There was some shuffling of feet last week as the B.C. Liberals tried to adjust their stance on the issue that won’t go away — the arbitrary firing of eight health researchers three years ago.

The full circumstances have never been explained. That has led to a cascading series of questions and related issues that seem to be making the government increasingly uncomfortable.

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Health Minister Terry Lake hinted that some kind of further review might be in the works, beyond the circumscribed efforts to date.

The government seems to be looking for some middle-ground mechanism that would more fully explore the poor judgment displayed by senior officials in ordering or approving the mass firing. The initial effort to quell suspicions was the independent review commissioned last year. There were so many limitations put on it that the effort came up well short of explaining what exactly happened.

So the government needs to go much further. But Liberals are loath to give in and deliver what the Opposition has been demanding — a full public inquiry. That would be a protracted, heavily lawyered exercise that would keep the dismaying story alive for months, if not a year or more.

So they’re groping around for yet another independent type of review, while trying to avoid the huge production of a public inquiry. Referring it to the auditor general is one option, but Lake said he’s “not ruling anything out.”

Government lawyers are looking at ways to get the answers while maintaining people’s privacy and respecting confidentiality agreements that were signed after some of the terminations were rescinded and acknowledged to have been improper. There are also some upcoming wrongful-dismissal lawsuits to keep in mind.

The case is obviously a huge legal mess by now. The only thing messier than the firings themselves is the government’s investigatory response.

After the information and privacy commissioner probed the case and concluded there were some data breaches, the government tightened up policies. But attention increased on the government’s initial response — the mass firings.

After the Opposition highlighted the bereaved sister of the fired researcher who took his own life four months after his termination, the government finally responded with apologies. Those apologies contributed to the impression something more needed to be done. So they commissioned Victoria lawyer Marcia McNeil to do a narrowly focused review.

Premier Christy Clark told the legislature after the appointment: “It’s important that this review be thorough. It’s important that we get to the bottom of it, and that is what, by the end of October, we hope we’re able to do.”

Not even close.

The terms of reference were bobbled right from the start and had to be adjusted. McNeil informed government that its timeline was hopeless, and she needed three more months to do the job.

She reported out last December, with the basic finding that the public-service investigators went into the case with their minds made up and bypassed due process.

But she acknowledged that the two most difficult questions — who made the dismissal decisions and what factors did they consider — were unanswered.

“Although the deputy ministers signed the letters of dismissal for each of the employees, no one has taken responsibility for making the effective decision to dismiss the employees. Instead, those most likely to have made the effective decision all pointed to someone else.”

She also acknowledged, because of the terms of reference, the report didn’t answer questions about the allegations against the employees, or whether their termination was legally or factually sound.

Nonetheless, the government tried to pretend for a few months that it was all behind them.

“We’ve canvassed this issue many times in this House,” said Lake, in the face of continuing questions from the Opposition. He accused the NDP of smearing public servants “who’ve given their whole lives” to public service.

That stance seems to be weakening as the need for a harder look at what those public servants did increases.

There’s a remarkable contrast in the story between high-ranking past and present deputies who didn’t take responsibility and the lowest-ranked person in the entire affair, Roderick MacIsaac. Doing health research as a co-op grad student, he was fired just before his term ended, and took his own life four months later.

lleyne@timescolonist.com