News stories, company info call into question Foundever’s ‘headquarters’
As the New Brunswick government negotiates a new virtual care services contract with Foundever Group, the opposition health critic still has questions about the company’s home base.
On Friday, Feb. 6, the River Valley Sun was first to report that the province would not renew its virtual care contract with New Brunswick-owned eVisitNB. Foundever Group, with global headquarters in Luxembourg and corporate offices in Miami, Florida, will take over the service from eVisitNB on April 1, following a Request for Proposals (RFP) that was issued by the Department of Health (DOH) last October. Foundever currently owns the company that operates Tele-Care 811.
eVisitNB previously held the contract, which was awarded in 2022 without an RFP. The company was created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by Woodstock ER Dr. Hanif Chatur and Stanley-area family physician Jonathan Clayton. Last year, eVisitNB was informed that the government would issue an RFP for the service. The province analyzed 11 bids. eVisitNB was the only New Brunswick-owned company involved in the process, but lost the contract.
On Monday, Feb. 16, Opposition Health Critic and Woodstock-Hartland MLA Bill Hogan issued a media release asking New Brunswickers if they were happy with the decision.
“Are you okay with (Premier) Susan Holt giving a monopoly on the e-health care of New Brunswickers to a Miami, Florida-based company?” Hogan asked. “That’s exactly what she is doing with Foundever, a company created when Tampa-based Sykes was taken over by Miami-based Sitel. This is the company Susan Holt and her supporters claim has ‘strong Canadian roots.'”
Hogan went on to explain that people living in the Saint John area might be familiar with the Sitel name, particularly the headline from May of 2010 announcing that more than 200 people lost their jobs when Sitel closed its call centre in the port city.
Last week, Premier Holt told the CBC that she had studied the RFP process and fully supported the DOH’s decision to award the contract to Foundever Group.
While Foundever is legally registered in Luxembourg, a well-known European tax haven, the majority of the corporation is based in Miami, Florida.
Foundever Group, a $4 billion company, has its Luxembourg address listed as 33 boulevard Prince Henri, L-1724 Luxembourg, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg – a shared co-working space operated by The Office Luxembourg.
It is the same address listed for dozens of other companies, including Amazon Web Services and Spotify.
In 2017, Foundever’s CEO, Laurent Uberti, was interviewed by the Miami Herald. The story focused on why he moved his global headquarters to Miami.
“Because it’s an international center for business, because of the energy of its people, because of its diversity, its direct flights to the rest of the world, because it’s perfect for a global company,” said Uberti, then president and CEO of Acticall Sitel Group, which later became Foundever Group.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article157886769.html
The article stated Acticall Sitel mainly operated in the U.S. All indications are that the company’s main home is Miami, Florida, where the CEO lives.
In 2022, Uberti was named Miami’s Top Business Leader for 2022. Recently, the website noted that Uberti transitioned to the role of Group CEO and Executive Chairman as of Sept. 2025, continuing to lead the global company from Miami.
https://thegreatentrepreneurs.com/the-top-50-business-leaders-of-miami-for-2022-complete/
In a recent CBC report, Susan Holt told reporters she has studied the request-for-proposals process and has no issue with Foundever Group, which operates in multiple countries.
Last spring, Holt announced that part of the government’s tariff response plan would include a directive not to award contracts to American companies.
The policy was one sentence in a government news release, which stated her caucus would “immediately review the government’s procurement and stop the signing of deals with United States companies, except for critical services for New Brunswickers that cannot be immediately replaced.”
https://www.gnb.ca/en/news/n-b.2025.02.premier-announces-new-brunswicks-tariff-response-plan.html
Initially, the province announced that it did not proceed with the eVisitNB contract due to language concerns. Later, during a Public Accounts Committee hearing at the legislature, the Deputy Minister of Health, Eric Beaulieu, told MLAs that they chose Foundever Group because they believed the company would be better at integrating the services the province wants.
A letter to a French reporter in January of 2025 from the department noted that the language issues had been rectified. After the Public Accounts Committee hearing last week, eVisitNB told the River Valley Sun that it was already integrating services with the DOH.
In 2024, the province tasked eVisitNB with developing a custom platform to integrate Foundever’s Tele-Care 811 call centre with our virtual care program,” said Dr. Chatur. “Working closely with both the Foundever team and the DOH, we successfully launched this integration in July 2024, allowing 811 to seamlessly schedule callers for appointments with an eVisitNB nurse practitioner.”
Dr. Chatur said the integration of services facilitated more than 3,700 virtual care appointment referrals to eVisitNB from 811.
“Beyond the technical integration, eVisitNB was also asked to review 3,000 of Foundever’s Tele-Care 811 triage protocols to ensure patients are accurately directed to the most appropriate service: whether that be pharmacists, mental health resources, in-person care, or eVisitNB,” he explained.
Dr. Chatur said his company’s successful work with Foundever’s 811 call centre “clearly demonstrates that we possess the proven capacity to expand these integrations to Emergency Departments, NB Health Link, and Primary Care Clinics and MyHealthNB.”
The province seemed more than happy with the company, presenting eVisitNB with New Brunswick’s Public Sector Award for Innovation.
Chatur said that, with all the different comments about the contract, the cancellation is starting to feel “personal.”
“A million visits in and (we were) never invited to an audience with any politician or any summit on virtual care held by GNB,” he told the River Valley Sun. “All of our corporate taxes are paid here, not in Luxembourg or the United States.”
Chatur said that, now, his 165 nurse practitioners are still wondering what opportunities, if any, will be available to them.
“They looked after New Brunswickers over a million times, during a time of great fear,” he told the River Valley Sun. “The message they are hearing is not that something better is coming, but that they aren’t good enough.”
Hogan says people remain upset at the government’s decision.
“Many New Brunswickers have emailed the premier and copied me, concerned with the care of their personal medical data taken from eVisit, a New Brunswick company with 100 (per cent) Canadian data storage, and given to an American firm with a huge blemish on their record just three years ago, and data storage in the U.S. and accessible worldwide.”
The MLA added that fears about data being stored outside the country are a real concern, as this is permitted under the CUSMA free-trade agreement.
Hogan told the River Valley Sun that if the government had done its due diligence, it would have seen that, even though the company was legally a Luxembourg-based operation, it is, operationally, American.
“The fact remains that eVisitNB is a homegrown solution that has been working to meet the needs of New Brunswickers,” he said. “We shouldn’t be looking elsewhere when there is no need to.”
