Government Operations Committee on Feb. 14th, 2024

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madam Hogan and your team, for the work you've been doing and the amount of effort and testimony over the last three days.

In your brief you indicated, “We were unable to calculate the exact cost of the ArriveCAN application, but by piecing together information available, we estimated that ArriveCAN cost approximately $59.5 million.”

Over the last three days since that comment was made initially at public accounts, many numbers have been thrown around. When you indicated an estimate—estimates usually come with a range—can you give us a sense of what that range is?

[Karen Hogan]

When we say “estimated” here, it's because we're unclear whether there are additional expenses—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Could it be $200 million?

[Karen Hogan]

I cannot guess that—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Could the application be $8 million?

[Karen Hogan]

There were many invoices, and it was very clear that lots of these expenditures were linked to the ArriveCAN app—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's fair enough.

I know the breakdown of $59.5 million is associated with how much went to each of the contractors. Did you ever come across any document that said this amount of money was given to the development; this amount of money went into implementation; this amount of money went to the roll-out; this amount of money was for post-implementation support, and so forth—document tracking, document maintenance, passing these documents? Are there any documents around that could help us to really understand what the development costs were of that application and the other costs associated with it?

[Karen Hogan]

I have seen a document that is available on the Canada Border Services Agency website, I think, where you can see that it breaks down. At the time it was $55 million, I believe. It's broken down like that—between the cloud, between a call centre and so on.

We had difficulty just piecing it by contractor, so we didn't try to piece it together by type of work.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

In public accounts, I was part of the group of MPs who were there. You talked about value for money. I'm seeking clarification. In your opinion, do you think we received value for money?

[Karen Hogan]

I would speak about value in two ways here.

There was value received during the pandemic. I made a reference earlier to our 2021 report, which found the ArriveCAN app did improve the quality of the information collected from travellers and the timeliness of that information. For example, at the time the paper form in some instances was taking over 28 days to get to the Public Health Agency, and it was hard to follow up on a 14-day quarantine.

I would then tell you that there's an enduring value in that now the Canada Border Services Agency has used some of this to springboard automation at the border—the customs declaration form—but it's clear to me that the public service paid too much for the application.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You also, in your testimony, said that probably the work could have been transitioned to CBSA after the application was developed, etc. Did you look into whether the CBSA at that time had the capacity, the resources and the knowledge to be able to handle the support that was needed?

I don't know. I see lots of concerning issues, and thank you for highlighting them. Also, the CBSA has agreed to it, but do they really have the resources to support an application like this?

[Karen Hogan]

There were many factors that contributed to our assessment that this was not the best value for money. The one that you're highlighting is the long-term dependency on external resources. I would have expected to see CBSA do that analysis. You shouldn't embark on something and have a long-term objective to stay dependent on a vendor. You should be able to transition internally.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

In your report, you indicated that there was a modification made that led to about 10,000 people by mistake going into quarantine. Did that study have any numbers around how many times...? I know my colleague talked about the 18 million downloads, but how many transactions went through that application?

[Karen Hogan]

We didn't actually audit the ArriveCAN application itself. The motion was to look at the procurement, the development and the implementation, not the functionality. We were looking at releases to the application. There were 177 releases. We looked at the 25 major ones. The consequence of not properly documenting and completing user testing is that errors could occur.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

We agreed on that.

With about five seconds to go, 60 million transactions were done. If you look at it, that's over $60 million. That's about a dollar per transaction. If I evaluate an application out there that is worth a dollar per transaction and manage that, I think we can go back and figure out how much the value of that application is. Probably that's one way we could look at it.

Thank you for your consideration, Mr. Chair. You gave me 27 seconds extra.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Everyone else always runs over but you never do, so I'm glad to give you that extra moment, Mr. Jowhari.

Mr. Brock, please, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Auditor General, we talked yesterday at public accounts regarding performance bonuses at PHAC during this boondoggle that wasted over $60 million of taxpayer funds. They want to reward themselves with bonuses to the tune of almost $340,000.

When I asked Erin O'Gorman, president of the CBSA, she was hesitant to provide me with details.

As part of your mandate, did you uncover any evidence to suggest that Ms. O'Gorman and other senior executives and other employees of the CBSA had bonused themselves while fleecing taxpayers?

[Karen Hogan]

When we looked at this, we weren't looking at HR matters or compensation, so I have no comments to provide on that.

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

That's fair enough.

I want to focus on paragraph 1.44 of your report, which talks about your not examining any work around ethics and code of conduct because of the RCMP investigation and the internal investigation.

You must be aware that the internal investigation has absolutely nothing to do with the ArriveCAN work that you looked at. It has everything to do with a Botler complaint that was received in November 2022. Was that explained to you?

[Karen Hogan]

The internal investigation, it's my understanding, is looking into the conduct and ethics of certain individuals. I believe it extends beyond Botler, but I didn't look at all the details.

I'll ask Andrew if he can add something there.

[Andrew Hayes]

Thank you.

Just as a preliminary comment here, we deliberately did not share the preliminary document with the Auditor General for the purposes of maintaining independence, objectivity and impartiality in the work.

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

Excuse me. Are you talking about the preliminary statement of fact?

[Andrew Hayes]

That's right.

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

Okay. Was that shared with you?

[Andrew Hayes]

Yes. I've read it carefully.