Baffin health board chair quits, trustee appointed

SEAN McKIBBON

IQALUIT — The chair of the soon-to-be-defunct Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board, Dennis Patterson, says he resigned his post last week because Health Minister Ed Picco had appointed an interim trustee to oversee the board.

“My decision to resign was because I was replaced,” said Patterson, who has served as board chair for the past two years.

But Rosemary Cooper, Nunavut’s assistant deputy minister of health and the newly appointed interim trustee of the Baffin health board, says she was appointed because Patterson resigned.

And the two don’t seem to agree on the order of events.

“On January 6 I was appointed interim trustee. A letter of resignation was received from Dennis Patterson on the fifth,” said Cooper.

“The reason I resigned was because I was replaced by the trustee. It would have been quite confusing for the CEO. I think the CEO would have properly asked, ‘Who do I report to?’,” said Patterson.

Patterson said he doesn’t think it is his place to comment on the reason the trustee was appointed, but he did say that when he discussed his resignation with Picco, the minister told him the process of integrating the health department with the health board was being “jump-started.”

“And I think that’s partly because our CEO is leaving,” said Patterson.

Jarvis Hoult, who was been CEO of the Baffin board for just over a year, will be leaving for a new job in the middle eastern nation of Oman by the end of the month, Cooper said.

When asked if there were plans to replace Hoult she said, “there are developments.”

The financially-troubled Baffin health board reported a deficit of $4.7 million as of April 1, 1999, and is expected to lose even more money by April 1,2000.

Health Minister Ed Picco has been attempting to find money from the Nunavut government’s budget to cover deficits run up by Nunavut’st hree health boards, and at the same time find ways of cutting health board expenses.

Cooper said her role as trustee is to oversee and sign off on expenditures and contractual arrangements.

She said that she had given Hoult a certain level of spending that he could sign off on independently, and that anything above that would require her approval.

Health Minister Ed Picco said in a Nunavut government press release issued last Friday that the appointment of the trustee “simply brings the plan for the Baffin forward a few months.”

All three of Nunavut’s health boards have been slated for demise in April since last spring, when Picco announced that they would be dissolved.

No reason was given in the press release for bringing the process forward in the Baffin region and Cooper would not comment on the reason.

Right now, neither the Kitikmeot nor the Kivalliq health boards have appointed “trustees.”

The health board will continue to operate in an advisory capacity, Cooper said, and she said the board plans to hold a final meeting in February.

The vice chair of the health board, Timut Qamukaq, has agreed to act as the chairman in Patterson’s absence, said Cooper.

Cooper, who remains ADM of health, said her appointment is to last until March 31.

After that date, health board CEOs will be called “executive directors” and report directly to her as ADM, Cooper said.