“All the government cared about was seeing me buried;” Saskatoon care home

The Premier’s office did not break any rules in disclosing the personal information of Saskatoon health-care worker Peter Bowden who publicly criticized conditions at the home where he worked earlier this year.

Bowden was suspended from his job at Oliver Lodge with pay last spring after he made allegations about the way seniors in the home were being treated.

Between the day Bowden spoke out and the day after he was suspended, the health region and the Ministry of Health communicated about Bowden’s personal employment record.

The province has said that Bowden’s initial suspension was because of a probe into allegations of misconduct in the workplace – not because he went public with his allegations.

“There was sufficient proof and this investigation had significant cause to justify termination with cause”.

Last week, Bowden was fired for breaking nine SHR and Oliver Lodge policies.

“I feel as though the government didn’t care”, Bowden said Sunday”. “The investigator was quite clear that I was out on my own”.

In an April 2014 e-mail, the government said Bowden had been disciplined for incidents related to patient care and “harassment of other staff and residents”.

But a report from the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner, to be released Tuesday morning, could shed some light on a controversial piece of the puzzle.

In a news release today, Wall said his office could have been more “circumspect” in how it handled information about the health care employee, and he accepts the privacy commissioner’s recommendations.

On April 23, Bowden went to the privacy commissioner with concerns his privacy had been breached.

Bowden was a care aide at Oliver Lodge in Saskatoon when he brought concerns about understaffing to the legislature in March.

Kruzeniski wrote in his report that neither the Health Minister’s office nor the Premier’s office qualify as a government institution under freedom of information laws and, as a result, he did not have the jurisdiction to rule on whether or not a member of the premier’s staff was right or wrong in sending information about Bowden’s suspension to the media. “What I did and what I’ve gone through has really been a complete waste of time”.