Treatment centre to remain closed after allegations of financial irregularities

The president of the Three Voices of Healing Society has gone public to refute allegations of questionable spending at its 12-bed residential alcohol and drug abuse treatment centre in Invermere, B.C.

The centre, which operated under the umbrella of the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program, earned a high profile for its success working with First Nations clients.

But the B.C. First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) withdrew funding for the facility effective Dec. 31, just days after a report published in the Vancouver Province, which provided details from a financial audit compiled earlier in the year.

The Province story drew on a single source: FNHA COO Richard Jock, who outlined the sequence of events that led to the decision to withdraw funding.

Calling it a “deliberate and vicious attack on the best run and most successful NNADAP treatment centre in B.C.,” Three Voices President Karen LeClair contacted Windspeaker to put some of the more glaring allegations into context. LeClair said it is important to examine the evolution of the society.

“Twelve years ago, [the forerunner to Three Voices] was part of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket First Nation,” she said. “They only had a 12-bed centre in Creston.”

As a result of operational difficulties, Health Canada stepped in, advising the principals to put together a new society. On the plus side, they had put together an after-care program, LeClair said, adding that both Health Canada and FNHA have named after-care as a much-needed component of treatment, beyond detoxification.

The members of the new society were determined to continue providing after-care, so they looked for a successful model to use at the newly-named Three Voices of Healing Society, which would relocate to a new facility on Shuswap First Nation property in Invermere. Funding would flow, at various levels, from FNHA, Shuswap First Nation and NNADAP.

The Province report spells out a litany of “unsupported” transactions and questionable spending that dated back to 2010. That included “$10,000 to cover travel and accommodation costs for three people to visit a rehab centre in Italy.”

The facility is the renowned San Patrignano centre in Rimini province, and it offers working visits for professionals from around the world. On its website (www.sanpatignano.org/en), the centre advertises that it has treated 25,000 young men and women so far.

“First of all, one of the three attendees was not from Three Voices, and he paid his own expenses,” LeClair said, making the figure closer to $6,600. “You go there for seven days. You’re on site, 24/7 and you experience everything they do. We came up with a [treatment] program that was modeled after what they do.”

That included an improved after-care program, LeClair said. In the eyes of the Three Voices board, this was a foundational learning session and $6,600 well spent.

In the Province article, Three Voices executive director Delena Tikk came under criticism for her “total remuneration in 2014 of $178,464.” A much more detailed report, by Columbia Valley Pioneer reporter Breanne Massey, posted Jan. 8, cited the same figure as an “executive director salary.”

LeClair said Tikk’s aggregate remuneration (not base salary) reflected the fact that she was, in effect, working at least two-and-a-half jobs, including raising money for operations via several fundraising efforts.

“She was on call, 24/7, 365 days a year. That meant she was paid out her vacation pay in lieu of holiday time. In the summer, on Saturdays and Sundays she supervised the beach concession that we ran as a fundraiser – 10 to 12 hours a day. On top of that, she also served as our chief fundraiser, rather than contracting it out at top dollar. So when someone is putting in that many hours, you have to compensate.”

LeClair said the auditor brought in to examine the society’s finances, John Scherbnyj of White Rock Consulting, had this information, but it was not reflected in the audit he delivered to FNHA.

LeClair maintains that, as a member of the FNHA board of directors and as acting band manager of Shuswap First Nation, which partially funded Three Voices, Scherbnyj was in a conflict of interest at the time he performed the audit. She said she has now filed a complaint with Certified Public Accountants BC.

Massey’s news report provided an expanded litany of expenses that came under question, but LeClair gave the young reporter high marks for taking a balanced approach and for speaking with herself and executive director Tikk.

LeClair said she was unable to “have a conversation” with COO Jock or with Sonia Isaac-Mann, FNHA executive director of Community Health and Wellness, who was cited extensively in the Jan. 8 article. LeClair maintains that the Dec. 31 shutdown violated the society’s contract, which demands 90 days’ notice.

On Jan. 19, Windspeaker held a conference call with Jock, Isaac-Mann and communications/public relations director Davis McKenzie to address some of the issues raised by LeClair.

Isaac-Mann offered reassurance that First Nations clients would continue to receive treatment in FNHA facilities. The first option would be the Round Lake facility near Armstrong, in the B.C. Interior.

(LeClair suggested that Round Lake was the only FNHA facility to achieve the kind of successful outcomes provided at Three Voices. But there is a months-long backlog, she added.)

“If there is a backlog in Round Lake, we have 254 beds, province-wide, and some of those treatment centres aren’t at max levels, so we have redirected to them,” Isaac-Mann said.

Jock was asked if, aside from finances, there had been any questions about the quality of care provided at Three Voices, which received a Certificate of Excellence in July, even as the audit was unfolding.

The COO said there was a long sequence of events that ultimately did raise issues of safety. But finances triggered the investigation, he said.
“We work very closely with the existing board and chair. About a year ago, at this time, we became aware of a ‘high-debt issue’,” he said.

The society’s bank, Peace Hills Trust, approached FNHA to advise that Three Voices was overdrawn by at least three-month’s (one quarter) worth of FNHA funding.

“They said, basically, their first full quarter of funding would go towards satisfying their line of credit. That was when we got involved. We tried to be helpful, and advanced two quarters [funding] to make sure they could operate.”

According to Jock, the Three Voices board, the FNHA and Shuswap chief and council all agreed to undertake a financial review, to be conducted by Scherbnyj. At no time was there any suggestion that Scherbnyj was in any conflict of interest.

“We did a financial review over the summer, then moved into a program review,” Jock said. At this point, he added, there had been no concerns raised about operational practices at the centre. Jock said the program consultant also found no issues when he visited.

“But after that, we were made aware of a series of written complaints from staff (six in total) and from clients (10), which were very specific. And we also received a very detailed complaint from Ktunaxa First Nation, with their perception of financial irregularities.”

Jock said FNHA contacted then-Three Voices chair, Dr. Murray Trusler, to set up a response plan.

“Our concern is the safety of clients, and secondarily, safety of staff. And ultimately, the complaints that we had were unaddressed.

“Without addressing those, we felt that patient safety is compromised. We provided many opportunities and many time frames for those client complaints to be addressed, and they were not addressed.”

Complicating the process further, Jock said Trusler was “effectively deposed” in late November, “in the middle of our discussion,” said Jock.

Jock said FNHA had no choice but to act. That led to the Discontinuing of Funding notice.

Jock and Isaac-Mann disagreed with LeCLair’s assertion that Three Voices was the only NNADAP centre in B.C. trained to accept fentanyl clients. Abuse of the synthetic opioid, mainly used in palliative care, has reached epidemic proportions in some communities.

“I am not aware of any specific training for fentanyl,” Isaac-Mann said, noting that it falls under the protocols for opioid abuse in general.

“We [FNHA facilities] are all part of the overall Fentanyl Overdose Response [program],” Jock said. “All of our facilities are equipped with Naloxone (antidote) kits. I would also say we use the provincial health system for some of the more intensive medical treatments. There is not ‘one’ way of dealing with it.”

Jock acknowledged there were concerns raised when it was revealed that 40 per cent of the Three Voices clientele was actually from Alberta. FNHA’s mandate is to treat First Nations clients from B.C.
“But these are the sort of secondary things we would have worked on if we had a willing partner,” he said.

Asked if Tikk’s total compensation package of nearly $180,000 was not unreasonable when her multiple roles and job duties were spelled out, Jock was emphatic.

“I think it’s pretty simple. Their total [annual] funding was about $750,000. For that size of centre, it is taking a much larger portion of finances than is sustainable.”

Another item pointed out in the Three Voices audit was a $5,000 trip to the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas in late 2014. LeClair said the trip came about when the State of Nevada asked Three Voices to do a presentation about the centre. The board approved the visit as a Christmas break for staff and an opportunity to publicize the work being done at Three Voices, she said.

Jock noted the timing, just weeks before Peace Hills Trust approached FNHA about the Three Voices financial deficit.

“We asked, is it reasonable to take trips of this order when you are $200,000 in overdraft?” he said.

Jock said taking all these factors into consideration, “The operation, to us, became too unstable to continue.”

Asked what would happen to the remaining debt on the Three Voices books, Jock replied, “I would direct that to the [Three Voices] board of directors.”

In the Jan. 8 Pioneer article, LeClair stated that she and the board would attempt to keep the facility running under a different funding system. Speaking to Windspeaker 10 days later, that goal had been abandoned.
“We have no capacity to take on any clients with no funding, so we are winding down the society, because there is no choice,” she concluded.