BC Liberals Forced to Reinstate Wrongly Fired Therapeutics Initiative Employees

The story of the firing of the Therapeutics Initiative employees keeps getting stranger and stranger: the person, Alana James, who initiated the complaint that starting the firing process now claims she was physically attacked outside of work after the firings happened and had her dog poisoned although she is not sure if this has anything to do with the firings. Initially, her claims were ignored, until the Auditor General got involved. The Auditor General moved backed to Australia and James followed him there and then married him.

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Among all the intrigues to emerge after those botched firings in the Health Ministry, none is more likely to raise an eyebrow among the uninitiated than the saga of the whistleblower and the auditor general.

The whistleblower was Alana James, a Health Ministry employee, who earlier trained as a nurse and a lawyer. In 2012 she challenged what she saw as conflicts of interest and other questionable arrangements in the awarding of contracts for pharmaceutical research. Getting nowhere in the ministry, she took her concerns, first anonymously and later in person, to then auditor general John Doyle.

He did take her seriously, pressuring the Ministry of Health to launch the internal probe that led to the firings and the decision to refer some of the allegations (sans evidence) to the RCMP. Doyle also offered James legal protection as a whistleblower and secondment to his office to placate her fears about remaining on staff within the ministry. ...

Doyle left B.C. in the spring of 2013, returning to his native Australia to take office as auditor general in the state of Victoria.

Alana James left as well, serving as a caregiver to Gillian, Doyle’s wife of more than 30 years, who was chronically ill and unable to travel by herself. Sadly, Mrs. Doyle died last year.

“It was a great marriage,” said Doyle, “but in the last five years or so, she was quite unwell and slowly slipped to the point where I couldn’t cope looking after her.” He and James have since got married. 

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Vaughn+Palmer+Saga+health+ministry+firi...

Why is the ombudsman so interested in having the power and the flexibility to fully address the issues associated with the Therapeutics Initiative firings in the BC Health Ministry. Because the December 2014 review ended up being called " 'Accountability Gong Show' ".

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NDP Opposition leader John Horgan said the review failed to answer key questions, including who decided to fire the employees and why. The task handed to McNeil by the Public Service Agency was designed to be a "whitewash" of the government's wrongdoings, he said.

"It is a gong show in terms of accountability," Horgan said.

McNeil was upfront about the report's limits. "This report is not intended to, and does not, answer questions regarding the specific allegations against the employees," she wrote. "Nor does it answer any lingering questions regarding whether any decision made about the employees was legally or factually sound. This report focuses exclusively on the process leading to the decision making." ...

The terms of reference for the review, written by the outgoing head of the Public Service Agency, Lynda Tarras, were narrow. The Tyee has reported that the agency was heavily involved in the firings and that its new head, Elaine McKnight, was an associate deputy minister in health who in 2012 supervised the people who conducted the early stages of the investigation that led to the firings.

The Public Service Agency hired McNeil to look at what happened from when the ministry received a complaint in May 2012 up until when the termination decisions were made and executed. She was to look at the human resources processes and the steps taken to investigate the allegations.

But McNeil was explicitly told not to examine "Ministry of Health policies and practices related to research, contracting and data-management at the time of the allegations were made and any changes that have been made to those policies and practices in response to the allegations."

Nor was she tasked to look at the decisions that settled the lawsuits or grievances. And she was not given the power to compel people to give interviews or evidence.

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2014/12/19/Health-Ministry-Firings-Review/

Since the reviewer had no subpoena power, many people involved simply refused to testify. The terms of reference were so narrow no shadow of blame could possibly fall on anyone or the government. The question of whether the research into the efficacy and safety of drugs done by Therapeutics initiative was halted and the the firings set in motion to prevent pharmaceutical sales loss for an industry that had contributed $600,000 to the BC Liberals and that was losing $140 million dollars a year because Therapeutics Initiative was identifying cheaper, equally safe drugs for the BC Pharmacare program was prevented from being examined. The questions about the side effects of Champix, in particular, which has resulted in hundreds of millions in lawsuit settlements in other jurisdictions and which was being examined by two of the fired employees, including the one who committed suicide, were never included in the review. The smoking cessation program involving Champix was also promoted by Christy Clark herself. 

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Questions are being raised about the research two of the fired B.C. health workers were involved in, including Christy Clark's highly-touted smoking cessation program and a controversial drug named Champix.

Roderick MacIsaac, the co-op student who took his own life, and Rebecca Warburton were researching the government program that prescribes drugs to help British Columbians stop smoking when they were fired in 2012. ...

Pfizer's Champix, one of the drugs that the ministry was reviewing, has been linked to 44 deaths in Canada with side effects including psychosis and depression. According to the Ministry of Health, 68,000 British Columbians have been prescribed the provincially-covered Champix through the smoking cessation program since 2011 and the sales have generated approximately $20 million for Pfizer. The B.C. Liberal Party has received more than $40,000 in donations from Pfizer over the past ten years. Pfizer Canada says it "aims to have good working relationships with all levels of government in Canada."

Alan Cassels, a pharmaceutical policy researcher at the University of Victoria, says there has been some speculation about the relationship between the pharma giant and the B.C. Liberals. "A lot of people think there's another agenda than just providing the drug," he says. "You're providing a market for a major manufacturer that has — some have claimed — close ties to the ruling government."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-smoking-cessation-pro...

The url below gives the timeline of the scandal:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-health-researcher-fir...

ETA: Even though Jay Chalke, the BC Ombudsman, has major concerns about the BC Liberals sending the Therapeutics Initiative firings to him for review, which he has now expressed at the legislature's finance committee, the Liberals on the committee will almost certainly order him to do the review over both his and the NDP's objections. This will allow the BC Liberals to avoid having a public inquiry investigate the firings, including any connection to $600,000 in donations that the Liberals have received from the pharmaceutical industry. A public inquiry could examine whether the pharmaceutical companies influenced the government's reducing funding of Therapeutics Initiative and the firing of its workers, whose findings had saved taxpayers (and cost the drug industry) $500 million. Two of those fired were also examining the safety of Champix, a smoking cessation drug endorsed by Christy Clark herself, that evidence has associated with increased risk of depression and suicide.

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The government’s top lawyer has dismissed concerns that the B.C. ombudsman lacks the power to investigate the botched firings of health researchers. Deputy attorney general Richard Fyfe told MLAs at the legislature Wednesday he doesn’t agree that Jay Chalke would have problems interviewing witnesses who are covered by confidentiality requirements as part of their work. ...

“What we are saying is we don’t think it’s going to be a problem,” he said. The government has already agreed to waive separate confidentiality deals with the researchers, which were signed as part of out-of-court settlements after the firings, he said. ...

MLAs on the legislature’s all-party finance committee heard Fyfe’s testimony Wednesday as part of their deliberations on whether to refer the health firings case to the ombudsman for investigation. ...

Critics have called for a public inquiry, but Health Minister Terry Lake has said an ombudsman’s probe would be cheaper and faster. MLAs on the committee also heard from Chalke, who said he’s so worried about the confidentiality problems that he would prefer MLAs not send him the case until government boosts his powers.

“It’s simply unwise and unworkable to proceed with a review of this magnitude and significance with one’s fingers crossed in the hope that this issue will never come up or will work itself out somehow through the expensive, time-consuming and uncertain litigation process,” said Chalke, who started his term as ombudsman earlier this month. Attorney General Suzanne Anton refused to promise legal change. ...

The Opposition NDP said it would support a change to the law, which means the legislature could introduce and pass such a bill within one day. “We believe that has to occur,” said NDP MLA Carole James, committee vice-chair. Without it, the NDP won’t support sending the case to the ombudsman, she said. ...

Chalke, a lawyer and former assistant deputy minister in Anton’s ministry, suggested a legal change could be small and narrow, perhaps only applying in the rare cases where the legislature forwards investigations to the ombudsman. MLAs said they’d meet again later this month to continue debating the issue. If they vote to send the case to Chalke, he will be obliged under law to conduct the investigation despite of his concerns.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Victoria+lawyer+disputes+ombudsman+worr...

ETA: The seven living fired Therapeutics Initiative researchers and the sister of the eighth, Rob MacIsaac who committed suicide because his career and PhD program were wiped out and he was treated as a criminal like the others, have rejected the BC Liberals proposal for the Ombudsman to investigate the firings because the Ombudsman is required by law to carry out his inquiries outside the public domain. They also rejected the Ombudsman investigation because such an inquiry would not examine "what motivated the dramatic interference with research and programs which were improving the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs for British Columbians".

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Eight people affected by the botched firings from the British Columbia health ministry in 2012 say a proposed review by the Ombudsperson will fail to provide the answers and accountability that they and the public need. The B.C. legislature's select standing committee on finance and government services is considering a request from Health Minister Terry Lake to ask recently appointed Ombudsperson Jay Chalke to review what went wrong with the firings.

"After consultation with our legal counsel and despite our genuine efforts to find a way to make this option work, it is clear that our needs and those of the public cannot be met through an Ombudsperson's investigation," said the letter dated July 27. "Indeed, it is a legal impossibility." Signing the letter were Ramsay Hamdi, Robert Hart, Malcolm Maclure, Ron Mattson, David Scott and Rebecca Warburton, all of whom were fired from the ministry in 2012, as well as former ministry contractor William Warburton and Linda Kayfish, whose brother Roderick MacIsaac killed himself a few months after being fired from a co-op position with the health ministry. ...

While they are glad Minister Lake sees the need for an independent review, the Ombudsperson lacks the jurisdiction to get to the heart of the matter, the eight said.

"There is no escaping that confidentiality is a core tenet of his process or that his interviews are conducted outside the public eye," they wrote. "No amount of tinkering with his statutory process can change the fundamental mandate of the Ombudsperson." ...

The letter writers also say the Ombudsperson's role is not well suited to investigating the kinds of broad concerns they have. "The central matter requiring investigation is what motivated the dramatic interference with research and programs which were improving the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs for British Columbians," they wrote. "This was the direct result of our unexplained terminations."

http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/07/28/BC-Health-Workers-Ombudsperson-Review/

Vincent Gogolek, Executive Director of the  BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is also demanding transparency with regard to what happened during the Therapeutics Iniitiative firings.

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"We were actually given information that there was something going on at the ministry, probably at the same time the Auditor General got it," said Vincent Gogolek. ...

"We were just trying to track down more information because the person tipping us off made some allegations, named some names. We put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to get copies of contracts and communications around the contracts, just to get some idea of what was going on."

However, Gogolek's FOI request was refused, in part because of the RCMP investigation 

"[The government] said 'Releasing these records to you would harm the investigations; we're not giving them to you.'"

There are still many unanswered questions about what exactly happened, according to Gogolek.

"Just from what we saw with our FOI request — claims being made, taken back — there's just been a lot of confusion about what's going on. That may be confusion inside government, or maybe it's the fact that information is coming out that contradicts the previous public position."

Gogolek said it's important the public knows that proper procedures are being followed and has asked Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham to investigate the government's claims.

"What we have is a bunch of finger pointing. Everybody's apologizing, nobody's taking responsibility."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/public-watchdog-wants-tra...

When I summarized the Health Ministry firings in the previous post, I said at the end that the credibility of both the Liberals and the Ombudsman was on the line. When it comes to the Liberals, I was being extremely generous.

For many BCers, the Liberals have already lost all credibility on this issue when it was discovered in June that their claims for two years that they could say nothing about the issue because the RCMP were investigating the situation, turned out to be false. Despite the RCMP asking the government five times during this period for the information to start an investigation, the Liberals never provided any.

In other words, the Liberals were repeating their BC Rail scandal strategy, where they refused for six years to respond to any questions about corruption being involved in the sale of BC Rail to CN because it was being investigated by the RCMP. 

This article is by a family physician, Warren Bell, who uses his intimate knowlegde of the medical sector to outline the pernicious relationship between big pharma and the Liberals that underlies the firing of the 8 researchers at Therapeutics Initivative. 

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B.C. Premier Christy Clark and her senior ministers are using every tactic in the book to avoid any sort of public disclosure of what happened behind the scenes when eight health researchers were illegitimately fired, one after the other, in the fall of 2012.

As a family physician for nearly 40 years, I have watched the pharmaceutical industry infiltrate into political and regulatory structures, as part of the general corporatization of society. What the Liberal government is now doing is simply one more example of how bought-and-sold officials sustain this pernicious process.

The voices resisting exposure include three ministers of health — Mike de Jong, Margaret MacDiarmid and the current minister, Terry Lake — all of whom claim, in chorus, and for various patently irrelevant reasons, that the matter is settled and no further investigation is needed.

When one of the slandered researchers, University of Victoria PhD student Roderick MacIsaac, sadly committed suicide shortly after his firing, pressure on the government began to build. Not only was his death an unmitigated tragedy, but the subject of his thesis — Premier Clark’s publicly touted smoking cessation program, which included the drug varenicline (brand name Champix®), a product increasingly associated with severe adverse effects — threatened to challenge the intimate relationship between the BC Liberal government and the pharmaceutical industry.  ...

The relationship between the BC Liberals and Big Pharma had already been clearly mapped out years ago, with the formation of the Pharmaceutical Task Force, whose nine members were dominated by drug industry representatives, including — astonishingly — Russell Williams, “president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D), a national lobby group with members from some 50 drug companies and whose directors include the presidents, CEOs and other top officials from 14 of the country’s biggest drug manufacturers," The Tyee reported in 2007. 

When the report of this body was finally released, it became clear that its primary purpose was to either destroy or severely limit an organization that had become a thorn in Big Pharma’s side. This was the UBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, a research body with a stellar international reputation for cutting through drug industry hype and delivering accurate information about drug effectiveness and hazards. It was, for example, the first group to question the safety of Vioxx, which was eventually taken off the market in 2004 because of severe harm to the heart. ...

ts withdrawal also caused $28 billion damage to the bottom line of its manufacturer Merck. 

Christy Clark is using every political and legal tool at her disposal to cover up what really happened since the fall of 2012. The public needs to know if the premier's longstanding support for the bottom line of the drug industry and resulting hostility toward industry critics influenced these firings. ...

The only suitable outcome in this matter is for an outraged citizenry to exert relentless pressure on the provincial government, compelling it to come clean and allow the real story to be told. Anything less will be a perversion of natural justice, and a continuation of business — big business — as usual.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/opinion/big-pharma-behind-clarks-health...

Since no one has updated what has happened to the lawsuits against the BC Liberal government over the Ministry of Health firings, I have posted part of an article concerning the last settlement in December by the government with the fired employees, which happened over the Christmas holidays when few are paying attention to the news. This means the government has now settled with all fired employees (or in the case of the PhD student who committed suicide, his family) and issued apologies in order to avoid having evidence of what happened in court and the close connections between the pharmaceutical industry donations and the BC Liberals that drove this witch hunt. 

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The B.C. government has settled out of court with two doctors fired in 2012 as part of a scandal that involved whistle-blowing, multiple lawsuits, apologies, a call for a public inquiry and a suicide.

Rebecca and William Warburton were part of a group of eight health ministry workers fired by the province, which had claimed the employees inappropriately accessed sensitive medical records. 

It was later revealed RCMP officers were never given evidence by the government to investigate the wrongdoing which was used to justify the firings, despite the government telling the public an investigation was ongoing.

One of the researchers, University of Victoria co-op student Roderick MacIsaac, took his own life three months after he was fired.

 

TIMELINE | B.C. health researcher firing scandal timeline

Health researcher firings: FOI requests find nothing, says NDP

B.C. health firings: Ombudsman promises thorough investigation

...

B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan said the settlement clearly indicates the province's mistakes. 

"We now finally know that eight individuals were smeared inappropriately by their own government," said Horgan. "The Christy Clark Liberals took eight individual lives and turned them upside down." 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-health-firings-doctors...

In the video accompanying the article below, two BC journalists, Vaughn Palmer and Rob Shaw, discuss how the Therapeutic Initiative program set up by the 1990s NDP government has helped keep the drug costs in BC low to such an extent that it has been a major contributor in the containing the cost of Pharmacare. Palmer and Shaw note that this has led to major questions about why the researchers associated with this program were fired and strong suggestions that it was due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which did not like the lower drug costs that Therapeutic Initative was creating. 
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/vaughn+palmer+liberal+official+hook...

The Christy Clark BC Liberal gang are once again proving to be masters of delay and coverup, as they continue to not investigating what happened during the Health Ministry firings while smearing the victims at the same time. 

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Opposition MLA Adrian Dix had another go at challenging the botched handling of those firings in the B.C. Health Ministry. His particular target was the review of the affair by the office of the comptroller general, launched shortly after the September 2012 firing of eight drug researchers and not concluded until after a number of them had been reinstated and/or exonerated in June of last year.

“It seems to me that that was a long time for the report,”  Dix observed during debate on the budget for the Ministry of Finance, which includes the office of the comptroller general.

“Two years and nine months is a long period of time — period,” conceded Finance Minister Mike de Jong, providing a rare moment of agreement in an otherwise contentious debate.

Why had it taken so long?  De Jong cited “the extent, the complexity of the work.” 

But Dix quoted passage after passage from the resulting report which blamed short-staffing and a lack of resources. Quote: “All the individuals originally assigned to the engagement, with the exemption of project lead, either retired or left the ministry. The investigative unit team frequently encountered other challenges, which stressed the team’s already limited resources.”

For a moment Dix seemed to be getting somewhere when he asked who had been interviewed in the course of the investigation. “I don’t want to speculate,” replied de Jong. “I’ll have to get the information.” But after consulting his staff, he came back with a partial rebuff: “I am only able to do that with consent of the people whose names appear on that list. I can undertake to do that but, obviously, won’t be in position to do so this afternoon.”

Dix is nothing if not persistent. He can wait. But by that point in the proceedings, he and the minister were bogged down in an over who did NOT get interviewed by the office of the comptroller general, namely the fired health workers.

De Jong, relying on advice from comptroller general Stuart Newton (who sat beside him in the house during the debate), said the employees were never the target of the investigation. “The focus was an examination of contracting practices as opposed to a review or an investigation of individuals and individual conduct.” ...

But …. but …. but, Dix protested. Those individuals were under a cloud while the comptroller general was conducting his review. They remained there even after the government began reversing course on the firings via a series of apologies, reinstatements and out of court settlements. Indeed, the government repeatedly cited the continuing work by the comptroller as one reason for not answering questions about how it handled the firings and not calling off the RCMP, to which it had referred the case in a well-publicized press release at the outset.

“I’m not in a position to really stray from the answer that I provided earlier, that the view of the comptroller general and his staff was that this was not an investigation relating to individualized conduct for which there would be findings against individuals.”

In an effort to minimize fallout for the individuals, the ministry did extensively edit the report before releasing it last year. But earlier this year, an uncensored copy was leaked to Rob Shaw of The Vancouver Sun.

The contents mainly served to provide further evidence of the Liberals’ botched handling of the affair. First firing the health workers, then launching an investigation by the comptroller general, then reinstating them, then producing a report that insinuated there might have been something to the allegations against them after all.

Dix suggested Wednesday that the source of the leak was someone in “the senior ranks of government.”  But de Jong denied that the leak “was the product of a government action or a deliberate step by a representative of the government.”

Far from having ordered the leak, the Liberals were trying to find out how it happened. “There is an investigation underway,” said de Jong, “I feel obliged to put that on the record.”

A witch hunt in other words. The Liberals maintain they have to try to chase down the source of the leak, because the unredacted version of the report constituted a serious breach of privacy of those named within it, including the fired health care workers. Never mind that the main author of the damage to all those reputations was the government itself, not whomever saw fit to leak the report to the paper.

http://vancouversun.com/news/politics/vaughn-palmer-health-firing-damage...

The BC Liberals originally chose the Ombudsman to investigate the Therapeutics Initiative Firings, arguing that it would be faster than a public inquiry. Of course, that's not the way its working out thanks to their 4 million documents into Ombudsman Jay Chalke's inbox to examine instead of the orignal 200,000 they said were relevant.

Surprise! Surprise! Chalke needs much more time to examine them, and similar to the BC Rail scandal, things drag on into the indefinite future and past the next election for a four-year old scandal. Furthermore Chalke, because his name has come up in documents, has had to adknowledge that he had some involvement in this issue while previously working in the Attorney General's office at the time of the firings, even though he denied having any involvement when he was chosen to review the firings. His excuse: he has no recollection of his involvement. 

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As progress reports go, the one Ombudsperson Jay Chalke provided this week on the investigation into those botched firings in the health ministry left a lot to be desired. Granted, Chalke didn’t want the assignment in the first place. But the best argument for preferring the Ombudsperson over a full-blown public inquiry was the prospect of getting answers before the next election. Now that hope is somewhat in doubt

Based on what Chalke told the legislature finance committee when he took on the assignment more than a year ago, he should have wrapped up the work and released his findings last month. Instead, as he conceded in a disconcerting briefing to the same committee Tuesday, the investigation is months behind schedule with multiple obstacles still to be cleared. The Ombudsperson says the main reason for the holdup was a 20-fold increase in the documentary record associated with the firings, four years ago, of eight health ministry employees and contractors, one of who subsequently killed himself.

Initially, the government advised Chalke to prepare for the handover of some 200,000 documents associated with the case and subsequent fallout. Lately that trove has grown to four million documents — and this from a government that provided no documentation whatsoever to a previous examination of the firings by Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil. ...

Still, Chalke assured the committee that “we have no reason to believe that the large volume of records provided to us reflects an intention to give us a huge haystack in order to make it harder to find the needles.” Rather he insisted that the flood of material was mainly a function of the committee’s broad brush direction to “leave no stone unturned” coupled with “how records were collected and created over the years by the many government officials responsible for the matters that you have asked us to investigate. ...

During his initial briefing to the committee in the summer of 2015, he assured MLAs that his previous posting in the ministry of the Attorney-General presented no obstacles to him taking on the investigation. “I was not involved in the health firings matter as my branch, the justice services branch, did not provide legal advice to line ministries on such matters,” the then-newly appointed Ombudsperson testified. Alas, in the course of sorting through those four million documents, his staff turned up evidence that a few months after the firings, the matter had briefly crossed his desk while he was filling for the vacationing deputy-attorney general. I received an inquiry from a senior deputy minister about the matter,” explained Chalke. “I made a preliminary inquiry of one or two senior officials, and then left the question for the deputy attorney-general to address when he returned from holiday … I made no decisions. I set no direction in any way, shape or form.

“Given how limited this involvement was, I simply had no recollection of it, he continued. “In fact, I still do not recall it.”

Hence his insistence that “this does not in any way affect my ability to complete this investigation.” He further advised that former Ombudsperson Stephen Owen had reached a similar conclusion after reviewing the circumstances.

That left the concern, well framed by New Democratic Party MLA George Heyman, as to why Chalke relied on a faulty memory in the first place.

“Did you consider that it was an issue of due diligence to make a request (of your former ministry) to be able to assure us and everyone else that you had been completely free and clear of any contact with this issue? Or was that simply an oversight?”

“I wouldn’t describe it as an oversight,” replied Chalke. “I simply had no recollection and so thought I had no reason to carry out the kind of request that you’re suggesting. Obviously, from my perspective, it would have been better had I done so.” Obviously — especially given the lack of trust associated with a case that was mishandled by the government every step of the way. Still, the only practical option is to let the Ombudsperson and his team proceed with the investigation and hope for the best, because time is running out.

Those firings happened before the last election. Any further delay diminishes the chance that British Columbians will have a proper explanation before the next one.

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-ombudsperson-ja...