The Ottawa Citizen has published email exchanges it says were between the former head of construction projects at The Ottawa Hospital and an electrical contractor appearing “to have given advice to an electrical contractor on how to win an upcoming bid on a hospital job, planned trips and outings with him and joked that ‘luck is for amateurs’ when talking about winning contracts to do hospital construction work.”
The Citizen obtained emails revealing discussions between The Ottawa Hospital’s former director of capital projects, Frank Medwenitsch, and the head of Federal Electric, Larry St. Pierre. The emails detail a personal relationship between Medwenitsch and St. Pierre and their correspondence raises questions about how the hospital awarded contracts, the Citizen reported.
Both Medwenitsch and St. Pierre are named in a lawsuit filed by The Ottawa Hospital last year that alleged a fraud and kickback scheme involving construction projects at the hospital. They both deny the allegations, as do others named in the suit.