Sask. Health Authority won't release details on CEO resignation despite privacy commissioner's recommendation
CBC
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) won't release information about its former CEO's resignation despite recommendations to do so from the province's privacy czar.
Information and privacy commissioner Ron Kruzeniski found the SHA failed to properly apply the law when it denied CBC Saskatchewan's requests for documents about the departure of Scott Livingstone, who abruptly resigned from the SHA in November 2021.
Livingstone's departure came at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in Saskatchewan and was reportedly motivated by an internal power struggle with government.
Livingstone collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance in the last fiscal year, even though he had apparently resigned voluntarily more than a year prior.
Kruzeniski recommended the SHA "reconsider" releasing Livingstone's resignation letter. He also found the SHA never asked Livingstone about releasing the letter, even though SHA cited his privacy as the reason for withholding it.
But the SHA says it has no plans to change tack.
"The subject individual is no longer associated with SHA and releasing this information would create an unjustified invasion of privacy," the authority said in its response.
It offered no further comment when contacted by CBC Saskatchewan. Neither did the office of Health Minister Everett Hindley, which redirected CBC Saskatchewan to the SHA.
Critics say the authority's refusal to budge illustrates fatal failings in the province's transparency legislation and deepens the intrigue about why Livingstone left.
"This is another example of the lack of transparency we see every day from this tired and out of touch government, and this underscores the need to give the information and privacy commissioner the power to force public bodies like the SHA to make documents public," Saskatchewan Opposition NDP health critic Vicki Mowat said in a statement.
Livingstone, the former head of the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, was the first-ever CEO of the SHA after it was forged from 12 regional health authorities in 2017.
He resigned on Nov. 24, 2021, but his departure was not announced until two weeks later on Dec. 2.
At the time, Saskatchewan had just flown dozens of critically ill COVID-19 patients to Ontario, because this province no longer had the resources to care for them.
Saskatchewan's government had also recently wrested control of COVID-19 management from the SHA and handed it to the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, which reports directly to a government ministry.