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Ontario NDP calls for probe of vaccine-clinic contract

JEFF GRAY QUEEN'S PARK REPORTER

Company officials gave thousands to PCs; province says deal handled by bureaucrats

The Ontario NDP is asking the province’s Chief Electoral Officer and Auditor-General to investigate the government’s move to hand a private COVID-19 testing firm a sole-source contract to operate several Greater Toronto Area vaccination clinics, after company officials gave the governing Progressive Conservative Party thousands in political donations.

NDP ethics critic Taras Natyshak said Thursday that he has requested the probes of the contract, which was awarded to FH Health Inc. earlier this month. He said elections officials should determine if any of the donations violated the Election Finances Act, which bans corporate donations and forbids people from making donations with cash provided by someone else, as well as parties from accepting them.

“It looks sketchy. It looks fishy. It looks potentially like a quid pro quo,” Mr. Natyshak told a virtual press conference. “There should be no quid pro quo associated with delivering essential, life-saving measures during a pandemic.”

Stephen Warner, a spokesman for Ontario Solicitor-General Sylvia Jones, said FH Health had won an earlier “competitive procurement process” with the province’s health system to provide mobile COVID-19 testing. Since the company already had a relationship with the government and had clinics and staff in place, he said the Ministry of the Solicitor-General entered into an “emergency procurement” earlier this month to set up additional vaccine clinics to get more education workers their booster shots before schools reopened.

Mr. Warner said the Solicitor-General was not involved and that bureaucrats handled the contract.

“To be clear, the size of this contract was such that, under the government’s procurement directives, the decision to enter into the sole-source agreement was made and executed by officials at the ministry – not the Solicitor-General,” Mr. Warner said. He said he did not know what this financial threshold was, nor would he reveal the size of the contract.

The contract, and the fact that some of the company’s directors were large PC donors, was first reported this week by the online newsletter Queen’s Park Today. FH Health did not respond to requests for comment from The Globe and Mail on Thursday. Queen’s Park Today quoted a company spokesman denying that the donations had anything to do with the contract or were directed by company officials.

Documents released on Thursday by the NDP and drawn from Elections Ontario records show that the company’s president, Melody Adhami-Dorrani, gave the Progressive Conservative Party $1,000 on Sept. 3, and another $2,300 on Sept. 16, to hit the annual maximum of $3,300. Three other directors or senior officials of the company also made similar donations around the same time. Plus, the NDP produced a list of 10 names appearing to match those of other FH Health employees or relatives and associates of the company’s leaders who also made the maximum $3,300 in donations to the party that month, for a total of $42,600.

In a letter to Ontario’s Chief Electoral Officer, Greg Essensa, Mr. Natyshak says he is “very concerned about the potential for these donations to be centrally coordinated” either by the company or the PC Party. He said he had received a file number for his complaint from Elections Ontario.

When contacted by The Globe, Elections Ontario said it does not disclose whether it has launched investigations. Mr. Na ty sh ak has also written to Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk to request an investigation of the sole-source contract. The NDP MPP said he had not yet received a response.

According to its website, FH Health offers private COVID-19 testing, with prices ranging from $78 for a rapid-antigen test needed for travel to $350 for a one-hour express polymerase chain reaction test, for international travel or“peace of mind .” It also says it has done testing for several large companies. It operates 10 vaccination clinics across the Greater Toronto Area, including at Toronto’ s downtown Eaton Centre and the Toronto Zoo.

The Toronto-based company was registered in Ontario in October, 2020, according to corporate records.

Mr. Natyshak, noting the previous Liberal government’s “cash-for-access” scandals around political influence for large donors that prompted a ban on union and corporate donations, said Mr. Ford came into office railing against government favours for insiders.

“Doug Ford as Premier, campaigned on getting rid of the gravy train,” he said. “Now we see the gravy train has been extended, and continues to operate, potentially, in this era of his tenure as the Premier.”

TORONTO

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2022-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

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