Baffin board baffled by $1 million deficit discovery

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — The Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board (BRHSSB) is $1 million deeper in the hole than it thought it was, bringing the board’s deficit this year to a grand total of $3 million.

The shocking discovery was announced by board chair Dennis Patterson at a general meeting of the health board this week. On Monday morning, board members held an in camera session to discuss the state of the board’s finances.

Patterson and the health board’s chief executive officer, Jarvis Hoult, would not release to the public the contents of an interim report detailing the Baffin health’s current financial state.

Nor would Hoult talk about recommendations he made at the in camera session to deal with the financial mess.

“That would only cause speculation among the public, and that is not what you want when it comes to health and social services. That’s our rule of thumb anyway,” Hoult said. He added that the Baffin board will still maintain services.

For his part, Patterson conceded that the health board isn’t about to spend new money. “I think it’s safe to say we weren’t talking about how to spend our fabulous surplus.”

Picco can’t find more money

The Nunavut government wants the board to deal with the deficit on its own, Patterson said. He said Health Minister Ed Picco is trying to find more money for the health board, but so far there have been no results.

“They said that we would have to absorb that ourselves,” Patterson said. “But the Nunavut government is going to have to provide some additional funding, or we are going to have to take steps to cut back spending.

The deficit comes from the 1996-1997 fiscal year and was carried over into 1997-1998, when it wasn’t reported to the board, Patterson said.

“I don’t know how it happened,” said Patterson. “I remember in ’97-98 congratulating ourselves on coming close to balancing the budget.” Patterson said that in 1997-1998 the board thought it had only overspent its budget by $40,000 or $50,000.

“What we have since learned is that in 97-98 there had also been a $1 million deficit that had been inherited from 96-97,” he said. But why that wasn’t taken care of in following year, Patterson couldn’t account for.

‘It didn’t go unnoticed in the audit process that year, but we just neglected to set aside a reserve fund to accommodate that in the budget process in ’98-99. The only explanation I can offer is that we had a high turnover of CEOs in that year, and it was an oversight on our part. It just fell through the cracks in the budget process.”

Patterson said the deficit had been discovered in June of this year, adding to the anticipated deficit of $2 million.

“All health boards in Nunavut are carrying deficits,” Patterson said.

Staff turnover

The only problem the board had an easy explanation for was the 50 per cent staff turnover rate that it experienced in the1998-99 fiscal year.

“A number of our people have jumped ship for jobs in the Nunavut government,” Hoult told the board.

During his report, Hoult said that the imminent demise of the board had lead to a lack of confidence in job security for employees.

He said that he has asked Picco to make some kind of guarantee to staff that their jobs would be secure.

Patterson added that more competitive job packages for health service employees in northern Quebec had also lured away staff. He echoed Hoult’s advice the health minister communicating to employees that their jobs would be secure.

“Even though Mr. Picco has assured me that will be the case, the employees haven’t been told that yet,” Patterson said.