A medical staffing agency charged taxpayers for a travel nurse to be provided with an electric vehicle rental, while simultaneously billing for the same nurse to take taxis, rent a separate car, and fly out of the province.

That’s according to an analysis of invoices submitted by the agency and obtained by CBC Investigates.

Canadian Health Labs (CHL) charged for that travel nurse in central Newfoundland to use the electric vehicle over a period of 175 consecutive days in 2023.

The EV rental came from an affiliated company, at a cost of $1,127 a week. 

The records show that, during the same timeframe, Canadian Health Labs submitted other transportation-related claims in the name of the same nurse.

Those include a flight out of the province for two weeks; taxis to and from the hospital in Gander during a span of 29 days; and a separate car rental from Hertz costing $2,161 for two weeks.

It’s not clear why all those claims were filed in the name of the same travel nurse — and whether multiple expenses like those were permitted under the agency’s contract with the health authority.

Even if they were somehow permitted, the auditor general wrote that health authority staff signed off on the invoices without having seen the contract — raising questions about the validity of those billings.

Meanwhile, records show that wasn’t the only time overlapping charges seem to have occurred.

EV rental charges in the names of at least five other nurses continued after taxpayers were billed for airline tickets to fly them out of the province.

CBC Investigates sent CHL a detailed email that outlined the findings of this story.

In response, the company sent this statement: “We have completed a thorough internal review of the matters referenced and are satisfied that NLHS was billed accurately for services provided.”

AG flagged ‘strong indications of potential billing fraud’

CBC Investigates obtained, through access to information, roughly 600 pages of billing records submitted by CHL to the local health authority in 2023.

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services initially refused to disclose the names of the nurses, before reversing course last fall after a complaint to the information commissioner.

None of the nurses in question replied to messages or could be reached by CBC Investigates.

Last June, Newfoundland and Labrador’s auditor general issued a critical report that found “strong indications of potential billing fraud” in relation to those electric vehicle rentals. 

At the time, the staffing company in question was identified only as “Agency A”; however, redacted invoices in Auditor General Denise Hanrahan’s report match unredacted invoices obtained through access to information that name Canadian Health Labs.

Soon after the auditor general’s report was released last year, health officials ordered a sweeping forensic review of all payments made to Agency A. 

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services recently confirmed that audit work — which is being completed by Deloitte — is still ongoing.

According to Hanrahan’s report, Canadian Health Labs received cash payments totalling $73.6 million from provincial health authorities over the three-year period of 2022 to 2024. CHL no longer has contracts with the province.

The EV rentals were only a sliver of that total amount — less than $550,000. But Hanrahan raised specific red flags about them.

“We found little evidence that health authorities verified that the electric vehicles were in use by a nurse, or even that the electric vehicles existed,” the auditor general wrote.

So CBC Investigates looked into those EVs, the companies linked to them, and the cash that came out of taxpayers’ pockets to pay for them.

Here’s what we found out.

EV rental company had office at Gander hotel

In the summer of 2022, Canadian EV Labs Inc. was incorporated in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

The sole director was Bill Hennessey, CEO of Canadian Health Labs.

The following March, the company changed its name to CSL EV Inc.

“The business which the company will carry on in Newfoundland and Labrador is owning a fleet of rental vehicles,” provincial corporate filings noted.

Hennessey remained the sole director.

According to the auditor general’s report, in mid-March, Central Health rejected a proposal from CHL to supply its nurses with electric vehicles. 

“Most concerning is when the authority said no to a vendor who offered a service,” Hanrahan said at the press conference where she released her report.

“In this particular case it would be electrical vehicles at above market rates. But they paid for it and then didn’t even seem to know that they did, when we asked.”

Canadian Health Labs continued to invoice rental charges for electric vehicles from CSL, and the health authority continued to pay them.

In corporate registration documents, CSL — the affiliate company set up to own the rental fleet — listed a registered office address at 133 Bennett Drive in Gander. That’s the same location as Sinbad’s Hotel.

The owner of the hotel didn’t respond to questions about whether it knew the EV company was using its address. CHL’s Hennessey also didn’t respond.

There is no evidence that the Town of Gander was aware the business may have been operating out of the hotel’s location.

In response to an access to information request last year, the town said it had no records at all from the beginning of 2022 onward related to CSL or corporate names associated with Canadian Health Labs.

According to town budget documents, car rental offices are classified as an example of companies subject to municipal business taxes.

The Town of Gander did not respond to multiple inquiries from CBC Investigates about whether the rental company was paying taxes — and, if not, whether they should have been.

The electric vehicle billings in Canadian Health Labs invoices were referenced to “CSL.”

CSL — under its original name, Canadian EV Labs — registered six vehicles in the province in 2023.

However, CHL charged the health authority for 12 CSL electric vehicles during the same week in late October, at a rate of between $1,021 and $1,368 a week.

It’s possible they used CSL cars registered elsewhere, but CHL did not respond to questions seeking more details. 

Health officials had ‘limited awareness’ of rentals 

In her report, Hanrahan raised a series of questions about those electric vehicles, and concluded that health authority officials “appeared to have limited awareness” of the rentals.

The AG found that taxpayers paid more than $90,000 for 81 weeks of electric vehicle rentals for nurses that were not in the province.

Another $227,000 was paid for electric vehicle rentals “without any indication of who was supposedly using the vehicle,” the report noted.

The CBC Investigates review of invoices shows that one of the rentals does not appear to have been assigned to a nurse.

For a period of more than three months in the latter half of 2023, EV#19 was billed to taxpayers in the name of a CHL logistics manager described in corporate filings as the company’s business contact in Gander.

According to the invoices, the standard weekly charge for EV#19 was $1,288.

However, the health authority was billed $6,440 for EV#19 for a single week at the beginning of the rental period — that’s a charge of $920 per day. 

And that’s not the only time billings reached that level — or beyond.

In mid-2023, the records show, a separate weeklong EV rental cost $6,636 — nearly $950 per day.

Controversy about travel nurse hiring ongoing for years

The cost of travel nurses — and Newfoundland and Labrador’s dependence on them — has been a long-simmering political issue in the province.

The controversy finally came to a boil in February 2024, after the Globe and Mail published an investigation focused on Canadian Health Labs.

The Globe reported that Newfoundland and Labrador taxpayers footed the bill for everything from Walmart furniture to pet transportation to an air fryer. Those charges were made on behalf of the agency’s travel nurses.

In a response to the Globe, CHL said contracts “are tailored to meet each jurisdiction’s significant local needs, and reflect the extraordinary logistical challenges of getting and keeping health care professionals in rural, remote and underserved communities.”

The newspaper reported that Newfoundland and Labrador had spent a total of $35.6 million for nurses provided by multiple staffing agencies over the period of April to August 2023. That compared to an average of just over $1 million annually before the pandemic.

Soon after, the auditor general launched a performance audit of health-sector contracts. 

After the AG’s report was released in June 2025, the public accounts committee convened at the House of Assembly to review her findings.

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services officials indicated at that August hearing that a contract for a forensic audit was being finalized into payments made to “Agency A” — which records show is Canadian Health Labs.

At that August hearing, Liberal MHA Perry Trimper referenced the EV rentals in particular.

“Could you [say], in your words, without compromising the work that’s to come, what you see as some of the issues that arose around this rather obscure aspect of contracting nurses related to electric vehicles?” Trimper asked.

Pat Parfrey, the then-CEO of the provincial health authority, replied.

“I don’t really want to comment on electric vehicles,” Parfrey said. 

“If there is fraudulent activity, it’ll be identified by the forensic audit and exactly how they came through and how they were approved is not really clear to me, if you want the truth.”