Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, the only thing your government is doing is trying to obstruct the parliamentary committee from getting to the bottom of things. You’re deleting emails and preventing us from obtaining answers to simple questions. Senator Gold, “ArriveScam” has been slammed by the procurement watchdog and the Auditor General, and it is currently under criminal investigation. Are they all partisan as well? We know that, at minimum, at least 10,000 Canadians were mistakenly sent to quarantine by glitches of this shameful app. Senator Gold, how can your government — in good conscience — continue to fight these Canadians in court and hold them to huge outstanding fines in relation to what we now know was a fraudulent app?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Senator Gold, over the last two years, your government paid a company called GC Strategies over $164 million for IT work. It is the same company responsible for the $54-million ArriveCAN app. This company has two owners but no employees. Neither of those two owners do any IT work. They subcontract all the work, and, of course, that’s a practice that allows the government to hide key information from public scrutiny.

Senator Gold, who in the Trudeau government made the decision to hire this company? Who in your government thought that the height of the pandemic was the time to go with a small, unproven company — with no employees and no expertise — to develop an app that you keep describing as being so pivotal in the government’s response to COVID? To which members of the Trudeau government are these insiders connected?

Senator Housakos: Senator Woo, I have two short questions. First, how could you profess that the government — that is, the elected Prime Minister who appoints in this parliamentary chamber and simultaneously appoints the government senators who will also serve in the opposition — could appoint government representatives and opposition representatives simultaneously?

Second, how could this chamber, despite being an appointed body — and there are few left in our modern parliamentary democracies — completely ignore the will of the democratic choice in the other house in choosing the government on one side of this chamber and the opposition on the other, as has been the tradition since 1867?

Senator Housakos: Yes, you have been clear; the government has been clear. We are going to continue to investigate. We are going to continue to have special or regular rapporteurs, or hire people from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation to write reports.

At the end of the day, we have had no action. It has been months that we have had these illegal CCP police stations operating on Canadian soil.

We have also seen the government take two years to address the issue of a member of Parliament — him and his family — being threatened by CCP foreign interference. Your government took no action whatsoever. It took two years before we actually expelled somebody who was involved directly in that particular threat.

The questions I have are very simple: How much longer before our government shuts these down? How much longer will it take before the government holds the people responsible for these operations to account, and has them meet the full force of Canadian law? At the end of the day, that’s the only time when we can say the government is serious — when we shut them down, and when those responsible for this illegal operation on Canadian soil face the full force of Canadian law.

Hon. Leo Housakos: I would like the government leader to focus on today’s candle, and we’ll worry about Rapporteur Johnston for another time.

Back to MP Michael Chong, he and his family were targeted by the Beijing regime because he moved a motion in the House of Commons recognizing the Uighur genocide. A similar motion, sadly enough — it was a sad day in this institution when Trudeau-appointed senators defeated that motion.

Now, if Prime Minister Trudeau did not take action to protect Michael Chong because he is a Conservative and because of partisan reasons, that’s shameful. If it’s because of utter incompetence — as he hasn’t shown any ability to protect Canadians from foreign interference — that’s just as shameful.

Now that the Prime Minister has been called out by the media with concrete information, what does he do, colleagues? He calls for another investigation where now that everyone has resigned from the Trudeau Foundation, he is running out of people he can appoint to investigate all of his various failures. Who is he going to appoint now to investigate this particular failure? Will it be his mother or his brother? Or maybe, colleagues, he might appoint himself. I can just see it now: What did I know? When did I know it? Who told me? Why didn’t I do something about it?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, my question is for the government leader in the Senate. Senator Gold, in a recent report to Parliament in response to a question from the opposition, your government misleadingly stated that the deeply flawed ArriveCAN app had cost taxpayers a total of approximately $29.5 million for developing, maintaining and promoting this app. What the report did not make clear is that the amount only covers the cost for the fiscal year that ended last March and that an additional $25 million has been approved for the current fiscal year by the CBSA — which expects to use that full amount — bringing the total closer to twice what the government reported in their parliamentary report.

Senator Gold, why does your government have such difficulty providing truthful and forthright responses to questions on behalf of hard-working Canadians who want to know where their money is going? I know that sometimes you are frustrated by the question, but is it simply that the government does not know how to count or that they deliberately fudge the numbers in order to give a false representation of the facts?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, you’re absolutely right. This is a very serious issue, and it requires serious action. Two senior British judges stepped down from their roles with the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal in March, one of whom issued a statement saying that he:

. . . cannot continue to sit in Hong Kong without appearing to endorse an administration which has departed from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression.

Since these resignations took place earlier this year, has there been any communication between the Government of Canada and the former chief justice about her continued membership on this court? Please, government leader, don’t say that it would be inappropriate to do so, because your government had no problem reaching out to Ms. McLachlin during the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

So, yes or no, has your government been in touch with the former chief justice on this matter? If not, why not?

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, to hear your government tell it, you would think that the ArriveCAN app is alleviating some of the pressures at these airports and, somehow, that your measures are contributing in a positive way. It’s actually adding to the delays. We continue to hear horror stories of its inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. Yet your government continues to make use of this app, making it mandatory and insisting that airlines deny boarding to passengers with right of entry into Canada.

Senator Gold, ArriveCAN — like the proof of vaccine requirements — was supposed to be a temporary measure. Is this still the case? Instead of cancelling flights for Canadians who have been waiting for two years to see loved ones or to get work done requiring necessary travel, does your government have a date for when they will be cancelling the ineffective use of this ArriveCAN app and your ineffective proof of vaccine requirements? What date will you take these unnecessary requirements down?

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, I appreciate that, but it has been a while since the government has made that commitment with regard to the app. I appreciate that the ArriveCAN app can be a useful tool for some, and I have no doubt that Canadians of certain generations appreciate it more than others but, the truth is, it should be optional. We have agents at entry points for a reason. Their responsibilities shouldn’t be entirely relegated to an app, especially one that has been prone to technical issues. Moreover, Canadians should not be turned away from entering their own country under any circumstances. I remind honourable senators that the Prime Minister, once upon a time, said that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

Can we get a commitment that this will be rectified? It has been a while now. I have asked this question in the past, and the minister has publicly given directives to CBSA. Canadians are still being penalized at the border, especially elderly Canadians who don’t have access to this app.

Senator Housakos: Government leader, with all due respect, it has been months and weeks that we have been inquiring about this and we can’t get a straight answer. Through our membership in this bank, the Trudeau government has sent over $200 million to a regime that kidnapped Canadians and held them arbitrarily for years, yet the government can’t tell Canadians how many middle-class jobs have been created, which they claim was the purpose of this program to begin with?

Leader, I’ll ask again, why should Canadians remain a member of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank where after weeks and months we can’t even provide this chamber, a chamber of Parliament, a simple answer to a simple question?

Senator Housakos: I appreciate that, government leader.

Over the last few years, more than $1.1 billion in approved or proposed funding has been tied to Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank projects in Russia. This means Canadian taxpayer dollars have been committed to improving Russia’s highways, supporting their railway system and supporting an infrastructure that they have used over the last few months in the most nefarious ways.

A week after the start of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank announced that it had put all of its activities in Russia and Belarus on hold and under review.

Leader, there is nothing to indicate that China will suspend these projects indefinitely. It has been exactly one month since the war in Ukraine began, and China still hasn’t condemned Russia’s invasion.

Why should Canadian taxpayer dollars continue to support this group?