- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Calgary Midnapore
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,419.87
- Government Page
- Nov/1/23 7:53:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. I am actually shocked when I walk through airports and see the arrive scam signage still there. Given the information we have received, which is a result of good investigation by the Conservative caucus, as well as Bill Curry at The Globe and Mail, one would think that the government would be in a pretty big hurry to conceal this, to wrap this up and to not put it in the faces of Canadian voyagers, to the point of my colleague from the Bloc.
That is a very good question. ArriveCAN now serves as the flagship of monetary and fiscal scandal within the current government. It will go down in history as more than just a failed application, but as the tip of the iceberg and as the canary in the coal mine of scandal and corruption within the current government.
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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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- 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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