44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 1, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/1/22 3:34:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the esteemed member of Parliament for Kings—Hants, which is in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia.
To appreciate the need and benefits of ArriveCAN, it is important to understand the context of where we started. At the onset of the pandemic, monitoring health measures at the border was a paper-based process.
In early 2020, the government implemented, through orders in council, strong border measures to slow the introduction and transmission of COVID-19 into Canada. We went from a few thousand travellers requiring additional health measures at the border per year, really per day, to millions of travellers being tested. The existing system was not operationally sustainable for the magnitude of COVID-19.
I would like to add that the measures that we introduced and the measures the provinces introduced were meant to protect Canadians, meant to protect their health and safety. This was the number one and most important priority for any government in Canada, but was also meant to allow for the building of capacity within our health care system.
When we think about asking people to wear masks, asking people to physically distance, asking people to stay home, and asking owners of restaurants who invested their lives and sweat into building their businesses to shut down, it was not done haphazardly. It was done with the intention of making sure that Canadians were kept safe and sound during the pandemic. It was the right thing to do. With that, it was the right thing to do to introduce the ArriveCAN app.
To implement the emergency orders, we collected contact information from travellers. This was initially done in paper form. Information was shared with provinces and territories to identify travellers quarantining in their jurisdictions. It was also exchanged with local law enforcement to inform them in their day-to-day operations and was used to contact travellers to verify their compliance with quarantine requirements.
Before ArriveCAN was launched, it was a cumbersome process at the border. Further exacerbating the process was the need to collect forms using biohazard protocols, as this was the period when there was suspicion that the virus could live on paper.
In the early days, shipping paper forms across the country, digitizing and inputting information into existing systems could take upwards of 14 days. It is within this context that ArriveCAN was created in the spring of 2020 as a joint initiative between the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency.
Without ArriveCAN, border services officers would have needed to ask each traveller health questions and review their documents. By using the app, travellers saved approximately five minutes each time they crossed the border. The app was downloaded more than 18 million times, and allowed more than 16 million travellers to expedite their border crossing.
Now that vaccine mandates and other health requirements have been removed, the advance CBSA declaration feature of the app can be used voluntarily to make customs and immigration declarations in advance. This continues to save travellers time at participating airports.
I do hope to see this form of advance CBSA declaration in an app be used for all travellers entering Canada, specifically Canadian citizens, to expedite their process through airports, such as Pearson airport. I use Pearson airport on a regular basis as do many of my colleagues, as I see them there on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings.
The budget allocated for ArriveCAN is $54 million by March 31, 2023. The budget breakdown can be found on the CBSA website.
As the science evolved, so too did our technology. Initially, ArriveCAN was simply a digitized version of the paper traveller contact information form that travellers were completing upon arrival to Canada.
Collecting information remotely prior to a traveller’s arrival minimized the number of questions that the border services officer had to ask each traveller. This speeded up processing times and also limited the exposure of officers to each traveller, protecting the public safety of individuals working for CBSA and various partner agencies
In a public health crisis, time and information are critical. With the paper forms, we had actionable information on day five to eight of a traveller’s quarantine. With ArriveCAN, we accelerated that to useful data within 48 hours.
The decision to make an ArriveCAN submission mandatory for all air travellers in November 2020 and all land travellers in February 2021 further facilitated PHAC’s ability to administer border measures, with the goal of mitigating the importation and spread of COVID-19, again to protect the public health and safety of Canadians.
As border measures evolved quickly to respond to the omicron variant, so did ArriveCAN. Travel history data was used to identify recent arrivals from countries of concern. PHAC was subsequently able to contact those travellers individually by email and phone, ask them to test and place them in necessary quarantine. This response would have been impossible without the ArriveCAN app.
Like at other points in history, the need to take timely action drove innovation. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the development of a more efficient process to manage large volumes of health data. The purpose and value of ArriveCAN to manage public health measures at the border cannot be understated. Again, it was to protect the safety and health of Canadians.
ArriveCAN is a tool that evolved with the pandemic, adopting changes with each new order in council. It improved the quality of the scientific data PHAC collected, which supported decision-making based on science and allowed the crucial exchange of information with provinces and territories. Without ArriveCAN, Canada’s ability to administer the border measures put in place to protect public health would have been significantly reduced. We needed a more streamlined digital approach to manage, track and protect our borders during the largest health care crisis we have faced in nearly a century and have seen in our lifetime, and that was the ArriveCAN app.
It is important to understand that ArriveCAN is not a just an information-sharing app. It is a secure, transactional app and web tool that used the internationally recognized SMART health card standard to verify proof of vaccination. ArriveCAN improved data quality and enhanced our ability to verify compliance rates under the Quarantine Act.
The budget includes far more than the creation and launch of the app itself. The cost to develop and launch the original version of the app in April 2020 was approximately $80,000. To ensure Canada’s COVID-19 response remained effective, the Government of Canada made regular adjustments to border measures, informed by scientific evidence, available data and international travel patterns. Support for these adjustments required 70 updates and upgrades to ArriveCAN. Each of these had to be developed and tested prior to launch to ensure the app was up to date and secure.
To that end, the total budget for ArriveCAN also includes all the necessary work to operate, maintain and upgrade the app over the last two years. It also covers the work done by Service Canada employees at the call centre, who answered over 645,000 calls and helped travellers during the pandemic. Again, the app, much like all the measures that were brought in during COVID-19 and that are ongoing, was meant to protect the public health and safety of Canadians.
Given the urgency of the pandemic, the app needed to be developed as quickly as possible. The CBSA had to use several professional services contracts for the development and maintenance of ArriveCAN based on their expertise. All contracts and payments were made in accordance with the Government of Canada’s policies and directives. This included safeguards to ensure the private information of Canadians using the app was protected, which was fundamental.
In conclusion, as Canada continues to recover from the pandemic, the CBSA will continue to work hard to make technology available at the border to help speed up travel and enhance the safety and security of Canadians. I hope to see the ArriveCAN app and iterations thereof used in CBSA pre-clearance for travellers coming through airports in Canada, particularly Canadian citizens, to speed up the process of clearing customs and immigration via CBSA.
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- Nov/1/22 3:45:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound for his concerns with regard to the usage of the ArriveCAN app.
We want to make sure that the experience of all Canadians using the ArriveCAN app is efficient, quick and smooth. Obviously, there are travellers who need assistance, and assistance was available for travellers requiring it, if they needed it.
I have elderly parents. They travelled during the time when COVID-19 was here and when the app was in use, and we did assist them with that. It was very efficient and smooth for them, including for my 87-year-old father, who had the app on his smart phone and utilized it. It was a good experience.
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- Nov/1/22 3:46:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to attempt to answer the question by the hon. member for Drummond. My interpretation may not have been working. I am not sure if it is just mine or that of other colleagues. I did not get the interpretation, but I think I understood the question.
With regard to the cost of the app, which many members have asked about, we can look at the full cost and operation of the app over the two years, with the many upgrades, the service call centre, the adjustments that were made, the number of professionals involved, the storage of data and so forth. Obviously, given the measure that was introduced, we cannot look at the microcosm of just the app itself.
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- Nov/1/22 3:48:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, look, having transparency and accountability in how every level of government is spending money is imperative for taxpayers, including the taxpayers in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge.
I know that all of the processes and procedures were followed by the Government of Canada in the procurement process for the app. If members would like to go to the CBSA website, there is a breakdown of how the monies were spent with regard to the ArriveCAN app, and, for that matter, with regard to all of the measures that were put in place during COVID-19, which was an extraordinary period of time in our country and the world's history.
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