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Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)

Nov/1/22 12:52:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians are worried about privatization, whether that is in the public health care system, which is being privatized now, or when it comes to public services like the ones we are talking about today with the ArriveCAN app. The Globe and Mail reported in January that the federal government spent $11.8 billion in the 2021 fiscal year on outsourcing contracts, which is a 41.8% increase since the 2015-16 fiscal year. Additionally, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada filed over 2,500 grievances where work was outsourced rather than assigned to the existing expertise in the public service. The question Canadians have is, why?

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Ms. Soraya Martinez Ferrada

Nov/1/22 12:53:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would remind my colleague that, during the pandemic, eight dollars out of every $10 invested to support health care across the country came from the federal government. We made sure to provide the best support possible during the pandemic, from coast to coast to coast. As for the awarding of contracts and how the public service works, I would like to reiterate what my colleague said earlier: We have faith in our process, our public servants and our departmental employees. Unlike other members of the House, we also believe in the independence of public servants. I hope my colleague believes in that too.

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Mr. Gérard Deltell (Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC)

Nov/1/22 12:54:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Calgary Midnapore. I am very pleased to participate in this debate, which centres on one of the main reasons I got involved in politics 14 years ago today, first at the provincial level and then at the federal level. That reason is the sound management of public funds. Not a single dollar that the government has in its hands has fallen from the sky. Someone has gone to work, produced something and saved that money, and the government has gone and taken that money through taxes so it could manage it responsibly. In this case, however, its management was anything but responsible. I will get right to the point. We are talking about the infamous ArriveCAN affair, which started out as a typical tale of a government wanting to bring people into its country. People coming to Canada have to pass a test to ensure that there are no issues. That makes sense. However, the leadership of this Liberal government—which spends lavishly and has never, in the last seven years, shown the slightest interest in reining in its spending, yet boasts about its lofty principles while generating huge debts and deficits that our children, our grandchildren and our unborn great-grandchildren will have to repay—has given rise to the financial disaster that is ArriveCAN. Let us review the facts. About a year ago, the government began this process to allow people to come to Canada and fill out the questionnaire. I do not want to get into my life story, but my brother is an engineer and a Canadian citizen, and he now lives in Portugal with his family. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, he had to come to Canada last spring. My brother is an engineer. As a student, he was among the first computer programmers at Laval. The point is, he is pretty comfortable with computer stuff. When he got off the plane, one of the first things we talked about, after personal and family matters, was ArriveCAN. He asked me what was up with that. He said it took forever to fill out, it was complicated, it did not work, there were lots of pages and so on. If my brother, who is an engineer, who studied engineering and knows a lot about this stuff, had problems, let us imagine what it was like for average citizens who were not used to doing that kind of thing but, all of a sudden, had to. It was fundamentally poorly designed, but when we look at how it was managed, that was even worse. The Canadian government spent $54 million of taxpayers' money, which Canadians saved and set aside, for which they worked and for which companies worked by producing products. The government collects taxes in order to run things properly, but that has definitely not been the case here. This app has been a fiasco from day one, considering that it almost never worked. It was not at all user friendly for people who had to enter their information. It was a fiasco because more than 10,000 people had to quarantine because of it. Worst of all, however, was the financial mismanagement, because it cost $54 million. As we have heard, a programming expert said he could have made it in his basement over a weekend or a Saturday night for about $250,000. The Liberal Canadian government spent $54 million on this. That is why our motion today states: ...it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending... No one can be against that. Our motion goes on to demand that: ...the House call on the Auditor General of Canada [a neutral and objective entity] to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and sub-contracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation. How can anyone be against transparency? How could anyone even think of voting against this motion, which asks the Auditor General to do her job with respect to a matter that has affected hundreds of thousands of Canadian families? Many people did not want to travel because of this. Some 10,000 people ended up in quarantine. More than $53 million seems to have been poorly invested, because someone could have done the job for $250,000 rather than $54 million. That is our job here in the House of Commons. All 338 of us, regardless of political stripe, were elected to see to the sound management of public funds, among other things. This is a prime example of mismanagement of public funds. We have a golden opportunity to get to the bottom of this business and find out exactly why things did not go as planned, so we can avoid making similar mistakes in the future. That is why I do not see how anyone in the House could be against us doing our job and asking the Auditor General to do hers. Government members are likely to be a bit embarrassed when we start analyzing their management of public funds, and rightly so. Let us not forget that, seven years ago, right after the election, this party, led by the member for Papineau and current Prime Minister, boasted that it would run very small deficits and a zero deficit in 2019 because it wanted to stimulate the economy. The result was anything but. It ran one large deficit after another, missing the target set by the former minister of finance three times. Then, it ended its first term with an accumulated debt of more than $100 billion. The Liberal Party was elected on a promise of running small deficits and then eliminating the deficit entirely. That is not at all what happened. The government ran four deficits in a row. That was the Liberal government's record even before the pandemic and current economic problems caused concerns. When the pandemic happened, we all realized that an emergency situation called for emergency measures, which was likely to bring about deficits. When we were in power in 2008, 2009 and 2010, our country, like every other country, grappled with the worst economic crisis since the great recession of 1929. Very reluctantly, our government ran deficits because we had no choice under the circumstances. However, starting in 2015, our government managed to balance the budget. Canada was the first G7 country to get back in the black thanks to sound management of public funds. That is what responsible government looks like. They Liberal government ran massive deficits during a period of growth. When the pandemic happened, emergency measures were needed and money had to be spent. We knew that would result in deficits, but we did not know the deficits would be this big. The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently concluded that $205 billion of the $500‑billion deficit had nothing to do with COVID-19. In other words, over 40% of the debt accumulated under the current government over the last seven years was in no way related to the pandemic. Those folks over there say that these were emergency measures and no one knew for sure what was going on, so it was important to be vigilant. A few months into the pandemic, when there was a bit of a lull in the summer, I remember very clearly talking to people in my riding, as we probably all did, and when I spoke with entrepreneurs or business leaders, I was always asked why parliamentarians had decided to pay people to stay at home and do nothing. People commented on the fact that CERB, which served a purpose during the emergency, was paying people $2,000 to stay at home, even though activities had resumed in the summer and workers were needed. That was the sad reality. That was the reality, but it was also our responsibility to sound the alarm about it. The government was attacking us and calling us names, but that was the reality. That is why we now know that the inflation that is hitting people rather hard all started with the current government's mismanagement. I hear my friends across the way say that the entire planet is experiencing a period of inflation. That is true, of course, but let us not forget that the future leader of the Liberal Party, Mark Carney, said that it was mainly a national issue, and therefore a Canadian issue. The Minister of Finance finally opened her eyes and said that the government may need to tighten its belt a bit and cut down on spending. I sincerely hope that this government will vote in favour of our motion so that Canadians can learn the truth behind the ArriveCAN financial fiasco.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/1/22 1:04:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member would agree that one has to put things into proper perspective. When we talk about ArriveCAN, for example, it is in fact something that was absolutely necessary in order to protect the interests of Canadians and their health. When we look at the application, there is also more to it. We could talk about the data bank or the security aspect. Imagine the sensitive information that being put into it, today's cybersecurity and so forth. Could the member provide his thoughts on the fact that it is not as simple as saying that it would only have cost a Conservative government $250,000 to do what has been done through the ArriveCAN app?

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Mr. Gérard Deltell

Nov/1/22 1:05:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the best way to answer the question of the member for Winnipeg North question is to say that it is not me. The Auditor General will do her job; she is there for that. She is there to analyze each and every penny that the government spends. On ArriveCAN, it is normal to have a system to evaluate the details of someone who is returning home, and we understand that, but why was it so difficult for everybody? My brother, who is an engineer, had difficulties with the app, like the hundreds of thousands of people who had to use it. The best person to answer that question is the Auditor General, and I am quite sure the member will support this motion.

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Mr. Mario Simard (Jonquière, BQ)

Nov/1/22 1:06:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about sound management, reckless spending, financial disaster and the fiasco surrounding ArriveCAN and its $54‑million price tag. He is right. However, there is another even greater fiasco that is part of what I would call the sacred cows of the Conservative Party. First, there is the monarchy, which represents $67 million a year. That said, the fiasco to end all fiascos is the support for the oil and gas sector, which represents roughly $8.5 billion a year. We know that ExxonMobil's profits have surged from $4.7 billion to $17.9 billion, or nearly $18 billion. Our Conservative colleagues are calling on the government to cancel the carbon tax and support the oil and gas sector. I have a question for my colleague: Which one is the real fiasco?

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Mr. Gérard Deltell

Nov/1/22 1:07:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always nice to listen to my colleague. However, I would like to remind him of the facts. In his riding, and everywhere else in Quebec, people still need traditional energy sources, the so-called fossil fuels. What is happening in Quebec right now? Well, over 45% of the oil we use comes from Texas. I assume that my colleague himself uses some. In any case, if he does not use it, many people in his riding do. Bloc members are very much against developing the energy sector in Canada because that is not the kind of energy they want to use. That magical thinking is all well and good, but the reality is that 45% of the gas that Quebeckers put in their cars comes from Texas. If these people are proud to support Texas, that is on them. I will always support Canada.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Nov/1/22 1:08:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to put this into perspective. During COVID, there was a crisis and we had to get projects approved. We had to get them out the door, but that still required oversight. For example, the government suddenly announced upward of $912 million to the WE Charity, the Kielburger brothers, and it was the duty of the staff to say that there were a whole series of holes in the plan. What we saw was that former finance minister Bill Morneau, and we can see this in the Ethics Commissioner's report, had a very unhealthy relationship with the people from the WE group. He had them in his office and he was basically working for them, so the oversight that should have been in place was not there. I want to ask my hon. colleague about the importance, and we sometimes need to get projects off the ground, of having oversight and accountability to ensure we do not end up with these kinds of dumb boondoggles.

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Mr. Gérard Deltell

Nov/1/22 1:09:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to be brief, I totally agree with my colleague. We have a job to do. The Auditor General has a job to do, and I am sure everybody will ask the Auditor General to do her job.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

Nov/1/22 1:09:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this motion is about an application that was supposed to cost $80,000, but instead ended up costing $54 million. Furthermore, a group of experts said that they could have created this app for $200,000 in a weekend. What this app represents is so much more than the app itself. It represents the level of government bloat we have come to see under the costly coalition. It represents the lack of transparency that we have come to expect from this coalition. Most of all, it reflects the serious situation that Canada finds itself in now of inflation, and the cause is inflationary spending. As we know, the bank rate started this year at 0.25%. It recently jumped to 3.75%. It is true that some external factors have contributed to this rate hike. Of course, there is the oil price spike, which began with the recovery of demand after COVID and was made worse by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That was one of those external factors. Also, China's hyper-restrictive COVID lockdowns disrupted international supply chains. However, there has been a consensus that the main reason for this inflation is inflationary spending by this costly coalition. An article was recently published by one of my favourite economists, Jack Mintz. In it he points to a study of the U.S. Federal Reserve last July. It concluded that countries with the largest-spending binges tended to have much higher inflation rates. Therefore, this is not something that is unique to Canada; it is something that has been seen as a trend, but certainly something of which the costly coalition is guilty. We know that Canada's headline inflation rate has eased to 6.9% from a peak of 8.1%, but food costs are still accelerating and underlying price pressures remain sticky. At the same time, the Bank of Canada has hiked interest rates by 350 basis points in just seven months, one of its sharpest tightening campaigns ever, to try to force inflation back to what was supposed to be a 2% target. Unfortunately, the bank last week signalled its tightening campaign was nearing its peak, but made it clear that it was not done yet as it hiked rates by 50 basis point to a fresh 14-year high. The average family will spend $3,000 more next year as a result of these inflationary effects. Food inflation is at a 40-year high. Grocery prices have been raised by 11.4%, and interest rates are going up. Energy costs are up 100% to 150%, some even 300%, and winter is coming of course. Mortgage payments, groceries, fuel and consumer goods have all gone up. We talk about what other nations are doing. Other nations have managed to fair much better than Canada. Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan and Hong Kong have all managed to keep their rates below 3%. Other nations are providing tax relief to their citizens. Fifty-one other national governments have provided some form of tax relief. That includes more than half of G7 and G20 countries, and two-thirds of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It found that at least 25 countries were choosing to provide tax relief at the pumps. Australia cut its gas tax in half. The United Kingdom announced billions of dollars of fuel tax relief. The Netherlands cut gas tax by 17¢ per litre. South Korea cut its taxes at the pumps by 30%. India cut gas taxes to keep inflation low, thus helping the poor and middle classes. Instead, the Prime Minister is also choosing to take more money from the pay of Canadians. If people are making $65,000 this year, the federal government is taking nearly $4,500 directly from their pay through the Canada pension plan and employment insurance taxes. Their employers are also coughing up an extra $4,800. This year, the annual payroll tax bill, including employer and employee payments, increased by $818 for each middle-class worker. Over the past decade, seven of which the Liberal government has been in power, it increased by $2,435. Our peers are choosing to reduce income taxes. Former U.K. chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng said, “We believe that high taxes reduce incentives to work”, as he announced payroll tax relief. Down under, the Australian government said that by putting more in their pockets, families would keep more of what they earned, allowing them to spend more on what they needed, as is provided by permanent tax cuts of up to $2,500 for individuals in 2022-23. Eighteen countries, including Belgium, Germany and Norway, chose to save their citizens money by reducing consumption taxes. As we can see, many of the nations I have named have made the choice to provide tax relief to Canadians. The costly coalition, the Liberal-NDP coalition, has not chosen that. The numbers are in. Canada ran a $90.2 billion deficit last year. That deficit is equivalent to almost $2,400 per Canadian and at the rate of $172,000 of new debt for every single minute of the fiscal year. That is not a small amount. It also means that Canada's total debt now stands well north of a trillion dollars. As of March 31, the Government of Canada also had an accumulated deficit of $1.13 trillion. We wonder where this is coming from. The Auditor General says that there are $500 million in overpayments to civil servants that need to be collected. A new report from Canada's Auditor General said that 28% of civil servants in its sampling had errors in their pay. If a government cannot even handle the payroll, why should it handle our nation's finances or even our country? Another example of this wasteful spending is the $12 million to Loblaws for new fridges. Where are Canadians at with this? Forty-seven percent of respondents in a survey of Canadians felt that their finances had worsened over the last year. Fifty-three percent believe that we will be in a recession next year. Even worse, 30% believe that we are in a recession right now. Canadians have long forgotten the sunny ways of the NDP-Liberal coalition. The good news is that relief is on the way. Relief is on the way with a Conservative government. We pledge no new taxes. We pledge the “pay-as-you-go” system. For every new dollar of spending, we must find a new dollar of savings. The motion today is not just about a $54-million application that was supposed to cost $80,000, which experts say could have been made for $200,000; it is about much more than that. It is about how the NDP-Liberal coalition has lost its way and how it needs to stop the taxes and stop the inflationary spending, now.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Nov/1/22 1:19:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am looking for a little clarification and perhaps the member could help. The very first clause in the motion says, “the cost of government is driving up the cost of living.” When I asked the New Democrats about this, they said that this referred to oil subsidies. However, what I heard the Leader of the Opposition and the finance critic say this morning was that more and more government employees were being hired and that was what they were being critical of. I want to ensure that the NDP knows what it is voting for here. With respect to the first clause in the motion, could the member confirm whether we are talking about oil subsidies or are we talking about the hiring more and more federal employees?

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Nov/1/22 1:19:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, well, it is true. Numbers have come back, and there has been a significant increase in the number of full-time equivalents, without a doubt, and in fact even more than planned originally. The unfortunate thing is that this has been done without an improvement to services for Canadians. Canadians are still waiting for their passports, and there is still an incredible backlog in our immigration system. The Liberal-NDP government is clearly not up to the task of not only reducing spending but spending and getting results for Canadians.

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Ms. Louise Chabot (Thérèse-De Blainville, BQ)

Nov/1/22 1:20:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with one part of my colleague's speech. I have to say that the part of the motion calling for an investigation to shed light on the astronomical amounts paid for ArriveCAN, an app that received far more complaints than praise, at least from my constituents, is welcome. We received calls condemning this fiasco of an app, which cost a fortune. We have to shed light on this matter. However, I am a bit concerned, because we are in a period when people need help and a recession is probably imminent. There will be an economic statement on Thursday. There are issues such as assistance for the most vulnerable and for seniors starting at age 65 and the workers who are being abandoned because there is no sign of EI reform. There is a whole set of issues with the Government of Canada's social programs, which should be strengthened to help people. Are these the types of measures that the Conservatives are prepared to support, yes or no?

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Nov/1/22 1:22:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, obviously we agree on the need for transparency. I also think we agree on the fact that the app cost too much and that far too much money was spent developing it. However, I think that the most important thing here is that we need to get value for our money, but we are not. I think we agree on the need for transparency. I think we also agree that we should be getting a return on our investment.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Nov/1/22 1:23:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try to be brief, but there is so much I want to get into. First is the idea that if we cut gas taxes at the pumps, it will help people. The member's own provincial government in Alberta tried this, and for a week the price went down relative to what it is in British Columbia. However, a week later gas companies pushed it back up to where it used to be, so it was cutting government income and saving nobody any money at all. Second, when it comes to the debate we had last week, NDP members had asked the Conservatives to support their idea of cutting the GST on home energy and they refused, instead fixating on a carbon tax that will go up by two cents a litre in April, saving nobody—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Nov/1/22 1:24:02 p.m.
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I am sorry, but there is not enough time. The hon. member used the whole minute. I will allow the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore to answer.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Nov/1/22 1:24:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, everyone's fuel prices went up as a result of commodity prices, and the reality is that as long as the Liberal-NDP coalition, which the member is a part of, continues to spend, inflationary prices will continue to increase across all goods and services.

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Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)

Nov/1/22 1:24:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Kingston and the Islands. I would like to start today by offering some context for the opposition motion debate that is before the House. I would like to go back to the spring of 2020, when we were facing one of the most serious public health crises in our country, the largest we have ever seen. I am proud to say that our government, this Liberal government, made every effort to buy essential supplies and services to protect Canadians. As the central purchasing agent for the federal government, Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC, was at the forefront of that effort. It was a monumental task for procurement experts to carry out. Our government worked non-stop to support our frontline health care professionals and all those keeping Canadians safe. When it came to procurement, we were operating in a hyper-competitive market. From the beginning, we followed a deliberate, strategic and comprehensive plan that helped us get results. We can all take pride in the fact that our focused procurement approach, over more than two years, has ensured that Canada has a secure supply of vaccines and personal protective equipment. In fact, Canada is a world leader on this front. Because of the groundwork we laid at the beginning of the pandemic, and thanks to the hard work of so many Canadians across the country, we remain in one of the more enviable positions in the world when it comes to access to vaccines, personal protective equipment and other supplies. We took action when Canadians needed it most: when their health and safety were on the line. Our approach was no different when it came to the ArriveCAN application. Early in the pandemic, ArriveCAN was put in place urgently to track and trace travellers as they crossed the border. The app was created in the spring of 2020 as a joint initiative between the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency to meet sudden new pressures brought on by the pandemic. Their goal was an important one: to limit the spread of COVID-19 within Canada to ensure the health and safety of Canadians. When urgent needs were identified by Canada’s border agency, it turned to Public Services and Procurement Canada to put necessary contracts in place urgently. This was a request to develop, integrate and maintain a completely new and secure application, needed immediately to support Canada’s response to the pandemic. That was in April 2020, only one month after the pandemic began, and as a common service provider, the department moved quickly to help shore up the resources needed to produce ArriveCAN. It acted with the greatest of urgency, leveraging existing tools to respond. As GC Strategies is a pre-qualified supplier on an existing method of supply, namely a standing offer and supply arrangement for informatics professional services, the Government of Canada tapped into its expertise. This was done on an emergency basis using existing tools, and the app was developed and launched as quickly as possible during an unprecedented time in our history. As the pandemic dragged on, our government sought to ease difficulties at the border and at the same time improve the app. By late 2020, the Government of Canada made the necessary decision to make an ArriveCAN submission mandatory for all travellers in 2021. Again, the goal was to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19 associated with international travel and, ultimately, to keep Canadians safe. With the app soon to be mandatory, in December 2020 the government obtained expertise to ensure that ArriveCAN would meet requirements under the Accessible Canada Act and the Government of Canada’s policy on service and digital. In late 2021, the Canada Border Services Agency identified a new requirement to maintain and support various ongoing informatics professional needs, and that included maintenance for the ArriveCAN app. This requirement for services, which was competitively solicited, included ongoing complex work to support the Canada Border Services Agency. This included work in application development, biometrics, digital credentials, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning, among others, as needed. The procurement was publicly posted on buyandsell.gc.ca. One bid was received, and following a rigorous evaluation, the government awarded a three-year contract to GC Strategies in May 2022. I would reiterate that this contract is not only for resources to support ArriveCAN, but is supporting a variety of IT requirements for the Canada Border Services Agency. In addition, the Canada Border Services Agency has noted that GC Strategies was not the only contractor involved in developing and producing ArriveCAN. Several companies have worked on this highly complex and continuously evolving app, and not just private sector contractors but also Government of Canada experts. For example, throughout the design, development and deployment process of the app, Shared Services Canada worked to enable the application to securely exchange information between the cloud and Government of Canada data centres. Again, this is a highly complex application, one that requires high levels of security, protection and interoperability with federal databases. I cannot underscore that point enough. As the pandemic situation evolved and the Government of Canada made regular adjustments to border measures, regular updates to ArriveCAN were also needed. These updates had to be developed and tested prior to launch to ensure the app worked as expected while safeguarding the personal information of Canadians and international travellers. It required more than 70 app and website releases over two and a half years. The contracts we put in place allowed that to happen quickly and in a time of crisis, and I note that the Canada Border Services Agency has released a breakdown of costs associated with ArriveCAN. The ArriveCAN app was absolutely necessary. Despite what the opposition may say, ArriveCAN was a critical tool that we successfully stood up in the middle of a global emergency. It is an app that has helped keep Canadians healthy and safe. That is what our government is focused on and has always been focused on. Allow me to emphasize that we are committed to an open, fair and transparent procurement process, while obtaining the best possible value for Canadian taxpayers. The ArriveCAN app was put in place to protect Canadians. The ability it gave us to manage public health measures at the border in a time of crisis to keep Canadians safe was absolutely necessary. ArriveCAN evolved with the pandemic and, yes, this required expertise from and contracts with private sector experts, as well as work performed by civil servants. Without this vital tool, Canada’s ability to administer the border measures needed to protect public health would have been significantly reduced. I hope my colleagues in the House can agree that responsible governments take action in times of need to protect their citizens, and that is precisely what we did. Throughout the pandemic, our government has been there for Canadians. We have had their backs and we will continue to be there for all Canadians as our country recovers from this crisis.

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Mrs. Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton—Melville, CPC)

Nov/1/22 1:31:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would ask the member if he is aware of the metrics used to determine the number of COVID-infected individuals entering Canada that validated the millions and millions of dollars spent on the ArriveCAN app. Does he have a number?

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Mr. John Aldag

Nov/1/22 1:32:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in my comments, our government's first and foremost priority was the health and safety and protection of Canadians during a worldwide pandemic. The fact that international travellers or Canadians abroad could be bringing COVID-19 and its variants into Canada was a concern. That is why, as I mentioned, the government made sure that resources were spent to protect Canadians' safety. That was done in part through the resources expended on the development and refinement of the ArriveCAN app.

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