You might remember the controversial firings of health researchers in 2012. It ended very poorly! Bill 13 amends the Public Service Act implementing recommendations empower the Merit Commissioner to review just-cause firings.
In summary, four health workers were publicly dismissed and the government announced that they had referred the matter to the RCMP. Well, the government never referred the matter to the RCMP and so there was never an investigation. As it turns out one of the fired health researchers committed suicide.
With the then NDP opposition calling for an inquiry the BC Liberal government referred the fiasco to the BC Ombudsperson, Jay Chalke, to review.
Chalke’s final report “Misfire”, a hefty 500+ pager, was released just days before the start of the 2017 election rebuking the government process calling the investigations “flawed” and “rushed” with actions that had “far reaching the harmful consequences.”
He made 41 recommendations to the government. Bill 13 (2018) addresses recommendation 27 by empowering the Merit Commissioner to review all just-cause dismissals.
This video is my response to the Bill at second reading. As I mention, we have a number of questions that will be canvassed at committee stage in the coming weeks.
[Transcript]
I rise to make some brief comments on Bill 13, the Public Service Amendment Act. My colleagues and I are supportive of the efforts to implement the recommendations provided to the government by the April 2017 Ombudsperson’s Misfire report.
This report contained 41 recommendations aimed at addressing what was a failure of government to respect its own processes and the rights of its workers. It is recommendation 27 that this bill seeks to fulfil, providing the Merit Commissioner with new powers to conduct reviews for just cause dismissals.
The minister, in introducing this bill, spoke about the need for checks and balances in the process, and I’m incredibly supportive of this notion. However, I and my colleagues do want to ensure that, beyond fulfilling a recommendation provided to government, the changes we are proposing in practice address the fundamental gap that the Ombudsperson was highlighting in the report.
In reviewing this legislation, there are some questions that come to mind about how these new provisions will work in practice. First, it is noted in a media report that there are around 25 dismissals of public employees for just cause each year. Given the responsibility this legislation would give the Merit Commissioner to potentially review all of these dismissals, I think it is important to look at whether the adequate resources exist within the office to fulfil the job as it is intended.
Second, I’m interested in hearing from the minister whether or not she feels that the process would have changed what occurred back in 2012. We just heard that this would ensure that what happened will never happen again. I’m not sure that we know that, and I think that we can explore that a little further as we get to the committee stage of this bill.
Will the changes to this act provide a general check on the policies and the procedures? Or will it be able to highlight specific issues with specific dismissals? I ask this question particularly in light of section 5.14(4) — that the Merit Commissioner’s review is not to make a determination “whether the dismissal met the legal standard for a just cause dismissal.”
Finally, it’s unclear to me in the legislation how exactly these reports will be handled, who the commissioner will be providing the report to, who will be responsible for taking actions on the problems identified. These are all questions that we can seek further clarification on at the committee stage of this bill. I look forward to getting some clarity on them, and I thank the minister for bringing them forward.
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