Health Minister Carolyn Bertram says she’s legally bound by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPP) to keep the information secret.
But Bertram said if she’s asked to produce the documents in the P.E.I. legislature she will obey that request.
“If it is asked inside the rail of the legislature ... they can be disclosed under the privilege of the legislature,” said Bertram.
But what Bertram doesn’t say is that she can stand up and release the documents at any time inside the rails of the P.E.I. legislature and still have that same legislative privilege. She doesn’t have to be asked to do so.
Auditor General Colin Younker issued a scathing report about how the P.E.I. government implemented its high-tech e-health records program.
Costs ballooned from $12 million to more than $33 million and the program is still not fully operational.
Younker said the Department of Health “... did not provide adequate oversight,” underestimated both the capital and operational costs, and handed out contracts without going out to a competitive bid process, something which breaks provincial rules.
In The Guardian on Tuesday, senior officials within the Department of Health said those contracts, including those that were handed out without going to public competition, are “not public documents” and are “confidential.” They said the only way the documents are going to be released to both the public and the P.E.I. legislature is through a Freedom of Information request, something that could take weeks, if not months.
Paul MacNeill, the publisher of the Eastern Graphic, has been trying to get his hands on those e-health contracts for nearly 10 months. He’s been told it will cost his weekly newspaper $10,000 before the Department of Health will release the information. MacNeill is now challenging that price tag.
“What’s scary here is not only the delay but the arrogance or ignorance of the law put forward by personnel within the Department of Health,” said MacNeill, who has been highly critical of the cost overruns associated with e-health in his weekly column.
“When the PR person said a contract is not a public document — well, bullshit, a contract is a public document.”
MacNeill said the Freedom of Information commissioner has already ruled that government contracts, paid for with taxpayers’ money, can be made public. He said the Health minister doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
“Government, in my opinion, is using the act to dodge accountability,” he said. “But it also speaks to an arrogance within the government. That’s what is most troubling about the comments that The Guardian obtained. These people’s job is not to stymie the release of information but clearly the way they both speak about the issue there’s clearly a perception or a mentality within the Ghiz government that says ‘don’t release.’”
Opposition critic Jim Bagnall said he’ll be asking for the contracts.
“She’s done a flip-flop on this after she realized that she has to produce those (contracts) on the floor of the legislature,” said Bagnall.
Bertram refutes suggestions by the Opposition that she’s hiding details about the e-health contracts. She also denies her party has flip-flopped on the issue of releasing the information to the legislature.
Bertram said The Guardian got it wrong.
“I think you have to look in context of maybe how you asked your question to officials in our department,” Bertram told The Guardian.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Wayne Thibodeau
Quelle/Source: The Guardian, 14.04.2010
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