The recent disappearance from a public registry of more than 100 government contracts — worth over $8.2 million — was simply correcting for an earlier bureaucratic error, according to Health Minister Doug Graham.

“This is proprietary information,” he told the Star late this morning.

“In other words, it’s for a physician’s private knowledge.”

Government contracting and procurement regulations exclude “contracts for physician services” from public disclosure, along with individual employment and legal contracts.

“We’re still going ahead with the contracts; they just don’t appear in the registry,” Graham said.

The erased contracts, posted since April 1, are mainly for physician visits to the communities and for specialists within the territory.

He said an “administrative error” at the Department of Highways and Public Works, responsible for maintaining the registry, resulted in the contracts being posted earlier this year, and taken down within the last six weeks.

“There’s no conspiracy here. There’s no underlying cause. Somebody noticed there was an error so they deleted it from the registry,” Graham said.

“It’s more of the NDP raising unwarranted concerns in the minds of people in the territory because there’s nothing new or different going on here.”

“I don’t have conspiracy theories going on,” NDP Health critic Jan Stick said in an interview earlier this morning.

“I don’t know what the answer is, and that’s why I asked the question.”

She posed the query Monday in the legislature.

The Department of Health and Social Services handed out 424 contracts worth $18.2 million to doctors and medical companies between April 1 and Oct. 9 — when Stick printed off a copy of the online contract registry.

As of last Friday, nearly one-quarter of those contracts had vanished from the vault.

“The reason it’s there is to be open and accountable. That’s what government is supposed to be,” Stick told the Star.

“Anybody can go and look at these contacts. To remove $8 million of them from one department does not seem open and accountable to me.”

One $574,000 contract to Whitehorse Medical Services for providing clinic space for a nurse practitioner was taken down from the registry.

Two other contracts amounting to $32,000 for the same company remain accessible online.

Another example is $384,000 in contract cash for the Pine Medical Centre’s provision of space for a nurse practitioner, which is no longer visible on the registry.

A $10,000 contract for support for visiting health professionals at the clinic still is.

Four contracts adding up to more than $600,000 for the provision of psychiatric services by one doctor are also no longer available.

“I have no idea why 104 contracts, totalling $8.2 million, were removed from the website, but I will endeavour to find out and return to the legislature with an answer,” Graham told the house Monday.

“What we have here is a conspiracy theory imagined by the member opposite somewhere ... I’m sure that we have absolutely nothing to hide.”

Graham said physician contracts are fundamentally different than those for other services, like construction or catering.

“Some doctors have picked a community they’re interested in. We listen to feedback from the community and we take a look at a doctor’s experience in rural settings.”

Medical services contracts are negotiated with doctors individually. They do not involve a request for proposals (RFPs).

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