News

For two years the CCF has been trying to find out how much the BC government has spent fighting to deny our patient plaintiffs’ right to seek care and to shut down the Cambie Surgery Centre. Despite a freedom of information adjudicator ordering the government to comply with our request, the BC government has remained stubborn on the issue and used every legal and administrative tool at their disposal to delay the issue further.

We are now eagerly awaiting a March 28 Judicial Review hearing where the Supreme Court of BC will hopefully make a judgement in favour of taxpayers and those defending healthcare freedom in the Cambie case.

In other news, the BC government has quietly delayed enacting penalties on private clinics and doctors. Though we were successful in getting an injunction recently against these same penalties for surgery clinics, the injunction did not include clinics offering MRI, CT and PET scan imaging. Now they will be spared for at least another year while we continue to defend the right of all BC patients to seek care.

The Attorney General of British Columbia’s application for leave to appeal the interim order of a Supreme Court judge in chambers enjoining enforcement of sections 17-8 and 45 of the Medicare Protection Act is dismissed.

This means the clinics that have been operating in BC for more than 20 years can remain open for the duration of the Charter challenge. This is fantastic news for patients who rely on these clinics as their only source of necessary, timely treatment.

Read that decision here.

Quebecers who are facing lengthy waits for medical procedures can opt to go to private clinics. Don’t the rest of Canadians deserve that option? Check out this great article in the National Post by CCF board member and MD, Will Johnston.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The Cambie trial resumes in January.

This is big news. Obtaining an injunction against legislation coming into force is always a steep uphill battle and such injunctions are rarely granted. That is why we are thrilled to say that the BC Supreme Court has sided with suffering patients and the doctors and private clinics who treat them by staying the coming into force of new financial penalties that the BC government recently introduced to put the clinics out of business.

This is just an interim victory, but it keeps the clinics — which have been treating patients for more than 20 years in BC — open while the case can proceed. It will allow them to continue to provide the life-saving and life-improving treatments and surgeries that are the only option for many patients suffering on long and growing waiting lists.

Read the full release here. The decision can be downloaded and viewed here.

BC really doesn’t want you to know how much the government has spent since 2009 fighting against patients suffering on waitlists who want their Charter right to timely treatment. Since 2009, the BC Government has been litigating against patient plaintiffs who have suffered as a result of rationed healthcare and who have benefited from services offered by private clinics, like the Cambie Surgery Centre, which have operated in BC for more than two decades.

Last year, the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), which is supporting the plaintiffs’ Charter challenge, filed a request under BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), asking the BC Government to come clean on just how much public money it has spent so far fighting to deny patients their right to timely healthcare treatment.

At first BC stonewalled. They acknowledged that they knew the number, but they refused to provide it. They alleged that somehow we were seeking to gain an advantage in the litigation, which they argued could be gleaned from knowing how much they had spent on the case since it started eight years earlier. This was preposterous. As we made clear over and over again, the CCF was not looking for any solicitor-client privileged communication. We sought only disclosure of “the total sum spent by the BC Government on the Cambie case from 2009 to 2017” and “[did] not seek to have that total global figure broken down by service provider, by year, by hourly rates, or in any other way.”

So we persisted.

And on August 14, 2018, the BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner sided with us and ordered that, “pursuant to s. 58 of FIPPA I require the Ministry [of the Attorney General] to give the applicant access to the total cost of litigation contained in the record by September 26, 2018.”

Victory, right?

For more than a month we heard nothing from the Government. Finally, on September 25, 2018, the day before they would have to disclose how much taxpayer money that had spent on the case, the BC Government filed a petition in the BC Supreme Court to have the Information Commissioner’s order quashed.

Last week, we filed our response, clarifying once more that all we are seeking is one number – one single number, representing the amount of taxpayer dollars the BC Government has spent so far litigating against patients who just want to exercise their constitutional right to access timely healthcare – a number the BC Government admits it has, but refuses to make public.

Quotes:

CCF Staff Lawyer Derek From said:

A central stated purpose of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act is to “make public bodies more accountable to the public … by … giving the public a right of access to records”. Patients suffering on waiting lists are taxpayers, and the Government is using their money to fight to limit their healthcare choices. So why aren’t they allowed to know how much? Why is the Government fighting so hard – and expending even more tax dollars doing so – to keep the public in the dark about the millions of dollars it is spending to fight patient choice?

1. Guess how much the BC government has spent fighting against healthcare choice!

No really, you’ll have to guess, because the Government won’t tell us! And now they are going to court to fight an order from BC’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner requiring the Government to tell us.

For almost two years, the CCF has been trying to find out how much the BC government has spent fighting to deny our patient plaintiffs healthcare choice and to shut down Dr. Day’s Cambie Surgery Centre, which has been relieving patient suffering in BC for more than 20 years. While the CCF has been quite open about the increasing costs our side has faced (largely due to the Government’s delay tactics), the government has been unwilling to divulge how much it has spent to deny patients suffering on waiting lists their Charter right to security of the person.

After our request for an accounting of taxpayer money spent on the case was rejected by the Ministry of the Attorney General, we pursued an appeal through BC’s freedom of information laws. In August, the freedom of information adjudicator concluded that “the Interim total cost was not subject to solicitor-client privilege” and ordered the Government to disclose the cost of litigation — just a single number, which the Government has admitted it has — by September 26. Instead of handing over this number — note, we did not ask for any confidential records, only a single number representing to the total cost of litigating against our plaintiffs — the Government of BC is now spending even more tax dollars seeking judicial review of the adjudicator’s order.

Read more in Business Vancouver.

And to help us uncover what the Government is hiding, please donate here.

2. BC Government backs down … for now, and won’t penalize doctors helping suffering patients

Under pressure, the Government of BC has agreed not to impose stiff new penalties on doctors and private clinics helping thousands of BC patients receive timely care until after the court has ruled on our application for an injunction against these penalties. This means hundreds of procedures will not have to be cancelled as of October 1, which is excellent news for patients wondering if they would be thrust back into the limbo of growing waiting lists. It will also likely save the provincial health budget millions of dollars as it preserves … for now … the “escape valve” that these private clinics have provided suffering patients in BC for decades. If only the government recognized that the logic behind this temporary agreement should compel them to stop fighting BC’s private clinics and embrace their benefits for patients and the healthcare system.

Read more in the Vancouver Sun.

In case you missed it, this story by Ian Mulgrew in the Vancouver Sun is a good account of the first day of hearings on the application for an injunction against the enforcement of draconian new financial penalties on doctors and clinics providing vital private services after October 1.

There is a high bar for granting an injunction, so counsel has a difficult task ahead persuading the court to step in and prevent the new penalties form coming into force. Whatever the court rules, the main case will continue to hear evidence and we are confident of eventual victory in that fight.

If you are able to support the injunction application and the main case, please consider doing so here.