Government Operations Committee on March 26th, 2024

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much.

While you were reviewing the supplier options, what evidence did you have that GC Strategies could actually provide the federal government with good value for money?

[Jonathan Moor]

I think my understanding is that GC Strategies had been working with other departments already and had shown evidence of being able to provide the technical architects required.

What this contract was about was the acquisition of technical architects to do specific pieces of work—with a range of different skills and a range of different experience. The majority of experience required more than 10 years of experience in the past, so GC Strategies was providing those. If one of those individuals was not satisfactory, then the information, science and technology branch would ask for an alternative.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Martel, you received the 2021 Canadian Institute for Procurement and Materiel Management award. That award was given precisely for the CBSA's acquisition of the ArriveCAN app in the context of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Congratulations.

[Alexandre Martel, Executive Director, Procurement, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you.

People tend not to select themselves. The award was given for saving time. Essentially, the goal was to expedite the process while maintaining the same control measures as before. Of course, this assumed that technical authorities would be able to apply their own controls and that a need existed.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

Is a 40‑second reduction in wait times per person such a big deal?

[Alexandre Martel]

You'd have to ask my colleagues in operations. I can say that there are ways to assess that.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Moor, last January 18, Ms. O'Gorman told the committee that better control and oversight measures had been implemented. You said so in your speech as well.

I'd like to ask you four questions about that.

How long have these control and oversight measures been in place?

What effects have they had so far?

Are these measures permanent?

Can they be used to perform checks on existing contracts? I'm thinking, for example, of the contract between the CBSA and Deloitte for the agency's assessment and revenue management application, also called CARM.

[Jonathan Moor]

We have been looking at developing our procurement improvement plan over the last nine months.

Our first step in that was to remind individual managers of their responsibilities for procurement. All individual managers with delegated financial signing authority—over 800 people—were asked to do 16 hours of training. That was the first thing, just to remind people of what they needed to do.

The second action was that we created the executive procurement review committee. The first meeting of that was in October. We are now looking at every TA and every contract.

The third action is that we are now implementing a quality assurance review process through Alex's team.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

You've explained those steps already. What impact have these measures had so far?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll have a brief answer, please, Mr. Moor.

[Jonathan Moor]

The effect is much more transparency over all of the actions we are taking on procurement, and we have strengthened our first line and second line of defence. This was lacking during the COVID period.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bachrach, please.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Moor and fellow witnesses, thanks for being here today and answering our questions.

I'll start out with one of your statements from today's testimony. You said that ArriveCAN was done “in-house”. I wonder if you can confirm where the intellectual property now resides. Is it the property of the Government of Canada or does it belong to the contractors who did the bulk of the work?

[Jonathan Moor]

I'm pretty certain in my answer to this that the IPR belongs to the Government of Canada, because this is an app that we developed and we are continuing to operate.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Okay. If you could confirm that and provide that information to the committee after this meeting, it would be appreciated.

There has been a fair bit of focus on who signed the contracts, and I think that we now have fairly straightforward answers around the role of Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano.

I'm interested in the process of confirming that the work was delivered as required. Assumedly, at the other end of the process, the contractors complete the work and submit it and there's some process of reviewing that work and then signing off on it before the bills are paid. This is my basic understanding of the way the process should work.

Were those same individuals responsible for signing off on the invoices prior to the contractors being paid for the work and confirming that the work was done in good order?

[Jonathan Moor]

I can confirm that the work was done in good order through the Financial Administration Act section 34 requirements. As I said before, the border technologies innovation directorate was responsible for overseeing these contracts. They would receive invoices from the contractors. Their job would be to check that the individuals had done that work. They also have the right technical quality and experience in order to make those payments.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

These are delegated authorities provided to, assigned to, individuals within that secretariat. Those individuals had the training and were responsible for signing off on the invoices to confirm that the work was done. I see you nodding, so I'll take that as confirmation.

The reason I'm asking this is that one of the Auditor General's findings was that the CBSA approved time sheets that included no details on the work completed. This is a quote from the AG's report: “This limited the agency’s ability to challenge the contractor’s invoice and, without knowing what work was completed, its ability to allocate the invoice to the right project.”

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that the AG has highlighted a lack of documentation, which assumedly would have made it difficult for those delegated authorities to confirm that the work was actually done. Were those delegated authorities, those individuals who had the authority to sign off on the invoices, provided with adequate information to confirm that the work was actually done?

[Jonathan Moor]

I think there are two issues here. One is around certification that the work has been done. The other one is around whether the costs have been allocated correctly to the cost centre.

For example, a cost centre manager may well have been observing and seeing that the individual on the invoice had done 30 hours. However, they may not have been allocated to specifically ArriveCAN. This is what I said at the start of this evidence: We did a mistake in not setting up a separate ArriveCAN cost centre code from year one. When we were receiving an invoice, we would say, yes, those 30 hours have been done, but we weren't coding it between ArriveCAN or operational expenditures or elsewhere.

However, we are now looking at all of these invoices, because a number of allegations have been made, to go back and make sure that we have not been overcharged. If we do find that we have been overcharged, we will pursue repayment for those. The minister for the Treasury Board announced last week that PSPC had identified some overpayments. We will be doing the same. If we identify any invoices that were not for work done, we will be pursuing payments for that.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The Auditor General has said that there weren't adequate details to confirm that the work was done, but you're asserting that the individuals signing off that the work had been done had adequate information to confirm that this was the case. Is that correct?

[Jonathan Moor]

I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Martel on that.

[Alexandre Martel]

Thank you.

Contracts contain very clear invoicing instructions. If the technical authority isn't satisfied with details in the invoice, they can return it and request additional details.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

How many individuals at the secretariat were involved in this process of signing off on invoices?

[Jonathan Moor]

I don't have details on the number of individuals who were signing it. This comes back to the point I made earlier around the delegated financial signing authorizations. We have around 900 in the agency headquarters in total.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Moor, could you provide to the committee the names and titles of the individuals who were responsible for signing off on invoices related to the ArriveCAN contracts?

[Jonathan Moor]

I can certainly take that away and see what evidence we are pursuing at the moment to look at invoices and whether they have been checked.