Former hospital CEO in Nova Scotia sentenced to nine months in jail for fraud

HALIFAX – A former health-care executive was sentenced Wednesday to nine months in jail for defrauding a Halifax children’s hospital of more than $30,000 by using her corporate credit card to pay for personal expenses.

Provincial court Judge Ronda van der Hoek told the court that the sentence for Tracy Kitch should serve as a warning to public officials who defraud public institutions, saying that doing so “should result in the doors of a jail cell locking behind offenders.”

The judge said the 65-year-old former hospital CEO “was motivated by greed and a sense of entitlement.”

Kitch, who is now unemployed, had pleaded not guilty to fraud over $5,000.

During her trial last year, the court heard that most of her illegal spending covered the cost of flights home to Toronto, where she would visit her family while she was head of the IWK Health Centre, the largest children’s hospital east of Montreal. 

In a decision delivered Sept. 5, van der Hoek said Kitch’s actions were dishonest and deprived the hospital of money meant to address health-care needs for mothers and children. The judge said Kitch “never intended to pay back those expenditures.”

At her sentencing hearing last month, Kitch told the judge that as CEO, she had failed to prioritize oversight of her expense claims while she served in the position between 2014 and 2017. But she did not apologize for her actions.

On Wednesday, the judge cited a pre-sentence report that quoted Kitch claiming she had not done anything dishonest. 

“She says she was not intentionally trying to defraud Nova Scotia,” van der Hoek said. “She says when she was offered the position (at the Halifax hospital) she was unable to move her whole family right away because three of her four children were still in high school (in Toronto).”

But van der Hoek cited the Crown’s argument that Kitch abused her position of authority soon after she was hired in Halifax, with a starting salary at $280,000 a year. “Despite her stature and success, she conducted herself with the level of entitlement that placed her above the institution and its important objectives,” van der Hoek said.

“The Crown also says a fit and proper sentence must communicate that the public trust should not be taken lightly and that exploitation of the position of a senior executive attracts significant penalties.”

In the end, the sentence handed to Kitch was in line with what the Crown had asked for, though the judge told the court she was inclined to sentence her to 12 months in jail.

Kitch was also sentenced to 24 months of probation and is subject to a court order prohibiting her from working in a job or volunteer position that involves authority over property or money for the next 10 years.

“The fraud was conducted blatantly after first testing the waters with two unauthorized credit card uses,” the judge said. “Given her role as CEO, she could not practically expect to be challenged internally by those beneath her.”

Kitch’s lawyer, Nicholaus Fitch, has already filed a notice to appeal her conviction. The document dated Jan. 29 seeks an appeal on several grounds, including that the trial judge “erred in law by concluding that no person employed at a public institution is permitted to use public funds for personal use with no exception.” The notice also asserts that the judge misapprehended evidence, which resulted in an unreasonable verdict.

Court heard that Kitch resigned from her position in 2017 after an independent review of corporate credit card transactions and expense claims identified $47,273 of potentially personal expenses, of which $25,009 had been reimbursed.

Kitch was charged October 2018. She was convicted in February 2022 and sentenced to five months in jail. But the conviction was overturned by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in March 2023 and a new trial was ordered.

In its decision, the province’s highest court noted that Kitch’s expense records were posted on a public website in October 2016, as required by the provincial government. But the court indicated that reporting from CBC News drew public scrutiny.

“Eventually, media attention came to bear on the appellant’s expense history,” the ruling says. “By September 2017, the scrutiny was so intense that (Kitch), having by then reimbursed the IWK thousands of dollars for personal expenses, resigned.”  

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2026.