The Department of Public Works paid $8,625,000 to Deloitte Inc. to manage shipments of pandemic supplies from China, according to records. Staff in a Memorandum To The Minister said they had no choice due to “extreme urgency”.
Federal agencies spent nearly $150 million on a Covid-19 test kit that didn’t work in clinical trials. Records show funding for Spartan Bioscience Inc. of Ottawa was approved only weeks before its test kits were recalled: “Results were not positive.”
Youth Minister Bardish Chagger yesterday confirmed she called We Charity about federal subsidies five days before the group submitted a winning proposal for a $43.5 million grant. Chagger told the Commons ethics committee she could not recall all details of the half-hour phone call to charity co-founder Craig Kielburger: “It is really a yes or no question.”
Mary Dawson, retired ethics commissioner, yesterday described the Prime Minister as a man with a good heart who doesn’t mean to breach the Conflict Of Interest Act. Testifying at the Commons ethics committee, Dawson said she opposed harsh penalties for any MP found to break the law: “There are different levels of badness.”
Foreign Minister Françoise-Philippe Champagne has refinanced $1.2 million in Bank of China mortgages with the National Bank of Montréal. Champagne in a federal filing said his debts to the People’s Republic bank were paid in full by August 10: “I feel very transparent.”
A federal judge has ruled Canadian National Railways is bound to confidential terms of a shipper’s agreement even if the contract technically expired. The decision came in the case of million-dollar mistake over the height of a railway bridge: “CN denies owing anything.”
A former Québec Liberal MP’s company was awarded a federal contract for 10,000 pandemic ventilators though none of the machines were “approved in any jurisdiction to date”, according to a Department of Health memo. Ex-MP Frank Baylis did not comment: “I never planned on being a career politician.”
The Office of the Procurement Ombudsman yesterday said it is investigating inaccurate federal claims in the awarding of a $382 million contract to a Québec pandemic mask supplier. The Public Health Agency falsely claimed the contract followed competitive bidding, and under-reported the true value of the deal by nearly $300 million: “The Ombudsman is always interested.”
Every urban hotel in the nation is operating at a loss this summer, the Hotel Association of Canada yesterday told the Commons industry committee. Lobbyists said the industry is so hard-pressed insurers have warned they will be denied coverage by year’s end: “It’s just bad everywhere.”
Lengthy jailing of foreigners awaiting deportation is constitutional, says the Federal Court of Appeal. The ruling came in the case of a Toronto man jailed nearly five years in Canada after Jamaican authorities refused to take him back: “Prolonged detention is constitutional.”
The Public Health Agency that failed to stockpile pandemic supplies had poor management of information technology systems, says an internal audit. “IT is central to almost every aspect of Health Canada and Public Health Agency business,” wrote auditors.
A Québec contractor named an exclusive federal supplier of Canadian-made pandemic masks has failed to ship any, says the Public Health Agency. Internal documents show AMD Medicom Inc. was awarded contracts worth $381,693,476 — three times the figure publicly disclosed — on a promise of speedy delivery weeks ago, though it didn’t have a factory in Canada: “To date the Public Health Agency has not received surgical masks from Medicom’s Canadian production facility.”
The Public Health Agency in internal memos disclosed it was so unprepared for the pandemic it shipped date-expired medical items to provinces, and relied on donations from Home Depot. The documents confirmed managers had scant supplies in a national stockpile after throwing away millions of masks in 2019: ‘Did they warn the cabinet?’
A federal agency, the Canada Energy Regulator, is paying $150,000 to fly trainers to Calgary for workshops on “contemplative dialogue”. Staff will attend four-day seminars on “awareness and the human person” and how to conduct smoother meetings: “Where do you go to learn that?”
TV tycoon Kevin O’Leary is named in a $13 million federal lawsuit under the Marine Liability Act. Lawyers representing families of two victims killed in a 2019 boating accident filed the Federal Court claim against O’Leary, his wife and the driver of a second power boat that collided after dusk: “He failed to keep a proper lookout.”
