VICTORIA — B.C. Liberal MLA Harry Bloy on Thursday defended a committee he chaired on the future of Burnaby Hospital against allegations of political interference.

“It’s a citizen’s committee. Everyone on the committee volunteered their time to do this,” Bloy said in an interview.

“I believe you’re going to be impressed with the report,” he added, saying the committee’s final report is being written now and will be complete as early as next week.

Bloy was responding after emails leaked to the New Democratic Party showed the Burnaby Hospital Community Consultation Committee — which has conducted several public meetings on the future of Burnaby Hospital, and holds itself out to be impartial — appeared to be orchestrated behind the scenes by B.C. Liberals to make the government look good.

Those emails show the committee’s citizen chair — Pamela Gardner, who has served as a B.C. Liberal Party riding president in Burnaby-Edmonds — has been in contact with key party insiders about the review.

They also show Gardner tapped former B.C. Liberal Party president Sonja Sanguinetti to write the final report, and that she told B.C. Liberal operatives that Sanguinetti would say that problems at Burnaby Hospital aren’t “a reflection on the Liberal government but more on the Chair of Fraser Health.”

“It’s not the Liberals that force and continue to allow the citizens of Burnaby to suffer,” Gardner wrote.

Gardner has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

On Thursday, Bloy said the emails were simply an expression of personal opinions by people passionate about the issue.

“Everybody who was working on the committee exchanged some of their views and how they thought it was going,” said Bloy, who received the messages in question at his personal email account.

“I wasn’t concerned that it was partisan. Some people expressed some of their own personal views,” he added, saying he did not respond to the emails.

Bloy also defended the choice of Sanguinetti as the report’s author.

“She’s done a lot of work in the province. She’s a retired lawyer, someone that’s capable of writing the report,” he said.

“She reviewed all the submissions (to the committee) and all the comments that were written and pulled it all together.”

Wendy Joan Scott, a small-business owner and former nurse who sits on the 12-member committee, said Thursday she was “shocked” by the allegations of political interference.

“I feel very very badly that this has even come up because in all good faith everybody on that committee was working toward getting as much public information as possible in order to come up with something to give the minister of health to say what the public wanted,” she said in an interview, adding she never saw evidence of any political agenda during meetings.

“Our main role was to listen, to gather and to let people have an opportunity (to speak) and there was no judgment,” she added, saying there was “never any political discussion in the public forums.”

Dr. Ross Horton, a plastic surgeon and member of the committee, said he is most concerned that news of the emails might delay or derail progress toward a new hospital in Burnaby, something he said is desperately needed and long overdue.