The former top doctor in the B.C. Interior collected a salary of $346,000 in the fiscal year 2022-2023, a full year after he had been charged with child sex crimes.
Former Interior Health chief medical officer Dr. Albert de Villiers was jailed for 5.5 years in June for molesting a child in Alberta between 2018 and 2020. He was arrested and charged in June 2021.
On Tuesday, the BC United Party slammed the NDP government for allowing de Villiers to stay on payroll until he was convicted.
“It defies logic that hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds were spent to pay the salary of someone on trial for such horrible crimes,” said Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond, BC United Shadow Minister for Health.
“This NDP government has still not explained why they continued to pay a child sex offender and why they refused to put him on unpaid leave until the trial was concluded. British Columbians will be appalled to find out that de Villiers continued to collect a massive salary — paid for by taxpayers — while on trial. People deserve an explanation of how this was allowed to happen in the first place and what this government is doing to ensure it never happens again.”
Interior Health's Executive Compensation disclosure shows that Dr. de Villiers took a “general paid leave,” beginning June 9, 2021, shortly after his arrest.
But he returned to work on Oct. 4, and was “reassigned to [medical health officer] duties.” Interior Health at the time would not elaborate further on de Villiers new duties, only calling them “administrative.”
In a statement to Castanet News on Tuesday, Health Minister Adrian Dix reiterated that de Villiers ceased to be an employee of Interior Health following his criminal conviction.
“Interior Health’s process during this time aligned with the federal and provincial laws, including employment standards, human rights, occupational health and safety, privacy legislation, and principles of procedural fairness and, where relevant, union collective agreements,” Dix said.
“It is any employer’s obligation to follow the law – and once Dr. de Villiers was found guilty in a court of law, Interior Health fired him. We are not able to comment further on his employment duties during that time due to privacy obligations, however we can confirm Interior Health had an interim Chief Medical Health Officer in place,” Dix continued.
Last month, a second set of child sex crime charges against the now-incarcerated de Villiers were dropped by the Alberta courts in favour of a peace bond.
