Ron Mattson 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.
“I am confident the trial will exonerate me; hopefully, in time for the municipal election this November,” said Mattson, who is a View Royal councillor.
Mattson, former manager of policy and special projects for the PharmaCare branch, is suing former health minister Margaret MacDiarmid for defamation after he was fired by the ministry in 2012 in connection with an alleged privacy breach.
He is also suing the Health Ministry for wrongful dismissal without pay, breach of contract and defamation.
In court documents filed in response to Mattson’s suit, the ministry said the 28-year employee was fired for just cause and was never defamed. The ministry alleges that Mattson talked to a third-party contractor about ways to get around the province’s policies and procedures to access data.
Mattson’s trial is scheduled for 10 days beginning Oct. 20.
None of the allegations has been proven in court.
Last week, the B.C. government announced its second out-of-court settlement after the Health Ministry fired seven employees and at least one contractor lost data access related to a sweeping probe in 2012 into allegations of conflict of interest, inappropriate conduct and data mismanagement in its pharmaceutical services division.
The sharing of drug data and contracts with the University of B.C. and the University of Victoria were suspended. The government also suspended the use of de-identified Health Ministry data by the UBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, an independent research group on pharmaceuticals that acts as a drug-safety watchdog for British Columbians.
All seven employees claimed they were wrongfully dismissed.
Defence lawyer Chris Siver said the government has failed to show “one scintilla of evidence” that Mattson did anything wrong.
“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.”
Malcolm Maclure was rehired Friday as a consultant on research and evidence development. The government praised Maclure for his work in health-data privacy research. In turn, Maclure dropped his civil suit for wrongful dismissal.
In March, Robert Neil Hart, the ministry’s former director of data access, research and stewardship, was rehired “as a demonstration of the government’s continuing confidence in him,” according to an agreement of facts.
Three of the fired employees — senior researcher David Scott, senior economist Ramsay Hamdi, and UVic co-op student Roderick MacIsaac — were members of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union. The union won’t say how their grievances were resolved.
MacIsaac, who was evaluating the province’s smoking-cessation program, committed suicide in January 2013. He was let go three days before his co-op term ended.
The government is defending itself in the remaining lawsuits.
University of Victoria professor Rebecca Warburton is suing the B.C. government and MacDiarmid for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract. She shared a half-time co-director of research title within the Health Ministry with Maclure.
In its counter claim, the government says Warburton was fired for cause.
Warburton does not yet have a court date.
“They delay at every stage, at every chance they can in the hopes we’ll run out of money and go away,” Warburton said Tuesday.
“I’m confident I’m going to be exonerated. I’m not confident about when,” she 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.”
Her husband, William Warburton, a labour and health economist, lost his contracts with the government when it suspended the sharing of drug data and contracts with UBC and UVic. He is suing the province and Mac-Diarmid for defamation, breach of contract and interference with contract, and alleges that the B.C. Liberal Party, as a recipient of “significant contributions from drug companies,” was trying to curtail research by revoking his access to Health Ministry data.
The government has denied the allegations.
B.C. Opposition health critic Judy Darcy said Tuesday that the government should admit its investigation was flawed and settle the outstanding lawsuits “for the people whose reputations have been ruined and whose personal lives are in shambles.”
The Health Ministry says the cost of the investigation to date is almost $3.4 million, including legal costs.
The government will not reveal the cost of the two out-of-court settlements.
