- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Jun/5/24 12:10:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, today is an important day in the arrive scam scandal saga, because later today, Minh Doan, who is one of the central figures in this affair, will be testifying before the government operations committee.
He will be testifying for three hours and will be required to answer critical questions about how the decision was made to choose GC Strategies and who was responsible for that decision. He will need to answer questions about significant allegations around the destruction of emails. Since his last appearance before the government operations and committee, there have been revelations in The Globe and Mail that note an accusation of unusual steps that he took that led to the destruction of emails at the Canada Border Services Agency.
There is an Auditor General's report on the arrive scam scandal that shows that there are missing records. There are also allegations filed by a CBSA IT employee that were obtained by The Globe and Mail, allegations of moving files in an odd way that led to the destruction of emails and other critical documents. This has, of course, as The Globe and Mail noted, particular importance given that we are seeking information about what happened with GC Strategies, that is, how it was awarded the contract. One of the deeply suspicious aspects of the arrive scam scandal is that nobody is actually prepared to take responsibility for the decision to choose GC Strategies. There is a flurry of very sharp and public accusations among senior public servants, which speaks to significant and enduring challenges at CBSA.
There are new audits that came out yesterday, new, damning audits from the Auditor General. One issue in particular that we have highlighted has been the government's cosy relationship with McKinsey, the government's constantly funnelling money and contracts to McKinsey, close friends with the government, without the proper processes in place and without demonstrating value for money.
It is another day, another series of corruption scandals and more damning reports from the Auditor General. Whether it is yesterday's Auditor General's report on McKinsey, as well as the green slush fund, or today's hearings that we are going to have with Minh Doan, it is scandal after scandal. After nine years, the Liberal government always wants to blame somebody else. The Liberals always want to say that it is somebody else's responsibility, without any clarity about who is actually going to take responsibility.
After nine years, the Prime Minister bears responsibility. He bears responsibility for a broken contracting system, for the fact that the Auditor General's reports repeatedly emphasize the lack of accountability for the way the government is serving up contracts to its close friends, and for the fact that there is a GC Strategies model. It is not just one company; it is a model that we see growing across government, where a small firm specializes in simply getting government contracts but then subcontracts all of the actual work and takes a big cut along the way.
This is systemic corruption in the procurement process that we have seen in the arrive scam and in multiple other instances. When will the corruption end? Will it be soon, or will it be after the election?
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- May/28/24 12:16:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is unbelievable to me that the NDP-Liberals are still defending the arrive scam policy. The fact is that this app was a disaster. Sixty million dollars was spent. A big chunk of it went to this do-nothing middleman company. Most versions of the app, according to the Auditor General, were not tested. As a result, over 10,000 people who followed all the rules were accidentally sent into quarantine because of a glitch in the app.
We can imagine that someone does everything they are supposed to. They are coming back home; they are supposed to be able to see their family and get back to work. They are sent into quarantine, not because they are supposed to go, but because the government could not be bothered to test the app. Rather, it hired two guys working out of a basement with no IT experience, who went on LinkedIn to find other people to do the work.
The Auditor General very clearly said that there is no excuse. The government continues to make excuses in spite of it. Does the government have no shame? Will it finally admit what a disaster the arrive scam policy was?
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- May/7/24 7:02:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it being May 7, I want to start by wishing my dear wife back home a happy anniversary. With five kids and one more on the way and through four election campaigns, it has been a wild 13 years. I am so grateful to her and to my whole family for supporting me in this important vocation. It involves far more sacrifice for them than it does for me.
The process was rigged. The arrive scam process was rigged in favour of well-connected insider companies. We know this because the procurement ombud's report identified the well-connected insiders at GC Strategies, the small two-person company that the government loved giving deals to, over and over again. GC Strategies, the small two-person company, was actually founded in the same year that the Prime Minister took office. Fancy that.
The company was founded the same year the Prime Minister took office, and it became a favoured go-to supplier for the government. A supplier of what? A supplier of nothing. This company did no work. It simply received contracts and subcontracted all of the work. If the government needed to pay someone to do nothing, GC Strategies was its go-to.
The process was rigged because GC Strategies sat down with folks inside of the government who were deciding the terms of critical contracts. GC Strategies said what the specifications of the contract and the terms of the contract should look like, and that advice was taken. GC Strategies then bid on the contract, which it had informed the development of, and, surprise, it got it. GC Strategies was able to sit down with those developing the contracting process, fix the process by saying exactly what the specifications of the contract could be and then, surprise, it got the deal.
I have continually asked the government why. Why did sketchy companies like GC Strategies develop this favoured stature within the NDP-Liberal government? Why did it continue to go to the same shady characters over and over again to give them these incredibly generous contracts?
On arrive scam alone, this glitchy app that did not work, that sent over 10,000 people into quarantine on an error, that had real horrifying impacts on the lives of Canadians, this company got, according to the Auditor General, almost $20 million for nothing. It simply got the work and then subcontracted all of it to other people. Now that is a glorious gig. It got millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, from the NDP-Liberal government to do nothing. It had the process rigged in its favour when it was a two-person company working out of a basement.
I am trying to understand. There is this systematic rot in the procurement process. This arrive scam issue is just the tip of the iceberg. We keep hearing new reports about broken contracting, contracting across various departments that clearly did not follow the rules.
I want to ask the parliamentary secretary a question. Why did the government rig the process in favour of the shady characters at GC Strategies? Why did the government do it?
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- Apr/18/24 2:56:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has not cooperated because the House voted to ask for the money to be paid back, and Kristian Firth testified that the government has not taken any steps to seek the return of the money.
After nine years, it is clear that the Prime Minister is presiding over a severely incontinent contracting system where money constantly flows to NDP-Liberal insiders. Canadians need a government that they can depend upon to stop the crime and end the corruption.
Again, will the Prime Minister follow the direction of Parliament and ask the arrive scammers to return the money?
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- Apr/18/24 2:55:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's arrive scam led to unprecedented testimony before the House of Commons, which the Liberal House leader tried to shut down, and no wonder. That scam, which the NDP and Liberals voted for, cost taxpayers at least $60 million. Parliament ordered the government to pay the money back, but Liberals have not even asked for it to be returned. Now, the RCMP have come knocking.
After nine years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the corruption or the crime. Will the Prime Minister finally follow the direction of Parliament and get back the arrive scam cash?
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- Apr/15/24 8:00:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are about to see historic consequences for historic Liberal corruption. Here in the House of Commons chamber, this week on Wednesday, Kristian Firth, one of the two people who work at GC Strategies, one of the favourite contractors of the NDP-Liberal government, will be hauled before the bar of the House of Commons. He will be brought into the House of Commons chamber, where normally just members of Parliament meet and debate, and after being admonished by the Speaker for failing to answer questions properly at committee, the favoured contractor of the NDP-Liberal government will be forced to answer questions in multiple rounds from members of all parties for over 100 minutes. This is the history that is going to unfold in the chamber this week, a historic response to historic NDP-Liberal corruption.
GC Strategies got the contract for the arrive scam app, and it is not clear why. It is a two-person company. It did no work on the app. It got almost $20 million simply for receiving the contract and subcontracting. Essentially, its business model is that it goes on LinkedIn, finds other people who can do the work, receives the contract and subcontracts other people who can do the work. However, GC Strategies collected almost $20 million in the process, according to the Auditor General.
GC Strategies disputes that number; it says that it was not $20 million but more like only $11 million that it collected. If we do the math according to GC Strategies' own figures, Kristian Firth collected over $2,500 per hour working for the government. How can anybody else who is good with LinkedIn get a piece of that deal as well? We are going to find that out when, in the historic moment this week, a representative of GC Strategies, Kristian Firth, is called before the bar.
What we know already, and what we will probe further with questions when we have this historic exchange, is that GC Strategies was the favourite contractor of the NDP-Liberal government. The company, founded in 2015, benefited from processes that were clearly designed to benefit it. In fact, we know from the Auditor General's report that at one point senior officials sat down and met with representatives from GC Strategies to figure out the specifications of a contract that GC Strategies would then bid on and get, so it was a made-for-insiders process, designed specifically to benefit the two-person company that did no IT work, got the deal and then subcontracted.
What we are seeing is historic corruption under the NDP-Liberal government. There are processes that are designed to benefit well-connected insiders at enormous expense to taxpayers. Arrive scam, GC Strategies and $60 million spent developing an app are just the tip of the iceberg, because we know now that there are 635 different firms that are doing so-called “staff augmentation” in the IT space for the government. There are over 600 firms whose business it is to receive contracts and then to subcontract the actual work.
Is the government prepared to acknowledge and apologize for the system of costly criminal corruption that it has been presiding over for the last eight years?
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- Apr/8/24 12:54:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not aware of some of the long-tenured, historical events about which the member is speaking. I am a relatively young member of the House, so events before a certain date are before my time.
It is pretty rich for the Liberals, after eight years in power, to always want to draw our attention to things that happened in decades past. The fact of the matter is that since 2015, the national debt has more than doubled. More than half of our national debt is the responsibility of the Prime Minister. That is why we are now spending more on debt servicing than we transfer for health care. It is outrageous, out-of-control spending under the government. The $60 million for the arrive scam scandal is important, but it is part of a larger pattern of cost, crime and corruption. I mentioned some of these numbers in my speech, such as over 600 companies just doing staff augmentation. It is out of control.
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- Mar/18/24 3:05:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the arrive scam scandal has made clear again that the NDP-Liberal government and the Prime Minister are not worth the cost or the corruption.
Liberals gave GC Strategies $20 million for arrive scam alone. Last week, Kristian Firth from GC Strategies revealed that he got at least $2,600 per hour for subcontracting. Canadians are struggling to put food on the table and Liberals are giving well-connected consultants multi-millions at $2,600 per hour.
I have a simple question: Do Liberals believe that $2,600 per hour was a reasonable rate?
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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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- 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/26/24 3:05:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, Canadians know that the NDP-Liberal government is not worth the cost or the corruption. With the help of the NDP, the Liberals gave at least $20 million to a two-person company during the arrive scam scandal for no work done, and Canadians want their money back.
Meanwhile, the Auditor General found a stark absence of documentation. Reports now show that tens of thousands of emails were illegally deleted.
Will the Prime Minister and his NDP partners who are responsible for this scandal stand up and tell us when they will release the documents that are missing?
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- Feb/12/24 2:42:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the two insiders at GC Strategies worked with the NDP-Liberal government to set the requirements of the arrive scam contracts, which GC Strategies then got.
In other words, the process was rigged. The government massively overpaid for the $60-million glitchy app, because the process was rigged. It was rigged so that GC Strategies got $20 million from taxpayers and did no actual work.
After eight years, it is clear the Prime Minister's arrive scam app is not worth the cost or the corruption. Why did the Prime Minister rig the process to pay insiders and punish taxpayers?
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- Feb/6/24 7:54:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates has been gripped by the arrive scam scandal: the way the government spent $54 million on a glitchy app that did not work and the fact that it chose GC Strategies, a two-person company that did no actual IT work and simply subcontracted all the work.
How did this happen? Who was responsible? Who had the relationships with GC Strategies? Who created the procurement system that allowed a two-person company that does no IT work to get this contract and, essentially, to simply be able to receive and subcontract the work? This is the work the government operations committee has been trying to get to the bottom of.
The government is now intimidating witnesses who spoke out at committee. Here is what happened. Supposedly there was an ongoing internal investigation within the government into what happened in the context of the ArriveCAN procurement. The investigator in this case is not independent; this is an internal investigation. The so-called investigator reports through the existing chain of command within CBSA. He effectively reports to people who could be under a cloud of suspicion in the context of the investigation.
On November 7, 2023, two witnesses, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, came before the government operations committee. In response to questions, in particular from Conservatives, they gave devastating testimony. They identified people inside the government who, they said, were lying and were covering up information. They identified conversations that happened between the minister's office and the senior public servants that were filtered to them. While other public servants were very reserved and limited in their responses to questions, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano gave very direct and very forthright responses that were critical of actions taken by others, especially more senior people within the chain of command.
Surprisingly, almost immediately after that, on November 27, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano received a letter saying that they were the subject of internal investigation. They had not been notified of this before. Coincidentally, apparently, they were told they were under investigation immediately after they offered critical testimony at committee. Then the government went further and suspended these senior public servants from their jobs without pay, even though the internal investigation has not been completed. There is an ongoing internal investigation not complete, yet two people have been suspended without pay.
This is very suspicious. The government is under a cloud of suspicion over this procurement, so it has an internal investigator; however, the internal investigator has not even completed the investigation but has submitted interim findings that apparently point the finger at people who have been critical of the same senior public servants to whom this investigator in fact is subject, and they have been suspended without pay.
This very clearly, given the timeline, looks like retaliation against public servants who have spoken out about the arrive scam scandal. There is a big problem here. There is the underlying issue of corruption in the arrive scam contracting, $54 million to a company that did no actual work but just subcontracted all of the work, but then there are people who have provided testimony about it, not the testimony the government wanted to hear, apparently, who are suddenly suspended without pay.
How does the government justify retaliating against witnesses who criticize it?
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- Feb/5/24 3:06:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that response had absolutely nothing to do with the question. There was a sham investigation. The government's investigator admitted that he is not independent; his job depends on the government's pleasure.
We have with the arrive scam that, when whistle-blowers criticize the government, they are suspended without pay. When witnesses defend the government, they are protected. It is a $54-million arrive sham.
The Prime Minister is not worth the cost in spending or in corruption. After eight years, why is the government continuing to protect its arrive scam, arrive sham insider friends?
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- Feb/5/24 3:04:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, it is clear that well-connected insiders have never had it as good as they do under the NDP-Liberal government. The arrive scam watchdog report found a made-for-insiders process for this $54-million spend, where qualified companies were cut from contracts if they did not have the right connections and experience. High-priced insiders were paid every time. This was not a bug in the system; it was a feature in a process designed to drive up costs and reward insiders. It is clear the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
The only explanation for this insider protection scheme is incompetence or corruption, so which is it?
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- Jan/29/24 6:57:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the irony of these points of order interruptions, by the way, from a procedural perspective, is that there is limited time for this debate. The more points of order we have, the less time will be available for questions and comments. I welcome the opportunity for debate. If members do not interrupt on points of order, there will be more time after my speech for us to have an actual debate in the proper format.
The point of highlighting what happened with the arrive scam and talking about how—
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- Nov/29/23 7:22:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, J.F.K. purportedly said once that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. From this, we can gather that the decision to hire GC Strategies to build the ArriveCAN app was a failure because nobody will admit to being the one responsible. Nobody wants to claim the parentage of this terrible decision.
Conservatives have been persistently prosecuting this case of the arrive scam scandal. The government spent $54 million. It contracted GC Strategies to build the ArriveCAN app. The RCMP is now investigating some of the contractors involved. We have repeatedly asked a simple question: Who is the person responsible for the decision to hire GC Strategies? This is a two-person company. Nobody in the company does any IT work. All they do is receive the contract and then subcontract it. They go on LinkedIn and send messages to people asking them to do the work. They do not do any of the work themselves. They just receive the contract and subcontract it.
It is like if you, Madam Speaker, hired me for $100 to paint your fence, and then I went and hired another member to paint the fence for $50. They did the work. You paid me and I collected a whole bunch of money in the middle. That is essentially how GC Strategies operated in this case and in other cases. It does not have the people or capacity to do the actual work.
By all indications, it was a terrible decision to spend enormous amounts of public money through GC Strategies for this overpriced, glitchy, ineffective app. We have all kinds of things that have come out during the discussion of this issue. We have doctored resumés that have, in another case, been presented to the Government of Canada. We have systemic questions about how the procurement process works. We also have senior public servants accusing each other of lying about who made the decision. This is quite incredible. We have senior public servants Cameron MacDonald and Minh Doan accusing each other of lying about who made the decision to go with GC Strategies.
Again, we have repeatedly, in this House and in committee, asked who was responsible for this decision. I put the question to the Minister of Procurement yesterday, but he did not answer. Under the Liberal-NDP government, over the last eight years, we have seen how everything is broken, but nobody is responsible. Apparently anything that goes wrong is nobody's responsibility. Again, as J.F.K. said, victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
There are a lot of orphans according to the Liberals. They said they did not make the decision and it was external factors. This was a decision of someone in government. Somebody decided this two-man company working out of a basement doing no IT work were the right people to build this app. They were the right people to spend $54 million on.
We will continue to ask the government this simple question: Who made the decision? Was it a minister? Was it the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of Procurement? Was it a particular senior official? We have senior officials actually accusing each other of lying. They are saying, “It was not me. It was that guy.” The government is ultimately responsible for the decisions made while it is in power. It has been in power for eight years.
It is a simple question. I hope the parliamentary secretary will answer. Who made the decision to choose GC Strategies to build the ArriveCAN app?
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- Nov/22/23 7:47:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that great fog of a non-response obviously gets nowhere close to the question I asked. I will repeat it. We have the arrive scam scandal: $54 million that was spent on an app that should have cost much, much less. Money was spent through a company that did no IT work and subcontracted all of the actual work.
We need to know who is responsible. Who made the choice to hire GC Strategies? There are senior public servants, Cameron MacDonald and Minh Doan, accusing each other of lying about who is responsible. Somebody has to be responsible. The government made the decision to give the money to GC Strategies for the arrive scam app. It is a simple question: Who was responsible for the decision to hire GC Strategies for the ArriveCAN app?
Finally, to the parliamentary secretary, who was the person responsible for hiring GC Strategies?
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- Nov/22/23 7:43:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was simply reading a quote, which I think is on the record, that showed the NDP speaking out against giving lethal weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine needs weapons.
I will speak now about the arrive scam app, which is a grotesque scandal that I think many Canadians are seized with. It is actually more like a family of scandals; it is a number of different scandals that are interrelated. The government spent $54 million developing an app, which is far in excess of what it had spent on apps before. It spent $54 million developing a glitchy app that did not work and that sent many Canadians into quarantine who should not have been in quarantine.
In the process, the government hired not a major company or a company with IT expertise. Rather, it hired GC Strategies, a company of two people working out of their basement and who did no IT work. They simply subcontracted all of the actual work. That would be like the Speaker's hiring me to paint her fence for $100, my then hiring the member for Winnipeg North to paint the fence for $20, and my pocketing $80. He did all the work, and the Speaker was sort of fine with that arrangement. That is what happened consistently. I think Canadians have a grave problem with why the two-person company that did nothing got all the work. The RCMP is now investigating the contractors. Meanwhile, there is an admission that fraudulent resumes were submitted to the Government of Canada by GC Strategies, and there are senior public servants accusing each other of lying about who is responsible for the choice to hire GC Strategies.
We need an answer from the government on this, because we have tried to ask senior public servants, and they have accused each other. They have said, “It wasn't me; he chose GC” and “No, someone else chose GC Strategies.” One can understand why nobody wants to take credit for the decision, given the fact that a company with no IT experience and that did no work was hired. The government needs to explain, because it was a decision made by the Government of Canada.
In the midst of these structural problems about contracting, fraudulent resumes and public servants accusing each other of lying, will the government finally tell us who is responsible for choosing GC Strategies for ArriveCAN?
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- Nov/22/23 7:42:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am here to speak on the arrive scam.
However, in a brief coda to the previous debate, the NDP House leader was talking about the importance of supporting Ukraine, trying to wrap himself in blue and yellow. It is important to tell the House that the NDP has consistently opposed giving Ukraine the weapons it needs. In fact, I will quote from the member for Edmonton Strathcona, the NDP foreign affairs critic, who said, last February at committee:
Some people in this committee and some members of our Parliament have been calling on the government to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine. I have some concerns about that, obviously.
Do you believe there are risks—
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