Regina contractor being sued for health region 'billing irregularities'

The Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region says it has filed a lawsuit and a complaint to the Regina Police Service after it noted "billing irregularities" on electrical work undertaken at the Pioneer Village long-term care home.

According to a statement of claim filed at Regina's Court of Queen's Bench on Wednesday, the health region alleges AB Electric Corp. submitted false invoices on work done at the Regina facility. 

"AB Electric's false invoices were not the product of isolated errors but were instead a persistent scheme to overage RQHR," it reads.

The health region alleges the contractor did the following:

• Issuing multiple invoices for doing the same work
• Billing excessive hours for a journeyman and electrician to do the same work
• Inflating the number of hours employees worked per day
• Billing the region for work not done
• Charging for materials supplied by the region
• Improper invoicing for electrical permits

The RQHR is suing for damages, plus interest.

CBC has reached out to company president Adrian Bechard for comment, but has not yet received a response.

As of Wednesday afternoon, a statement of defence had not been filed. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Employee blew the whistle

RQHR CEO Keith Dewar said he became aware of potential problems with invoicing when a manager blew the whistle in March. 

Dewar said that led to an internal investigation, which revealed instances of duplicate or triple invoices, or invoices submitted for work not yet complete.

The statement of claim reads: "The defendant's invoices were false, misleading or deceptive in that they incorrectly listed the number of hours worked by employees, were duplicative, and claimed that permits had been issued for work prior performance when that was not the case."

The health region has notified the provincial auditor of the losses and has filed a loss report with the Ministry of Health's financial services branch.

Dewar believes the potential wrongful billing only extends to work done on Pioneer Village, and said the health region isn't investigating any other sites. Nevertheless, he said, the health region will bring in measures to improve its procurement process and handling of contractors' work. 

The firm MNP is currently working on report that will outline best practices and recommendations the health region could choose to adopt.

Internal inconsistencies found

During the investigation, some inconsistencies were revealed in how health region employees kept track of the contractor's billing and the work done on site. 

"The variation of practice may or may not have led to some of the concerns we have, and that's some of the work we're doing," Dewar said.

According to the statement of claim, health region employees would sometimes provide a purchase requisition to the contractor to do specific work. Other times, employees would "informally request" the contractor's staff who were already on-site to do additional electrical work. 

"Regardless of the procedure followed, it was always understood and agreed that AB Electric would invoice RQHR on a time and materials basis for services provided," the statement read. 

So far, Dewar said no one has been disciplined, but that could change. 

"As we find fault that is intentional and not fault that is sort of either part of poor training or lack of support around understanding from the individual's perspective, but if we find as we continue down this path that there is purposeful negligence or purposeful wrongdoing, then yes."

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