🇨🇦 $250M to Replace Fax Machines — Liberals Built Software for Telus Instead

PrescribeIT burned through over $300 million since 2016 to digitize prescriptions. Result: less than 5% adoption, doctors still faxing, program scrapped next month. Telus Health pocketed $98 million to build the system — but Ottawa owns zero intellectual property. Telus already owned 85% of the underlying tech and the system can't even be transferred without them. Taxpayers funded a private company's product development and got nothing.

Health Minister's excuse: low uptake made it unsustainable, so killing it was fiscally responsible. Translation: we blew a fortune on vaporware, handed the IP to a telecom giant, and now we're pretending ending the disaster is sound management. This is Ottawa procurement in one perfect microcosm — no oversight, no deliverables, no accountability, just connected corporations getting rich while fax machines hum along.

🍁 Maple Chronicles