Evidence of meeting #108 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 contract.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
You mentioned also that Dalian and Coradix were siloed during this time and you didn't have interactions regarding the ArriveCAN app, but you also mentioned that it was GC Strategies that paid Botler AI through Dalian.
Would there not have been interactions regarding that?
Partner, GC Strategies
Yes, but Botler was not part of the ArriveCAN project. Botler was completely independent from ArriveCAN and was actually before ArriveCAN.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Okay.
We've mentioned a bit about how journalists have been following this very closely. Many articles on this have been published.
Have you spoken to any journalists?
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Is there a desire to do so, to clear up anything that's been reported in the media?
Partner, GC Strategies
Yes, there will be after this testimony. We'll be answering questions.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Both the Office of the Auditor General and the Office of the Procurement Ombud found that GC Strategies did not meet the document safeguarding capability requirement in effect when it was awarded its contract.
To the best of your knowledge, how did GC Strategies manage to be awarded a contract without meeting the security requirement?
Partner, GC Strategies
I'm actually going to quote something that was clarified by PSPC in the last testimony, when PSPC clarified that a distinction needed to be made between a security clearance of an organization or staff member and the capacity requested by an organization. It is not necessary for an organization to have that capacity at the time of contract award. It is normal for a contract to be awarded without that capacity for contract security being verified ahead of time. Otherwise there is an amendment to withdraw that requirement as it's not necessary, and that's what happened for us in our contract.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
As part of this contract, did GC Strategies and/or its resources ever have access to classified data or information without having been properly screened?
Partner, GC Strategies
Yes. Everybody is screened by PSPC and then screened by CBSA specifically. Every CBSA person has to be screened twice.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
The report by the Office of the Procurement Ombud also stated:
The assessment worksheets for resources added through [task authorizations] under a contract awarded to GC Strategies...stood out from the others. For this contract valued at $25.3 million there were 42 [task authorizations].
OPO found assessment worksheets for resources on 16 of the 42 [task authorizations] issued under this contract did not demonstrate the proposed resource met mandatory criteria or support points awarded for point-rated criteria. There were numerous examples where the supplier had simply copied and pasted requirements from mandatory and point-rated criteria as project experience of the resource.
Is it standard practice for suppliers to copy and paste requirements for mandatory and point-rated criteria as project experience on the proposed resources?
Partner, GC Strategies
I'm sorry, but what was the number there for the OPO?
Partner, GC Strategies
First of all, that statement is incorrect.
We've actually gone through and reviewed all of the résumés and the evaluation grids that would have supported those 42 task authorizations, and we've identified bullet points in the resources' résumés that clearly show this experience was outside of the supposed “cut and paste”.
Again, that number, 16, is drastically inaccurate compared to what we've gone through for our evidence.
Second, the TA stage, as you can appreciate, is a business one. Every time there is an opportunity for CBSA to evaluate this even more clearly, at that point they can choose to accept or not accept the resource. All of those people on the 42 task authorizations had worked there before.
I hope that answers your question.
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
Yes. Thank you.
In your view, were the government's resource criteria for ArriveCAN work realistic and reasonable?
Partner, GC Strategies
They did the ePortal review, and there were fully qualified vendors who could work on them.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you very much. That is our time.
Colleagues, we will suspend for about five minutes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thanks, everyone.
We're back, and we'll have Mr. Deltell, please, for five minutes.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Firth, does your company have contracts with private companies?
Conservative