Former IWK Health Centre CEO Tracy Kitch sentenced to 9 months in jail for fraud

The former head of the IWK has been sentenced to nine months in jail for fraud.

The former CEO of the IWK Health Centre, who was twice convicted of fraud after she used her corporate credit card to pay for personal expenses, has been sentenced to nine months in jail followed by 24 months of probation.

Tracy Kitch was sentenced Wednesday afternoon in Halifax provincial court.

She is also barred from holding a position of public trust for 10 years.

“May this sentence also serve as a message to public officials that public service is a high calling and fraud against public institutions should result in the doors of a jail cell locking behind an offender,” said Judge Ronda van der Hoek while handing down her decision.

The defence had been asking for an 18-month conditional sentence, followed by probation, but the judge accepted the Crown’s recommendation.

“We’re of the view that something of this seriousness with this degree of breach of trust requires no sentence less than a period of incarceration in a provincial institution,” Crown attorney Peter Dostal told reporters outside the courtroom.

The judge told the court she had even considered a one-year jail term. She noted the case garnered national media attention partly due to the “high level position of trust and leadership” Kitch held and because a well-loved children’s hospital funded by taxpayers and donors had been defrauded.

“A sentence of incarceration, especially this sentence for this individual, is one that communicates, I think, very clearly that the public has a high degree of trust in our top-level officials within public institutions,” said Dostal. “That trust should be respected. Money that they’re in control of needs to be spent in the public interest, not in their own personal interest, and in order for the public to trust our government, to trust our hard-working civil servants, we have to make it clear that if anyone’s going to start self-serving before they serve the public, there’s going to be serious consequences and I think this decision today makes that very clear.”

In a pre-sentence report, Kitch said she did not feel like what she did was “malintent or dishonest.”

“Ms. Kitch is entitled to her own opinion with respect to what had happened and all the surrounding circumstances, but the judge looked at that and rightfully considered it as an element showing, in my view, that she lacked insight into what exactly had occurred, what exactly was the crime, and what exactly was the gravity of it, including the impact on both the public and the hospital itself,” said Dostal.

Kitch has filed a notice to appeal the verdict on six grounds, including that the trial judge “erred in law by concluding that no person employed at a public institution is permitted to use public funds for personal use … with no exception.”

When asked if the Crown would pursue a third trial if Kitch’s appeal is successful, Dostal said it’s too soon to say.

Kitch used corporate credit card to pay for personal expenses

Kitch was appointed as the Halifax children’s hospital CEO in 2014. At the time, she was given a corporate credit card, which she acknowledged in writing was not for personal use, according to a previous court decision.

Kitch resigned in 2017 and was charged with fraud over $5,000 in 2018, following an internal investigation by the hospital. An audit found Kitch used her hospital credit card to pay for roughly $47,000 in personal expenses. That money was reimbursed.

A conservative estimate of more than $30,000 was the evidence presented at trial, consisting of personal flight passes and taxi chits.

Kitch was first convicted and sentenced to five months in jail in 2022, but she was released on bail pending her appeal, which was heard on Mar. 7, 2023. That appeal was successful, with the court ruling the trial judge had failed to adequately explain the reasons behind the decision to convict Kitch in 2022, and a new trial was ordered.

Kitch’s retrial started in November 2024 and she was convicted in September 2025 of fraud over $5,000 for the second time.

Kitch served as a contract nurse and spent time working in the film industry following her resignation, but is currently unemployed.

With files from CTV News Atlantic’s Callum Smith, Jonathan MacInnis and Hafsa Arif

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