In its May 2025 decision in Summit Helicopters Ltd. v. British Columbia (Emergency Health Services), the Supreme Court of British Columbia upheld an internal bid protest decision and dismissed a losing bidder’s injunction application. The case dealt with a bidding process initiated by the BC Public Health Services Authority (PHSA) for air ambulance services. After losing the bidding process, Summit Helicopters Ltd. (Summit), an incumbent air ambulance service provider, challenged the outcome under the PHSA’s vendor complaint policy on the grounds that one of the bid evaluators, whose spouse had a long-standing business relationship with a competing bidder, failed to declare a conflict and recuse herself from the evaluation process.
An ad-hoc review committee conducted an internal bid protest process and found that the conflict gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias and that PHSA failed to follow its own conflict rules in allowing the conflicted evaluator to participate in the process. The review committee recommended that an independent third-party be appointed to oversee a re-evaluation by a new evaluation committee, leaving it to PHSA to then determine whether to proceed with the awarded contract or terminate it.
Summit then brought a court application seeking a court injunction stopping the performance of the new contract and requiring PHSA to continue using its services. After engaging in a complex legal analysis, the court concluded that the review committee’s re-evaluation remedy was reasonable in the circumstances and denied the injunction application.
This decision, which offers a useful case study illustrating why public institutions should adopt clear conflict screening protocols and formal internal bid protest procedures, will be featured in Dealing with Conflicts and Collusion and Dealing with Bid Protests modules of our new Fundamentals of Canadian Government Procurement certificate program that runs in April and returns in October. Please see our current training schedule for more details.
