OTTAWA — A $7.5-million contract for one of the RCMP’s Black Hawk helicopters has been cancelled, months after the Star revealed the U.S.-made aircraft was grounded for being ineligible to use for border patrols in Canada.
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) said in a written statement to the Star on Tuesday that the government and Ottawa-based Helicopter Transport Services (HTS) “have agreed to terminate the agreement by mutual consent.”
The statement did not say if an ongoing probe into the contract had found wrongdoing by the RCMP or HTS, which won the contract despite questions about whether the helicopter met the licensing requirements to be used for border patrols in Canada.
It also did not say how much money, if any, the RCMP had paid HTS under the contract before it was cancelled.
NDP Public Safety critic Jenny Kwan told the Star she supports the contract’s cancellation but questioned why it was authorized in the first place.
“It is a serious failure of procurement oversight,” Kwan wrote in a statement.
“Canadians deserve to know who approved this contract, how much public dollars were on the hook with this debacle, and what steps will be taken to ensure this kind of procurement failure does not happen again.”
Anandasangaree has defended the use of the Black Hawks as an “off-the-shelf fix” that was implemented quickly to get around procurement challenges, and said their long-term use will be assessed.
