Former PC minister questions travel-nurse exemption granted by colleague
MLA Ross Wetmore says small Social Development contract 'ballooned' into $173M expense
For the second straight day, a former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister has strongly criticized the PC government's handling of costly travel-nurse contracts.
Gagetown-Petitcodiac MLA Ross Wetmore suggested that Service New Brunswick Minister Mary Wilson should have taken a closer look in 2022 before signing an emergency exemption that allowed contracts to be awarded without a competitive bidding process.
"When funding came across my desk, I asked questions," Wetmore, a former minister of agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries, told reporters.
"If something was a million dollars and they asked for a minister's exemption, I'd be asking questions."
The exemptions were approved by the deputy minister of social development, using a regulation that allows departments to bypass normal procurement rules in an emergency.
But because the deals were worth more than $1 million, the exemptions required the approval of the minister of Service New Brunswick, which oversees contracting, before the contracts could be signed.
Wetmore said, during a meeting of the legislature's public accounts committee, that the two seemingly small contracts set the stage for the $173 million that taxpayers have now forked over for travel nurses — with more costs still to come.
"The door got opened with Social Development," Wetmore told the department's deputy minister, Jim Mehan, saying a $2.7 million agreement with Canadian Health Labs Inc. had "ballooned" and "snowballed" into the much larger sum.
"I'm sorry I'm picking on you," he told Mehan, "but … this is where it started."
Service New Brunswick did not acknowledge a request for an interview with Wilson about the exemption she approved, but spokesperson Jennifer Vienneau said in a written statement that "SNB only approves the exemption to the procurement process, not the contract."
She said Wilson's approval in 2022 followed regulations under the Procurement Act and was granted "in response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic at that time."
A 'failure in process'
The travel-nurse contracts have become a major political headache for the Higgs government in the wake of a scathing report by Auditor General Paul Martin.
On Tuesday, former health minister Dorothy Shephard called the contracts — one of which is still in force and can be renewed automatically — a "failure in process."
Social Development signed the first two agreements in early 2022 with two companies that provided nurses and other staff to fill severe staffing shortages in long-term care homes, caused in part by COVID-19 outbreaks.
"Obviously we exhausted as many possible options as we could prior to that," Mehan told the committee.
He said based on "quick research," the department identified four potential travel-nurse suppliers, and Canadian Health Labs and another agency, Plan A, were "the only two at the time that could provide resources immediately. … We did what we had to do."
The result, he said, was that the department signed contracts drafted by the companies themselves.
"These contracts did not favour GNB," he said.
He confirmed that he signed one of the contracts when he was acting deputy minister and the other was signed by Elizabeth Dubee, then the assistant deputy minister for seniors and long-term care.
She had experience negotiating contracts and signed the Canadian Health Labs agreement without the benefit of legal advice, Mehan said — a fact that Wetmore said he found disturbing as a former cabinet minister from 2018 to 2020.
As a minister, he was not allowed to sign a contract worth more than $500,000 without additional layers of scrutiny, he told Mehan.
"I understand the sense of urgency, but I don't think we can use that as a legitimate reason or excuse.
"Never once have I been able to go in, tell them 'this is what it is, take it or leave it,' and gotten a contract."
Should have negotiated 'harder'
According to Martin's audit, Canadian Health Labs forced the province to agree to a bundled team of registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and personal support workers at $9,995 per day for "up to" eight hours of work — even if they weren't all needed.
"I cannot understand the province of New Brunswick agreeing to CHL — I don't care how hard up we are — to take a bundle when we don't need everybody," Wetmore said.
As a cabinet minister and a business owner, he later told reporters, "never once have I ever gone in … and said, 'Listen, you don't want widgets, but you're going to get widgets whether you want them or not.'"
The veteran MLA, who is retiring this year after 14 years in the legislature, said he believes if the province had "negotiated a lot harder," it might have obtained better terms from the company.
Social Development's agreements ended in 2022, but the Vitalité health authority is still under contract with the company until 2026.
Vitalité's three contracts with Canadian Health Labs have cost a total of $98 million, Martin's audit revealed.
"What the [Social Development] department has done is opened up the door," Wetmore said.
"This has ballooned from when you folks started … and it hasn't stopped yet."
Officials from Vitalité are scheduled to take questions from the committee starting at 9 a.m. Thursday.
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