After Grit MPs on House Health Committee spent a month blocking probe into Canada Health Infoway’s $300-million terminated PrescribeIT program, minister orders audit, review
Liberal MPs on the House Health Committee spent the last month blocking attempts by opposition MPs to look into Canada Health Infoway's $300-million terminated PrescribeIT program by preventing the committee from questioning Health Minister Marjorie Michel and Michael Green, its former long-time CEO who was dismissed by the organization's board back in April. The committee had also requested the auditor general look into the organization, but Michel announced on June 18 that the federal government will order a third-party audit and review of Infoway.
On June 18, Michel (Papineau, Que.) posted a statement on LinkedIn saying she has ordered a multi-phase review, including a third-party audit. Phase one will tackle the organization's compliance with its federal contribution agreement, and a “wider strategic review” will follow of the organization’s funding model, governance framework, and compensation practices, among other issues. The statement says the review’s findings and an announcement of next steps will be made public.
Meanwhile, the spring sitting included a seven-part meeting—which began on May 7 and was only formally adjourned on June 11 after six additional meetings—in which Conservative members attempted to pass amendment after amendment to a Liberal motion that would have added a study on HIV to the agenda. Most of those amendments called on Michel and former Canada Health Infoway CEO Green to come in and answer MPs’ questions about the program.
Any attempts to have both Michel and Green appear were either voted down by Liberal MPs, who now hold the majority of committee's seats, or declared out of order by the Liberal chair Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey Newton, B.C.).
The reason the Conservatives continue to insist on this, said the party’s health critic and committee vice-chair Dan Mazier (Riding Mountain, Man.), is that “$300-million has gone into nowhere.”
Mazier spoke to The Hill Times on May 16 before his party issued a press release on June 18, calling on the federal government to permanently defund Canada Health Infoway. Describing it as a “bloated taxpayer-funded organization,” the release takes issue with Infoway's size, saying it has 175 staff, including 24 vice-presidents; and the compensation of the former CEO, who had been making nearly $900,000 a year, according to reporting from The Globe and Mail.
The press release says that any necessary activities conducted by Infoway should be done under the authority of Health Canada, where it would be subject to oversight rules that apply to government departments.
Bloc Québécois health critic Maxime Blanchette-Joncas (Rimouski-La Matapédia, Que.) told The Hill Times that the committee has been “paralyzed” since its May 7 meeting because Liberal MPs have not voted to have Michel appear at the committee to discuss the issue.
But Liberal MP Maggie Chi (Don Valley North, Ont.), Michel’s parliamentary secretary of health, said the committee has already held “multiple” meetings on the issue, and the Liberals agreed to a Conservative motion to ask the auditor general to review the program.
“They do have the expertise, and they do have the resources,” Chi said, calling the Auditor General’s Office the “proper channel” for further study.
The committee agreed on April 28 to ask the auditor general to “audit PrescribeIT, including its costs, governance, termination, transition, and intellectual property arrangements.” The committee also ordered “complete and unredacted” documents from Infoway for items including the compensation of Green, Infoway CEO between 2014 and April 29, 2026; expenses for things like his travel and meals; agreements and contracts with Telus Health (which designed the technology behind PrescribeIT); and consulting expenses for the organization.
Mazier’s office told The Hill Times on June 18 that the auditor general has not yet responded to the request.
By June 9, Infoway had not produced those documents. Dhaliwal wrote to the organization that day about its responsibility under the Constitution to grant the committee’s request.
Conservative MP Helena Konanz (Similkameen-South Okanagan-West Kootenay, B.C.) referred to the letter in a point of privilege raised during the June 9 meeting, where she asked the chair to rule on whether Infoway’s delayed response means it is in contempt of Parliament.
Dhaliwal did not rule on the matter that day, or in a subsequent public meeting on June 11.
Mazier told The Hill Times on June 18 that Konanz’s point of privilege was addressed in the committee’s June 16 meeting, but what was discussed cannot be disclosed because the meeting was in camera. He also said members were told that Infoway has since submitted 7,000 documents, but that members have not yet had access to those.
PrescribeIT was an e-prescription service facilitated by Infoway, which promotes the use of digital health tools. It is an independent, not-for-profit organization that is fully funded by the federal government.
PrescribeIT was cancelled earlier this year due to low participation rates from health-care providers. News of the cancellation came thanks to reporting from The Globe and Mail on Feb. 10, citing anonymous sources. The Globe also reported that more than $250-million had been spent on the program, but the government estimated that fewer than five per cent of prescriptions were sent using PrescribeIT and, instead, fax and paper prescriptions continue to dominate.
The House Health Committee met on April 21 and May 5 to question witnesses about the program. Green, who was still CEO at the time, appeared at the April 21 meeting. There was some tension as Green refused to answer questions about his compensation, and some MPs said they were having to repeatedly ask the same questions because he was not providing direct responses.
By the time of the May 5 meeting, during which Infoway board chair Dr. Peter Vaughan appeared, Green had been removed from his CEO role by the organization’s board.
On June 9, Michel said in the House that Ottawa was withholding the organization's 2026-27 funding envelope of $50-million until it addresses concerns about its governance, the Globe reported on June 9.
But the minister’s office has since changed its position following the announcement of the third-party review. The Globe and Mail reported on June 18 that Michel’s office has said it will “thaw” Infoway’s frozen funds once the review is underway, but that funding will be tied to performance milestones.
While officials from Health Canada appeared on April 21 to answer the committee’s questions about PrescribeIT, Michel has not been before the committee since this past March. She went to the House Finance committee on June 1 to discuss health-related measures from the spring economic update. But, as previously reported by The Hill Times, the Health Committee was one of 11 House committees that did not study the 2026-27 main estimates.
May 7 meeting turns into six-part debate session
Since May 7, the committee has been discussing a Liberal motion to add another study to the agenda. Liberal MP Sonia Sidhu (Brampton South, Ont.) proposed an AI study, which was replaced by a motion from fellow Liberal Doug Eyolfson (Winnipeg West, Man.) to study HIV infections in Canada with a focus on federal programs and funding. He spoke about the need for the study in light of Manitoba’s decision to declare a public health emergency on HIV.
But the Conservatives have refused to allow the motion to go to a vote, instead choosing to add amendments that would see further study of PrescribeIT while the committee also conducts the HIV study.
The Liberals derailed those attempts with their majority vote on the committee. In some cases, Dhaliwal ruled amendments out of order.
Between May 26 and June 11, the committee spent just shy of 11 hours of public meetings on these issues.
Both Mazier and Blanchette-Joncas, the committee’s second vice-chair, told The Hill Times they are not opposed to the HIV study, but they also want to see a review of PrescribeIT take place.
“As far as the HIV study, it is very important, and we've never ever said that it's not important,” Mazier said on June 16, noting that his party proposed that the committee work over the summer so that reviews of HIV and PrescribeIT can occur.
Blanchette-Joncas said he isn’t opposed to the HIV study, but that its introduction by the Liberals is “just a basic strategy in politics, like, ‘look on the left and you don't see what happened on the right.’”
He also said he would be available if the committee chooses to meet over the summer.
Chi said the HIV study is an “excellent” idea, and an “urgent issue.”
She described the Liberals’ unwillingness to support additional meetings on PrescribeIT as a way to “try and get the committee on track to … complete studies [and] complete reports.”
Chi described the discussion in recent meetings as Conservative filibustering, saying that those were “hours we didn’t hear from experts in the field, which I think is unfortunate.”
When The Hill Times asked Mazier if the Conservatives have been filibustering meetings, he responded, “No, the Liberals have been actually stonewalling. … They know we want Michael Green in there, and the Liberals refused to negotiate.”
Blanchette-Joncas said studying PrescribeIT would help ensure similar mistakes aren’t made in the future. The MP added that he would suggest to the government that they be more willing to answer questions in public “if they want to build trust in the public and in the institution.”
Mazier said there is a lack of transparency from the Liberals since they achieved majority status this past April following multiple floor-crossings and a series of byelections.
“All our activities stopped as soon as they formed this manufactured majority. … We were actually very productive [beforehand],” Mazier said.
On June 11, committee chair Dhaliwal unilaterally adjourned the meeting, thereby putting an end to the six-part impasse.
A June 16 meeting was held in camera, with the agenda citing two items: a review of the committee’s antimicrobial (AMR) study that was completed in early February, and discussion of the Conservative and Bloc request for an emergency meeting about PrescribeIT, specifically compelling Michel and Green to appear.
While reviews of draft reports are typically held in camera across committees, other committee business can be conducted in public.
Mazier said the decision to hold the entire meeting in camera was made by the Liberals and is an example of their "abuse of power."
The June 16 meeting was the last of the spring sitting. The committee ends the sitting without having tabled reports for any of the three in-depth studies it completed on AMR, immigration’s impact on health care, and pharmaceutical sovereignty.
Mazier said the reports for the AMR and immigration studies are in draft form, but that the Liberals are not bringing forward the immigration study, which had been proposed by the Conservatives.
Blanchette-Joncas said the lack of reports “show[s] that the government … is not really in a rush to produce some work,” and that it is the chair’s responsibility to make suggestions about the order of work on a calendar.
Chi, who spoke to The Hill Times after the June 16 meeting, put the responsibility for the lack of committee reports on the opposition parties.
“The reality is for the most part of the past year, for this Parliament, … [the] Conservatives and Bloc have had the majority of the votes on Health Committee, and in that time we really haven't completed any of our studies, we have not tabled any reports, we've not made any recommendations to the House of Commons on how we can improve the health-care system for Canadians,” she said.
tsanci@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
Editor's Note: This article was updated on June 22 to reflect that Bloc MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas is his party's health critic. This article was updated on June 23 to reflect that Telus Health designed the technology behind PrescribeIT, and not the overall program.