44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 27, 2024 10:00AM
- Feb/27/24 1:22:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, $60 million is the running total so far for the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government's arrive scam. This is a scandal that sees Liberal insiders lining their pockets with tens of millions of dollars while Canadians are lined up at food banks.
I just came from the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics where we heard very interesting testimony from the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The leader of the official opposition sent a letter of complaint to the RCMP about the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister's $60 million arrive scam. The RCMP commissioner confirmed, just minutes ago, that, yes, the Prime Minister's $60 million arrive scam is under RCMP investigation.
This is a government that has been mired in scandal. This issue, though on its face seems to be business as usual, is shocking to Canadians. It is shocking because one contractor, who worked on the government's failed $60 million arrive scam received $20 million, but that is $20 million out of $258 million that these two guys, working out of a suburban Ottawa basement, have been pulling in, in contracts. The same two guys admitted under questioning at committee that they fraudulently won the bids.
That was not enough for the government to freeze the awarding of contracts to GC Strategies, just like every single one of the Liberal members voted against having Canada's Auditor General investigate the arrive scam. Why did they vote against it? We learned, when we got the report back from the Auditor General, that it was damning, just like the report from the procurement ombud, revealing that 76% of the contractors, whose résumés were used to win the bids for the $60 million boondoggle, did not do any work on the ArriveCAN app.
The accountability that the Liberals look to apply to this measure is the same as having the fox guard the henhouse. They want internal processes, the CBSA, to investigate itself. That does a disservice to everyone. In my community, we have frontline border service officers and managers. Those border service officers work tirelessly to keep our country and our communities safe. They are appalled by what they have seen from the Prime Minister's senior bureaucrats, like the former president of the CBSA, in this shocking waste of taxpayers' money.
I did have a parliamentary secretary in this place one day say that it saved tens of thousands of lives. The parliamentary secretary had to walk that back. There was no data. They just make stuff up. Also, under questioning, their officials at committee confirmed the same.
This scandal has seen explosive testimony at committee with allegations of bribery and extortion, and evidence of corruption, forgery, fraud and threats. After we forced meetings last week, including testimony by the Information Commissioner, the Information Commissioner has launched her own investigation into the Prime Minister's and the NDP-Liberal government's $60-million scandal.
Today's motion is incredibly important because this is going to require the government to report on actual costs. It says something about the complete absence of transparency. The Liberals committed themselves to having the most transparent government in history and having sunshine be the best disinfectant. They need a lot of disinfectant over there because, every step of the way, they have tried to block the answers and the accountability that common-sense Conservatives have pressed for on this massive scandal. We want the actual costs.
Let us break down the name of the Auditor General for a second. She is a general who has an army of auditors, and she could not even get the true costs out of the government because of the paper shredders working overtime every time anyone takes a look at the Liberals and their well-connected friends.
We are going to get all the costs, all the way down the line, and we are going to call on the government to recoup the costs. Last week at committee, senior officials confirmed, when I asked, that there is a mechanism to get Canadians' tax dollars back in this egregious scandal. It is unbelievable that when we have officials lying at committee, when we have clear evidence of criminal acts and when all this evidence continues to pile up, the app was originally billed at a cost of $80,000.
We will hear the hue and cry that it was never going to cost $80,000 and that it could not have been built in a day. I have yet to hear testimony, in all the hours, at all the committees looking at this, that $60 million is good value for money. In fact, the Auditor General confirmed that this was not a value-for-money project, that there was gross mismanagement and that thousands of pages of documents are missing. The government does not know how many documents are missing, just like it does not know the true cost of the app. It is a bit of a problem, and this issue is one that we have been attuned to for more than a year. The government has pushed back on every effort that Conservatives have made on this.
I am pleased that I will be splitting my time to allow for another common-sense Conservative to speak to this egregious scandal.
In spite of the Liberals' protests and their filibuster of a two-day talkathon to try to block the founders of GC Strategies from having to testify at committee, dodging summonses from a parliamentary committee twice, the Liberals, yesterday, voted against the committee motion forcing the founders of GC Strategies to come before the House. They voted against it happening. Again, with common-sense Conservative pressure, we had to give them a mulligan and have a second vote because that member's party voted against accountability and transparency for Canadian tax dollars.
That is egregious, and Canadians are outraged. They are outraged, but they are also hungry and are lined up at food banks in record numbers: two million Canadians in a single month with a third of them being children. They are struggling after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government and its Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. That is what Canadians see under his government.
However, the good news is that it was not like this before, and it will not be like this after. Common-sense Conservatives have a very straightforward plan. It is to axe the tax, to fix the budget, to build the homes and to stop the crime. That is what Canadians deserve after suffering for eight years under a government that has been mired in corruption and scandal for years.
I look forward to putting the question to the House. We will see if Liberals are again going to work with their cover-up coalition to try to block this very important and straightforward accountability measure from passing. Their attempts before have not stopped Conservatives from working for Canadians. That is what we were elected to do. We are going to continue to provide answers and accountability for Canadians, and we are going to get some of their money back.
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- Feb/27/24 2:58:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, that is the Conservative common sense plan.
Common sense is also knowing the extent of the Liberal arrive scam disaster. Even though the Liberals can count on the Bloc Québécois to close their eyes to millions of dollars in spending, the Conservatives want to shed light on the arrive scam scandal.
Will the Prime Minister co-operate with the RCMP in its investigation into arrive scam or will he once again refuse to fully co-operate with the police, as he did in the cases of the Aga Khan's island and SNC-Lavalin?
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- Feb/27/24 5:15:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption.
Today, we are talking about costly criminal corruption, a three-in-one, right at the heart of the government. That is the arrive scam scandal. We found out today that the RCMP is investigating this costly criminal corruption. People are familiar with the arrive scam scandal. I think we should be calling it “the arrive scam scandals”, plural. There are multiple different scandals, and every time, at the public accounts committee and the government operations committee, we turn over a new leaf or a new stone. There is more to uncover, and it speaks to the rot, the crime, the corruption and the capricious disregard for public money that is at the heart of the NDP-Liberal government.
We heard today in committee from watchdogs, from the Auditor General's office, from the procurement ombudsman's office, that they are not at all surprised that the RCMP is investigating criminal behaviour in the context of the arrive scam scandal. We heard ministers in question period today, when they were asked about the RCMP investigation, say that it is no big deal and that of course the RCMP is looking into it.
We have come to a point, in Canada, after eight years of the Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal government, where ministers will say, unironically, that the RCMP investigating the behaviour of the government is not a big deal. It is true that there have been many different RCMP investigations involving conduct by and within the current government. However, we should never normalize or accept or tolerate, in Canada, the fact that there would be a government that has so debased our public institutions that it thinks it is normal for the RCMP to be investigating its bad behaviour.
What happened in the arrive scam scandal? It is the “arrive scam scandals”. There are many different things at the heart of this problem. We had at least $60 million spent on an app that should have cost $80,000. Many of those who worked on this did not actually do any work. GC Strategies, the company that received this contract, got $20 million for nothing. It simply received the contract and subcontracted it.
We do not just have the problem of the government contracting out work. We have the government contracting out to people who contract out. There are multiple layers and levels of subcontracting. It is essentially a two-person company that received this contract, did no work, had no IT expertise and subcontracted. It went on LinkedIn and found people who could do the work for them. It received $20 million for searching on LinkedIn.
I think a lot of Canadians would say, “I could get $20 million for just going on social media and looking for people who could do something”. That is the way this government operates. One gets $20 million for looking around on LinkedIn, if one is a well-connected insider.
We have no work done and millions of dollars going to GC Strategies for this process of getting contracts and subcontracting. Not only that, we know now, from the Auditor General's report, that the process was rigged. GC Strategies sat down with government officials to determine what the terms of the contract would be, which it would then bid on. The procurement ombudsman revealed that the terms of the contract were designed to drive up costs. They built a system that would incentivize driving up costs and would incentivize contractors to ask the government for more money instead of less.
Normal people look for opportunities to spend less when they buy things. This government built a system in which it was in the interests of contractors to charge more instead of less. It built a system that was structurally designed to protect insiders. It was built so that if one was not an insider, one could not get the contract. We have money for nothing, a rigged process, protection for insiders, a process designed to drive up costs.
As part of studying this issue at the government operations committee, we found out about faked résumés. GC Strategies, as part of trying to get work, submitted faked résumés. It said that it changed numbers around in résumés and just sent in the wrong version. However, it admitted under questioning that this insider company, as part of its process, changes numbers on résumés in order to make it compliant with the requirements.
If the government said that it needed someone with five years' experience and the person had five months of experience, GC Strategies' processes would be to change the number to five years to make it compliant, and then they would go back to the original subcontractor or resource and ask if it was okay that they changed the numbers. In one case, they did not even do that. They just sent in the false résumé.
Further, we have instances of tens of thousands of emails being deleted, with the Auditor General saying in so many cases that there is a complete absence of records. The Auditor General cannot confirm if records were destroyed or never existed, although we now have allegations of emails being deleted. We have senior public servants accusing each other of lying to the committee, accusing each other of faking health episodes in order to avoid accountability. We also have reprisals against senior public servants, public servants suspended without pay in the middle of an investigation after they give critical testimony.
That is money for no work; a rigged process and protection for insiders driving up costs; fake résumés; senior officials accusing each other of lying and reprisals among senior public servants. The result of all that was an app that went through 177 versions and sent over 10,000 people into quarantine as a result of a tech glitch, because they could not bother to test it. What a disaster. What a complete and utter disaster this arrive scam fiasco has been. After eight years, the government would say that the RCMP is investigating this whole family of scandals. That is just the way things work.
On this side of the House, we say no. We say that Canadians deserve clean, efficient, effective government and a government, by the way, in which elected leaders take responsibility. Liberals would have us believe that they had nothing to do with this. “Oh, my goodness, can you believe the things that happen to us when we're ministers? All these public servants are doing things that we know nothing about.” Our system is built on the principle of ministerial accountability, which is that ministers are responsible for what happens in their departments and ministers are responsible for the systems they create within their departments.
After eight years, the Prime Minister and his ministers have presided over the complete debasement of efficiency and integrity within the government. They have presided over a dramatic decline in the Government of Canada's ability to do anything efficiently or effectively. We have seen this across many different areas, that the ability of the Canadian state to deliver on basic services, to purchase an app, for example, has dramatically declined. However, the government would have us believe that this dramatic decline over the last years has nothing to do with it.
We have an increase in crime. We have struggles in the cost of living. We have an escalation in corruption. There is the cost, the crime and the corruption, but the government wants us to believe that the people in charge have nothing to do with the outcomes. Who are we going to blame for all these challenges our country is facing? It will not be the people in charge, surely.
We need to go back to a time when we have a government that is willing to take responsibility for what happens under its watch. We have seen this escalation in cost, crime and corruption, and it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister and his government, for what they did and what they fail to do to ensure integrity, effectiveness and fair processes within government.
This is why Conservatives have put forward a motion today that calls on the government to show the numbers, to account for the cost. It also calls for the money to be paid back. In cases where money was spent for no work, money should be paid back to the taxpayers. Canadians are struggling as a result of decisions made by the government. Canadians deserve to know the cost. They deserve to see the records of deleted emails. They deserve to see the information, and they deserve to have their money back.
Common-sense Conservatives will restore accountability and responsibility in government. When Conservatives are in office, we will no longer have ministers presiding over corruption, crime and chaos while claiming that they had nothing to do with it. We will have a government that axes the tax, builds the homes, fixes the budget, stops the crime, ends the corruption and treats taxpayers' dollars with respect.
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- Feb/27/24 6:26:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canada's common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. This is in contrast to the Liberal record. The Liberals have axed the homes, built the crime, hiked the tax and stopped the budgeting.
We are here to discuss the arrive scam scandal and, in particular, the procurement ombudsman's excellent report. Today, the procurement ombudsman was before the public accounts committee, and he confirmed that he is not at all surprised that the RCMP is now investigating the corruption at the heart of the government.
In the arrive scam scandal, we see multiple layers of costly criminal corruption in the government's procurement system. The procurement ombudsman found that the government built a system for procurement designed to encourage companies to charge the government more. This is really incredible. If they charged too little, their bids or points might be removed, so the incentive was built right into the system for companies to charge more.
The procurement ombudsman found a chronic problem of so-called bait and switch. This is where the bidding company says it is going to have one person do the work, then it switches and has someone else do the work, someone who is potentially substantially less qualified. This builds on what we already know: GC Strategies, the company that got the ArriveCAN contract, was changing and falsifying resumés they submitted to the government, and the government rigged the process.
Members of the government sat down with the GC Strategies team to set the terms of the contract, such that GC Strategies would get the deal. This is a two-person company that subcontracts all the actual work, and yet the government sat down with this company and rigged the process so it would get the contracts. It built a system that would favour insiders to ensure GC Strategies got the deal. On top of that, it designed a process that would encourage GC Strategies and others to charge the government more, not less.
It is no wonder that spending is out of control and that Canadians are struggling under the pressure of higher taxes and the impact of higher deficits. When the government designs contracting-out processes, it designs systems to try to charge more. The levels of cost, crime and corruption we see in this arrive scam scandal are really incredible.
The RCMP is investigating. I asked the Prime Minister today whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP investigation. There was no answer. We had the procurement ombudsman's investigation report and the Auditor General's report, which reveal what happened. However, we now need to identify who the responsible individuals are and why they did it. Why was the process rigged in order to give this deal to this two-person company working out of a basement? Why was it rigged to GC Strategies' advantage? Why did the government create a system designed to charge taxpayers more, not less?
These are the key questions that need to be answered by the government, but I will distill it into one simple point. The RCMP is now investigating criminal behaviour as part of the arrive scam scandal. The parliamentary secretary was formerly with the Ontario government and has a great deal of experience dealing with issues of corruption. Could he tell the House, yes or no, whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP's investigation?
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