Fri Dec 17, 2021 – 7:54 pm EST
OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The husband of Canadian Minister of Defence Anita Anand is a director of a COVID testing company that appears to have gained financially during the pandemic in the form of million-dollar government contracts.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Anand did not disclose under the Conflicts of Interest Act that her husband, John Knowlton, is a director of LifeLabs, which is a large contractor for the government’s COVID testing programs.
Knowlton is also a senior managing director with Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a pension fund investor, which in turn is the indirect owner of LifeLabs.
Before the COVID crisis hit, according to Blacklock’s Reporter, LifeLabs received few federal contracts. In 2019, it only received $134,413 from the feds.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, LifeLabs was just awarded millions of dollars’ worth of contracts for COVID testing.
Indeed, Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos confirmed this last Friday while announcing an increase in virus testing capacity.
“In order to further increase our capacity quickly, we have awarded contracts to private companies providing us with additional testing and processing services. These companies include Switch Health, LifeLabs and Dynacare,” Duclos noted.
Daniel Minden, Anand’s press secretary, claims the minister “fulfilled her disclosure obligations to the Ethics Commissioner” and that she has not “signed any contracts with this entity or its subsidiaries.”
LifeLabs bills itself as a “Canadian-owned company serving the healthcare needs of Canadians for more than 50 years,” performing over 112 million laboratory tests each year.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at LifeSite News
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