SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 113 - Oct/19/22

Mr. George Chahal (Calgary Skyview, Lib.)

Oct/19/22 2:56:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we recently learned the good news that over 2.5 million Canadians have now been lifted out of poverty since 2015, yet some of my constituents are still concerned about the rising cost of living. What are the latest actions our government is taking to help my constituents and all Canadians make ends meet?

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Context: House Hansard - 113 - Oct/19/22

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Oct/19/22 8:16:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it cost $54 million at a time when Canadians are facing record food price inflation. Conservatives are asking, “Who got rich?” Where did the $54 million that was spent on the failed ArriveCAN app go? We heard from some members of the government that they believe this app was responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives. I can tell members what that app did to at least 10,000 people, which was to put them wrongly under house arrest, in a forced quarantine, in spite of their compliance with public health guidelines in Canada. This $54-million app was built by one web designer while he was having his turkey dinner over a weekend, and tech experts saying the upset limit they would have given to an application like this would have been in the low seven figures, if they exceeded a quarter of a million dollars. When we raised this issue of this $54-million app with an unknown number of subcontractors, whose identities the government refuses to reveal, the Prime Minister said that $54 million was just petty. He is not worried about $54 million at a time when Canadians are having to choose between nutritious food for their children and putting gas in their vehicles to get to work. They are just dreading the day they know they are going to need to turn the thermostat on as the mercury plunges. It was $54 million. We could heat a lot of homes and feed a lot of families with that kind of cash, but we heard that it was petty. We disagree. What we want from the government is transparency. It has rescinded the mandatory use of this app, for now, but still left in place seven figures of fines for Canadians who used an app we know did not work correctly. We know we saw thousands of people punished because of errors in what is one of the most expensive apps going. We saw the wonderful app reviews ArriveCAN had in the App Store, so one wonders how much of that money went to pay for fake reviews for an app that was, by most accounts, terrible and demonstrably unjustified. What we are looking for from the government is not the assertion by the Prime Minister that $54 million is a petty sum of money. What we are looking for is transparency. We are looking for the names of the vendors and details of the services they provided for $54 million. Canadians deserve that kind of transparency. If we are going to ask Canadians to have confidence in their institutions, to be able to trust government, then the government needs to do the right thing and be transparent. Will the parliamentary secretary stand today and commit to providing Canadians with the details of those contracts? Who got rich?

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Context: House Hansard - 113 - Oct/19/22

Mr. Adam van Koeverden

Oct/19/22 8:26:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate that clarification. I will be honest: It was not a mistake. It happens all the time. It is an effort to catch parliamentary secretaries with a speech or a response that has nothing to do with the question, so the member opposite can stand up and say that the parliamentary secretary is not answering their question. If I were to answer the question he asked in June, it might not be as interesting now, because there are no vaccine mandates anymore. I think that is why we have pivoted to a new question. The member opposite continually referred to $54 million as the cost to build the app, which is of course not true. He has read the same articles as I have. There were costs to maintain the app, and there were costs to upgrade the app over the last two years. It was required to do all the necessary work that the ArriveCAN app did, and the member opposite can continually reference the glitches or the errors, but what it did was provide people at the border with the ability to demonstrate that they indeed got a vaccine, which was a requirement to enter this country. Within a couple of hours, the member voted against a bill to ensure that lower-income families would have access to dental care. Once again the members opposite are demonstrating that they care about money more than they care about Canadians.

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