Government Operations Committee on March 26th, 2024

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

No, it's okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Mrs. Vignola, go ahead, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Moor, do the three measures that you put in place apply to current contracts, like the one for the agency's assessment and revenue management application, also known as CARM?

[Jonathan Moor]

Yes, they are being applied to all contracts. The only exception is CARM, which is being managed by the executive committee directly. There's a subcommittee for CARM.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Then CARM is not managed by—

[Jonathan Moor]

It's been managed in the same way but by a separate committee.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

According to Ms. Ladouceur, spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency, the objectives are to publicize the application and add other important features. That was her answer to a reporter's question. The app needs to be publicized more so that people use it more. Right now, 300,000 people use it every month. That amounts to only 13% of travellers, which is not a lot, between you and me.

How much will it cost us to make it more widely known?

What other important features need to be added?

How much is going to be invested in this application annually, and for how long?

[Jonathan Moor]

The maintenance of the existing app is costing just under $3 million. That is for cloud hosting and for technical support.

The actual advertising is being done largely by third parties. While I was on the plane coming back, it was Air Canada that was saying to use ArriveCAN because it would speed up your border process. We're also seeing at the airports extensive advertising on the benefits of ArriveCAN.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Why isn't the ArriveCAN app being used at land border crossings? Why is it only used at airports?

[Jonathan Moor]

The intention is to roll out ArriveCAN at the land borders. That's part of our travel modernization project, which is ongoing at the moment. Clearly it was intended, during COVID, as part of the public health measures, that the e-declaration would be rolled out at the land borders shortly.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Before we go to Mr. Bachrach, would you be able to clarify? You mentioned $3 million. Is that $3 million a year?

[Jonathan Moor]

It's $3 million a year, because the cloud hosting—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm not questioning why. I just couldn't understand if it was $3 million a year. Thanks very much.

Mr. Bachrach, go ahead please.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Moor, going back to my original questions around invoicing, would it be fraudulent for a contractor to submit an invoice to the CBSA indicating that a certain resource had been used to complete the work when that resource wasn't in fact used to complete the work?

[Jonathan Moor]

It would be if it was a staff augmentation contract. For example, if we had asked for a level three technical architect and we were delivered a level two technical architect, that would be fraudulent, but in this case, in the Botler case, we were asking for an outcome, for an output, and, therefore, we were judging the quality of the output on the quality of the work done, not on who did it.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Can I take it from your comments that there was no process to confirm which resources were used to get to that outcome and that what the CBSA was concerned with was the quality of the outcome, not the resources that were used to get there?

[Jonathan Moor]

That's right, especially in this case, because this was a subcontractor to the vendor we contracted with.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That subcontractor didn't have a contract, just to be clear, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is this idea that in these task authorizations, different resources are valued at different amounts. We've heard at this committee about the bait-and-switch approach that some unscrupulous companies use, whereby they suggest that certain resources are going to be used in order to get the work, and then when the work is actually done, they use different resources that cost them less.

Here we have a case in which a contractor is indicating that a certain resource was involved in the work when in fact they weren't, and you're saying that isn't a problem?

[Jonathan Moor]

Botler's contract would be with Dalian-Coradix, not with us. We were contracting with Dalian-Coradix and we were asking them to produce six documents. It was not relevant to us who was producing those documents. What was relevant to us was that the quality of the documents was in line with the statements of work.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Is it required that the resources used be cited on the invoice? I'm looking at the invoice right here and it includes the task number and the specific resources that were utilized in completing the work. Is that a requirement of the invoicing process?

[Jonathan Moor]

It was not in this case, because we were asking for a task to be completed; we weren't asking for individuals. That is a requirement if it's a staff augmentation contract, because then we would need to check that they have the right skills and experience to do the work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Duncan, welcome to OGGO. Please go ahead, sir.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Auditor General said in her report that in documentation provided by the CBSA the financial records and controls were so poor that they were unable to determine the precise cost, and they pegged it at $60 million. That report has been out for 50 days now.

Mr. Moor, can you tell us if you've provided any follow-up documentation since this report to the auditor's office to further clarify what exactly was the cost of ArriveCAN?

[Jonathan Moor]

We did work with the Auditor General on identifying the cost that we had assigned to Public Health and—