The chair of the board at the IWK Health Centre says the board's trust was breached by the hospital's former CEO, but it seems the ongoing expense scandal is not affecting fundraising at the IWK Foundation.
Jennifer Gillivan, the foundation’s president, says she wants the public to know that money donated to the IWK Foundation is completely separate from the operational funding that's used to pay salaries and expenses of executives.
“We are 100 per cent separate,” Gillivan says. “We share the same name, but our organization is managed completely separately.”
This comes after a report in late August showed that then-CEO Tracy Kitch had billed the hospital for more than $47,000 in apparently personal expenses during her tenure.
Kitch resigned a week before that report was released, and last week the hospital's chief financial officer Stephen D'Arcy was placed on a paid leave as the hospital undertakes a review of its expense reporting process.
But there are now new revelations that appear to show D'Arcy was involved in conversations about which of Kitch's expenses were reported to the public.
On Monday, IWK board of directors chair Karen Hutt says it is working to determine why its own policies didn't work.
“The board gives the responsibility of implementing and operating against those policies to the CEO and in this particular circumstance we came to understand that the trust was breached and we are redesigning the process in a way going forward that we have extra reassurance behind it that we have more documentation to be able to perform the responsibility of the board,” Hutt says.
The review of the hospital's expense reporting processes is now in the hands of the province's auditor general. No criminal investigations going on in relation to this, but Hutt wouldn't rule out the potential of a criminal investigation in the future should new information come to light.
Tracy Kitch is required to repay the personal expenses she billed by the end of this month.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Sarah Ritchie.
