Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 30th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 50 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of June 23, 2022, and therefore, members can attend in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Should any technical challenges arise, please advise me. Please note that we may need to suspend a few minutes, as we need to ensure that all members are able to participate fully.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, November 14, 2022, the committee is commencing its study of privacy concerns in relation to the ArriveCAN application.

Before we begin, Madam Clerk, can you confirm that all headphones and microphones are working properly?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Nancy Vohl]

They should be working properly, Mr. Chair, but you never know.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to welcome our witness today.

I want to welcome, from IBISKA, Mr. Narindar Khabra, who is the president.

Mr. Khabra, you have five minutes to address the committee.

I want to welcome you today. Thank you for taking the time to be with us.

[Narindar Khabra, President, IBISKA]

Thank you very much.

As you said, my name is Narindar Khabra. I'm the president of IBISKA Telecom Inc.

IBISKA is an Ottawa-based consulting company that was incorporated in 1995. We have over 26 years of experience in working with private industries, as well as with the Government of Canada, providing consulting services in the areas of IT—information technology—and information management.

Our focus is all in the areas of either business, program/project management or, on the technology side, enterprise or infrastructure services, which include cloud computing, data centres and networks. We also do quite a bit of work in cybersecurity and IT security, and we also do business in applications and IM architecture.

IBISKA is qualified under the Government of Canada's supply arrangement. Many of those are there right now, such as TBIPS, SBIPS, or different names. We have actually been working with the Government of Canada with multiple departments. We have a number of multi-million-dollar and multi-year contracts at this time, so we're providing services to many different departments at this time.

This leads me to talk about why I'm here right now. I was invited to speak here as part of ArriveCAN, so I want to talk a little bit about how we are doing business with the CBSA.

On March 25, 2021, the CBSA issued a request for proposals to all TBIPS tier 2 companies. There are close to—I'm estimating—80 to 100 companies that are qualified to do business with the federal government at that particular tier. The CBSA put out a request for proposal during that time for the IT security services, which means that they wanted to have a firm that could actually produce and work with them and look at all their applications, all their data centres, all their systems or networks so that they could be authenticated and authorized.

On May 10, 2021, we responded back to the department, and on June 30, we were awarded the contract by PWGSC. The total amount for that contract is just over $8 million, but that does not include all the taxes. Including tax, it's $9.278 million.

This is the work they call an omnibus contract, which means that the CBSA asks us to provide the qualified resources so that they can actually go there and utilize them on any different applications, any different systems or any different networks, which will include cloud computing or anything like that. Basically, we do not write the applications and we do not do project management. We do none of that business. The only thing we do with the CBSA is the cybersecurity authentication and authorization.

I think what I want to say right now is that the total contract is $8 million. This contract is what they call a task-based contract, which means that a company cannot actually do any business until a task is issued to the company. We have presently a number of different task authorizations from the CBSA. We provide consulting services to them, and they actually ask the individuals to work on these particular networks, systems or applications.

For the time being, I just want to say that looking at what we have right now, we see that we have actually invoiced so far on this contract, even though the contract is $8 million, just a little bit less than $1.4 million since we got the contract on June 30, 2021.

Out of that, my understanding is that we have invoiced just over $101,000 on ArriveCAN, which was until March 2022. Since that time, we have also invoiced approximately just over $80,000. There is also a part-time individual who was working on this contract and is actually providing services right now to other applications as well.

I'm assuming that right now, we might have actually invoiced approximately $200,000 as of the end of October.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Khabra, we're beyond the five minutes. I'm sure there may be questions related to some of these issues that will come up during the questioning.

I understand that this is your first time before a parliamentary committee. Just so you're familiar, we will have six-minute rounds to start. We will be starting with Mr. Barrett on the Conservative side. Then we will go to the Liberal side, and then to Monsieur Villemure with the Bloc and then to Mr. Green. There will be subsequent rounds after that.

I want to welcome a couple of members to the committee this morning. Ms. Kramp-Neuman is here, and Mr. Dong is here as well.

With that, I will start the first round of questioning with Mr. Barrett. You have six minutes, please.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you, sir, for joining us today.

You listed the contract amounts that were awarded and the amounts that you've invoiced. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to provide to the committee those invoices that your company has billed the government. Would you be willing to send those to the committee?

[Narindar Khabra]

Obviously I do have to get permission from the CBSA. If they allow me to do that, yes, I will.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay. We'd appreciate that, for clarity.

You offered a few different numbers there. CBSA has actually offered a few different numbers, and some of their numbers don't.... Depending on the day, the number is different. I want to make sure we're getting a full picture of what was asked for, what was billed and what was delivered.

You said you have a separate contract that you're doing for CBSA that is not related to ArriveCAN. Is that correct?

[Narindar Khabra]

No. As I said, this is a contract for the overall—any applications or any systems that CBSA develops or has in operation. Whenever they are introducing new applications or a new system or network, there is always a process whereby a security check has to be done. Authentication has to be done. Security authentication and authorization has to be done as part of the process.

What we have is the omnibus contract. They are allowed to request us and give us the resources, and these individuals will be used for whatever applications or systems they are developing at this time.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Is all of the billing for CBSA? Is that your only business with the government?

[Narindar Khabra]

No, sir. As I said, we have multi million dollars with other departments, many of them.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay. Is it possible that any of the work being done under any of the other contracts is contributing to the ArriveCAN project, or are they siloed and very distinct and unrelated?

[Narindar Khabra]

There is no.... I really can't tell exactly. We have a number of contracts with Shared Services Canada. We have to provide services to Shared Services Canada. We have no idea of how these individual departments relate to each other.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

Do you use any subcontractors?

[Narindar Khabra]

Yes, we do.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Did you use any subcontractors on your work on ArriveCAN?

[Narindar Khabra]

As I was saying, we did not.... I'm sorry. Our contract is not ArriveCAN. We have one consultant that was used by CBSA to do the security authentication and authorization.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I'm not sure I understand. The Canada Border Services Agency said that you are a vendor of theirs on ArriveCAN. Is that correct?

[Narindar Khabra]

I don't know, but when you say ArriveCAN.... We are also a vendor of them, but they have other projects, what they call the PCI project. We also have another project there—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Sir, the CBSA has said they've given you $8 million.

[Narindar Khabra]

That has nothing to do with ArriveCAN.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

They said they gave you $8 million for ArriveCAN.

[Narindar Khabra]

I don't know why they said that. We're not doing ArriveCAN with $8 million.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Did they give you $8 million?

[Narindar Khabra]

We have $8 million to do multiple projects. ArriveCAN is one of them. There are many others that we have.