Annual general meetings, popularly known for short as AGMs, can be somewhat somnolent affairs, but there was nothing slumberous about outgoing BRHA chair Duke Beardy’s remark about the media Nov. 25.

Beardy, chief of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation at Split Lake, whose term as BRHA chair ended Dec. 1, took the opportunity in his BRHA AGM report, when discussing senior staff, to say, “Unfortunately days that could have been spent on patient care are lost to dealing with media.”

Really? Well, here’s a news flash. Dealing with the media and offering some semblance of accountability – aside from once a year at an annual general meeting – go with the territory of being senior staff at a regional health authority with more than three times the taxpayer-funded budget of the City of Thompson and close to three times the budget of the School District of Mystery Lake.

In fairness, it should be noted that Beardy has generally gotten good marks from that very same senior administrative staff for his leadership as chair, as chief executive officer Gloria King noted at the meeting. He’s someone said to have had a good grasp of the issues, been a good listener, exhibited a sense of humour, and been a consensus builder.

We suspect then that Beardy’s remark about the media had an extemporaneous element to it, born of certain very specific frustrations. Indeed, King, in her own remarks a few minutes after Beardy’s, was at pains to say that overall the BRHA feels the media coverage it receives has been very fair, with the exception of “one publisher,” whom she didn’t name, but few in the room wouldn’t recognize immediately as Winnipeg’s Grassroots News.

To be even more specific the issue for the BRHA is that Grassroots News, which was established in 1995 and bills itself as “Manitoba’s source for aboriginal, Métis and First Nation news,” continues to defy the health authority and publish with impunity Thompson freelance columnist Hussain Guisti, who is relentless in his printed attacks on the BRHA.

The BRHA had to deal with about 150 Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) requests for information last year, King said.

We wouldn’t be surprised if most them came from Guisti, who holds a bachelor of medicine and surgery degrees from King Saud University in Abha in Saudi Arabia and is currently working, he says, to obtain licensure to practice medicine in the Province of Manitoba, a credential he was lacking when he was passed over several years ago when he applied the job as vice-president of medical, a senior administrative job, with the BRHA.

Guisti, who also holds master’s degrees in public health and science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, worked for more than three years as a sub-editor at the English-language Saudi Gazette in Makkah. Much of the information he has ferreted out about the BRHA is in the public domain – or can be obtained – if one is willing to work for it, and he clearly is.

In June 2008, a FIPPA request by him led to media throughout Manitoba picking up the story Thompson General Hospital had treated 27 cases of necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as flesh-eating disease, over the last three years, a number far greater than statistical norms would predict. Guisti, whose wife is a surgeon with the BRHA, also published a publicly available list of senior staff salaries in August, which was read locally with more than passing interest.

In some ways, it matters not so much if Guisti is a high-minded public crusader or a loose cannon with a personal axe to grind. That is not for us to judge. What matters more, we would suggest, is the institutional response of the BRHA to its critics.

While it must be frustrating, annoying and even maddening at times to have to deal with Guisti’s barrage of questions and published articles, we believe the BRHA needs to have a measured and tempered response.

Last May 25, the BRHA used the Winnipeg law firm of Pitblado Barristers & Solicitors to have lawyer Tracey Epp send Guisti a cease-and-desist letter in reference to material published in some of his columns. The David-and-Goliath optics were immediate: Tom Brodbeck on May 31 took up Guisti’s cause in his Winnipeg Sun column. The opposition raised the issue in the legislature. The Grassroots columns continue.

King later said she was “disappointed” Brodbeck didn’t include her “key messages” from an interview she gave him in his column, namely: “People are free to criticize as part of healthy debate; accuracy is a reasonable expectation; It is important to BRHA that the public has confidence in the organization and the services that are provided; there are processes for independent review such as the Manitoba Ombudsman and the whistleblower legislation – third parties can be asked to review concerns by the public.  We encourage this process to be utilized if there are concerns.” 

And we would encourage the BRHA – as unfortunate a distraction as Beardy described it publicly in terms of lost days from patient care – a proposition we don’t buy for minute, to continue to be accountable and deal with the media – all of the media. As for that unnamed “one publisher” and columnist: Take the high road.