Public Accounts Committee on April 9th, 2024

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I understand now. Thank you very much for that fulsome answer.

I would like to come back to Mr. Abbott. With regard to BDO's purchase of Lixar, you're stating your association with GC Strategies comes via that purchase, is that correct?

[Mike Abbott]

That is correct. We had no relationship with GC Strategies prior to that.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Was there a risk assessment process done by your company in order to determine the exact contracts it was engaged in? Was your company aware, upon purchase, that it was engaged in work related to this project?

[Mike Abbott]

At the time, there was no work related to the project. I can't speak to the extent of every due diligence we did around Lixar, but, certainly, we worked through a valuation. We would not have looked at every contract that existed in the organization. We did not have a direct awareness of the relationship with GC Strategies when we acquired it, no.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I understand.

We had several testimonies at this committee regarding some of the contracting of GC Strategies and the awareness of GC Strategies. We understood there was “a well-known community” that GC Strategies was a part of. Contractors of the government were known to this group.

Were you aware of Kristian Firth or any members of GC Strategies, even without directly working or engaging with them through Lixar?

[Mike Abbott]

I can tell you I was not.

From my experience, I had probably seen the name GC Strategies in looking at contracts that had been published on the opengovernment.ca platform over the years, but I didn't have an awareness of him in any way, shape or form.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is the time.

We'll begin our second round with Mr. Nater, for five minutes, please.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

Ms. Foster, can you confirm for this committee what Amazon Web Services believe is the accurate figure for how much you were paid for your work on ArriveCAN?

[Nicole Foster]

It is admittedly a little bit difficult to confirm in terms of the cloud computing utility amount. It is easier for us to confirm the amount we were contracted for advisory services. That amount was $4.6 million in terms of the advisory services provided.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Can you not give us a number for the cloud services?

[Nicole Foster]

The estimate from the Auditor General is in the range of being correct. The reason it is difficult for us to determine exactly is that the app continues to run today on the cloud in addition to 40 other workloads that CBSA runs on AWS. We have assigned account numbers for a number of different workloads—

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I'm going to cut you off there. I get the sense of where you're going.

Would you be willing to provide to this committee a breakdown of those accounts, and the amounts you see from cloud services up until today's date?

[Nicole Foster]

CBSA could provide that detail. It has a number of accounts, and we don't know what the workload is assigned to. We can't see, for example, which.... Due to our security and confidentiality, we actually don't have visibility into what our customers are exactly doing in those workloads. They can tell us there's a workload assigned to CBSA, and we can provide that account number, but we don't have the detailed visibility on which account is doing what.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I may circle back to this, because I think there's a lot more there.

Who at CBSA was the principal contact for AWS?

[Nicole Foster]

Nick, who was your contact?

[Nick Markou]

We had worked with the CBSA technical team. A gentleman named Kien Tsang was, I believe, the director. I don't recall his title exactly. He was the director of the technical team that was leading the ArriveCAN program, amongst others.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

AWS is a registered lobbyist with the federal government. When AWS met with Minh Doan in May 2022, what was discussed?

[Nicole Foster]

I was not at that meeting, so I can't confirm the details of what was discussed. I would need to verify who was at that meeting.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Could you come back to us with that information?

[Nicole Foster]

Sure.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

And the topic that was discussed?

Circling back briefly, CBSA has been accused—specifically Minh Doan—of actually deleting emails. I'm going to go back to you to ask that you provide this committee with as much information as you can about the costing of the cloud for CBSA. Even if you're unable to provide us with specific accounts, we'd be interested in knowing the broad amounts, and what CBSA was charged for cloud services up until the current date. Frankly, we can't trust what CBSA has provided, because of the deletion of documents.

Would you be able to provide us with that?

[Nicole Foster]

I will clarify with you what would be useful, but I'm happy to try to be helpful to the committee in their work.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

We will circle back through the chair for that information, through our analysts.

Mr. Abbott, can you confirm that, prior to beginning your work with BDO, you spent some time with Deloitte? Is that correct? Was it about 25 years?

[Mike Abbott]

That's correct.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

While at Deloitte, were you involved at all in, or aware of, a project called CARM, the CBSA assessment and revenue management digital initiative?