BREAKING: Taxpayer Funded Company Refuses To Disclose Documents, Minister Refuses To Speak & MORE

The question then comes, well why would you even begin to dream about something like Prescribe IT if you knew that it wasn't working and you weren't getting the buy -in in the first place?I think because it makes a nice speech.How's it going everybody?I am right outside the committee meeting where the Health Committee is meeting right now.We're going to be talking to a few Conservative MPs that are actually fighting to investigate the prescribed IT scandal.It's $300 million of your taxpayer money that is literally being flushed down the toilet and we need to get to the bottom of this and we're looking forward to talking to a few people that are involved in this fight.

Let's take a look.Ladies and gentlemen, we are live right outside the committee room meeting for the health committee, which the Conservatives are trying trying to investigate the $300 million prescribed IT scandal.Dan, what's going on in there?

Right now, the Liberals are continuing to cover up.They've turned off the cameras, as usual.They have adjourned.They've tried everything to cover this scandal up.And we are fighting hard to make sure that this comes to public light, and we do actually do the study at the end of the day.

So as you may recognize him, this is MP Dan Major.He has been one of the conservatives leading the fight on this, leading the investigation, and it was going swimmingly up until the Liberals reconstituted a committee, and this is where we are.And you're also trying to get additional documents from Canada Health Infoway that is responsible for this whole scandal.What's going on there?

Yeah, so it was actually April 28th we did a production order.That was still when we had the majority as far as the opposition.that all the committee agreed to get the documents out of Canada Health InfoWay.So they have not responded.They, meanwhile, about a month later, they only had half the documents and then some redacted.We asked for totally unredacted

and all the different documents.So as of, I guess, this morning, the chair actually ended up putting a letter back out to Canada Health Infoway, kind of referring to what the powers are of the committee.And he basically said, look, you better step up and produce these documents or you will be held in contempt of Parliament, which is, I mean, it does speak to the seriousness of what Canada Health Infoway is withholding here for documents.So again, will press hard.Now, that doesn't mean the Liberals won't keep on trying to cover this up, but, I mean, it is raising the risk level for Canada Health InfoWay that this should come clean with this information.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here with another Conservative Member of Parliament in the Health Committee, Member of Parliament Burton Bailey.Burton, thanks for joining us.Thank you for having us today.Thank you.So, one of the other things that we are following regarding this $300 million Boondoggle with Canada Health Infoway is the fact that the Liberals have been doing everything they can to prevent the Minister from coming, and Dan Major, he was trying to question the Health Minister as to whether she will commit to actually come back and talk about this, and she refuses to commit on that.

Can you come and testify before the Health Committee before the end of summer to clarify all these questions that we have about prescribed IT?Je ne vais pas me commettre.I will not commit.Oh.I can't understand why you can't spend some time and make sure that you come to the Health Committee to explain all these questions that we have.So can you commit today, before the summer break, that you'll come to the Health Committee and explain all this?

I've already told you I will not commit.

What do you think is going on?What are they hiding?Well, I know that they are hiding a waste of $300 million.I know that we've asked repeatedly in the House during question period, and even in committee when the Shadow Minister, Dan Masur, asked the question directly to her, she refused to commit to coming to committee.And as a health minister, I believe it's her responsibility to show up at committee when she's requested, and they are flat out blocking anything that we accomplish in community to protect not only her but Michael Green, the disgraced CEO of Canada Health InfoWay.

The disgraced CEO that was doing such a great job that they gave him a bonus only to then have him not in his position anymore after everyone found out that he was being paid over $900 ,000 a year.So what message does that send Canadians that you get paid handsomely for failure until you're found out?

It's an awful message, it's disgusting and I'm going to leave it at that because it's something that we as Conservatives just don't stand by.This is what we fight for and we in the Health Committee have caught them with their hands in the cookie jar and we're not giving up.

So just make sure you clamp that lid shut until we can actually get to the bottom of this.Because in an affordability crisis, when people are struggling to afford rent, we had a viewer email us the other day that their friend had actually invited them over for dinner, to which they accepted.and they accepted just because they hadn't eaten that day or the day before but their friend didn't know that and this is what people are resorting to never mind the but we have liberals and their insiders earning 300 million dollars for essentially a non -deliverable to Canadians.

It's so concerning the way that they consider $300 million dollar ashtray change.And as a Conservative, I look at the good that we could be doing with recovery, or what we could be doing in healthcare, the things that this money could make a difference on.And that's why I came to Ottawa was to make a difference, not to be chasing down people to tell the truth.And I find it appalling the fact that we have to go to social media to get our story out.And the truth is, this has become such a scandal.We are on the Globe and Mail.

We have been getting press coverage.We're getting asked questions when we come into our chambers into our committee.So that is encouraging, but the fact is we need to hold the Liberals accountable to how this $300 million was spent.And to me, with this passing of S5, which means that we are going to be connecting all the provinces so that we can share health information, the organization My understanding, and I've seen documentation to support my understanding, is that Canada Health Infoway will be leading the direction on the vendors that will be supplying the EMRs.So that means that they're going to be in charge of connecting all the province's health care records, and if they can't even be accountable on this prescribed IT, I'm very concerned and I think that every time we touch IT as a federal government, whether it be Arrive scam, whether it be Phoenix, whether it be the latest CPP debacle, and now Prescribe IT, we need to have some accountability.This should be handled by the public and they would have metrics, they would have accountability that we could actually attach this money to and say, this is what $4 million buys you.

None of this $300 million dollars and no accountability.

So just to get this straight for Canadians, this is an organization that we've been giving government taxpayer money to for roughly 20 years now, 20 years and change, since 2001.And their goal has been interoperability, meaning trying to get medical institutions to communicate digitally.And they have utterly failed in that aspect.We gave them another $300 million for prescribed IT, which utterly failed.And now we're going to be giving them even more money to connect all of the different provinces medical information together.Is that what Canadians are to understand?

That is what Canadians need to understand.S5, the bill from the Senate.is giving the power to start to connect all the provinces.And let me be very clear, this is very important stuff.Where I come from in Alberta, I can access my health information by going online.I get a blood test, I can go home, and we can look at my blood work.

So this is important for Canada, but it has to work.We cannot have a whole bunch of providers, potentially a thousand or more people that have software that we're introducing to different healthcare systems for large sums of money don't work.We could be losing people's information.This system needs to work seamlessly and if Prescribe IT is any example of how well their department is working, we really seriously need to relook at who's going to be in charge of S5 and connecting the provinces.

So ladies and gentlemen, we're joined here now by Dr. Matt Strauss.He is another Conservative MP that has really been fighting hard against this $300 million boondoggle which is Prescribe IT.Dr. Strauss, when you look at this whole scandal that has been bubbling up, aside from the misuse of the taxpayer funds, what upsets you the most about what has been going on?

Well, you say aside from these are the taxpayer funds.That's that's what I was going to say.Like $300 million is a crazy amount.And what I said during the press conference was that I think the average community hospital in Canada costs like $50 million to people think of these super hospitals.in Montreal and Toronto, but in Fergus, Ontario, Palmerston, Ontario, The median hospital in Canada costs about $50 million to construct.We're talking about six brand new sparkling community hospitals that we could have had instead of a piece of software that doesn't work at all.

But the next most upsetting thing was when we had the chair of Canada Health InfoWay, himself a physician, come speak to us about what the heck happened.Like the undercurrent was, well, you know, the problem is these doctors wouldn't just use it.We built this wonderful thing.Why won't these doctors use it?Um, and I know from my own time as a physician, it's so frequent that administrators will say, look, we, we, we spent $10 million on this thing, use it.And we're like, no, this, this is worse.

This is worse in every way.And as a physician, I get maybe this is why I reacted so strongly to it is one of the things that really broke the camel's back, causing me to run for parliament was a, an inadequate software solution was foisted on the physicians at one of the hospitals I work at.And I said, I went to meetings, we pass in motion unanimously in the department just saying this is going to kill people.And I saw it kill people like we said it would kill people and it did kill people.So the idea that we should just twist physicians arm harder to use a piece of software that is not not fit for purpose is a very bad and dangerous idea.

Well, and this isn't even news because in 2009, the Auditor General did an audit of this program and they found that this wasn't working.The whole goal of interoperability, which is what PrescribeIT was first working on, six or seven years before PrescribeIT, they weren't getting buy -in from all of the different physicians and pharmacies and everybody in between.If that wasn't even working, the question then comes, well why would you even begin to dream about something like that?IT if you knew that it wasn't working and you weren't getting the buy -in in the first place?

I think because it makes a nice speech.So to say we're going to have one healthcare information system all across Canada and this is going to save us money, It takes longer than four years to blow the $300 million, but it takes five minutes to give the speech.And I've quoted several times in that committee, Jane Philpott, who's a very nice lady.I know her personally and professionally.She gave these speeches saying how much money was going to save, how many lives it was going to save.And now that we're picking up the pieces $300 million later, she's long gone.

So a big Part of the problem is that election cycles are four years.I'm now a politician.I know every day there's temptation to not think more than one election away, and I think that these grand national projects, they take more than four years, and that's part of why politicians are not good at designing them.

This is why the Conservatives are pushing so hard into this investigation, right?Because it's taxpayer money and there's been far, far and above any amount of taxpayer money that has been wasted and thrown away over the last 10 years of the Liberal government.and that can never be repaid, unfortunately.And we need to stop the bleeding somewhere.So, you know, we need to stop it here now.

Yeah, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.Like, so if we could, if we could all just go on that committee.You're saying they can't dig up?Do a stop digging, stop digging study.I'd be very pleased.And I think, and hopefully we'll, you know, we're now in a majority parliament as an opposition.

We don't have so much power, but if we can save a few hundred million dollars here and there, I think, I think that would be a good day's work.

This is MP Helena Konanz.What can you tell us about what has been going on in that room with TELUS, with Infoway, and with the Liberals trying to block this?

Well, thanks so much for asking.It's so important.It's so important to so many Canadians.You can tell by the letters we've had come into Health Committee.requests in my office.People are talking about this everywhere.

They want us to find out what happened to the prescribed IT program, why it cost $300 million, why it didn't work, was closed down.What about, what does the health minister have to say about this?We want to make sure this doesn't happen again.

And you spent a lot of time by committee standards trying to get the answer from Michael Green as to how much he made.And he would not answer the question.Why do you think he was so reluctant?

It was really interesting.He's obviously a pretty smart man.He led this organization for years.He's, a CEO, it wasn't that he said he didn't know how much he made, he didn't know.All of us know roundly, round about how much we make.If we don't, then that is also, that's just going in the face of Canadians who every day are struggling to get food on the table, and here this gentleman who the Liberals have chosen to be head of this organization can't even tell us how much he made, and it wasn't until later that we find out that he's making almost a million dollars a year.

And who doesn't know that when they're making that much?So it was really a shame that he came forward.And by the way, if you look at that tape, you'll see that the liberals in the committee were just as offended, just as offended.How do you come before a committee that's representing Canadians and not tell the truth?

Yes, and we saw the frustration on the other side.We saw it in Hedy Fry when she was voicing her frustration, but all that frustration seemed to go out the window when they got a majority in committee, didn't it?

It actuallywent out the window by the next meeting.They obviously were told that no, they were not to push this any further.So yes, when they got the majority, that really added to us really having trouble getting the information, but it also, it turned out that what the liberals in that meeting were very concerned, but by the following meeting, they decided it was not important anymore.

Now, in some of that questioning, We learned that TELUS had lobbied the government in our review.We found out that they were lobbying them immediately upon the RFP dropping and it ended upon the RFP seemingly being decided.Why do you think TELUS was so reluctant to actually talk about the fact that they were lobbying the government?Isn't this something that they should just embrace as part of the system?

What we need is the details of why that happened.particular business was chosen, and also what they're doing with the information that they collected.since they were hired to do this job that was a failure.So what's happening with the information that they gathered at that time, and are they going to use it in the future, and how?We'll find out.Is this going to be charged right back to Canadians again?

Over and over again, they've already spent 300, Canadians have already spent 300 million on this.Are we going to be spending, are Canadians going to spend more in the future?

that we had is since they own 75 % of the intellectual property of this, did Canadians just finance them to enhance their own system that they're using for commercial purposes?

Such a good question and this is exactly why we need the health minister to come forward.We need Michael Green to come forward.We need itinvestigation.You know, people make mistakes.Now, $300 million is more than just a little mistake.

People make mistakes.But again, I'm going to go back to we need to make sure that this doesn't happen again.And I think every single member of this committee should be interested.in making sure this doesn't happen again.And again, let's go back to the fact that after all this $300 million is spent, we still have fax machines in the pharmacies doing business the old -fashioned way after this whole program.So we need to, again, get to the bottom of this.

Ladies and gentlemen, after all that, after all that, The Conservatives ended up raising a point of privilege against Canada Health Infoway.And this is it here.And this is what it says.On April 28, 2026, this committee adopted by unanimous agreement a motion ordering Canada Health InfoWay to produce a comprehensive set of records related to the failed $300 million prescribed IT program.The order set a deadline of two weeks.That deadline was May 12, 2026.

For the record, the motion ordered Canada Health InfoWay to produce contracts, invoices, termination agreements, board meeting decisions, consulting fees, and overall expenses related to prescribed IT.More than six weeks have now passed and Canada Health Infoway has not complied with it.So what they have done is they have raised a point of privilege.And just a reminder, what this means is that the Parliamentary Committee has ordered documents be produced by this organization, and they have failed to succumb to a parliamentary order.That could result in a contempt of Parliament, which means Canada Health Infoway may be in a lot of trouble very, very soon.