When the head of the board that determines the mental status of people facing criminal charges sued the government over his salary, he lost the case on principle.
But over the course of the argument, he won a 40 per cent pay hike.
Bernd Walter, the longtime chairman of the B.C. Review Board, believes his salary is improperly set by government, when it should instead be tied to the judiciary’s to protect the board’s independence.
He took an unusual step in June when he filed an annual report on the board’s activities. He denounced the very office to which he was submitting the report — the ministry of the attorney general.
Walter had already caught the ministry’s attention in a more direct fashion — he sued it. He lost that case this month.
A judge ruled the board doesn’t meet the test of requiring judicial independence.
But much of the case is about Walter’s salary, and he got two raises after filing the petition, which jacked his pay from $135,000 to $190,000 in less than a year.
The issue festered behind the scenes for years before he filed the suit last year. When the review board was established in 1992, pay for the chair was set at the rate of a judge. But it wasn’t tied to that level. Over time, the salary was determined by Treasury Board. Walter had gone without a raise for 10 years when he filed suit last August.
The Treasury Board of the previous government set a higher salary range in 2016. Walter asked for a raise and a meeting was scheduled, but the election intervened. After the NDP took power and David Eby became attorney general, the ministry offered five per cent raises every six months until Walter and other officials in similar roles reached the new minimum.
But Walter sued a week later.
The government later abandoned the schedule and approved immediate raises, which jumped Walter to $168,000 a year.
Then, midway through the hearing of his case, the attorney general hiked it to $190,000, the maximum of the range.
Provincial court judges’ salaries are in the $250,000 range, although that rate is also the subject of a separate, ongoing legal dispute.
Despite Walter’s win on the pay issue, his case continued just on the constitutional issue of whether the review board has or should have judicial independence. A judge ruled this month it doesn’t qualify.
In June, Walter wrote a covering letter for his annual report that referred to the dispute and noted there had been a settlement meeting and the hearing was adjourned based on agreements.
“I am deeply disappointed to have learned that the ministry essential resiled from every commitment,” he wrote.
That revealed a “fundamental lack of respect for the board” that “has shaken my confidence,” so he informed them the case was back on.
Walter had fired a warning shot in the previous annual report, saying the pay issue “further reflects the province’s ongoing and pervasive lack of respect for the administrative justice system.”
The review board handled 373 cases last year and has 22 members who are psychiatrists or otherwise qualified. Walter doubled as chair of the Human Rights Tribunal for several years, and said he has also chaired several other tribunals simultaneously at various times.
The Treasury Board directive that set the new ranges replaced one that was six years old and covers appointees to bodies such as the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, B.C. Securities Commission and Labour Relations Board.
Salaries for full-time chairs range from $124,000 to $210,000. Full-time members can earn between $87,000 and $147,000.
Part-time members are paid between $550 and $900 a day for their services.
Just So You Know: Walter also had strong words for a long-running policy to better co-ordinate all the various tribunals by sharing functions and clustering them in one location.
Current work on that front is being done by people who know nothing about their operations, he said.
Six tribunals are being put into a space occupied by one.
“I can predict with absolute confidence that capacity, timeliness, responsiveness, productivity, accuracy and performance will be sacrificed.”
