44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 17, 2024 02:00PM
- Apr/17/24 3:42:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, ArriveCAN was supposed to cost taxpayers $80,000, but the NDP-Liberal government rewarded consultants and insiders, who got rich on taxpayer dollars for an app that nobody wanted. The app erroneously forced more than 10,000 people into house arrest. It did not work, and the Auditor General said it cost at least $60 million. ArriveCAN is now under 13 federal investigations. Two middlemen who do no IT work got rich in a corrupt system under the NDP-Liberal government. Some, including the witness today, became multi-millionaires.
GC Strategies is a two-person company, and it claims to find people who actually do the work by using LinkedIn. Nearly $20 million for ArriveCan is what the company was paid, roughly $2,500 per hour. The people have been paid $100 million since forming GC Strategies just after the Liberal Prime Minister was elected. This is eight years under the Liberal Prime Minister.
The Liberal government has been ordered to collect and recoup all funds paid to ArriveCAN contractors and subcontractors who did no work on the ArriveCAN app. Has the government asked Mr. Firth to repay the money paid to GC Strategies on ArriveCAN?
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- Apr/17/24 3:44:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the procurement watchdog found “numerous examples where [GC Strategies] had simply copied and pasted” information to prove the people GC Strategies found to do work on ArriveCAN actually did it.
Has the government asked GC Strategies to repay the money paid to GC Strategies for ArriveCAN?
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- Apr/17/24 3:45:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for how many contracts did GC Strategies copy and paste the exact same information?
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- Apr/17/24 3:45:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have also confirmed that GC Strategies and ArriveCAN are under police investigation.
Has the RCMP contacted Mr. Firth about allegations related specifically to the Prime Minister's $60-million arrive scam?
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- Apr/17/24 3:47:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, GC Strategies is two guys in a basement taking 30% commissions on multi-million dollar contracts that they add no value to, but they have endorsements from senior NDP-Liberal government officials.
On the endorsements, who was the Government of Canada chief information officer who offered a quote?
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- Apr/17/24 3:47:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, GC Strategies is two guys in a basement taking 30% commissions on multi-million dollar contracts that they add no value to, but they have endorsements from senior NDP-Liberal government officials. On—
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- Apr/17/24 3:49:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, are all of the subcontractors that GC Strategies uses Canadian companies?
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- Apr/17/24 3:59:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was talking about what happened long before ArriveCAN. I was talking about what happened at the very beginning, when GC Strategies first became a company recognized by the Government of Canada. How did that happen? How did the company make its mark?
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- Apr/17/24 3:59:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for the first two years GC Strategies was in business, we actually were building corporate requirements. We were trying to get onto supply arrangements like TBIPS, SBIPS and ProServices, and all the mechanisms to go after business. Granted they were bluebirds, which basically means we had no idea these things were hitting the street. Then, shortly after winning the first two or three, one then starts getting corporate requirements, people start identifying the company as being good at one thing or good at the other, and then, at that point, one starts building credibility and so forth.
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- Apr/17/24 4:00:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, so, if I understand correctly, the first contracts he received, he received them before he even knew exactly how it all worked. If I remember correctly, these first contracts were awarded back in 2015, when GC Strategies was founded. Despite not knowing exactly how it all worked, he managed to get contracts.
I would like to understand that.
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- Apr/17/24 4:02:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, does the witness believe that public servants complied with the rules, procedures and policies related to their strategic and privileged position within the government apparatus in negotiating contracts for GC Strategies?
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- Apr/17/24 4:03:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been noted, particularly by the Auditor General, that people from GC Strategies helped develop the criteria for a contract that they ultimately won.
Does the witness believe that any company that participates in developing criteria should withdraw from a call for tenders?
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- Apr/17/24 4:11:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, both the Auditor General and the procurement ombudsman found that the criteria for that contract were set in such a restrictive way that only GC Strategies could have been selected as the successful bidder.
Does Mr. Firth not agree that this process is profoundly unfair?
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- Apr/17/24 4:15:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, earlier, Mr. Firth said that no one has asked him to pay back the commission that he earned.
Given that the Auditor General found the government overpaid for the ArriveCAN app, that the app itself did not work and sent thousands to quarantine incorrectly, that the Auditor General has called the record-keeping around those contracts some of the worst that she has ever seen, that 76% of the subcontractors did zero or little work, that GC Strategies bills itself as a recruitment firm but does not recruit, and that Mr. Firth took $2.5 million in commission for very little work, will he give that money back?
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- Apr/17/24 4:33:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, can Mr. Firth confirm that the three quotations on the GC Strategies website were anonymous at the request of the authors of those quotations?
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- Apr/17/24 4:33:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, did these individuals receive any benefit for allowing GC Strategies to use their comments anonymously?
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- Apr/17/24 4:54:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is too bad, because even a recruiter is considered a company employee.
I think that what we are seeing today is that there is a big problem when it comes to procurement and that there is a certain loss of control when it comes to the gifts that are being accepted by public servants. We saw proof of that today.
I think that the CBSA, which was one of the main government bodies that awarded contracts to GC Strategies, must be put under third-party management because Quebeckers and Canadians need to recover the money that was wasted on this company and others.
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- Apr/17/24 4:55:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians across the country and members of Parliament are disappointed, not just in the dramatic failure of the procurement system in our country to address the real issues of value for money, but in that this sheds light on what has been a terrible instance of reporting missing information and lost invoicing. We do not even know the total amount to date.
This is a serious and grave matter facing our country, one that stems back decades now. We heard testimony at the public accounts committee, of which I am a member, several times. Other contractors spoke to us about the tremendous vulnerability that exists in Canada's procurement system and also exists in the lack of investment in our public sector.
According to The Globe and Mail, for instance, since 2017, GC Strategies has received $46 million in federal funding. The flow of tax dollars to GC Strategies has increased steadily each year, growing from $32.6 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year to $80.3 million in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
According to the Auditor General, GC Strategies' ArriveCAN app cost Canadians almost $60 million. The total is still undetermined due to the lack of documentation and of a paper trail, a serious and grave error in and of itself.
On top of that, we have noticed that this vulnerability of our public service and procurement process has created a system in which insiders are able to profit in extreme amounts because of a system that does not have the proper accountability and does not have the proper follow through, albeit, in this particular instance, that there is a lack of proper procurement.
Canadians are rightly disappointed. Not only that, but they are angry at the very real fact that they wake up every single day, go to work, pay their taxes and do everything right, and then are told that the tax dollars they have worked so hard for have not gone to close in the gaps in social or economic outcomes, or for material benefits for Canadians, but have been going towards a dramatic outsourcing of jobs that Canadians in our public service could do.
I recognize that not all IT services, of course, can be dealt with here at the House of Commons or in our public service, but a great deal of them could.
When did Mr. Firth first start doing contracts and business with the Government of Canada?
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- Apr/17/24 4:59:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the only IT staffing firm I have had is GC Strategies, as an owner. We were not part of Coredal.
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- Apr/17/24 4:59:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, does Mr. Firth believe that the work his company, GC Strategies, has done in relation to ArriveCAN was good money for Canadians' dollars?
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