(March 30, 2022) – David Brazil, PC Official Opposition Leader and MHA for Conception Bay East-Bell Island, and Paul Dinn, PC Official Opposition Shadow Minister of Health and Community Services, say todays update on the cyberattack which disrupted the Newfoundland and Labrador Health Care system demonstrated a lack of a commitment to transparency from government about this serious incident.

“The Minister of Health waited over a month to inform the province that over 200,000 records, including personal medical records, were taken by bad actors impacting thousands of people. Delayed transparency is not transparency and the Minister has not lived up to his duty to keep the people of our province informed about this attack,” said Brazil.

“Other jurisdictions, such as Ireland, hired outside agencies to review the attacks and made the resulting reports public, with reasonable redactions, within months of the attack. No such commitment has been made by the Minister of Health in today’s update.”

Dinn says the Cameron Inquiry enshrined a duty to disclose for major events in our healthcare system, which the Minister is not meeting.

“The Cameron Inquiry outlined a duty to disclose adverse events in our healthcare system. Waiting a month to reveal this critical information does not live up to the standards set as a result of the Cameron Inquiry,” said Dinn.

“The frontline workers who maintained healthcare services to the people of our province, also in the middle of a pandemic, deserve praise for their heroics under impossible circumstances. That’s why it’s so important to protect them, their information, and to demonstrate to the public steps taken to prevent this serious incident from ever happening again.”

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Contacts:

David Maher

Director of Strategic Communications

(cell) 709-725-0984

DavidMaher@gov.nl.ca