Government Operations Committee on June 5th, 2024

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Those were the files. Am I right to understand that you had saved work-related files on your personal computer in a personal folder?

I just want to make sure, because I'm not an IT guy. I understand IT, but I'm not an IT guy.

[Minh Doan]

I had both.

As I mentioned in my opening statements, all emails are backed up on servers. Those servers are managed by another department. They're not managed by my team. They're not managed by the agency. I have those backups.

We also have backups of network drives, and those are managed by the CBSA IT. I had my local files as well that I wanted to transfer over, documents, pictures of my children or other things.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have 30 seconds left.

Were you keeping Government of Canada emails on your local folder drive, and over thousands of emails all of a sudden got corrupted as a result of that? Just say yes or no.

[Minh Doan]

No.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, sir.

I don't understand that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Jowhari.

Ms. Vignola, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Doan, for being here with us.

I had problems myself, relating to the transfer of emails and files to my Surface laptop when I changed desktop computers. I understand, at least in part, the problem you experienced. I experienced it myself less than a month ago. It is frustrating and upsetting. In my case, it is infuriating, because I have to start all over. I am not a “digger” when it comes to computers, I would mention as an aside—and I apologize to the interpreters for using the word “piochonne”.

Mr. Doan, I have reread your testimony from October 24, 2023, but I need some clarification. You said it was your team that made the decision. You then said that the team was made up of 1,400 employees under your supervision. That is enormous.

What I understand is that those people were divided into sub-teams; 1,400 people did not decide to opt for GC Strategies. I would like to know who did it. I am not asking you for names, but it is obvious that 1,400 people did not make that choice.

[Minh Doan]

Thank you for allowing me to clarify this for you. I gave an overview of the scope of my responsibilities and the size of my team. I was asked how many people there were in total and how many director generals. The question at that point was who had made the decision. It was my team, and it still is.

To get to your specific question, that is a bit of a summary of what I said in my opening remarks. It was members of my team, but not six director generals, and certainly not 1,400 employees. It was two individuals whose affidavits I read just a few minutes ago.

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

Thank you.

I did not understand what was said earlier clearly. Can you remind me of when your emails were erased? When that problem occurred? Did it only affect emails relating to the ArriveCan project?

[Minh Doan]

No, it occurred at the beginning of 2023. You did not misunderstand, since I did not answer that question.

To get back to the question asked by the committee member before you, I want to clarify that this was not my personal computer. People are not allowed to use their personal computers. It was a Government of Canada computer, and more specifically a Canada Border Services Agency computer. I should have clarified that, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it.

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

Was it only emails relating to the ArriveCan project that disappeared, or was it rather emails about a lot of subjects?

[Minh Doan]

The best possible term to use here to describe what happened would be “random”. It was certainly not just one subject. It was corruption, and corruption is technical.

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

Thank you.

In your testimony on October 24, you said that it was not you who made the decision and you had not been informed of complaints, in particular the one from Botler AI, which was unrelated to the ArriveCan application.

So you are saying that in the Botler AI case, you were not made aware of the complaints and you did not know, at that time, what could be improved in the contracting process.

As a final question, what exactly were your duties as chief information officer?

[Minh Doan]

It comes back to your previous question. As the person in charge of 1,400 employees, with six director generals, I was responsible for 190 systems, not just the internal Canada Border Services Agency systems, but also all the tools it uses.

I had no choice, I had to delegate tasks. I had to stay at the strategic and technical level, not the policy level, for example. I worked with colleagues, with counterparts, vice-presidents and others, I kind of defined the needs at the highest levels and I translated it all into strategic and technical decisions.

That said, I trusted my director generals, based on the situation, to find the best possible methods and to be able to provide the deliverables. I had to delegate the delivery of services to them, both financially and in terms of human resources, among other things. They had to inform me if they needed my help and warn me if I had to know about something.

To come back to one of the first questions, at my level, I was no longer doing coding or designing networks. What I did was strategic and technical management at the appropriate levels. I made sure that what the director generals were producing and delivering met high-level needs.

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

Very quickly, who ultimately exercised oversight of your team? Were you alone or was there a whole team that oversaw the 1,400 people?

[Minh Doan]

It functions hierarchically. I directly oversee my six director generals, they oversee directors, who direct managers, and so on. When the governance is functioning well, that is how employee oversight works. Obviously, I did not manage 1,400 employees directly.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Bachrach.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Doan, for being with us today.

I'll start with some matters concerning Botler AI. My understanding from Botler is that they have still not been paid about $220,000 for work that they delivered. If I understand correctly how they became involved in this, someone who worked for you went out and found Botler AI, and then convinced them to contact GC Strategies. GC Strategies then got them to do some work for a CBSA project, and those deliverables were delivered, but as of today, they're still owed quite a bit of money.

I'm wondering how that money could not have been paid to Botler AI for the work that they did.

[Minh Doan]

I believe there are a few questions there, and I'll try to address them as directly as possible.

How they came to be has been an issue of contention, as you rightly point out. There was testimony by some witnesses that it was an unsolicited proposal from GC Strategies. I've heard from the president of CBSA, at this committee or another committee, that it was actually, in fact, not an unsolicited proposal by this individual. As you say, this individual found this company and then asked them to work with GC Strategies, which is consistent with some social media messages that I've seen posted by Botler. I do believe your summary of events to be consistent with what I've seen in terms of testimony and evidence.

In terms of other testimony, though, I wasn't involved in the payment of Botler. That was delegated to my team. I'd heard from early testimony back in the late fall, and it was my understanding, that they were paid for the two out of six modules that they had delivered and that the contract was stopped. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of details, in terms of what payments were and were not made. I would perhaps redirect that question to CBSA officials who would have all the details of which invoices and which modules were paid. My understanding from testimony here was that they were paid for the work they had completed and accepted.

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

I guess the confusing part, Mr. Doan, is that if they delivered six modules and got paid for two, what about the other four? I think that's where the contention lies. I don't know if these are questions that you can answer, given your relationship to this work, but as I understand it, they were clearly asked to deliver all six of the deliverables, and they delivered all six of them, and then, they were only paid for two of them.

Is that your understanding of what's being alleged?

[Minh Doan]

That is not my understanding of what happened. It comes only from what I also heard at the various committees. I understood that there was an agreement for a pilot project in order to produce up to six modules, and, in that case, the client was not me.

Given the nature of the work in question, because it involved sexual harassment and artificial intelligence, it was a client in human resources. From what I understood, only two of the six modules were delivered and accepted, and that affected the work. What I understood is that the six modules were not delivered. However, my understanding of things might be inadequate, since I do not have the most recent or up-to-date information. I am basing this on the testimony I read and heard at the committee.

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

Shifting topics, Mr. Doan, the last time you were at committee, you said that your role was IT, not procurement, which is something you've reiterated today. The Auditor General found that CBSA failed to use their procurement directorate to procure GC Strategies, but instead, the information, science and technology branch worked directly with PSPC for contracting it. By your own admission, if you're not a procurement expert, why did you elect to not use the procurement experts in the CBSA procurement directorate?

[Minh Doan]

It was during a time of a pandemic emergency. I go back to my opening statement and what I've said. I did not make the decision to not go through the procurement directorate. Once I made the decision on the direction for staff augmentation, the procurement itself was carried out by my delegated DG.

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

I'll move on to some questions from a line of questioning by Mr. Barrett at one of our last meetings. This is where Mr. Barrett was questioning the invitation to dinners or activities with vendors. I believe that Mr. MacDonald indicated that he had been invited to dinners and that he had disclosed this to his supervisor. Mr. Utano said, “The short answer is I was at one dinner, and that was disclosed to my boss, who was Minh Doan at the time.”

Did Cameron MacDonald or Antonio Utano disclose these to you?