Service New Brunswick continues to block release of info on hospital laundries

Service New Brunswickis still refusing to release parts of a September 2014 briefing note on hospital laundries, even though most of the information was released more than a year ago by the Department of Health.

The refusal by Service New Brunswick also comes despite a recommendation by the province's information commissioner.

• Facilicorp criticized for 'unreal' redactions to public memo
• Hospital laundry consolidation falls short of $1.7M savings target

Anne Bertrand says the Sept. 9, 2014,document,on problems with the centralization of hospital laundry services, should be released in full in response to a right-to-information request from Dieppe resident Jacques Verge.

Bertrandpoints out the Department of Health released the same document, with few redactions, to CBC News in January 2015 in response to its separate right-to-information request.

"So it's embarrassing, obviously, and that fuels the debate," Bertrand says.

"What are you trying to protect? This is information that is well known. Why not release it?"

Verge agrees it's absurd that information in the public domain is still partially concealed in the second version of the Sept. 9, 2014, briefing note released to him last week.

"I find it abhorrent," he says.

"If I were the minister, I'd make a change [to Service New Brunswick], either a change of attitude or a change of personnel."

The briefing note was drafted by FacilicorpNB, the provincial agency that oversaw non-medical services for the province's hospitals. It was merged into Service New Brunswick last year.

The briefing note prompted a CBC News story a year ago that detailed problems with the Alward government's centralization of laundry services.

The effort was plagued with problems and delays, and fell short of its goal of saving taxpayers $1.7 million.

"Obviously, in this case, we encouraged Facilicorp to look at that and say, `It's out there,'" Bertrand said.

"This is information that is known."

While the Health Department redacted a small amount of information from the version of the briefing note released to CBC in January 2015, FacilicorpNB blacked out almost all of it in the version it sent to Verge.

Bertrand's investigation found the briefing note should now be released in full.

Service New Brunswick refusal

But Service New Brunswick refused in a Feb. 16 letter to Verge, saying some of the information is still exempt from the act. It gave him the briefing note a second time, with some sections still redacted.

That includes the original estimates for cost savings from laundry centralization, a breakdown of the number of jobs that would be affectedand the timeline for implementation at some hospitals.

The refusal means Verge, a member of the lobby group Egalit Sant en Francais, must now apply to the Court of Queen's Bench in the hope a judge will order the information released.

"We have a government that says it wants to be open and transparent, but structures within that government are hiding information," Verge said.

Bertrand also recommended the full or partial release of several other documents about the laundry centralization, including two out of three reports by U.S. based consultants, PowerPoint presentations, a "business case review," and documents on costs and on equipment needing replacement.

In some cases, Service New Brunswick agreed to release some of them. But in other cases, it rejected Bertrand's recommendations.

A spokesperson for Service New Brunswick said Monday it would be "inappropriate" to comment while it's still possible for Verge to take his complaint before the courts.

The province's right-to-information law gives government bodies the right to exempt certain types of information from release, including advice. But Bertrand says it can only do that based on "relevant" factors.

She also points out the government body has the discretion to release the advice if it's old and the decisions have already been made.

But FacilicorpNB took "a very narrow approach" in interpreting what factors were relevant and even what documents it should consider for release.

Commissioner sides with requester

"FacilicorpNB did not meet its statutory duty to assist the Applicant, by interpreting the request too narrowly and not conducting a thorough search for all relevant records in its possession," she wrote in her report on Verge's complaint.

The Crown corporation has not met its burden to prove that the factors it considered in handling Verge's request were relevant, she said.

Bertrand said FacilicorpNB has complied with some of her recommendations in the pastbut still has a way to go.

"There comes a time when the approach has to be changed," she said.

"It has to be modified."

In his Feb. 16 letter to Verge refusing to heed many of Bertrand's recommendations, Service New Brunswick CEO Gordon Gilman says the corporation wanted to contact Verge for more information on his request after Bertrand tried to resolve the complaint informally.

Gilman writes that "our request was refused" because Bertrand's investigation was underway.

Bertrand says in her report that Service New Brunswick should have contacted Verge earlier in the process to try to help him with his request, a step many government departments take when they want to clarify what someone is looking for.

Verge says he'd like to see the right-to-information law changed so that Bertrand can take a government to court toforce the release of documents.

At the moment, the person requesting the document has to do that.

"The principle is that all documents are public with certain exceptions," he said.

Bertrand says she prefers the existing law because it means there's no adversarial relationship when she tries to informally persuade a government body to release information.

That informal process is successful in most cases, she says.