Members of the Registered Nurses Union of Newfoundland and Labrador gather on Confederation Hill in St. John's on Feb. 27, to protest the use of private agencies and privatization in healthcare in the province.GREG LOCKE /The Globe and Mail
Newfoundland and Labrador’s Comptroller-General has been asked to review contracts with a for-profit nursing agency that a Globe and Mail investigation found had charged unusually high rates, even as it collected public money for meal allowances it appears not to have distributed to workers.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Newfoundland Health Minister Tom Osborne said he has requested that the Office of the Comptroller-General, which oversees the province’s finances, examine the contracts with the Toronto-based agency, Canadian Health Labs. The province’s regional health authorities turned to CHL, a staffing company that relocates nurses to areas in need, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Globe reported earlier this month on the costs of hiring out-of-province nurses in Atlantic Canada. The investigation found that CHL is charging Newfoundland as much as $312 an hour for each nurse, twice the rates charged by other private companies, and six times what local nurses earn in the public health care system.
The investigation also found that CHL had invoiced Newfoundland for the equivalent of more than 87,000 meals for its personnel, $1.6-million in total. But The Globe found no evidence that this money had been distributed to workers. Contracts signed by CHL’s nurses said they were responsible for their own food costs, and more than two dozen of them told The Globe they had never received meal allowances from the agency.
Mr. Osborne did not raise the issue of the meal allowances specifically on Tuesday. But he said the review would examine whether the terms of the contracts CHL signed with the province’s regional health authorities had been fulfilled. Those contracts, which were obtained by The Globe through freedom of information legislation, said nurses would each be paid meal allowances worth as much as $60 a day.
“If the contracts were not followed to the letter, then there are concerns. And that’s what we’ve asked the Comptroller-General to look at – the concerns that were raised by the Globe and Mail article,” Mr. Osborne said.
He said the probe would “ensure that there were controls, that there were procedures and measures and policies in place to protect public funding and to protect the integrity of any contracts that were signed.”
CHL did not reply to a request for comment about Mr. Osborne’s decision to involve the office of the Comptroller-General. The company previously said in written statements that its contracts are “fair and transparent” and that they are “tailored to meet each jurisdiction’s significant local needs, and reflect the extraordinary logistical challenges of getting and keeping health care professionals in rural, remote and underserved communities.” CHL has also signed contracts with the francophone medical authority in New Brunswick.
The office of the Comptroller-General has an internal audit division. It is a part of the Newfoundland government’s Treasury Board secretariat, but Mr. Osborne said the office has enough autonomy to review the contracts.
“The Comptroller-General is independent, but works within the government system,” he said. “... The Comptroller-General does have the ability and the resources and the process at their hands to be able to carry out this review.”
The Globe’s reporting has led to calls by unions and opposition politicians for the RCMP and the province’s Auditor-General to step in. The Auditor-General, unlike the Comptroller-General, operates at arm’s length from the government.
Newfoundland Progressive Conservative Leader Tony Wakeham said in a statement that Mr. Osborne’s request to the Comptroller-General is an attempt by the Liberal government of Premier Andrew Furey to deflect from the controversy.
“The minister is trying to get the Comptroller-General who is answerable to a minister to investigate themselves,” Mr. Wakeham said. “We won’t let the Furey Liberals distract us with these stunts.”
The statement described the contracts as “a free-for-all on the public’s dime with no accountability.”
The Registered Nurses’ Union of Newfoundland and Labrador held a rally on the steps of the province’s House of Assembly on Tuesday during which they called on the Auditor-General to investigate the contracts.
“Government could have and should have invested in the people of this province and not a private agency,” RNUN president Yvette Coffey told the gathering.
Chrysta Collins, a spokesperson for Auditor-General Denise Hanrahan, told The Globe in a statement last week that “travel nursing is certainly a topic that is being actively considered for audit.”