesses should start with Whitmarsh, his successor, Stephen Brown, and several other senior officials in the health ministry.

Current minister of health Terry Lake should be interviewed, notwithstanding his professions of ignorance as to what went on. Ditto Margaret MacDiarmid, who was health minister from the day the firings were announced to her defeat in the 2013 provincial election.

Nor should any thorough inquiry bypass her predecessor Mike de Jong, on whose watch as health minister the internal investigation was launched and the mass firing initiated. Another key witness, mentioned here yesterday, would be Wendy Taylor, who oversaw the investigation and who remains in a senior position in government to this day.

Given Whitmarsh’s insistence that he did not proceed with the firings before consulting other senior players in government, it would be necessary to check his version of events with others. ...

Though McNeil did not interview most of those who were fired and later reinstated, they ought to be heard from in a more thoroughgoing inquiry. ...

Doubtless, others would have a story to tell. But a proper effort to get to the bottom of things could start with the foregoing list. Put them all under oath and let the chips fall where they may.

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Vaughn+Palmer+Health+firi...

Here are more details on the research done by Bill Warburton, one of the seven employee of Therapeutics Initiative fired by the BC Liberals.

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Bill Warburton, whose health ministry contract was cancelled in 2012 amid a spate of firings, says his research that used data from British Columbia patients shows that about 60,000 people now taking anti-psychotic drugs will die prematurely. 

The finding is one example of the public interest research that came to an abrupt end due to a botched health ministry investigation, Warburton said. 

In a phone interview, he noted that his research shows there is a two per cent increase in mortality for people who use second generation anti-psychotic medication to treat depression, a "huge increase," he said. 

More than three million people take the drugs, he added. 

"There are 60,000 people who are going to die needlessly because they haven't been warned of the side effects of these drugs," said Warburton, a health economist, who in late February presented his findings to a seminar at the University of Victoria. 

Prior to the abrupt dismissal, Warburton had access to medical data from millions of B.C. patients and enjoyed many opportunities to present his research to the government for use in health policy. Now those opportunities are gone. 

In his drug research, Warburton's research looked at the health of people who had been taking an anti-depressant drug before switching to either a different anti-depressant or to an atypical anti-psychotic. 

Atypical or second-generation anti-psychotics include more than a dozen drugs produced by various companies. At least five are used to treat depression and as a class they are among the top money makers for pharmaceutical companies. 

Premature deaths 

"People taking the anti-depressants tended to die more quickly in the early years," Warburton said, speculating the drugs had a stimulating effect that caused heart attacks. In later years, however, more people taking the anti-psychotics died, likely due to circulatory or heart problems caused by the drugs, which are known to increase diabetes, he said. 

The study did not include anyone diagnosed with a psychosis or who had been hospitalized for any reason. Warburton found that over a period of 10 years, the people who switched to the anti-psychotic drugs were more likely to die. 

Until a couple years ago Warburton had a $1-a-year contract that gave him access to B.C. pharmaceutical data that he could use in his research. 

That contract was cancelled in 2012 as part of a botched investigation that led to the firing of at least seven people, a freeze on drug research and the suicide of co-op student Roderick MacIsaac. 

Premier Christy Clark and Health Minister Terry Lake have apologized for most of the firings and the government has settled lawsuits or grievance claims with the majority of the workers. Two have returned to work for the ministry. 

But two wrongful dismissal and defamation suits remain before the courts. One is Warburton's and the other was filed by his wife Rebecca Warburton, a University of Victoria associate professor in the school of public administration who had been cross-appointed to the health ministry as a co-director of research and evidence development in the pharmaceutical services division. 

Bill Warburton's notice of claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court in 2013 said, "The province's acts against Dr. Warburton are part of a bad faith program by the defendants to end the investigation of harmful effects of drugs which risk leading to diminishing payments to their political contributors." 

Speed vs. knowledge 

Often, not much is known about the safety of a new drug when it first becomes available, Warburton told The Tyee. There is initial testing for safety, but not on a scale large enough to detect something like a two per cent difference in mortality, he said. 

At the same time, there's often a strong desire to make potentially helpful drugs available quickly to people who need them, he said. 

"The stuff that we were doing is needed because of the trade-off between speed and thoroughness with the initial safety protocols they have," he said. "Any small side effect can't be detected at the time of approval. You have to do post market surveillance for the safety of the public." 

B.C. shut that kind of research down in 2012 and to his knowledge is yet to restart it, he said. "Stopping it from being done altogether is reprehensible." 

A health ministry spokesperson said that access to data for research was restored in 2013. While the new process allows researchers to apply for access to data, it does not provide the kind of wide access Warburton and some health ministry employees previously enjoyed. 

"Researchers can now equally and fairly access the data they need for their research through population data and the Data Stewardship Committee," he said in an email, noting the process has been streamlined and made quicker. 

Adrian Dix, the NDP opposition MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway, said Warburton's revelation reveals how much research was lost when the health ministry fired the employees. 

"In addition to the lives that were damaged by the government's fiasco in the health firings, there was just a huge impact on research," Dix said. 

Warburton's research -- on prescribing anti-psychotics to children and to people in seniors' homes -- was significant, Dix said. "This is exactly the thing doctors and parents and other health care workers need to know, and that work was effectively stopped by what we now know was a dramatically flawed process." 

Research on drug effectiveness helps ensure the government doesn't waste money on medications that don't work, but also protects patients, he said. 

http://www.canadianbasketball.net/chtboard/viewtopic.php?t=5539&sid=9e25...

Once again today the mainstream media, this time in the form of Vaughn Palmer in an article entitled "Health Firings debacle demands answers", calls for a public inquiry into the firings, but focuses only on the irregularities in the firings, without questioning any connections to political contributions by big pharma to the BC Liberals. He notes that Christy Clark commissioned a report on the firings by Marcia McNeil that was so narrow in scope that it raised more questions than answers.

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Those limitations were very much on display in McNeil’s report, issued in late December of last year.

“This case is lacking in the reports, briefing notes, meeting notes or other documents which are frequently prepared in situations where discipline may be contemplated,” she wrote, drawing on her own legal expertise in matters of employment law and terminations.

The gaps in the record, combined with the lack of co-operation from officials fearful of being scapegoated, meant she was unable to determine who made the decisions to dismiss and what factors were considered.

“Two of the most difficult questions I considered during my review were who effectively made the dismissal decisions and what factors were considered,” she wrote. “Those questions remain unanswered.” ...

Doubtless, others would have a story to tell. But a proper effort to get to the bottom of things could start with the foregoing list. Put them all under oath and let the chips fall where they may.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Vaughn+Palmer+Health+firings+debacle+...

The following article describes the callous manner in which the BC Liberal government fired Dr. Bill Warburton, his wife Dr. Rebecca Warburton, Dr. Malcolm Maclure, and researchers Bob Hart, David Scott, Ramsay Hamdi, and Roderick MacIsaac (who committed suicide over this).

However, even more important, the article goes on to describe how the pharmaceutical industry wanted this research shut down because "All of this research had the potential to seriously dent the international drug companies whose products were being investigated". 

The article also discusses how 80% of newly patented drugs, called "me-too" drugs, are simply much more expensive slightly modified versions of existing drugs that perform the same function with the same safety record and therefore aimed at increasing profits only. More than 60% of pregnancies now involve drugs, the side effects of which are poorly known in many cases. Therapeutics Initiative and Pharmanet BC through the examination of which drugs were equally effective and safe as the "me-too" expensive drugs had already saved the province $500 million dollars, and therefore cost the drug industry the same amount.

"A data stewardship committee that overprotects the security of the data and a government that conducts witch-hunts that demolish scientific careers may wind up not protecting the public at all, but leaving us exposed to ever more drug safety disasters".

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"We figured that someone in the ministry got their wires crossed," Bill Warburton says about what started as an obscure misunderstanding but has ignited into a threat to province-wide medical safety. But after eight months of growing financial and emotional distress, he now believes he and his wife are ensnared in something far larger than a petty squabble over data management.

Alan Cassels, a UVic pharmaceutical policy analyst, sees distressing implications in the firings. "Most of the enterprise of drug policy research has ground to a halt in B.C.," he says. "Many of the research leaders within the government are gone." The affected scientists were all closely involved in staging major studies of physician prescribing practices, and the safety of a wide array of drugs, he notes. MacIsaac's work, for example, was to assess smoking cessation drugs including Champix, which PharmaCare began paying for in September 2011. Warburton was investigating antipsychotic drugs that are often used with little medical supervision in old folks' homes and are attracting increasing scrutiny. Mattson and Maclure were deeply involved with a major study of Alzheimer drugs that PharmaCare is funding pending the studies' outcome. Maclure was also investigating whether physician prescribing patterns are influenced by drug companies: in recent scientific publications he has probed the medical basis for the vast sums spent by the B.C. government and B.C. patients on drugs prescribed for diabetes, depression, and respiratory disease.

All of this research had the potential to seriously dent the international drug companies whose products were being investigated, Cassels says. "The Alzheimer drugs, especially, are expensive drugs with huge potential for market growth internationally that face important questions about effectiveness. The pharmaceutical industry really doesn't like people doing this kind of research because it's independent research, it's clean and hopefully objective, and they don't have control over the results. So you can imagine how much pressure there is to discredit it and perhaps even shut it down." Not surprisingly, no government official has publicly validated his theory.

So far, the government has revealed next to nothing about the results of the investigation into the confidential records, underway since last May. In September, Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid issued allegations of misconduct in a terse press conference, saying that the RCMP had been asked to investigate. (When contacted by Vancouver Magazine she and other ministry officials refused to expand on those comments.) In an interview with Victoria's CFAX radio in mid January, however, MacDiarmid did say, "While on one hand we don't believe that anybody is personally in jeopardy because names weren't attached, it's still highly personal information....It's only been used for research as far as we know, and we just haven't found anything to indicate that it's been used for other than research." For their part, the RCMP are saying nothing; Corp. Darren Lagan, a Mounty spokesman in Victoria, won't even confirm they are investigating.

On average, every person in B.C. spends $575 a year on pills, which puts pharmaceuticals on par with the forestry industry-although with exponentially greater growth potential: government spending on the PharmaCare Plan-which pays for drugs for seniors and people with disabilities, and administers programs like the smoking-cessation regimen MacIsaac was reviewing-has increased roughly 30 percent since 2005, and the number of pills popped in the province is growing about 10 percent every year. The number of registered pharmacists in B.C. has risen by 23 percent over the past five years, in part because the variety of pills available to patients is so vast: more than 8,000 drugs are approved for use in the province, and PharmaCare covers over half of them based on detailed appraisals of their medical validity.

Provincial officials tasked with managing this vast pharmacopeia walk a fine line. Asserting budget and safety concerns in the face of pressure from the famously aggressive, powerful international companies presiding over the trillion-dollar global pharma industry requires enormous sensitivity. Deciding what drugs to include within the provincial drug plan, and how much to pay their manufacturers, is a high-pressure task that sees officials barraged with competing pressures from pharmaceutical companies, physicians, patients, and a plethora of public watchdog groups. Yet thanks to the 1996 creation of the PharmaNet database, which researchers use to help inform government healthcare policies, British Columbia has one of the most successful (and unsung) drug safety regimes in the world. PharmaNet uniquely includes records of every prescription filled in the province, so B.C. captures better data on pharmaceutical consumption than any other province or state in North America, explains Steve Morgan, a UBC drug policy researcher who has published a series of studies in recent years that validate the tens of millions of dollars invested in the program.

Among the findings that Morgan and his UBC colleagues have gleaned from the data is that 80 percent of the increase in drug expenditure between 1996 and 2003 (a period during which per capita expenditure on prescription drugs more than doubled) was explained by the use of new, patented drugs (dubbed "me-too" drugs) that copy cheaper existing drugs. Because the me-too drugs cost as much as four times more than the older drugs they mimic, they substantially raise pharmaceutical makers' profits. But few systematic benefits to patients are gained, Morgan emphasizes. "The rising cost of using these me-too drugs at prices far exceeding those of time-tested competitors deserves careful scrutiny," he and his colleagues concluded in a warning that sent a chilly message to the industry.

In his latest paper, Morgan revealed that while prescriptions were filled during 63.5 percent of pregnancies in B.C., "evidence on safety is limited for many of the medicines most frequently filled in pregnancy"-an unwelcome finding for the manufacturers of the drugs in question. And a 2011 study offered even broader advice to health policymakers. Based on a probe of pharmaceutical data alongside other healthcare data, he forcefully disputed the widely held belief that B.C.'s aging population is inflicting unsustainable costs on the system. After drilling into the data, he concluded that population aging contributes less than one percent per year to spending on medical, hospital, and pharmaceutical care. A major cause of health cost inflation, he suggested, is the rising price of pharmaceuticals. ...

There are few people who know more about B.C.'s passion for pills than Bob Nakagawa. A pharmacist by training, Nakagawa directed the Ministry of Health's Pharmaceutical Services Division from 2006 until last April, when he left the ministry to become registrar of the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia. (He was council president for the College in the late 1980s when he played a leading role in coaxing the province to establish the PharmaNet database.)

During his tenure running the ministry's pharmaceutical programs there were three highly publicized data scandals, including one that involved millions of personal files, yet while running the branch that governs PharmaNet Nakagawa never heard a word about the recent troubles that led the ministry to fire Malcolm Maclure, the Warburtons, and the rest. (He does acknowledge that according to his replacement in the branch, Assistant Deputy Minister Barbara Walman, the investigation began when he was still in charge.) And the news that Maclure was singled out "absolutely shocked" him, Nakagawa recalls. "I've known Malcolm for many years," noting that the two men helped structure B.C.'s drug pricing regime-a topic on which Maclure enjoys commanding international status. "He is the researcher in the world," Nakagawa says before adding that he's nonplussed as to why MacDiarmid fired Maclure: "From the outside looking in, we're not hearing very much," he laments. "People seem to think its nefarious pharma pressure. I don't know."

Tensions over the use of the PharmaNet data had been mounting for years, but in 2008 conflict openly flared after the provincial government-anxious to encourage pharmaceutical research investments-established the industry-dominated Pharmaceutical Task Force to investigate the work of UBC's Therapeutics Initiative, the province's leading drug research team. According to the nine-person force-five with ties to the drug industry, including Russell Williams, Canada's top pharmaceutical industry lobbyist-the Therapeutics Initiative (which won international plaudits by issuing early warnings about Vioxx, a drug named in 27,000 lawsuits for injury or death) needed "replacing or reconstituting." The task force was especially anxious to eliminate the Therapeutic Initiative's role in determining what drugs should be covered by PharmaCare-a recommendation the government quickly implemented, notes the co-managing director of the Therapeutics Initiative, UBC professor Jim Wright.

Seeking to put the situation in perspective, Nakagawa notes that many researchers express frustration with the ministry's unwillingness to grant scientists access to data-a point recently underscored by Elizabeth Denham, B.C.'s information and privacy commissioner. Last June, Denham met with a group of PharmaNet experts, including Dr. Bruce Carleton, a UBC pharmacology professor who, as chair of the Ministry of Health's Data Stewardship Committee, has significant influence over who gets drug data and for what purpose. In a report on the meeting's outcome, Denham concluded there is a "real and systemic" problem: "Researchers in British Columbia are simply not getting access to the health data they need to conduct medical research. This is unacceptable." Even more pointedly, in a passage that seems to address Carleton's role chairing the province's data committee, she complained of "data stewards with no efficient processes to approve data access requests and inefficient administration." ...

A data stewardship committee that overprotects the security of the data and a government that conducts witch-hunts that demolish scientific careers may wind up not protecting the public at all, but leaving us exposed to ever more drug safety disasters

http://www.chrcrm.org/en/node/5933

In 2013, Bill Warburton, an "international expert in analysis of administrative data for research purposes published in numerous peer-reviewed journals," sued the BC Liberal government and its Health Minister, Margaret MacDiarmid, because his research threatened the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. 

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The British Columbia government's attack on research that exposes the harmful effects of pharmaceutical drugs was aimed at protecting the profits of donors to the BC Liberal Party, according to court documents filed this week.

Bill Warburton, whose contract was terminated last July, filed his notice of claim in B.C. Supreme Court on May 6, 2013.

"The Province's acts against Dr. Warburton are part of a bad faith program by the Defendants to end the investigation of harmful effects of drugs which risk leading to diminishing payments to their political contributors," said the notice.

"[The acts] constitute misfeasance in public office as the Defendants were aware that their deliberate acts against Dr. Warburton were illegal and would likely harm him," it said.

The notice of claim names Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid and the province of B.C. as the defendants.

"Dr. Warburton's research related to the Contracts included investigation of harmful side-effects, including mortality, and risk assessment of drugs purchased by the Province through its programs, and had the potential of disrupting financially significant payments to large pharmaceutical companies, many of whom were major contributors to the Liberal Party who formed the government in the Province," it said. ...

He is a former director of the economic analysis branch of the province's ministry of human resources and "an international expert in analysis of administrative data for research purposes" published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, the notice of claim said.

He had a $1-per-year contract "to conduct complex data analyses at the Ministry of Health," it said. The contract gave him access to data the defendants were aware Warburton "required the contract in order to fulfill his other related research obligations which provided him with income and professional enhancement."

On Sept. 6, 2012, newly appointed Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid announced seven ministry employees had been fired or suspended and several contracts stopped as part of an investigation related to potential conflicts of interest, contracting and responsible data management.

Four of the former employees have filed wrongful dismissal and defamation claims against the government, including Rebecca Warburton, who is married to Bill Warburton, Malcolm Maclure,Ron Mattson and Bob Hart. Two others -- Ramsay Hamdi and Dave Scott -- have launched a grievance through their union, the BCGEU. ...

He is a former director of the economic analysis branch of the province's ministry of human resources and "an international expert in analysis of administrative data for research purposes" published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, the notice of claim said.

He had a $1-per-year contract "to conduct complex data analyses at the Ministry of Health," it said. The contract gave him access to data the defendants were aware Warburton "required the contract in order to fulfill his other related research obligations which provided him with income and professional enhancement."

On Sept. 6, 2012, newly appointed Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid announced seven ministry employees had been fired or suspended and several contracts stopped as part of an investigation related to potential conflicts of interest, contracting and responsible data management.

Four of the former employees have filed wrongful dismissal and defamation claims against the government, including Rebecca Warburton, who is married to Bill Warburton, Malcolm Maclure,Ron Mattson and Bob Hart. Two others -- Ramsay Hamdi and Dave Scott -- have launched a grievance through their union, the BCGEU.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/05/07/Health-Worker-Fired-Liberal-Donors/

In the following article Christy Clark admits the close ties between the BC LIerals and the drug industry, thereby helping to explain why this scandal occurred. 

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Paul Webster provides a good overview in the Vancouver Observer of the BC liberal government’s gutting of public-service drug research and analysis in the province, including this admission from Premier Christy Clark about axing the Therapeutics Initiative:

Unplugging the Therapeutics Initiative, the premier suggested, was in keeping with her commitment to “a businesslike manner” in running the government. “We are managing the costs of drugs as best we can,” she insisted in language verging on doublespeak. “Since I have been Premier, we have lowered the cost of generic drugs for seniors. And we have done that by working hard with the pharmacies that provide those drugs.”

But the need to control drug costs has to be balanced with “respecting the private sector,” she explained. The attack on the teams that audit drug safety and spending, she seemed to want people to believe, was necessary in “supporting an economy that is growing, that is going to pay for the things we need.”

Clark appeared to be suggesting the TI was being sacrificed to appease private interests.

Which would be a fitting outcome to the TI’s history, starting in the years when Gordon Campbell served as premier and began whittling down the TI’s budget and scope.

In 2008, the Liberals -- anxious to encourage pharmaceutical research investments -- convened an industry-dominated Pharmaceutical Task Force to investigate the Initiative. Five members of the nine member Task Force had drug industry ties, including Russell Williams, Canada's leading pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. The Task Force swiftly concluded the TI (which had won international praise by issuing early warnings about Vioxx, a drug named in 27,000 lawsuits for injury or death) needed "replacing or reconstituting."

The Task Force was especially anxious to eliminate the Therapeutic Initiative's role in determining what drugs should be covered by PharmaCare -- a recommendation the government quickly implemented, notes TI’s Jim Wright.

http://mycanadianshield.ca/archives/406

The Health Ministry fired the Therapeutics Initiative employees for allegedly for wrongful sharing of confidential healthcare data.  However,

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It’s worth noting that data breaches are not unusual. In response to a freedom-of-information request filed by North Vancouver-based journalist Bob Mackin, the B.C. government produced a list of 350 such incidents recorded between January 2, 2010, and December 31, 2012.

http://www.straight.com/news/396371/privacy-commissioners-report-bc-heal...

ETA: Even more concerning, is the fact that the BC Liberals were at the same time giving serious consideration to two proposals to selling healthcare data to a private corporation, although their own bureaucrats were warning them that this would risk massive violations of the privacy of individuals's healthcare data.

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At the same time that the British Columbia health ministry was cracking down on alleged data breaches in 2012, it was actively discussing selling patient health information to private companies.

"This is what was happening concurrently with the process around the health firings -- a significant effort by the ministry to conceal the opening up of health information for private hands," said Adrian Dix, the MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway.

Referring to 32-pages of documents the government released recently through the freedom of information process, Dix said, "It's laid out pretty explicitly in there that was the direction they were going in."

The records include notes on meetings starting in April 2011 between representatives of the Ministry of Health and Life Sciences BC, an industry group whose members include drug and biotech companies. The industry sought access to personal records such as drug prescription information and the government's linked databases, claiming the data could help B.C. become a leader in clinical research. ...

"Life Sciences BC believes there are two opportunities to drive revenue, without compromising privacy," draft meeting notes from April 1, 2011 said. One was "gathering health outcomes data through post-marketing surveillance/patient studies in British Columbia."

The other opportunity to generate revenue was the "sale of aggregate data from BC's Health databases." Aggregate data is consolidated data relating to a number of patients, so that it can't be traced back to a specific patient. ...

The government was open to Life Sciences BC's idea at the time, according to the meeting notes. "The Ministry has interest in discussing this topic further, provided that PharmaNet data is used only on an aggregate basis, with no disclosure of any personal or individual information."

But in the background, ministry staff had serious concerns.

Senior research methodology analyst Deanna Amos and chief data steward Chris Norman drafted a Nov. 18, 2011 briefing note for Graham Whitmarsh (who was directly involved in the Therapeutics Initiative firings), then the deputy minister of health. "While Life Sciences BC identifies that their industry's primary interest is in aggregate data, their proposals speak to the value of data linking opportunities, which would not normally be contemplated with aggregate data," they wrote.

Amos and Norman questioned what kind of "linkages" Life Sciences BC hoped to make with the data and whether that would make it possible for researchers to identify individuals. ...

Whatever happened to Life Sciences BC's bid for data access, it is not front of mind for Terry Lake, who has served as health minister since June 2013. When The Tyee recently asked Lake for an update on the discussions with Life Sciences BC, he said, "I'm not aware they've been asking for greater access to data."

The NDP's Dix said it's ironic that the government was firing researchers who were doing work in the public interest at the same time that it was discussing selling data to private companies. "There was pushback in the ministry, for obvious reasons," he said.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/03/20/BC-Health-Ministry-Selling-Data/

Even Micheal Smyth, one of the most anti-NDP pundits in BC, is demanding an inquiry now over the BC Liberals Therapeutics Initiative firings, although he also fails to connect the dots to the pharmaceutical industry's funding of the Liberals. One of the fired employees was Ron Mattson, who was re-elected as a City Councillor for View Royal on Vancouver Island in the midst of the scandal, showing a lot of the public did not trust the Liberals even before the revelations that there was no police investigation of wrongdoing by the fired employees, despite many repeated statements by the Liberals that there was an RCMP investigation going on and therefore they could say nothing about the firings. 

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Smyth: Government still refuses much-needed inquiry into tragic health-care researcher case ...

But even this idyllic retreat was not enough to protect Mattson from the emotional turmoil inflicted on him by the B.C. government. “I went through hell,” he said. “We all did. It was terrible. And it’s not over until we get all the answers.” ...

The workers were involved in researching prescription drugs for the Ministry of Health. The government said they were fired because of breaches in data-sharing protocols.

The government repeatedly said the RCMP was investigating, even though a full-blown investigation never got off the ground because the government didn’t supply evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Eventually, amid a flurry of wrongful dismissal suits, the government apologized and said it had over-reacted with the “heavy-handed” firings. Most of the workers were reinstated and/or received financial settlements But, tragically, one of the people fired — University of Victoria PhD student Roderick MacIsaac — committed suicide amid his public humiliation. “Poor Roderick,” Mattson said, shaking his head sadly at the memory of his colleague. “He was a shy, sensitive person. He didn’t have a lot of family around. They destroyed him.” ...

When Mattson was fired, he was manager of a ministry program that researched drugs for Alzheimer patients, testing their safety and effectiveness and making recommendations about whether the provincial PharmaCare program should pay for them.

His nightmare began when a ministry manager quietly approached him at an Alzheimer conference in Vancouver and told him he had to return to Victoria for a meeting.

“They read a statement and advised that I was suspended without pay,” he said.

“I was then ushered out of the office … in a complete state of shock. I then had to go tell my wife that our income was gone.”

The government told him there would be an internal investigation into suspected data breaches and he would have an opportunity to defend himself.

“I went through three months of hell,” he said. “It was incredibly brutal in terms of the way they interviewed me. ...

In a termination letter, he was told he had arranged to give confidential health data to an unapproved researcher at the University of Victoria. But Mattson said he never gave any confidential data to the UVic researcher or anyone else.

He sued the government for wrongful dismissal and defamation. Last year, he reached an out-of-court settlement with the government, which admitted Mattson’s firing was “a regrettable mistake.” Though vindicated, Mattson said it didn’t make up for the trauma he and his family suffered. “I was under the care of my physician for depression,” he said. “I saw a counsellor. I was on antidepressants for a period of time.”

His wife, Linda, also suffered badly. “It was like our world dropped out from under our feet,” she said. “I started having anxiety attacks and had to go on medication.”

The worst part, Ron Mattson said, was the government’s frequent claims that a criminal investigation was underway. “I had the added pressure of basically being accused of criminal wrongdoing,” said Mattson, who is also a View Royal municipal councillor. “You get this feeling that people think you did something really wrong.”

The government eventually said no confidential data had been misused and the RCMP closed its file. A review of the mass firings by labour lawyer Marcia McNeil found the termination process was flawed, the workers were subjected to intimidation tactics and the employees were not given a fair chance to defend themselves.

But, perhaps most disturbingly, McNeil found a lack of documentation on the firings and no one in the government would take responsibility for making the ultimate decision to fire the workers. That’s why Mattson, and many others, are demanding a public inquiry. “We want this resolved,” he said. “Roderick lost his life.

“For the people to have faith that this can’t happen again, and for the public to have faith that their government is not lying to them, a public inquiry is required.” He is absolutely right. This tragic case cries out for a public inquiry.

But the government is refusing to hold one, the final indignity to the people who were harmed.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Smyth+Government+still+refuses+much+need...

Here's another call for a public inquiry (by the Tyee) based on the history of this scandal. Christy of course has no intention of calling an inquiry that is meaningful because it would have to look at why the BC Liberals closed down the Therapeutics Initiative program that had saved the the government and taxpayers $500 million in pharmaceuticals, as well as the $600,000 in funding that the pharmaceutical industry gave to the BC Liberals. The Liberals will stonewall an inquiry, just as they did with the sale of BC Rail to CN. Nevertheless, this creates image problems for Christy and governments often fall from a death of a thousand cuts.

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Powerful government forces suddenly fire eight health ministry researchers and contractors, alleging they breached the privacy of sensitive patient files regarding pharmaceuticals and that the police are investigating.

One researcher sadly commits suicide; the others are pariahs, unable to work while government suspends their $4-million research project.

The ruling party, one of those fired alleged in a lawsuit, accepted significant political donations from big pharmaceutical companies selling products to government health plans. The fired researcher continues with a defamation lawsuit against a former minister. 

Then -- shocker -- it's disclosed there was no police investigation, because the government never turned over information on the alleged offences.

Most of the researchers, who had filed wrongful dismissal and defamation lawsuits or grievances through their union, are reinstated or paid compensation.

No senior official is publicly disciplined for firings -- and government refuses to say who was responsible or why it happened.

A veteran lawyer hired to review the firings complains about the lack of government records, and says that -- and the unwillingness of officials to cooperate -- means questions about who ordered the dismissals and why "remain unanswered." ...

Clark's own deputy minister, John Dyble, and Lynda Tarras, deputy minister and head of the Public Service Agency, are alleged by Whitmarsh to have been involved in briefings regarding the original firings -- and were therefore, he claims, in a conflict of interest in the government review.  ...

Leave the last words to Ron Mattson ..."Even though there was a settlement, telling the public there was a police investigation... you are still tainted. It was done to support the firings, and basically we all felt it was done to humiliate us and beat us down, otherwise why would you make up a story like that? We are angry," . ... "We want to find out who is responsible and we want those responsible to have to pay some sort of consequence, and probably the only way to do that is if there is a formal public inquiry," Mattson said.

Exactly. A public inquiry is needed.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/06/16/BC-Health-Ministry-Firings-Inquiry/

The pressure on the BC Liberals to have an meaningful inquiry into the Health Ministry firings continues to mount. 

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Graham Whitmarsh, the deputy minister of health at the time eight researchers were fired in 2012, told The Vancouver Sun on Thursday that a full public airing of the facts is needed after revelations the government failed to provide information to the RCMP and publicly portrayed a criminal investigation into the case when none actually existed. ...

“Given the recent disclosure regarding the government’s handling and representation of the activities of the RCMP, I believe a full, independent inquiry is in everyone involved best interests,” Whitmarsh said in a statement. “I continue to support a genuinely thorough, substantive and independent review in which I would participate. The government’s refusal to acknowledge the role of key individuals in these events is deeply disappointing.” ...

The Opposition NDP, affected researchers, and the family of one researcher who committed suicide after being fired, have all called for a public inquiry.

Whitmarsh had legal responsibility for the firings and signed the termination letters.

But he refused to participate in an independent lawyer’s review last year, saying the terms of reference were too narrow, the timeline rushed, and he feared being made a scapegoat when there were many other senior officials also involved.

Whitmarsh had also complained about a conflict in the review, because Premier Christy Clark’s top deputy minister, John Dyble, helped craft the terms for the review even though Dyble was part of the firings. Whitmarsh has said he briefed Dyble numerous times before the firings. Whitmarsh was fired after the 2013 provincial election.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Pressure+mounts+inquiry+into+health+fir...

The new NDP Alberta government's first legislation on its agenda is a ban on corporate and union donations to political parties. The NDP governments in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, as well as the government of Quebec, have already implemented such bans.

Vaughn Palmer argues that this legislation has important implications for BC. 

One obvious situation in which such legislation would apply is the $600,000 in donations to the BC Liberals by the pharmaceutical industry. A ban on corporate donations would have prevented the obvious conflict of interest the BC Liberals placed themselves in a conflict of interest by accepting this money and then reducing funding to Therapeutics Initiative, which has saved the province $500,0000,000 in drug costs through its review of drug effectiveness and safety. This gave the province the lowest cost pharmaceuticals in Canada, but cost the drug industry an equivalent amount. The legisltation would also have eliminated questions about whether Therapeutics Initiative employees, who carried out this research, were fired as a favour to the pharmaceutical industry.

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Since losing power to the corporate-funding-dependent B.C. Liberals in 2001, the New Democrats have supported a ban, recognizing that their own party had already made the necessary shift to lining up donations from individuals.

“We do get a good deal of support from trade unions, but it’s individuals that drive the NDP,” said Opposition leader John Horgan during an interview with me on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV last week.

“One of the planks of our electoral reform and legislative reform package is to do away with union and corporate donations. I believe that’s integral to bringing people back into the equation, and that’s another part of the platform that I believe will appeal, not just to New Democrats, but to Green-leaning voters and those really traditional middle Liberal voters. Not the right-of-centre types. They’re quite happy to have corporations pay for their political party.” ...

As for the governing Liberals, the party recently announced it had paid off $3 million in loans from the last election and was now embarking on building up a war chest for Campaign 2017. Notwithstanding the broad support in Alberta for Premier Notley’s move to stem the flow of corporate and union donations, not likely will Premier Christy Clark undertake anything of the kind. The Liberals have long relied on a steady tide of corporate money, even raising it from out of province sources from time to time. ...

The same cross-border thinking will likely be in play in 2017. Indeed, with the Alberta government forcing the province’s corporations to pocket their cash and their chequebooks, one can readily imagine the B.C. Liberals trying to carve out a bigger piece of that fundraising action for themselves.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vaughn+Palmer+Alberta+political+funding...

On Vancouver CBC Radio's "On the Coast" program from 4:00 to 6:00 PM yesterday, there was a discussion of the Health Ministry firings, followed by a phone in on the issue. All of the approximately 15 callers demanded a public inquiry into the scandal, with many tying the scandal to the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying influence over the BC Liberals, thanks to its $600,000 in donations to the Liberal party.

Another article discussing what happened in the Health Ministry.

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Take a look at how the Clark Liberals really operate.

There’s a drug on the BC formulary, paid by BC Pharmacare, to assist in smoking cessation, called Champix. Getting BC to stop smoking is one of Christy Clark’s stated desires. It was brought up yet again during the recent general election campaign.

Researchers associated with the University of British Columbia, operating as the Therapeutics Initiative, studied a number of drugs to see if they delivered value for money. Champix was one of them. ...

This drug, incidentally, has been studied by Health Canada, and warnings issued, about the increased propensity for people using it to commit suicide. ...

A leaked email from the Ministry of Health indicating that studies into Champix would be “kept in house” was tabled during Question Period. Clark’s health minister, Terry Lake, bobbed and weaved, trying to convince all and sundry he knew nothing.

But, in the interim, BC continues to dispense Champix — and because it’s the approved drug, any alternatives are not covered. Good for Pfizer Corporation. Not so good for British Columbians put at risk.

http://beaconnews.ca/blog/2013/07/christy-clark-touts-free-enterprise-wh...

The NDP in 2013 claimed that the Liberals stopped Therapeutics Initiative research into Champix.

Quote:

the NDP is accusing the B.C. Liberal government of putting politics ahead of patient safety in the case of a popular smoking cessation drug.

The NDP used question period in the legislature to suggest that the government ordered an end to independent research into the efficacy and safety of Champix, which is currently covered under Pharmacare. ...

Last October, the B.C. government announced that over 40,000 people had obtained a prescription for a smoking cessation drug since the smoking cessation program launched the year before. ...

The drug is also the subject of a class action lawsuit in Ontario over alleged side effects that include psychiatric problems, including attempted suicide.

The NDP says it has uncovered an email written by a former health ministry employee that was sent to the independent Therapeutics Initiative. In the email, the employee tells the UBC-based drug safety watchdog to stop their evaluation of Champix because "it's getting political and we aren't sure anyone wants to see a published evaluation."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ndp-claims-liberals-halte...

The demands for a public inquiry just keep getting louder and louder, but the BC Liberals have to deny them because the revealing the truth that Therapeutics Initiative had saved BCers $500,000 and identified harmful pharmaceuticals, while costing the Liberals' pharmaceutical industry donors the same amount, would be a disaster politically.

This scandal shows why it is imperative to eliminate corporate contributions to political parties.

Quote:

The most damaging allegation -- contained in a defamation lawsuit claim by fired contractor William Warburton -- is explosive. Warburton charged in 2013 that the firings were motivated by the government's need to protect the interest of big pharmaceutical companies who were also major donors to the BC Liberal Party.

"The province's acts against Dr. Warburton are part of a bad-faith program by the defendants to end the investigation of harmful effects of drugs which risk leading to diminishing payments to their political contributors, and constitute misfeasance in public office as the defendants were aware that their deliberate acts against Dr. Warburton were illegal and would likely harm him," court documents say. ...

Warburton's court filing lists several major pharmaceutical companies as making "very profitable drugs" that he was investigating as to their effectiveness, including possible side effects. His studies, Warburton claimed, "had the potential of disrupting financially significant payments to large pharmaceutical companies, many of who were major contributors to the Liberal Party..."

Warburton's court document then lists several firms, including between 2005 and 2015: Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada: $25,894; Pfizer Canada Inc.: $41,277; Janssen Inc. & Janssen-Ortho Inc.: $31,734; AstraZeneca Canada Inc.: $12,698; Eli Lilly Canada Inc.: $6,323. In addition, Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies -- an umbrella group -- is recorded by Elections BC as contributing $27,908 to the BC Liberals in the same period....

In 2008 a task force the government created -- with at least five of its nine members having close pharmaceutical industry connections -- recommended the Therapeutics Initiative be shut down. The president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies was among those appointed. The Therapeutics Initiative survived the report. ...

And that the B.C. government wrongly fired and tarnished its own researchers, frustrated any possible police investigation and then covered it all up can only fuel speculation about what else they might be hiding.

That's why calls for a public inquiry will only grow louder

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/06/23/Health-Ministry-Firings-Theories/

With the ever growing demand for an inquiry into the Health Ministry firings, the BC Liberals have finally conceded (of course, on a Friday afternoon when all bad  government news is released).

Quote:

With seemingly everyone calling for a public inquiry on thecontroversial 2012 firings of eight Ministry of Health researchers, B.C.'s minister of health has asked for the provincial ombudsperson to probe the scandal. ...

NDP Leader John Horgan has issued the following statement in response to Lake's letter...

After months of insisting there was nothing more to learn about the BC Liberals health firings scandal, Premier Christy Clark has finally conceded that the matter needs further investigation.

The choice to ask the province’s Ombudsperson to conduct the investigation is a positive step, but the political games Premier Clark has been playing on this issue for three years lead me to believe she’s hoping the issue will disappear in obscure legislative procedures. We will not let that happen.

http://www.straight.com/blogra/482896/bc-health-minister-requests-ombuds...

By having the Ombudsman, Jay Chalke, examine the firings, the BC Liberals avoid people testifying under oath in public, which was so damaging to the federal Liberals in Adscam. In addition, they have an insider of the very Department of Justice that played a major role in the firings and what happened afterwards. Chalke has just been appointed Ombudsman in the last week. In addition, the BC Liberals will no doubt say that they cannot comment on the situation because it is under review by the Ombudsman. That is, an ombudsman that they have just chosen and who himself worked closely with some of the people involved in the firing. 

They will also quickly ram through the approval of the referral of the case to the Ombudsman in a legislative committee vote so that when they legislature is recalled this summer to deal with other issues, they can refuse to answer any questions about the scandal by saying it is in the Ombudsman's hands. 

Can we say BC Rail scandal strategy deja vu?

Quote:

The B.C. government brushed aside calls Thursday for a public inquiry into the botched 2012 firings of eight health researchers, instead asking the independent ombudsperson to probe the case. The decision means the public likely won't get to see government officials, politicians and aggrieved civil servants testify under oath in an open courtroom — as was done in the 2009 commission into the tasering death of Robert Dziekanski, or the 2010 commission into missing and murdered women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Instead, the ombudsperson is expected to conduct interviews privately before submitting a report to the legislature that will look at how government made so many mistakes in its investigation, firing and subsequent treatment of researchers. ...

Ombudsperson Jay Chalke has legal powers to subpoena witnesses, take testimony under oath and search for documents. His officials "will have full ability to look at terms of reference and structure any review in the way they deem fit," said Lake. But that did not satisfy critics, who've pointed out Chalke worked as a top official in the Ministry of Justice between 2011 and when he assumed his new ombudsperson duties this week. He may be called upon to interview old colleagues and supervisors in a Justice Ministry that likely gave legal advice in the termination of the workers.

Opposition NDP leader John Horgan had said Thursday it was "inconceivable" that Chalke could navigate such a conflict. On Friday, he tempered his comments, calling the ombudsperson a good first step. ...

Others who've expressed concern about Chalke's conflict include the former deputy health minister who fired the researchers, Graham Whitmarsh, as well as the original ministry whistleblower, Alana James, and the former auditor general who took the allegations to government, John Doyle. James said Friday it's a "smoke and mirrors" attempt to cover up the case unless the ombudsperson widens his scope to include broader drug research issues, research contract irregularities and funding concerns. ...

An all-party legislative committee of MLAs must still vote to refer the case to the ombudsperson. The Liberals have a majority on the committee and are pushing for a meeting as early as Wednesday. The NDP, fearing a quick referral will prevent them from quizzing government about the case when the legislature resumes later this month, are calling for a delay.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Inquiry+promised+into+botched+hea...

double post