Public Accounts Committee on April 4th, 2024

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Whom did he speak with at KPMG?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

He ultimately spoke with a partner in our cybersecurity—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Who?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

The name of the partner on the cybersecurity team is Mr. Imraan Bashir.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

All right. How was that communicated? Was it in a phone call? Was it by email? Was it by text?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

The initial conversation was through email. The initial outreach was done through emails.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Do you still have a copy of that email?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

I would need to investigate and check.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

I will be asking you within the time permitted by this committee to submit that email—in fact, any and all written correspondence, whether that's snail mail, email or a text message, between the CBSA and KPMG, to work specifically with GC Strategies.

Can you provide that to us?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

We will definitely have a look to see what we have and what we can provide and get back to you.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay.

Were you communicating at all with any other member of the CBSA team?

[Hartaj Nijjar]

No, not to my knowledge.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Were you communicating with any elected official—the president of the CBSA, the deputy minister, the Minister of Public Safety—anything like that?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Brock, your time is up, but I'm going to allow an answer.

[Hartaj Nijjar]

Thank you.

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

All right.

Chair, could we identify the timeline, please?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I will at the end, yes. We'll come back to requested documents, and I will explain how that works.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor for five minutes.

It's over to you, please.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Just to build a little bit of context around some of the questions my colleague asked, how much did the Harper government award to KPMG while they were in power?

[Lydia Lee]

I'm not aware of the answer to that question, but as I said before, KPMG has been very proud to support the federal government for a very long time, for many years, well before this body of work.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Are you able to get us an answer to that question?

[Lydia Lee]

We can certainly endeavour to check that out and follow up with the committee afterward if you'd like.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I know that the issue we're discussing here is not whether the ArriveCAN app was a success or a failure. We're talking about the cost of the app. There has been a lot of disappointment—me included—as to how this money was spent and the process through our federal government as to how it was spent, but it seems to be, more and more, a systemic problem. You, having worked with various governments over past decades, perhaps can help us understand that a bit.

I know that when the Conservatives were in power they were paying Deloitte $90,000 a day to teach them how to cut costs. There was a quote from the late Jim Flaherty, who was the finance minister. He said, “Private sector advice is valuable, it’s important, it’s essential.”

Can I perhaps get your viewpoints on how the private sector does lend a hand, especially in instances like the pandemic that we were facing?

[Lydia Lee]

I can answer that in respect of when clients reach out, and by the way, we've worked for clients at the federal level, the provincial level and the municipal level, in the public sector and in the private sector. I worked largely in the public sector health care arena.

We find that when clients reach out to ask for consulting support, it's typically for two major reasons. One is that they lack the specific expertise or capabilities that are required to address a specific problem within their organization, and the second reason is that perhaps they might need more capacity in a very short period of time to address time-sensitive or urgent requirements.

Coming back to the experience that KPMG had in this instance that we're talking about this morning, we certainly felt that we were being asked to provide exactly support in those two areas, for both the Public Health Agency and the CBSA.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Has KPMG worked with GC Strategies on other projects and any various iterations of GC Strategies as they have worked with government over the years?