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Nov/1/23 7:52:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is right, and I said this the first day of witnesses. This is potentially the largest scandal that we have had in the history of recent Canadian government, for certain. I was very encouraged to hear the NDP member who spoke to this moments ago, about when he questioned his colleague as to the extent of this scandal. We believe, within the Conservative caucus, that it is certainly very important to have the discussion around what happened until the Auditor General report, but I am very encouraged to hear my NDP colleague say that his colleague believes that the matter will seize us until the next election. It tells me that members of the House, and the government as well, should recognize the depth and breadth of this scandal and the extent to which Canadians are affected.

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Nov/1/23 7:50:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been many scandals under this government. That includes Canadian travellers. I am talking about ArriveCAN. It is truly the big scandal here today. In addition to the ArriveCAN scandal, we heard from witnesses at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that many more scandals exist. Of course there is the one in connection with Canadian travellers, but also with finances and government spending.

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Nov/1/23 7:39:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the fine constituents of Calgary Midnapore, especially on such an important issue that truly affects their tax dollars. I want members to take a moment and imagine a Lifetime movie that includes the elements of identity theft, forged resumes, contractual theft, fraudulent contracting and collusion. Members do not have to imagine this Lifetime movie, because it actually exists. It is the ordeal behind ArriveCAN. ArriveCAN was created for $54 million. Experts have said that the app could have been created with simply $200,000 over a weekend. Instead, $54 million was spent on the app. Of that $54 million, $11.2 million went to a company called GCStrategies, and $4.3 million went to two companies called Coradix and DALIAN. I will add that these companies have actually received $80.3 million from the federal government over a significant period of time. It is very concerning that these companies would receive these large amounts of funding for the $54-million app. Originally, this was an issue brought to the government operations committee last spring. I will say that the government tried to dismiss it. It tried to write it off as “nothing to see here”, and our objective at that time was just to try to get value for money for Canadians. As we have found out, it has become so much more than that. It has become a search for the truth. This was broken by The Globe and Mail's Bill Curry, when he broke the story of the RCMP's investigating this CBSA contract. The fact that GCStrategies, the group central to the creation of ArriveCAN, is the central player in the scandal leads to a lot of concerns. The company at the centre of this is a small company called Botler. It originally did some work for the Justice Department. It was eventually reached out to by GCStrategies, the company at the centre of the ArriveCAN scandal, to do a pilot for Bill C-65, relative to sexual misconduct. According to Curry's article: The developers said they were first approached by GCStrategies's managing partner, Kristian Firth, via LinkedIn in late 2019. Mr. Firth said he was reaching out on behalf of his ‘client,’ who he later said was the CBSA's then-director, Cameron MacDonald. [They said] they were shocked to discover that after interacting with GCStrategies and Mr. MacDonald for months, the funding for their software was approved through an agency contract with another company—Dalian—without their knowledge. They said they had never heard of Dalian at that time and never worked with any Dalian employees. They said they later discovered that Coradix had submitted forms to the agency about their work experience without their knowledge or permission. For instance, [one of the employees] said a two-month summer internship at Deloitte on her résumé was inflated in an invoicing points form to say she had 51 months of experience working for [an] accounting firm. Years of experience is used in federal contracting to determine whether a contractor qualifies for [those positions]. It is also used to calculate per diem rates. The story starts there, but it does not end there. GCStrategies' Mr. Firth also told these two employees of this company that: ...he could act as a broker to secure a contract with the agency. He also promised he could open doors for them to land contracts with other departments or have [their] software approved to use across the entire public service, which would be a substantial contract. He explained that he would do this for a fee that is contingent on successfully landing government contracts. This company went on to record conversations with Mr. Firth. Those recorded conversations show Mr. MacDonald directed Botler in February 2020 to “‘please work with [Mr. Firth]’ and ‘let [Mr. Firth] work his magic.’” “The conversations also reveal that Mr. Firth described Mr. MacDonald, in November, 2019, as a friend and said, 'I've been with him his whole career in government.' Mr. Firth referred to various senior public servants as friends.” “They said they were asked by Mr. Firth to start working on the project even though they had yet to...sign a contract.” We get into the fraudulent contracting piece here. “For months, [the two employees] said they were repeatedly denied answers when they asked Mr. Firth for a contract so their legal team could review it.” When called to appear last year before [the government operations committee] to answer questions related to ArriveCan, [the topic of discussion today], Mr. Firth said his company had invoiced $44-million in federal contract work with more than 20 different departments over the past two years. He said his company has no stand-alone office and just two employees—himself and Darren Anthony. Neither of them perform IT work themselves. Instead, they hire subcontractors to do the work in exchange for a fee of between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of the contract values. Mr. MacDonald wrote, “You asked me for advice on the key question of ‘why GC Strategies’”, as the government was struggling to determine why GC Strategies was chosen. Mr. MacDonald himself said that they were still “grappling with 'who selected GC Strategies'”. The article says, “Mr. MacDonald’s e-mail comments…suggested answers for the executives. The draft answers appeared aimed at convincing MPs that no one person was responsible for selecting [GS Strategies].” However, we know someone selected GC Strategies. Mr. MacDonald “set up meetings for Botler with the Canada Revenue Agency, Correctional Service Canada, Global Affairs, Shared Services Canada, Transport Canada, Treasury Board and others in an effort to have the software approved as a government-wide project to all public servants.” This is the crux of the concern for myself and my Conservative colleagues. When we are talking about ArriveCAN, it is a $54-million app, which, experts say, they could have done for $200,000. Here we have the company that received $11 million trying to arrange contracts across all of these other government departments. “During this outreach, Mr. Firth introduced them to another consultant named Vaughn Brennan, who Mr. Firth said had extensive government connections in Ottawa. Mr. Brennan recommended that they send and e-mail to [the Deputy Prime Minister] from Mr. Dutt's e-mail account.” In addition to the breadth of this fraud, we are concerned about the level at which individuals were complicit and informed. “The contract for Botler to provide its services was not a direct contract between Botler and the border services agency. In fact, Botler's company name was not mentioned at all, nor was GC Strategies. Instead, the agency relied on a contract with Dalian and Coradix.” “In a separate subcontracting document between Dalian and GC Strategies, which is not a direct contract with the government, GC Strategies is listed as a subcontractor to Dalian...along with an independent contractor named Patrick van Abbema—are listed as consultants.” Unannounced to you as Coradix/Dalian were brought in as a pass through and they demanded 15% for doing so, CBSA were pissed at the overall pricing and threatened to pull the contract,” Mr. Firth wrote in an e-mail. “Your cost, plus 15% for me and 20% for Coradix etc, it rose to close to $500k. I was not prepared to slow the process down and stop our first client from purchasing so I removed myself from the equation completely and gave them a 15% discount. “By September, 2021, Ms. Dutt and Mr. Morv [of Botler] had had enough and filed a formal misconduct complaint via the Sept. 27, 2021, e-mail to Mr. Utano and another agency official they had been dealing with.” I will add this initial complaint was ignored, so they had to go on and do an additional complaint as well. “They learned that the original contract through which their services were obtained was through an existing contract for IT services.” “Like with ArriveCan, the border agency had turned to a general standing offer contract for IT services and added a specific request...” “Through their research, [they] found that Dalian was submitting invoices and receiving payments...” To summarize, in the words of Ms. Dutt: This is about something that affects every single Canadian, every single taxpayer dollar that is taken from ... hardworking Canadians who are already struggling financially, that is given and spent through contractors through improper means. And I think that Canadians have a right to know what’s going on with their hard-earned money. That—

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Nov/1/23 7:38:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, another phenomenon we saw during the pandemic was Canadians flying out of U.S. border towns as a result of the halt of the airline sector by the government. I am sure that had a significant impact on tourism as well. Canadians were basically sent to three neighbouring airports: Buffalo, Bellevue and Bellingham. I would like to hear how the shutdown of the airline sector and the driving of Canadians to these border towns affected tourism for Canadians.

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Context: House Hansard - 238 - Oct/24/23

Nov/1/23 7:34:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I had the distinct honour during the pandemic of being the shadow minister for transport, and I worked hand in hand with the member who just gave his address. I wonder whether the member could comment, given his close proximity to the tourism sector, on the comments he heard relative to airlines, what they went through at that time and the impacts of the transport sector on tourism during the pandemic.

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Context: House Hansard - 237 - Oct/23/23

Oct/24/23 2:59:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, damning new information revealed today shows that ArriveCAN contractors submitted receipts to the government for a company that does not even exist. This investigation already includes allegations of identity theft, forged resumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price-fixing and collusion in the creation of the $54-million ArriveCAN app. How much worse can this boondoggle get? I have a simple question: Which Liberal insiders got rich?

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Oct/23/23 2:17:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal-NDP government is once again in the midst of a scandal and criminal investigation. The RCMP is currently investigating allegations of identity theft, forged resumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price-fixing and collusion in the creation of the $54-million ArriveCAN app. Two whistle-blowers trapped in this scandal came forward to the media. This is the only reason we now know about it, as government officials were forced by their political masters to lie to Canadians about this contract. This investigation was hidden by GC Strategies, the Canada Border Services Agency and numerous Liberal ministers during our study last year. They deliberately withheld the truth from this House and from Canadians. The Liberal-NDP government will engage in criminal behaviour to pay their friends millions and continue their cover-up before they tell the truth. The Prime Minister once again has shown that he is not worth the cost.

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Nov/1/22 1:24:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, everyone's fuel prices went up as a result of commodity prices, and the reality is that as long as the Liberal-NDP coalition, which the member is a part of, continues to spend, inflationary prices will continue to increase across all goods and services.

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Nov/1/22 1:22:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, obviously we agree on the need for transparency. I also think we agree on the fact that the app cost too much and that far too much money was spent developing it. However, I think that the most important thing here is that we need to get value for our money, but we are not. I think we agree on the need for transparency. I think we also agree that we should be getting a return on our investment.

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Nov/1/22 1:19:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, well, it is true. Numbers have come back, and there has been a significant increase in the number of full-time equivalents, without a doubt, and in fact even more than planned originally. The unfortunate thing is that this has been done without an improvement to services for Canadians. Canadians are still waiting for their passports, and there is still an incredible backlog in our immigration system. The Liberal-NDP government is clearly not up to the task of not only reducing spending but spending and getting results for Canadians.

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Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Nov/1/22 1:09:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this motion is about an application that was supposed to cost $80,000, but instead ended up costing $54 million. Furthermore, a group of experts said that they could have created this app for $200,000 in a weekend. What this app represents is so much more than the app itself. It represents the level of government bloat we have come to see under the costly coalition. It represents the lack of transparency that we have come to expect from this coalition. Most of all, it reflects the serious situation that Canada finds itself in now of inflation, and the cause is inflationary spending. As we know, the bank rate started this year at 0.25%. It recently jumped to 3.75%. It is true that some external factors have contributed to this rate hike. Of course, there is the oil price spike, which began with the recovery of demand after COVID and was made worse by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That was one of those external factors. Also, China's hyper-restrictive COVID lockdowns disrupted international supply chains. However, there has been a consensus that the main reason for this inflation is inflationary spending by this costly coalition. An article was recently published by one of my favourite economists, Jack Mintz. In it he points to a study of the U.S. Federal Reserve last July. It concluded that countries with the largest-spending binges tended to have much higher inflation rates. Therefore, this is not something that is unique to Canada; it is something that has been seen as a trend, but certainly something of which the costly coalition is guilty. We know that Canada's headline inflation rate has eased to 6.9% from a peak of 8.1%, but food costs are still accelerating and underlying price pressures remain sticky. At the same time, the Bank of Canada has hiked interest rates by 350 basis points in just seven months, one of its sharpest tightening campaigns ever, to try to force inflation back to what was supposed to be a 2% target. Unfortunately, the bank last week signalled its tightening campaign was nearing its peak, but made it clear that it was not done yet as it hiked rates by 50 basis point to a fresh 14-year high. The average family will spend $3,000 more next year as a result of these inflationary effects. Food inflation is at a 40-year high. Grocery prices have been raised by 11.4%, and interest rates are going up. Energy costs are up 100% to 150%, some even 300%, and winter is coming of course. Mortgage payments, groceries, fuel and consumer goods have all gone up. We talk about what other nations are doing. Other nations have managed to fair much better than Canada. Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan and Hong Kong have all managed to keep their rates below 3%. Other nations are providing tax relief to their citizens. Fifty-one other national governments have provided some form of tax relief. That includes more than half of G7 and G20 countries, and two-thirds of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It found that at least 25 countries were choosing to provide tax relief at the pumps. Australia cut its gas tax in half. The United Kingdom announced billions of dollars of fuel tax relief. The Netherlands cut gas tax by 17¢ per litre. South Korea cut its taxes at the pumps by 30%. India cut gas taxes to keep inflation low, thus helping the poor and middle classes. Instead, the Prime Minister is also choosing to take more money from the pay of Canadians. If people are making $65,000 this year, the federal government is taking nearly $4,500 directly from their pay through the Canada pension plan and employment insurance taxes. Their employers are also coughing up an extra $4,800. This year, the annual payroll tax bill, including employer and employee payments, increased by $818 for each middle-class worker. Over the past decade, seven of which the Liberal government has been in power, it increased by $2,435. Our peers are choosing to reduce income taxes. Former U.K. chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng said, “We believe that high taxes reduce incentives to work”, as he announced payroll tax relief. Down under, the Australian government said that by putting more in their pockets, families would keep more of what they earned, allowing them to spend more on what they needed, as is provided by permanent tax cuts of up to $2,500 for individuals in 2022-23. Eighteen countries, including Belgium, Germany and Norway, chose to save their citizens money by reducing consumption taxes. As we can see, many of the nations I have named have made the choice to provide tax relief to Canadians. The costly coalition, the Liberal-NDP coalition, has not chosen that. The numbers are in. Canada ran a $90.2 billion deficit last year. That deficit is equivalent to almost $2,400 per Canadian and at the rate of $172,000 of new debt for every single minute of the fiscal year. That is not a small amount. It also means that Canada's total debt now stands well north of a trillion dollars. As of March 31, the Government of Canada also had an accumulated deficit of $1.13 trillion. We wonder where this is coming from. The Auditor General says that there are $500 million in overpayments to civil servants that need to be collected. A new report from Canada's Auditor General said that 28% of civil servants in its sampling had errors in their pay. If a government cannot even handle the payroll, why should it handle our nation's finances or even our country? Another example of this wasteful spending is the $12 million to Loblaws for new fridges. Where are Canadians at with this? Forty-seven percent of respondents in a survey of Canadians felt that their finances had worsened over the last year. Fifty-three percent believe that we will be in a recession next year. Even worse, 30% believe that we are in a recession right now. Canadians have long forgotten the sunny ways of the NDP-Liberal coalition. The good news is that relief is on the way. Relief is on the way with a Conservative government. We pledge no new taxes. We pledge the “pay-as-you-go” system. For every new dollar of spending, we must find a new dollar of savings. The motion today is not just about a $54-million application that was supposed to cost $80,000, which experts say could have been made for $200,000; it is about much more than that. It is about how the NDP-Liberal coalition has lost its way and how it needs to stop the taxes and stop the inflationary spending, now.

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Context: House Hansard - 85 - Jun/9/22

Oct/24/22 2:50:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government spent $54 million on an application that experts say they could have created for $200,000. We demanded a list from the Liberal government of the contractors to see who got the $54 million. Already three contractors have come forward to say they did not get a penny. What is the government trying to hide, where is the money and who got rich?

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Context: House Hansard - 73 - May/17/22

Jun/9/22 2:37:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the EU and U.S. have dropped their mandates, while Canadian travellers still have to provide proof of vaccination, wear masks and be subject to random testing. Canadians want to travel again, but the backlogs created by these now unnecessary restrictions have become so extensive that Air Canada had to cancel 360 flights in one week at Toronto's Pearson airport. When will the government finally focus on economic recovery and lift these out-of-date, punitive travel mandates?

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Context: House Hansard - 67 - May/9/22

May/17/22 3:00:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to punish Canadians who do not agree with him. A letter in The Globe and Mail stated today that continued travel restrictions are an unnecessary and illogical infringement on individual rights of mobility. The Prime Minister states, over and over, that he stands with Canadians. Well, he sure does not want them sitting beside him on a plane, a train or a bus. Will he put politics aside and allow Canadians to get back to prepandemic normal, or will he continue to punish Canadians for their health choices?

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Context: House Hansard - 67 - May/9/22

May/9/22 5:54:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-19

Madam Speaker, I will tell my colleague that the sun has indeed set. He talks a lot about, for example, day care. I wish the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development had been focused on Service Canada and the delivery of passports. I think that is just another example of how the government has lost its way. Liberals have been so focused on their own ideology that they have forgotten about the needs of Canadians and delivering to Canadians, and they should remember that.

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Context: House Hansard - 63 - May/3/22

May/9/22 5:43:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-19

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to be in the House and to speak on behalf of the people of Calgary Midnapore, and here I am today addressing the BIA. I will start with an anecdote. Last Friday, when my husband picked me up at the Calgary airport, we were making the left-hand turn we usually do in an effort to merge onto Deerfoot Trail. Halfway through our turn, the light turned yellow and my husband stopped in the middle of the intersection. I turned to him and said, “James, what the bleep are you doing here?” Well, that is what I have to say: What are we doing here? What is the government doing here? When I arrived here in 2017, there was the same sentiment that existed in 2015 when the Liberal government came into place. Among Canadians, although we were disappointed as Conservatives and sorry to see the departure of former prime minister Stephen Harper, I think there was a feeling of hope and enthusiasm across the country. We often think of sunny ways at that time, when the Prime Minister and the Liberal government came in. Those same sentiments existed when I arrived here in 2017. I was just outside those doors getting ready to be walked into the House of Commons for the first time, and there was still that same feeling of excitement and of sunny ways. I have to say, that is not there anymore, and this budget reflects it. This budget is a mishmash and a patchwork of legislation. Any individual reading through this content could not determine the goals, aspirations and theme of the government. Is that not what leadership really is? What are we doing here? When I reflect upon the reasons for the lack of direction we now see from the government, I would attribute it to three things. Number one is now the failure to implement any vision the government to the Prime Minister might have once had. The second would be an unuseful and impractical adherence to ideology. The third would be ignoring the real problems affecting Canadians. I will take some time now to expand on each of those. When I talk about the failure to implement the vision, I am talking about the sunny ways and hope and enthusiasm the Prime Minister and the government arrived here with. Unfortunately, when they have tried to execute these sunny ways and implement them in Canada and Canadian culture, it has been nothing but an absolute failure. We saw that with the attempts for democracy reform. We saw it when the attempt was made to go to proportional representation, which was a 2015 election promise. It was failed upon by the previous minister for democratic institutions, who is no longer in the House. That is one example of the failure of the implementation of vision we have seen from the government. We saw this with the climate plan. We saw this with the Paris climate accord. I sat back there in my second week, having to vote on the Paris climate accord. The fear and division it created in the House, which I will expand upon, was for no reason. These targets that we voted upon and that divided us were never actually achieved by the government, so what is the point? It is the same thing we saw with the Liberals' grand idea of planting two billion trees. As I look around this room, I see nary a tree. They have failed on these climate initiatives as well. The third is unity, and I will speak to this from two perspectives. The first is regional. Liberals have pitted region against region in this country, needlessly creating division at a time even before the pandemic descended upon us. Of course, with the pandemic, it was the Prime Minister who used inflammatory language, name-called and attacked Canadians who had valid concerns about the mandates. He actually rejected a Conservative motion to create a plan to roll back the mandates, which could have lowered the temperature, and he then of course invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canada's history. We, on this side of the House, are still reviewing that to this day. It created terrible disunity not only in the House, but among Canadians. The second is a unuseful adherence to ideology. We have seen this in two places in particular. The first was the killing of the natural resources sector. As an Albertan, I take personal offence to this. How has the current government done this? It has done this by not providing support for Line 5. My colleague, the member for Calgary Centre, has talked and encouraged ad nauseam about this. Of course, at this moment in history, while Ukraine faces its most difficult time, the most difficult time we have seen in recent history, the government failed to pass a motion to get natural gas to Europe. At a time when our natural resources could be used for good in this world, the government turned its back against it. It brought in Bill C-48, the tanker moratorium, and who can forget Bill C-69, the no new pipelines bill, which again showed an unuseful adherence to ideology. We also saw that with the mandates, the mandates that still rest with us today. I can tell members of the House that the parliamentary precinct, and frankly airports and airplanes, are the only places now where I am required to wear a mask. The government should lift the mandates on that and stop using this unuseful adherence to ideology. It is not helpful for Canadians at all. What I think is most important here is that, if we look at the ways the government has failed and how this budget reflects that, it shows an ignorance of the real problems that affect Canadians. What are they? I will list a couple. At the industry committee we saw a rejection to support the lithium mine, which would have been very important for semiconductors, something that is becoming increasingly important as we evaluate supply chains going into the future. In addition, we saw a government that was useless and unwilling to take a stand until the very last moment on the CP Rail strike, which would have had devastating impacts on not only western Canada, but also all of Canada. We have seen this lack of action in labour shortages. The CFIB's recent report “Labour shortages are back with a vengeance” found that 55% of businesses could not find the staff they needed. Food and Beverage Canada said that it lacked 300,000 workers within its industry and has companies with vacancy rates of over 20%. The government throwing money at this is not helping. It needs to address the backlogs it has within its immigration processes. We hear about housing endlessly here, with the average price of a home now reaching $874,100, a jolting 27.1% increase over the last year. The initiatives of the government, such as the first-time homebuyer incentive and the shared equity mortgage fund, are failing terribly. I can talk about the failures of the government and how this budget and the budget implementation act do not address the cost of living and inflation. For the first time in 31 years, prices are up 6.7% compared to a year ago. Families are spending nearly $1,000 more a year on groceries and gas. Gas and home heating are costing more, and housing prices have doubled since the Prime Minister became the Prime Minister. More than half of Canadians are $200 or less away from not being able to pay their bills or rent, with three in 10 already falling behind at the end of the month. In conclusion, the government has run its course. It has received a minority not once, but twice now. It just had to buy a mandate until 2025. When it was elected in 2015, there was a sense of hope, optimism and possibility. That is gone now. This budget reflects it, and the budget implementation act reflects it. What are we doing here?

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Context: House Hansard - 38 - Mar/1/22

May/3/22 2:44:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if a person wants to visit Big Ben or the Queen, it's no problem. Passengers through Heathrow no longer require tests or proof of vaccination. If they want to visit the Hans Christian Andersen Museum or the Little Mermaid statue by the sea, they should feel free. There are now no travel restrictions in place for tourists visiting Denmark. If they have always dreamed of visiting the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Trevi Fountain, no health pass is needed. However, Canada is left behind in a myriad of mandates as tourist season looms. When the Prime Minister said that Canada was back, did he mean the back of the line for ending the mandates?

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Context: House Hansard - 31 - Feb/15/22

Mar/1/22 2:50:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have been plagued with backlogs throughout this pandemic, everything from immigration applications, to GIS payments, to parental benefits. Yesterday, the President of the Treasury Board said in the House that 99% of public servants are vaccinated. I have a simple question for the minister. How many unvaccinated federal employees did she have to fire to get to 99%?

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