44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 1, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/1/22 4:31:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that I will be sharing my time with my esteemed and valued colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot
One of the roles of government is to protect the public, particularly through border controls. In the case of a pandemic such as the one we have experienced, this is a matter of protecting the public from the spread of the virus within our borders.
Increased spread of a virus can put additional pressure on the country's health care systems, which have been compromised by inadequate federal transfers to Quebec and the provinces for the past 30 years, despite the constitutional agreements. Therefore, it was necessary to avoid putting more pressure on health care systems by protecting our people from anything that could be transmitted by travellers from here and abroad. That was part of the purpose of the ArriveCAN app: to ensure that travellers were not only vaccinated, but also tested negative before arriving in Canada.
Today, we are debating a strangely worded motion. I will read it:
That, given that, (i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living, (ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer states that 40% of new spending is not related to COVID-19, (iii) Canadians are now paying higher prices and higher interest rates as a result, (iv) it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending, the House call on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and sub-contracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation.
The motion's preamble lays out problems that people are experiencing because of inflation, but it also relates the Parliamentary Budget Officer's finding that $200 billion in ostensibly pandemic-related spending was not necessarily related to COVID‑19. Current inflation is not due solely to government spending. Other factors contributed to the inflation we are experiencing now.
Some aspects of the preamble simplify a complex inflationary reality into a single element. These aspects are followed by the motion itself, some of which is bewilderingly vague. In fact, upon rereading all the points of the preamble and the motion, one might first get the impression that the Conservative Party wants the Auditor General to analyze all aspects of pandemic management, which would be a monumental task if it were not done by subject. Fortunately, this is later clarified. The motion says at the end that the performance audit relates to all aspects surrounding the ArriveCAN app. It is a pretty flawed motion.
Despite this, my Bloc Québécois colleagues and I are inclined to vote in favour of the motion. We are inclined to do so because it is important to know whether public funds were used excessively to create this tool, ArriveCAN. That said, I have serious questions about the Conservative Party's priorities. Yes, $54 million is a lot of money, but it should be, in theory, a “one-hit wonder”. Year after year, $67 million is paid for symbolic monarchist functions, and the Conservatives voted against abolishing the control these monarchist functions have over the decisions of the people's representatives in the House and in all democratic chambers in Canada.
Basically, that is what ArriveCAN should have been. It should have been a screening and security tool at the border that border officers could use to quickly identify travellers that needed to quarantine, travellers who did not need to quarantine, and travellers that had to be turned away because they did not meet the criteria for entering Canada. If we take it one step further, ArriveCAN was also a way for Canada to save money. If members recall, before the app was created, travellers were required to quarantine in hotels reserved for that purpose. Of course, travellers had to pay for the room and their meals, and that did not come cheap, but the government had to find, train and pay additional staff to make sure that people were abiding by the quarantine requirements, whether at a hotel or at home.
Note that at the time, there were benefits for people who had to quarantine. For a brief moment, those benefits were provided to Canadian travellers returning from a trip who had to quarantine. It did not last long, thank heavens.
ArriveCAN should have been a screening and security tool, but also a way to save money by automating tracking and screening at the border to some degree. Some might gasp to hear me say that ArriveCAN was a means for screening at the border to ensure that travellers entering the country were vaccinated. The vaccination requirement raised eyebrows. Anyone who travelled before the pandemic knows that some vaccines, such as the yellow fever vaccine, and some drugs, such as antiparasitics or antimalarial drugs, are either mandatory or highly recommended for travelling to certain countries. The proof of vaccination requirement is not new in modern history. ArriveCAN would mean no longer needing to carry a vaccine record. People are less likely to forget their cellphone than a piece of paper.
The intention of ArriveCAN was to make life easier for travellers and border officers. Then again, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I was reminded of this saying because I believe that the idea of creating ArriveCAN was really based on the need for border control that would not make life difficult for anyone. However, the testimonies I received by email and in person from travellers and border officers, and those received by many members of the House, tend to show that the application had significant flaws. The first is that border officers were never consulted on the creation and implementation of the app, and yet, along with the travellers themselves, border officers were the first to experience the repercussions of ArriveCAN.
Then there were the programming problems. Vaccinated people with a negative test received a message ordering them to quarantine despite the verifications by border officers. There were also the incredible delays that paralyzed airports. Those are just a few examples of the difficulties experienced. The app required 70 whole updates. In short, ArriveCAN is an imperfect app that is difficult and even impossible for some people to use, including those who do not own a cell phone. To top it all off, it was also a very expensive app.
Newspaper articles recently disclosed that, to date, the app has cost $54 million. The committee received 2,000 documents related to ArriveCAN just last night. That does not include documents from the Canada Border Services Agency, which we are anxiously awaiting.
Once we have the documents, we hope to get to the bottom of this issue, because it is important. The problem is that the app cost $54 million when it was originally supposed to cost only a few hundred thousand dollars.
Where did those extra millions of dollars go? Does the $54 million include the development and acquisition of the app as well as the information documents handed out to travellers in airports here and abroad? Does it include advertising? Was there complacency in the management of public funds and peoples' taxes? These are just some of the questions I am asking, and I hope many others are asking them as well.
Of course, the issue is being studied by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. However, we do not have the same means as the Office of the Auditor General, which will certainly be able to do a more thorough analysis to complement that of the committee. We must shed light on a good intention that turned into a nightmare for border officers and many travellers. There have been extraordinary cost overruns, and we believe it would be useful for the Office of the Auditor General to conduct an in-depth analysis.
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- Nov/1/22 4:42:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, before the pandemic, travellers sometimes needed proof of vaccination against diseases such as yellow fever to enter certain countries. That is still the case today. There was no little cellphone app at the time.
Was the ArriveCAN app strictly necessary?
The answer is no. The government could have used other tools that have been available for a long time.
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- Nov/1/22 4:44:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us never forget that everyone in the House, everyone working here, is paid with taxpayer dollars.
That is why, as with any family budget, it is important to be accountable to the people who place their trust in us and whose taxes pay our salary, pay for this place and pay for all the services they then get back.
Demanding transparency and oversight is therefore perfectly legitimate, and the Auditor General of Canada is perfectly positioned to do that.
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- Nov/1/22 4:45:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the last thing we should be doing is brazenly interfering with the inflation and recession control measures that were put in place precisely to keep the government out of it, regardless of which party is in power.
The central bank has a role to play, a role that must be independent. All members of the House and all governments, regardless of political stripe, must respect this essential mandate, respect the fact that it is independent. We like that word in Quebec.
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