RQHR complains to police, launches suit alleging inappropriate invoicing

The Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region is suing a local contractor over work done at Regina Pioneer Village.

In March, an RQHR staff member raised concerns regarding potentially inappropriate invoicing at Pioneer Village, and the region started an intensive investigation.

On Wednesday, the region officially filed a complaint with the Regina Police Service and initiated a civil litigation claim against a local contractor who has performed significant work at the facility over a number of years.

“The complaint we’re filing with the Regina Police Service as well as the civil litigation we’re pursuing is in part to get additional information that we require in order to be able to fully understand the potential issue in front of us,” Keith Dewar, CEO of the RQHR, told reporters.

A statement of claim was filed at Regina Court of Queen’s Bench on Wednesday against AB Electric Corp. and Adrian Bechard, the company’s sole director and president.

Statements of claim contain allegations not proven in court.

A statement of defence has not yet been filed. When contacted by the Leader-Post, Bechard declined to comment.

According to the statement of claim, the company provided electrical contracting services to RQHR at Pioneer Village beginning around January 2011 until early 2017.

Over that time period, AB Electric provided invoices to RQHR for electrical contracting work allegedly provided in an amount totalling approximately $1.958 million.

During that time, the claim says, AB Electric issued approximately 1,611 invoices to RQHR for electrical goods and services supplied at Pioneer Village.

The RQHR alleges it made payments to AB Electric totalling $1,956,651.82 during the stated period.

According to the claim, sometime around March 2017, RQHR became aware of irregularities in the billings of AB Electric. RQHR immediately undertook a thorough review of all of AB Electric’s invoicing back to January 2011.

The region claims it has not seen evidence that would suggest there were billing irregularities prior to 2011.

In the statement of claim, the RQHR alleges numerous billing irregularities, including multiple invoices issued for the same work; routinely billing excessive hours for a journeyman and an apprentice electrician to do the same task; billing excessive hours worked for routine electrical tasks; grossly inflating hours worked per employee per day; issuing invoices for work not performed; billing for services performed at Pioneer Village by a subcontractor to AB Electric at an unreasonable markup; and charging RQHR for materials actually supplied by RQHR or for materials previously invoiced to and paid for by RQHR.

In the claim, the RQHR alleges that “AB Electric’s false invoices were not the product of isolated errors but were instead a persistent scheme to overcharge RQHR.”

Dewar told reporters the region notified the provincial auditor and filed a loss report with the Financial Services Branch of the Ministry for a loss he said could exceed $100,000.

“We can’t actually determine the exact amount because we don’t have all of the evidence that we need to say this is wrong or this is right,” he said.

The region said any alleged irregularities were only with the billing. There is no evidence to suggest there are concerns with the safety or quality of the work performed by the contractor.

As part of its investigation, the contractor was cut off from doing any more work in the health region and payment for any work already done was stopped.

AB Electric is owed approximately $60,000 in outstanding payments from the region, Dewar said.

After checking with a couple of different firms, the region hired MNP, an accounting firm that provides business advisory services, for further insight into areas for improvement.

Each firm was asked to provide a rate per hour and the type of person who would do the work.

“We anticipate that the actual work for this phase of it (by the accounting firm) will be less than $50,000 for sure,” Dewar said.

The RQHR is continuing to investigate the matter. Dewar believes the region can improve its controls.

At this time, no region employees have been disciplined as a result of the potential billing irregularities.

“If we find, as we continue down this path, that there is purposeful negligence or purposeful wrongdoing, we have a process in place where we will go through a sanctioning process with that individual,” Dewar said.

He said there is no information to suggest there are problems with billings from other contractors.