Hon. Leo Housakos: Senator Gold, last week, I asked Minister Duclos who is responsible at the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, and Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC, for verifying outside consultants and subcontractors. We saw disturbing information this morning in The Globe and Mail about how $54 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on ArriveCAN — on consultants who not only fudged their CVs but fabricated expertise for companies that, it seems, do not even exist. Given that information — and the fact that your government, since 2015, has increased spending on outside subcontractors and consultants by 74% — how can you possibly justify all this?

Can you tell this floor who in the Trudeau government is responsible for vetting these contracts? At the end of the day, ArriveCAN has become a fraud, a fiasco and an “ArriveScam.” Who is accountable for this?

Senator Housakos: The only assurance that this chamber and taxpayers have is that the RCMP is looking into it. Hopefully, they’ll get to the bottom of which pockets got lined.

Senator Gold, given the latest news regarding it, will your government finally do the right thing and cancel the outstanding fines that were issued as a result of this deeply flawed and — as we now know — fraudulent app? Will you apologize to Canadians who were unlawfully ordered into quarantine despite having done nothing wrong — Canadians such as Joe Walsh and thousands of others who have been fined?

Senator Housakos: At the end of the day, we ask respectful questions on behalf of taxpayers and we’re obligated answers.

I’ll ask you in the same words and polite fashion the question that the parliamentarian asked the Minister of Finance. Can you tell Canadians how much we’re spending or are projected to spend on interest on the debt this upcoming fiscal year?

Senator Housakos: Minister, Canadians, taxpayers and Parliament also deserve to know how much this will cost.

[Translation]

Despite the threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, the Trudeau government doesn’t seem to have a plan to so much as start the polar icebreaker construction project. The year 2030 is quickly approaching and not only have the ships not been ordered, but your government still hasn’t signed a framework agreement with Davie for the construction of one of the two icebreakers.

Every year for the past three years, your government has promised to sign an agreement with Davie. However, every year, it hasn’t kept its promise. Minister, why haven’t you been able to sign an agreement, and what is the impact of this failure on the 2030 delivery date?

[English]

The senator referred to the Arctic where it’s critical that Canada has the tools and capabilities to protect our waters, borders and ecosystems in that area, and we’re making historic investments to do just that.

I recently had a chance to spend half of a day on an icebreaker — with the Canadian Coast Guard on the St. Lawrence River — that was keeping the seaway free of ice, and I want to commend the Canadian Coast Guard for the amazing job that they do on their rotations in the South in the winter. They will be heading up to the Arctic in a few months to do the icebreaking and protective services there.

Senator Housakos: Government leader, your answer does not correlate with the facts. Over the last decade, we’ve seen the CBC reducing regional service to an enormous degree, simultaneously spending millions of dollars toward the digital platforms, and that is a fact. The only thing we can’t really determine is how much of taxpayers’ money they are actually spending to convert to digital.

Let’s try another question. Senator Gold, the minister responsible for your government’s online censorship bill, Bill C-11, has written a letter to the chair of the CRTC, whom the minister himself had just appointed, expressing concerns that his bill could be used to infringe on freedom of expression. Shocking. The bill is still before Parliament, so I’m not so sure why the minister would write a letter instead of just writing something in the actual bill to protect against the very thing we have been raising concerns about all along, which is the trampling of the freedom of expression.

Senator Gold, are the members of your government, the Trudeau government, unaware that they are in government and that it’s not being done to them, but it’s being done to Canadians by them? Why is the minister sending a letter to his appointee?

Senator Housakos: Senator Simons, I’m a little confused. You’re either for transparency or you’re not. The problem we have had over many decades is that the CBC, when it comes to dealing with certain aspects, is taken away from the realm of good governance and the board, and they are managed directly by the minister’s office and whoever the CEO is, who has been appointed by the minister’s office to begin with. The Broadcasting Act is the exact place to protect taxpayers’ money.

What would be the hesitation, if we believe in transparency, putting it crystal clear in this revamped, modern and renewed Broadcasting Act to make sure that the CBC — which is funded completely by taxpayers’ money — will be transparent like every other government agency?

Senator Housakos: Thank you, Senator Loffreda, for expressing very eloquently the government’s point of view as independently as you might have done. I will, independently of course, ask some questions on behalf of taxpayers in this country — starting with the fact that we saw the Auditor General put out a report very recently calling into question $27.4 billion of COVID spending that you allotted the government. Of course, we participated in getting a lot of that COVID spending out the door very quickly. Clearly now, the Auditor General has questioned the transparency of a lot of that spending.

What in this bill — what mechanisms — and what action has the government taken to make sure that a lot of the programs you just highlighted, and a lot of the new spending that will be taking place, will have better checks and balances than, clearly, the previous couple of budgets that we approved?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question, Senator Housakos. It’s very relevant as, in my previous life, I was an auditor — way back more than 20 years. I started in 1984. How many years is that? I lost count. It’s 38 years, right? So it’s over 20 years.

But I think what does matter here is there are a lot of measures that are there for tax avoidance. A lot of measures are there to show that fiscal responsibility is imperative. I think the government is showing that.

You are right; the Auditor General did state that there has been a lot of COVID spending that has been distributed that must be recovered. We have to recover those funds, so we have to put measures in place to adequately look over as to how they could be recovered.

But this bill — Bill C-32 — is basically the Fall Economic Statement. It’s going forward. It’s putting in measures of tax avoidance, updating the Income Tax Act and looking at ways that we could go against tax avoidance. I’m fully in support of these measures in the bill. Hopefully, in the future, we will have additional measures that will be productive, and go against the unnecessary COVID spending that did occur.

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, the only people who feel betrayed in this country are Canadian taxpayers who have been betrayed by this government for a number reasons.

Senator Gold, now that the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app has finally and rightfully been scrapped by your government — that is how useful it has been — why does the CBSA still expect to use the full amount that has been budgeted for this fiscal year, which doesn’t end until March 31, 2023? It’s a simple question.

Also, will your government do the right thing and forgo enforcing financial penalties wrongfully levied against Canadians because of their inability to use this flawed app?

There have been a number of hard-working Canadians who reached out to my office and who have been fined up to $18,000 for the simple fact that there was a glitch or they did not have access to ArriveCAN. At the end of the day, don’t you think it is only responsible to remove these fines, or has this flawed app become another tax grab at the expense of these betrayed Canadian taxpayers?

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?