A recent audit by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of Prince Edward Island has raised serious concerns about pay practices at Health P.E.I., finding that the organization failed to consistently follow its own policies, practices and procedures governing compensation for employees in “excluded” positions. A previous OAG audit in October 2024 raised similar problems.

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Excluded employees are those who perform managerial functions or deal with confidential matters related to labour relations and are therefore not covered by collective agreements. The audit examined a period just prior to the appointment of Health P.E.I.’s current chief executive officer, Melanie Fraser, who began her role in March 2024.

The auditor general found that some excluded employees were overpaid and that, in many cases, Health P.E.I. did not maintain adequate records to support payments that had been made. The audit also found that employee classification rules were not always followed, and that misclassification contributed directly to overpayments.

In response to the findings, CEO Melanie Fraser forwarded the audit report to the attorney general for review to determine whether any unlawful activity may have occurred. The report included 12 recommendations; all focused on improving compliance with existing rules and procedures.

What the recommendations did not address, however, were the deeper governance and management weaknesses that allowed these problems to persist undetected. Health P.E.I.’s responses to the recommendations acknowledged that the organization does not have........

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