CEO fired following misspending report
VICTORIA — The head of a health authority in British Columbia is no longer with the organization following allegations related to misspending on various items including $7 million for respirators that didn’t meet provincial standards.
Benoit Morin’s departure was announced by the Provincial Health Services Authority on Tuesday, hours after the government released a report it commissioned by Ernst & Young.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said Morin was dismissed without cause and will get nine months’ severance pay in keeping with his contract, adding that interim CEO David Byers has been appointed to the position.
Dix said he received a report from his deputy health minister about allegations of misspending late last year and a series of recommendations were made about those concerns, especially related to renovations of executive offices.
“On Dec. 3 we made strong recommendations about what needed to happen about spending that I considered to be not appropriate and that action was taken. And now we’ve had this report that lays out other concerns. It puts some concerns to rest, it should be said very clearly with respect to Mr. Morin, but raises some other concerns.”
The Provincial Health Services Authority is in charge of several health-care programs including BC Cancer and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, which Dix noted plays a key role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ernst & Young says in its report that it looked into allegations of a conflict of interest due to a possible relationship between Morin and a Montreal company that sold respirators last spring.
It says some of the respirators were deemed “counterfeit” but its findings suggested there was no pre-existing relationship between Morin or anyone at the company, identified by the Health Ministry as Luminarie, which could not be reached for comment.
The original order for personal protective equipment last March was outside of the health authority’s normal practices, which would have included due diligence procedures on the vendor, the report says.
“The unusual nature of the procurement resulted from global challenges in sourcing (personal protective equipment) at the time and the CEO’s involvement in the original purchase, including directing staff to issue a multimillion-dollar deposit to the Montreal vendor.”
After the orders were placed, a document within the health authority identified an individual with the same name as the CEO and the name of the founder of the company that sold the respirators, leading to rumours within the health authority about a conflict of interest, the report says.
Staff attempted to negotiate with the supplier and wanted to start legal action shortly after problems with the respirators were discovered but the health authority’s board and Morin supported negotiations instead, it says.
But when negotiations failed, other executives decided to pursue legal action without informing Morin or the board of directors, the report says, adding the company filed for bankruptcy in January.
The report says Morin did not agree with his finance staff on whether a writeoff of about $7 million should be recorded in its financial statements for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2020.
OTTAWA — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says his country “will do its best” to help Canada get COVID-19 vaccines but stopped short of making any specific guarantee that India would ship doses to Canada.
Canada is also not among 25 countries cleared by the Indian government to receive exported doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine this month, though federal officials indicated last week Canada’s shipments weren’t expected to start arriving until at least April.
The Serum Institute of India has a contract with AstraZeneca to make at least one billion vaccine doses, and Health Canada is currently reviewing the manufacturing processes at the facility as it works to greenlight the AstraZeneca vaccine for use on Canadians.
Modi says on Twitter that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called him today and the pair discussed vaccines, climate change and the global economic recovery.
Earlier today, Trudeau said Canada and India are working as partners against COVID-19 but didn’t mention any plans to speak to Modi.
Trudeau and Modi have a frequently tense relationship, including Trudeau’s troubled trip to India in 2018, and more recently India’s anger over Trudeau’s public support for farmers protesting new laws passed by the Indian government.