44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 18, 2023 02:00PM
- Oct/18/23 5:40:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in addition to the current scandal involving ArriveCAN, which is being investigated by the RCMP, there is also the whole issue of its implementation and the fact that, once again, consultants were called in who called in more consultants, who called in even more consultants. This was done without using the internal workforce, without recognizing the expertise and skills of our public servants.
Does my colleague have anything to add about the importance of using internal staff before calling in consultants, more consultants, and even more consultants?
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- Oct/18/23 6:13:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we could certainly talk about any number of other things, including bills that we feel strongly about. I agree with that.
That said, there was, and still is, a problem with ArriveCAN. We have an opportunity here today not only to raise the issues, but also to openly discuss solutions in the House.
Does my colleague agree with that vision? What solutions would he bring to the table so that disasters like ArriveCAN do not happen again?
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- Oct/18/23 6:31:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Terrebonne.
Here we are again to talk abut the ArriveCAN app. There would not have been so many questions—logically—if there had not been any problems, including with the contract.
I will not argue the reasons why the Conservatives decided to bring the report to the House now and ask for three hours of debate. I will not go there. I am not in their shoes and do not intend to be, ever. Rather, my goal is to raise the problems that cropped up with ArriveCAN and help make concrete improvements to procurement practices and the customs and practices of the machinery of government.
It is a question of efficiency. It is also a question of saving money, the money that helps create programs and applications—ArriveCAN in this case. It is not money that grows on trees. It is money that comes from taxpayers. It is our money from our taxes. Let us not forget that we are nothing more and nothing less than trustees of the tax money that taxpayers pay the federal government every year.
As trustees, we have a duty to manage this money responsibly. Was the ArriveCAN app developed in a responsible way? We have a duty to ask the question, because what we see and what we know so far is that it was not done either responsibly or well. An application initially expected to cost $80,000 with updates ended up costing $54 million. That is some increase.
An app designed to make it easier for people to get through certain border controls on arriving in Canada is not a bad idea. This is the 21st century after all, and if we can cut through the red tape to help things run more easily at the border, so much the better. “More easily”, however, does not mean less securely. We need to ensure both.
The problem with ArriveCAN is much the same as with other contracts. In the case of ArriveCAN, two guys won the contract. They said they knew people, so they assigned some of the work to others. The committee realized that no one really knew whether everyone had gone through security screening or whether due diligence had been done. There are a lot of questions that have not been answered. We were told yes, it was done, but it was more of a yes to get us off their backs. We do not want that kind of a yes. We want a definite “yes, that was done”. However, we are still not not sure about that yet. We are talking about an app that stores personal information, and the government is not sure that the people who developed it had the necessary security clearance.
This is not the first time this has happened. My colleagues spoke a bit about it earlier. Think about the WE Charity, for example, or the contract awarded to a non-existent company. That company did not exist 10 days before it was awarded a contract. It was founded by two guys. As soon as they got the contract, what did they do? They gave the $237 million to Baylis Medical, which belongs to a former Liberal MP who lost his seat in 2019, if memory serves. A $237-million contract was awarded to a company that existed for only 10 days. I already said it, but the Canadian dream is not bad. Not just anyone would be able to pull that off. I am not sure whether Rockefeller himself managed anything like that.
Once again, we have two guys who got awarded a contract and gave it to others to develop an application, supposedly because the federal government could not find one person among its 340,000 public servants who specializes in application development. It is 2023. This happened in 2020. That is a problem, and that is what I want members to think about. How is it that 1% of the population works for the federal government and that not one person in that 1% of the population specializes in application development?
Our public servants are trained. They have security clearance. They are capable of doing the work we ask them to do at a lower cost and in a much safer way.
We are currently faced with a situation involving allegations of identity theft, fake resumés, contract theft and fraudulent billing. That is not trivial. Where are the controls that should have been applied when this contract was being awarded or monitored? Given the allegations filed with the RCMP, there is no trace of that. How is it that officials who knew that the RCMP was conducting an investigation failed to inform the Auditor General?
Nothing is clear or transparent about the situation with ArriveCAN and other contracts. This needs to be said loud and clear. People do not want secrecy, they want transparency. We are not asking for the app's source code. We want to know where, how and on whom our money is being spent and who is spending it.
With ArriveCAN and in the consultations we did in committee—the powerful Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, as the committee chair would say—we heard from unions, university researchers and civil servants. We were astounded to learn that the unions had not been consulted, even though their members were the ones who were supposed to be making sure that things were working and following up with people at the airport. They were supposed to ensure that everything moved quickly so that things did not drag on and there were no delays. However, they were not consulted at any stage, either in the development of the app, the request for the exact need at the borders, or even the updates. At no point were they consulted, yet they were the ones who had to help passengers, use the ArriveCAN app and live with it on a daily basis. It seems to me that it would make sense to include the end users when developing an app.
As I have already mentioned, this was a private contract. There was no due diligence. Who are these guys? Who are the other parties involved in the contract? Are these people solvent? Are they reliable? We do not know. It seems to me that this expression has come up a lot in my speeches over the past four years. We do not know because we never get an answer. The people we are asking do not have any answers either.
No due diligence was done to determine whether the app could be created and managed internally. The government did not even ask whether anyone could create an app. A contract was awarded immediately. It does not take 15 years to ask whether we have in-house developers. Normally, when someone is hired, their skills are well known. With the millions of dollars we spend on IT in Canada, no one ever tried to find out whether there was anyone capable of developing apps. ArriveCAN has simply brought to light a whole host of problems inherent in the federal machinery, and those problems need to be dealt with at the source.
People might wonder why we are taking three hours to discuss a committee report. However, this committee report is just one small tree in a forest, and we cannot forget to see the forest for the trees. Here, the forest is the current federal government's inability to assume its responsibilities towards its own public servants, towards its citizens, and towards—
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- Oct/18/23 6:42:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a worrisome situation. People who are called to answer questions from the Auditor General need to be transparent and honest and report any fraud that may have occurred. These people who are required to do so failed to do so and that means that there is an internal culture that needs to be changed, and fast, for the good of the entire population.
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- Oct/18/23 6:43:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, is it a partisan problem or a problem of culture? We have already talked about Bill C‑290. We have already talked about whistle-blower protection in the public service. We have already talked about the internal culture that compels silence when people want to see improvements.
Does the problem stem from a level of government, blue or red, or does it come from a culture of silence? The discussion we are having today raises that question. This is not just about ArriveCAN, it is this culture that we need to dismantle for the greater good of the population.
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- Oct/18/23 6:45:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hope this sheds some light on what happened, either in whole or in part. We also cannot forget that the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates is studying the matter from another angle. Together, the two committees will certainly be able to shed light on the matter. More than anything though, we must find concrete long-term solutions and implement them.
As I was saying earlier and as my colleague was saying, we are talking about public money, of which we are merely the trustees. We have to be responsible when it comes to these funds.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to try a little experiment with you, although I am not sure whether you prefer sweet or salty snacks. Let us assume the latter.
Imagine you are sitting in your living room, curled up beside your partner, and watching a movie. He hands you the chip bowl. He left the bag of chips on the table in the living room in case you finish the bowl he just prepared. He hands you the bowl, all smiles, and you take a chip, all smiles. He takes one too, and you look at each other tenderly as you snack on the delicious chips. Is your mouth watering? Do you want to go to the corner store and buy a bag of your favourite potato chips? You probably do.
That is an example of the effect of advertising, to make people want to buy something they do not really need, usually not at all, something they may not even really want. That being said, the image of the story I just told could very well still be in your mind, and you may suddenly feel a craving for potato chips and need them immediately.
We are adults and we are able to see reason. We know what advertising is and the purposes of advertising, but we still sometimes fall for it. The difference between us and children is that we are aware of the effects of advertising and we can think logically. Children have not yet acquired the ability to question themselves and to think logically about the subject of the ad. They only see the good things. They do no ask themselves whether what they are seeing is good for their health and they do not ask questions when they see an advertisement on the street, along the highway or in a big box store.
There is also advertising on television, video games, social media and the videos that children sometimes watch. There are a lot of advertisements directed at children and, despite the laws, advertisers find new ways to ensure that children see their ads every day. Advertisements are also often sources of misinformation by omission. Think about the advertisement for that famous cereal with its delicious spoonfuls of honey. It is a delight to eat and provides nine essential nutrients. It is incredible just how nutritious and delicious that cereal is. What the ad does not tell people, however, is that the amount of sugar in one bowl exceeds the daily recommended intake and that the bowl in the ad represents three servings for a child. The ad also fails to mention that the essential nutrients a person would get from eating a real complete breakfast are far greater than the nine essential nutrients the cereal provides. The ad capitalizes on the pleasure of eating sweet things.
Why is it important to legislate on advertising targeting children?
Let us start with what I mentioned. Children do not have the maturity or the necessary knowledge to have perspective when they see an ad and to question the truth of that ad. Then there is the fact that sugar can be addictive. Our brain releases dopamine when we eat sugar. It is pleasing. We become hooked on that dopamine over time to the point where we always want more. The ad does not tell us that.
It does not tell us that children who do not adopt healthy eating habits from a young age will live with many health problems as they grow up. The ad leads our children to make bad food choices that will have repercussions on their health their entire lives and, by extension, on the health care systems because of weight-related comorbidity, obesity and inactivity that are the result of bad food choices. These bad food choices cause children to have less energy because they are not well fed.
Of course the parents are partly to blame, but they may be tempted to indulge, offer a treat, make an exception. Far too often the exception becomes the rule and that is how sugar becomes associated with the idea of a treat or a pleasure, as though there is nothing else that could be a treat or a pleasure.
The consequences of consuming foods that are high in sugar, saturated fat and sodium are not felt immediately, rather, they manifest over the long term. That is why we use them as treats, because they do no harm at the time. However, when consumed repeatedly, then they become problematic.
In the short term, the various effects of consuming sugar are no less unpleasant and damaging than the long-term consequences. These short-term effects impact both children's bodies and their social lives. Sometimes, children's behaviours change. They may become less agreeable and consequently be ignored by others.
Other consequences include fatigue, irritability, impatience, trouble concentrating, dizziness, headache, feeling hungry. Even after having just eaten, children may still feel hungry because they did not get any nutrients. They can also experience arrhythmia in some cases, or temper tantrums. Children may have a tantrum because they are not getting what they want and they are going through sugar withdrawal. Some even get aggressive.
Where is this sugar? It is everywhere, from croquettes to popsicles. As soon as I say the words I see advertising images in my head. Sugar is everywhere, and some ads target young people so directly they become almost impossible to avoid. That is the problem.
I would also mention that these foods can cause obesity. The industry is deliberately targeting young people because they are less equipped to detect its strategies. At their age, they cannot make informed choices.
In 2019, the Government of Quebec created an action plan to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks and encourage people to drink water instead. Things have reached a point where we have to promote water, when water is fundamental. Water is all we need and all we should have. However, we have ended up in a different place. The Government of Quebec makes the connection between sugary drinks and how they are marketed, and the resulting health problems.
The report states the following:
Given the findings of epidemiological studies on the health risks associated with the consumption of sugar or sugary drinks, as well as data on the consumption of sugary drinks in Quebec and their marketing, more efforts are needed to prevent the daily consumption of sugary drinks within the population, especially among certain groups (e.g. young people).
In the same report, the Government of Quebec says it wants to:
De-normalize the consumption of sugary drinks and marketing practices that promote their consumption....
Today I am talking about sugar, but it is one example of food advertising and marketing that should not be directed at young people. To direct advertising at children is nothing but crass profiteering; it is perverse. It targets people whose minds have not matured. It experiments on young human beings who have their whole lives ahead of them as if they were Pavlov's dogs.
Advertising directed at children under the age of 13 has been practically outlawed in Quebec for 40 years. Section 248 of the Consumer Protection Act already prohibits advertising directed at children. On the surface, therefore, the bill seems to offer no advantage for Quebec, which has already legislated on the matter. Quebec's legislation is among the toughest in North America. However, federal legislation is still important because some Canadian provinces lack the kind of protective legislation provided by Quebec.
In Quebec, certain players are using nostalgia for the past to try to convince people to put advertising to youth back on the agenda. They are saying that it is difficult to fund the great programs for youth as we did in the past. They claim they need youth-oriented advertising in order to invest in youth programming. We used to talk about greenwashing. In this case, it is “ad-washing”. I am not sure how to put it.
The Bloc Québécois will determine whether the proposed strategy is compatible with the strategies adopted in Quebec and with the Consumer Protection Act. We will propose amendments to ensure that the two acts are similar. I would remind the House that Quebec and the provinces have legislative jurisdiction over this area.
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