'A huge concern': P.E.I. health department has failed to produce annual reports for last decade

The last time P.E.I.'s Department of Health and Wellness submitted an annual report was for the fiscal year 2014-15.

Back then, Wade MacLauchlan and the Liberals were in power, Doug Currie was the health minister, and there were about 7,700 Islanders on the patient registry waiting to be assigned a primary-care provider.

Since then, MacLauchlan won an election and then lost one. The PCs have taken two elections, Currie resigned to eventually jump ship to run for the Conservative Party of Canada, and there are almost five times as many people on the patient registry (38,212 as of May 13).

Even though every government department is required to file an annual report two months after the province's audited financial statements are released, only two hit that deadline last year.

I think that's fairly poor accountability and transparency, to not have reported for that long of time.— Auditor General Darren Noonan

In that regard, the province's health department is the most tardy among a group that is habitually late with its assignments, Auditor General Darren Noonan told members of the P.E.I. legislature's public accounts committee last week.

"The lack of reporting by the Department of Health and Wellness, that's a huge concern, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Noonan said.

In his latest annual report, Noonan also calculated that only two of 27 government reporting entities — most of which are Crown corporations — hit their legislated deadlines for annual reports.

For Crown corps, those deadlines are included in the province's Financial Administration Act, giving them legislative force.

For government departments, the filing requirement isn't written in law but in Treasury Board policy, which stipulates the reports have to be submitted two months after the province's audited financial statements are tabled in the legislature.

Another missed deadline

The deadline for the audited financials is Oct. 31. In his latest report, the auditor general also noted that the provincial government missed that deadline for the fiscal year 2022-23.

In an interview with CBC News, Noonan said annual reports should provide some insight for residents into how government is addressing the challenges of the day.

"With some of the issues that we're facing today in the Department of Health and Wellness and Health P.E.I., it would be nice if they were reporting [to] us and telling Islanders what their plans are to make improvements, what's working well, what's not working well," Noonan said.

"I think that's fairly poor accountability and transparency, to not have reported for that long of time."

While Health P.E.I. has been filing annual reports, the provincial health authority does not have a current business plan available for the public to see, something else Noonan took issue with at the committee meeting last week.

CBC News asked Health Minister Mark McLane why his department hasn't filed an annual report since the one it filed for 2015. (It should be noted that that report wasn't actually filed until 2017, well after the Treasury Board deadline.)

McLane said he's discussed the issue with the new CEO of Health P.E.I., Melanie Fraser.

He said the annual reports for his department and the health authority "need to be cohesive… We drive policy, [Health P.E.I. is] operational so they are intertwined. So I think you can't have one without the other and I think they should be co-ordinated and presented to the public together."

This isn't something they can make excuses on. We need to see these reports.— Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly

But Noonan expressed concern that the Department of Health is so far out-of-date with its reporting, whatever information might have been included in the missing reports cannot be brought back.

"Chances are they're not going to issue a report for every year. You might get a current year's report, but you've lost all that reporting since 2015."

Noonan told the committee he had advised Treasury Board of a law in Ontario that would require cabinet ministers in that province to give up 10 per cent of their salary for presiding over a department that filed a late financial report. 

But that 2019 law was amended on two separate occasions where ministers might have run up against the deadlines to allow them to file late with no penalty.

Opposition Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly said the health department's failure to provide annual statements shows a lack of transparency to taxpayers.

"This isn't something they can make excuses on. We need to see these reports," he said.

"It's impossible for people to know where their money is going when we don't see this at the other end."