Canada Health Infoway, the non-profit behind a failed $300-million digital prescription program being probed by MPs, spent more than $400,000 on executive travel and $23-million in contracts to consultants in under three years, public disclosures reveal.
More than $147,000 of that travel was taken by Michael Green, the former chief executive who was dismissed last week, and who Infoway disclosed was making nearly $900,000 a year.
Canada Health Infoway and its PrescribeIT project have been the subject of scrutiny by the House of Commons health committee in recent weeks. Canada Health Infoway board chair Peter Vaughan, a former deputy minister of health and wellness for Nova Scotia, and Telus Health president Mohamed El-Demerdash are scheduled to testify at a hearing Tuesday afternoon.
PrescribeIT was launched in 2017 as part of “axe the fax” initiatives to replace fax machines with digital alternatives, in this case transmitting prescriptions from doctors’ offices to pharmacies digitally.
The program received more than $298-million in federal funds since launch, but as a Globe and Mail report revealed in February, fewer than 5 per cent of prescriptions have flowed through the service. Ottawa announced PrescribeIT would close May 29. About a third of PrescribeIT’s budget went to Telus Health, the largest single vendor.
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Expense disclosures on Canada Health Infoway’s website, and archived versions, show $418,000 was spent on executive travel and hospitality between April 1, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2025.
A total of just over $147,000 was spent on trips for Mr. Green, including at least two claims for more than $10,000. Abhinav Kalra, executive vice-president of connected care, booked $90,519 worth of travel. Eight other executives in that period made total claims of between $5,000 and $43,000 each.
The disclosures did not say where they travelled.
Canada Health Infoway told The Globe that one of Mr. Green’s larger claims was to attend the international SNOMED CT conference in Seoul, South Korea, in October, 2024. Another was to attend the Global Digital Health Partnership conference in Vienna in June, 2024.
The organization also disclosed more than 100 tendered contracts from April 1, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2025, totalling more than $23-million.
Some of the top total amounts included $2.7-million for international consultancy Accenture Inc.; $2-million for data advisory INQ Consulting Corp.; $1.7-million for developer The AppLabb Inc.; $1.5-million for public-affairs firm Sussex Strategy Group; $1.46-million for staffing firm Quantum Management Services Ltd; $1.36-million for developer Venuiti Solutions Inc.; $1.27-million for international consultancy Deloitte Inc.; and just over $1-million for public-affairs firm Crestview Strategy.
The disclosures did not explain the purpose of the contracts in detail. Most were listed as “Professional Services” or “Communications & Marketing.”
INQ Consulting is supporting Canada Health Infoway in its main mandate of enabling health data sharing across the country while safeguarding the privacy of personal health information, Carole Piovesan, the company’s co-founder, said by e-mail.
Thomas Schroecker, chief executive officer of the Venuiti Group, said his company is supporting digital health initiatives at Canada Health Infoway, but he declined to provide specifics, saying contracts are governed by multiple confidentiality agreements.
The other listed recipients of contracts worth more than $1-million in total during that period declined to comment or did not respond to The Globe and Mail.
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Canada Health Infoway said in an unsigned statement that it needs to issue contracts for specific areas of work and does so according to the organization’s procurement policies and agreements with Health Canada.
Conservative MP Dan Mazier, who sits on the health committee and has pushed for the probes, said the federal government has not held Canada Health Infoway accountable for how it spends taxpayer money.
“Instead of demanding answers, the Health Minister keeps rewarding Infoway with more tax dollars while Canadians learn about millions being spent on executive travel, performance awards, and consulting contracts, with nothing to show for it,” he said.
PrescribeIT was just one of Canada Health Infoway’s priorities. The organization’s founding purpose since 2001 has been to digitize health records and ensure sharing between health care providers and patients, a concept known as interoperability.
The organization budgeted $35.6-million on PrescribeIT work in 2024-25, according to its annual report. About $41.5-million was budgeted for interoperability, an increase of 45 per cent over the year before.
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As The Globe and Mail explained in an investigation for the Secret Canada series last year, Canada’s health records have only been digitized at scale in recent years and shareability continues to be a problem for providers and patients alike.
The federal government introduced Bill S-5 in February to set common standards of interoperability and prohibit software companies from blocking shareability. Canada Health Infoway is designated as taking a leading role in implementing the bill after it passes.
Health Minister Marjorie Michel told The Globe and Mail on Thursday that the organization’s board made the decision to dismiss Mr. Green and that she is ready to “move forward.”
She said she still has confidence in Canada Health Infoway to lead interoperability work in the future. “They also have a strong expertise that can be very useful,” she said.
With data analysis from Yang Sun