Procurement Minister Mum on Who Hired Company Behind Controversial ArriveCAN App

A smartphone set to the opening screen of the ArriveCan app is seen in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini)

Minister of Public Services and Procurement Jean-Yves Duclos repeatedly refused to answer questions from Conservative MPs on who at the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) was responsible for hiring GC Strategies to develop the controversial ArriveCAN app.

“Who at the CBSA was responsible for the decision to hire GC Strategies? Will you undertake, for the fifth time now of me asking this question, to give us that answer?” asked Conservative MP Larry Brock on Nov. 27.

“Will you undertake to ask CBSA who contracted GC Strategies?” responded Mr. Duclos.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates has spent weeks investigating how the three companies of GC Strategies, Dalian, and Coradix received millions in taxpayer dollars to develop the ArriveCAN app, which critics say could have been developed for a fraction of its $54 million cost.

As part of their work on the committee, MPs have also attempted to determine who at the CBSA chose to outsource the app’s development to GC Strategies, a two-person company that then subcontracted the work out to six other companies and pocketed a commission of between 15 and 30 percent.

In mid-November, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) announced it was launching a review of the three companies at the centre of ArriveCAN. The agency said the probe into the companies would cover the security verifications of the existing contracts with the three companies.

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While PSPC and the CBSA announced they were temporarily suspending all contracts with the three companies, PSPC has said the IT firms can still continue working with other departments in the federal government while the investigation is underway.

The RCMP has also said it’s investigating allegations of misconduct raised by IT firm Botler AI in relation to government contracts given to GC Strategies, Coradix, and Dalian.

Minister Says to Ask CBSA Who Made Decision

Mr. Brock told the committee that government officials at the CBSA had been “pointing fingers at each other” when it came to who developed the app. The CBSA’s former director Cameron MacDonald said that CBSA’s former vice president Minh Doan was the one who decided to hire the company, while Mr. Doan later told the committee he didn’t know GC Strategies would be the company chosen to develop it when he decided outsource the app’s development.

“I know you’re not responsible for CBSA, but you’re certainly responsible for the funding that went to CBSA to pay the $11 million to a two-person company that works out of their basement that did no IT work whatsoever,” Mr. Brock said.

Mr. Duclos responded that the PSPC minister was not responsible for funding CBSA, and said he was “totally right” to question who at CBSA had made the decision.

When Conservative MP Garnett Genuis again asked who was responsible for choosing GC Strategies, Mr. Duclos said he could offer information on “what ArriveCAN did.”

“As I said earlier, it’s CBSA who made those decisions. You should ask the minister of CBSA,” Mr. Duclos later added.

When Mr. Genuis questioned whether Mr. Duclos had asked who had made the decision, the minister said it would be a “perfectly appropriate question” to question who made the decision within CBSA.

Deputy PSPC Minister Arianne Reza said that with the allegations regarding the companies being investigated by the RCMP, it is “very hard to control everything” until it is completed.

“In the interim, what we’ve done is we’ve identified every active contract, every previous active contract, we’ve gone through every security clearance,” she said. “I know that’s an answer that may not be pleasing, but we’ve done a tremendous amount of work in the broader enterprise, even where CBSA is not the contract manager.”