Province to release portions of KPMG report

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This article was published 01/12/2017 (2878 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government is reversing course again on plans to release the KPMG report on health care sustainability.

The Free Press has learned “significant portions” of the review will be made public early next week.

That’s just two months after Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said the report would not be released before May 31.

“While there are many recommendations that either will not be implemented or on which decisions have not yet been made, there are some early initiatives such as the creation of Shared Health which are proceeding,” Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen’s spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

“We feel it is in line with our government’s commitment to transparency to release the information on those initiatives that are already underway.”

Premier Brian Pallister’s government initially promised to release the KPMG report — typically referred to as a value-for-money audit — with redactions made for privacy reasons. However, once it received the report, the government offered up a series of changing reasons for why it wasn’t being released.

In February, the rationale was it was being used to “inform decisions related to Budget 2017.”

After the budget was delivered in April, the reasoning shifted to a claim the government didn’t own the information it paid $750,000 for, and then an argument it constitutes advice to cabinet, which is exempt from freedom of information legislation.

By October, Friesen told reporters the government felt to release the report would only add to public confusion.

“I think it would be unhelpful to dump that 500-page report on the table right now,” he said.

“I think it would not bring about a sense of comfort.”

But releasing only part of the report is still an attempt at restricting access to information, said Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus in political studies at the University of Manitoba.

“Governments have two mechanisms that they use to try to restrict access,” he said.

“One is to engage in the selective release and then spin that information in a way that’s favourable to their image and reputation.”

In this case, Thomas said, restricted access has become a “key tool” in the provincial government’s attempts to manage its agenda while avoiding criticism and backlash.

“On all issues related to the release of government information there is room for debate… at least on what’s the best timing for release of information,” he said.

“But the shifting grounds on which Premier Pallister and his colleague the health minister have defended the non-release of this report just lack consistency and credibility.”

Attempts like Friesen’s to attribute the delay to the complexity of the issue also fall flat, Thomas said.

“Health care is grotesquely complicated. It’s always confusing,” he said, before mulling if the report actually outlines communication strategies for its rollout, as past KPMG reports have done.

“Did they recommend selective staged release as actions are taken after the fact?”

Thomas acknowledged there is “some degree of retrospective accountability.” Per the health minister’s emailed statement, the report will address the recommendations that centre on the creation of Shared Health Services Manitoba.

NDP health critic Andrew Swan was less generous in his assessment.

“For a government that talks about openness and transparency, this is the exact opposite,” he said.

“We don’t know what they’re refusing to do. We don’t know what they’re choosing to do and haven’t completed. They’re only letting Manitobans know a sliver of what’s contained in that report that Manitobans have paid for.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca