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Maggie Chi

Liberal on Adjournment Proceedings 2026-11-02

Replying to Michael Cooper (Conservative)

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow up on a question I posed to the Minister of Health regarding the PrescribeIT scandal. I have to say that a week and a half ago when I participated in an adjournment debate on this scandal, I was astounded that the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources had the audacity to say that the way the Liberals have handled PrescribeIT is what good governance looks like. Is it really? We are talking about a failed IT solution to digitize prescription services that cost taxpayers $300 million for a service that almost no one used. Even more concerning is the fact that of that $300 million, 200 million tax dollars are missing and unaccounted for. There are also the Liberal insider executives who got rich padding their pockets with exorbitant bonuses. Let us take the CEO, Michael Green, for example. He padded his pocket with in excess of $600,000 in bonuses in just three years, between 2023 and 2026. Then he was awarded $1 million on his way out the door after the Minister of Health claimed she had fired him. I can only say that most Canadians would love to have $1 million in compensation upon being fired. There are at least five other executives who received between $70,000 and $90,000 in bonuses in the same three-year period. We are talking about millions of tax dollars that went out the door by way of bonuses to reward Liberal insider executives who presided over what was a complete and total debacle, if not something much worse. Then, there is the Minister of Health. Where was the Minister of Health through it all? The minister had completely turned a blind eye. She turned a blind eye as millions of dollars continued to flow to PrescribeIT. Officials testified at the health committee that the minister asked no questions about PrescribeIT. She had no questions about where 300 million taxpayer dollars had gone. The parliamentary secretary says that is what good governance looks like. If that is what good governance looks like, I would hate to see what bad governance looks like. It is time for the Liberals to stop gaslighting and begin to answer some basic questions such as where the oversight was as 300 million tax dollars went up in smoke as the health minister was asleep at the switch.”

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Mr. Speaker, first, I appreciate a lot of the late show speeches. Monday is a good start to the week. As we go through the session, we have a lot of great legislation going on in the House, including Bill C-39 and a lot of the safe social media bills we are trying to advance also. As the minister announced in June, our government wants to be sure we are getting accountability and value for money for taxpayers. This why she launched the independent review of Infoway’s governance and structure, and a third party audit of the organization’s findings. I want to make sure my colleague is aware that the review and the audits are both under way, and we are looking forward to seeing and sharing the results once they are available. The Auditor General herself felt this was a very strong response, and the last time I checked, my Conservative colleague still respects the work of the Auditor General. She said that any additional work on the file by her would be “duplicative and therefore of limited added value for Parliamentarians and Canadians.” Especially seeing that the member opposite’s Conservative colleagues on the health committee were some of the people who asked for the Auditor General’s thoughts on the matter, I hope it is a good enough response for my colleague across the way as well.