VICTORIA — Health researchers at the centre of a government firing scandal are expressing relief and anger as internal RCMP documents prove they were never the subjects of a police investigation.

“It’s like being tainted,” said Ron Mattson, who was one of eight health researchers fired in 2012.

“If you get under investigation … for something, even after you are cleared, people still look at you funny. There are still probably people out there who say we did something criminally wrong.

“But it was all manufactured by the government to either embarrass us or justify the firings.”

When the Health Ministry fired Mattson and his colleagues in 2012, officials said publicly they had turned over material to the RCMP for an investigation.

But internal police records obtained by The Vancouver Sun this week show the RCMP never conducted an investigation because the province failed to provide the promised reports or evidence.

The RCMP tried five times over two years to get information from the province, then closed its file in mid-2014. The government took another seven months before publicly admitting in February that it no longer expected police to investigate the matter.

One of the researchers, Roderick MacIsaac, committed suicide three months after government announced the firings and supposed police probe.

MacIsaac’s family said he was hurt by losing his job three days before his co-op term expired, and having his career become ruined by the shadow of a police investigation. He withdrew from the University of Victoria and grew frustrated, said Linda Kayfish, his sister.

The revelation there was no police action “reduces our faith in the government,” said Kayfish. “It’s very hurtful. Who do you trust?”

Doug Kayfish, MacIsaac’s brother-in-law, said the government acted deliberately to reference the RCMP in the firings even when it knew it couldn’t back it up with actual evidence.

“How can you know those things and not know that using the word RCMP in this context would hurt these people and hurt their reputations?” he said. “Of course they knew it.”

Mattson and MacIsaac’s family said they support an Opposition NDP call for a full public inquiry into the firings. An independent investigation by an outside lawyer, which determined last year government badly botched the case, did not put key officials under oath and identify those who were responsible for the decisions.

“Thank goodness we now know there was no investigation. But how do we get to this point that a government could make this up for three years?” asked NDP leader John Horgan.

Health Minister Terry Lake maintained Friday it was still proper of government to notify RCMP at the time of the original allegations because the issue of concern was missing medical information. But he admitted the government’s interest in the RCMP probe diminished after his deputy minister re-examined the case in 2013.

“As time went on, information was gathered, but it was determined that it really didn’t have the same level of concern that initially, I think, had been,” Lake told radio station CKNW on Friday.

He denied the government failed to cooperate with RCMP. The province gave the Mounties in April a copy of a report by the comptroller general into related contracting concerns in the Health Ministry’s pharmaceutical branch.

Premier Christy Clark repeated an apology to the accused Friday.

“What I’ve said in the past is government very much regrets that mistake that was made,” she said. “It shouldn’t have been made and government has apologized. It was wrong.”

When asked if she was apologizing for the botched firings or for the government misleading the public to think there was a criminal investigation for three years, the premier replied: “For both.”

rshaw@vancouversun.com