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.
11:15 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I have attended dinners with different vendors over the last three years, which were disclosed, per the policy, to my supervisor.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
It's interesting to me that the bag was disclosed to a professional standards office but the free drinks and food were not.
Mr. MacDonald, are you being investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?
11:15 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I don't believe I am. I haven't been contacted by the RCMP. I think even the statement of facts shows that the CBSA says themselves that I didn't do anything.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
It's the same question to Mr. Utano, please.
11:15 a.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
It's the same. I have not been contacted, and I'm not aware of being under any investigation.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
The Auditor General says the RCMP is investigating certain individuals pertaining to ethics and conflicts of interest. The Auditor General said so herself. Do you have any idea who is being investigated?
11:20 a.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
I'm not aware of who is being investigated.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Mr. MacDonald, I'll ask you the same question.
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I'm not aware of anybody who's being investigated.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
There are millions of dollars being passed around. A vendor was allowed to write their own contract for the CBSA. It doesn't make sense that some whisky or meals or zucchini sticks would be sufficient in terms of influence.
Do you know of any other individuals who work for the Government of Canada who received any material benefit from vendors that you can share with us today?
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I'm not aware of any. Certainly, when I was at the CBSA, as I testified last time, I did not see any wrongdoing.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
I'll ask you the same question, Mr. Utano.
11:20 a.m.
Director General, Information Technology Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, As an Individual
It's exactly the same. I'm not aware of anybody who has received any sort of gift or hospitality that influenced them or influenced their actions.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
February 22nd, 2024 / 11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us again today.
Mr. MacDonald, I'll start with you. You mentioned in your opening statement that you believe a 2022 complaint initiated the review process. Can you provide any insight on the subject matter of that complaint?
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
I wish I could explain it to this committee. We've asked the CBSA a number of times to provide the information from the Botler complaint. It's been completely withheld. I really wish we could understand. I know that Botler has gone on TV and online a lot and talked about it. I believe it was sent to Ms. O'Gorman and a bunch of other people, but they're holding on to it pretty tight and won't allow us to see it.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
You also mentioned that some of your colleagues are being coerced to participate in the investigation. Can you further explain that or clarify it for us?
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
Sure. The document itself says that six people were invited to participate as witnesses. One of those people initially, as I understand it, rejected the offer to participate, which was her right, and certain steps were taken to pressure her into participating. I have some information around it, but not a lot. Due to the fact that anybody who participates needs to sign a non-disclosure, they won't even talk to us anymore.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
A lot of what we're seeing out of the Auditor General's report is with regard to missing information or time sheets and invoices that would have been approved and that didn't have supporting documentation or, again, the required information.
You were not the one to authorize those tasks or to sign off on these time sheets or invoices that were incomplete.
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
That's a great question. I hope I can enlighten the committee a bit.
We never had the authority to put in contracts. We never had the authority to put the TAs in place. We had what was called a “technical” authority. We could sign off on the scope of the task.
I also want to mention that we are not the finance group, so we don't have responsibility for invoicing, reconciliation, the overall financial system or the system of record. That would all be within the CFO group within the procurement team and within the finance branch. We were responsible for the technical delivery and execution.
We did have managers who oversaw the consultants who worked on ArriveCAN. They would have been responsible for signing off on the time sheets of the consultants. I believe they were all done in order. What would happen after that is the time sheets would go to the vendor. The vendor would reconcile them and submit an invoice. Once all the paperwork was submitted and it was in the proper format, I was asked to sign. Then it would go to finance to sign off. They would do the last verification to make sure that all of the tasks and all of the procedures were followed in order to sign off.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you.
One of the biggest pieces of this, or I guess one of the biggest frustrations, especially for Canadians who have been following along, is the ballooning of costs.
Can you enlighten us on that? Was there an original budget? Was there a number or a target you were aware of at an early stage?
It's just to help us understand how it got so far and how it got to that almost $60-million price tag.
11:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
Thanks for the question.
Minh Doan once said, at the early onset of the pandemic, that a rising tide floats all boats. At the onset of the pandemic, we were asked to digitize a form. The budget for that was about $50,000. When it went to building a mobile app and releasing it, the initial budget, from a prototype perspective, was about $400,000, as we've testified to previously and showed evidence of.
However, there was continuous change and everybody started injecting their requirements. Not only were we dealing with the Public Health Agency, but we were dealing with the rest of the IT branch, with the travellers branch and the commercial branch.
From my vantage point, there was never a budget allocated. However, I will point out that there's been talk about an ATIP, and there are 780 pages in it. I've gone through it. That was known to the CFOs of PHAC, of IRCC and of CBSA. They were able to recover $12.5 million from IRCC and PHAC the second year after I was gone. They actually put in a budget request for $25 million the third year.
That's not far off from the $60 million, when you add $6.3 million plus $25 million plus $25 million. The residual, I would suggest, is probably just other people putting their hands in the purse.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
11:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Canada, COVID and Pandemic Response Secretariat, As an Individual
Sure, no problem.
As an example—it was after my time—Service Canada asked for about $8 million for a call centre. I didn't validate those costs, but I would imagine they already have a call centre, since they're Service Canada.
The IT operations team was asking for new resources, but they didn't take on the operation. There were project managers, I'm sure, working against ArriveCAN and being costed against it. Obviously, the Auditor General found a glaring hole with project management.
Overall, the only thing I can say is that these two guys weren't responsible for the $60-million budget or the oversight of it. I'm kind of incensed at the fact that the rest of the CBSA has tried to insulate themselves from their own accountabilities.
