Evidence of meeting #105 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbsa.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. MacDonald, do you acknowledge that the emails you presented to the committee on November 7 were the property of CBSA?
12:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I haven't been shown anything that says that.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Were those emails ones that were exchanged during your employment at CBSA, using their—
12:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
When everybody else exchanged emails in their testimony, were those emails the property of the CBSA as well?
When Mr. Doan testified after I called him a liar and proved it, he came back and said that he had found emails that were deleted, apparently, but he was able to find them.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The question was a fairly straightforward one, Mr. MacDonald. Were those emails were sent or received using your CBSA email account?
12:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
Yes.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay.
Do you acknowledge that those emails, because they were sent as part of your employment with CBSA, the property of CBSA?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
May I answer that question, Mr. Chair?
When an ATIP is received, we are to divulge our emails. That then becomes the property of the Government of Canada as a whole, or even of the requester. They pay a $5 fee and they get access to all of our emails, so at that point, it's a good question. If an ATIP is processed and emails are released, who owns the emails?
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The question was whether those emails that you brought to committee on November 7 are the property of CBSA. Because those emails were part of your employment there, they weren't yours to disclose to the committee.
As my next question, were you then surprised that your security clearance was revoked after that November 7 meeting? Was part of the reason that your security clearance was revoked because you were disclosing emails that were the property of CBSA?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
Mr. Chair, I can answer that.
Our emails were released through ATIP requests, and we did not process ATIP requests. We don't have that many. We don't work in the ATIP office.
I think what we're saying, then, is, did the ATIP office release documents that were the property of a certain agency? I don't think so. The emails belong to the Government of Canada and Canadians. That's why we have an ATIP process—
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Were the documents you brought to the November 7 meeting all in the public domain?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
They were ATIP—
12:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
Every document that I provided.... I provided no documents that were protected.
Furthermore, let's go back to the investigation. No part of the letter we received and the preliminary statement of facts suggests that I provided secret information to jurisdictions that I shouldn't have.
I appreciate the line of questioning and I'm happy to answer your questions. I will always tell the truth, but—
12:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
—my suspension wasn't due to the fact that I testified at this committee and provided evidence, as is being suggested.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That is your time, Mr. Bachrach.
We will go to Mr. Brock and then to Mr. Kusmierczyk.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Despite the unsuccessful efforts of my Liberal colleagues today and throughout this week to try to spin the narrative that Canadians received really good value for the $60 million wasted on this “ArriveScam”, and we often hear that it saved lives, there's really no empirical evidence to suggest that one life was actually saved. However, the Liberals continue with this narrative, and I think Canadians would actually prefer the independent voice of the Auditor General on the issue of value, and not the voice of biased Liberal members.
I'm going to put out a phrase to you from her report:
The Canada Border Services Agency's disregard for policies, controls, and transparency in the contracting process restricted opportunities for competition and undermined value for money.
I emphasize “value for money”, so the focus that I have, for the amount of time I have left, is to really drill down on the guess that the Auditor General made with respect to what this fiasco cost Canadians. It's almost $60 million, but that doesn't include the probably millions of dollars that were paid to the federal public service.
Can you offer any suggestion as to how many millions of dollars, on top of that $60 million, were actually paid to the professional federal public service?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
I'll start with that.
With respect to responsibilities on the oversight of what this whole thing cost, that does not fall on the technical delivery teams, so to give you an estimate on what it cost to pay public servants, I don't have that answer, Mr. Brock.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
However, you can confirm that federal public servants did work during the number of years that the 177 different applications of this “ArriveScam” was being rolled out. We did have federal public servants working: Is that correct?
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
That's correct—
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
—and not just within the agency, the CBSA; we also have to look at PHAC and the other agencies. We're not responsible for providing that whole—
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Absolutely, okay, and we don't know what that number is, but it's going to be more than the $60-million estimate.
We also have evidence from the Auditor General that millions of dollars were paid out to contractors who did zero work on ArriveCAN, but did unrelated work.
Do you have evidence, for the time you were at CBSA, of entities coming forward in the knowledge that there was a pot of unlimited resources to take advantage of and seeking millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars for projects unrelated to ArriveCAN?
Go ahead, Mr. MacDonald.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I don't have any evidence of wrongdoing, just to be clear. What I will say is that there were divisions, federal public servants, who wanted to associate with ArriveCAN so that they could get the funding they needed to move their initiatives forward.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative