Government Operations Committee on Oct. 17th, 2022

[The Clerk]

You mean the deadline in the original motion, which is noon on the 10th business day following the adoption of the motion.

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

Yes.

[The Clerk]

Thank you.

I'd like to check something to make sure I understand what the committee wants.

You want to receive unredacted documents. Is that right?

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

Yes, we'd like the documents to be unredacted.

Did I also mention that we'd like to call the ministers to appear, if that's possible?

[The Clerk]

No, you hadn't mentioned that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It's one hour with the ministers and one hour with the bureaucrats.

What witnesses did you...? Did you have the two from the hackathons?

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

Yes.

[The Clerk]

The witnesses Madam Vignola told me were the four departments outlined in the original amendment of Mr. Housefather. I believe they were Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Public Health Agency, Public Safety Canada, and the Canadian Border Services Agency, as well as two people from GC Strategies, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony.

Those were the only witnesses suggested to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Housefather, I see your hand is up. Right now there's a bit of banter, which is good. I'm hoping to try to get that resolved, so that we can get everything.... We're sort of on the borderline here.

With that said, we have a proposal by Mrs. Vignola, and whether Mr. Housefather would accept that as an amendment to his motion.

I'm going to go to Mr. Johns first.

Go ahead, Mr. Johns.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

With regard to Mrs. Vignola's proposal, which I support, can we add one more witness? I'd like to add Mark Weber, the president of the Customs and Immigration Union, to appear as a witness as well. I think Mr. Weber would provide testimony on how frontline workers were consulted on the development of the app and their experiences with it. I think it's important testimony to hear.

Would everybody be okay with that as an addition?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry. Can you repeat that, please?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

It's Mark Weber, the president of the Customs and Immigration Union. I'm hoping he can appear as a witness. Mr. Weber could provide the important testimony that's needed on how frontline workers were consulted on the development of the app and their experiences with it.

I have one more friendly amendment. I'm hoping I can put it forward now, because it's easy for Mr. Housefather and Mrs. Vignola. I'm a bit concerned about the proposed focus on the development and launch of the app. We'll miss why the costs for the app have continued to accumulate well past the launch. What are the new or recurring costs that have been encountered? Maybe a friendly amendment could include reference to the maintenance of the app.

If you look at paragraph one and you go past “undertake a study on the development”, I would add “launch and maintenance of the ArriveCAN app”. We could then strike out “with a focus on the costs to develop and launch the app”, so it would be all inclusive.

In paragraph two, after “app development”, we could add “launch and maintenance”. I can bring this to the clerk, if that will help.

[The Clerk]

Paragraph two has been removed now.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Johns, you're basically asking for a friendly addition to what's been proposed.

The challenge we have here is that now we have an amendment to the motion and then a subamendment that wasn't really a subamendment, which was the amending motion to be done. Now you're adding another subamendment to the subamendment—a friendly subamendment.

There's discussion, and that's good. We can hopefully try to come to an agreement to get this straightened out.

At this point in time, we have an addition from Mr. Johns, and we have Mrs. Vignola's changes, which really are some additions to Mr. Housefather's amendment—just so everyone is aware of that.

Now, we have Mr. McCauley, who has the floor to hopefully iron it all out for everybody.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

I hate to pile on, but I think we're getting to a solution.

If we start with the two days, we just have a few more witnesses from our original list that we want to hear from: Mr. Hyatt and then the two companies that performed the successful hackathon. I'm not sure how we add on to Mr. Johns', Mrs. Vignola's and Mr. Housefather's amendments. I think we're getting there if we could add those three in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. McCauley is pointing out an issue: that as we add on one person here and there, all of a sudden we run out of time in those two days. There appears to be a suggestion—and there's some sort of nodding—about maybe taking those two days and making them three or four so that you can fit in these people. I'm just throwing that out there at this point in time.

It's good to see that there's discussion to try to resolve it. However, I want to make certain that we keep this orderly so that we don't lose the structure of what's going on.

Mr. Housefather's hand is up. We've heard from Mr. Johns, Mrs. Vignola and Mr. McCauley.

Mr. Housefather, hopefully some of this is acceptable to you and you could maybe add a little bit more to it.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the collegiality of the committee. I'd like to try to bring everything around to one amendment that everybody agrees to.

Let's start with the two additional witnesses that were proposed by Mrs. Vignola, to bring in the company, which I think is absolutely fine. Mr. Johns' request to bring in the person from the CBSA union is fine. I'm in agreement with adding those two witnesses to the list of witnesses, which I have now put into section three of my amendment. Instead of just saying, “Public Services and Procurement Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada, Public Safety Canada and Canada Border Services Agency”, it would add the individuals from the company proposed by Mrs. Vignola and the individual proposed by Mr. Johns.

I am not in agreement with the proposal of Mr. McCauley because, again, this assumes that the hackathon is remotely connected to the actual development of the app. In the event we were to take those witnesses who somehow believe that their hackathon was related, then we would want to bring in any number of people who would say that it wasn't. So, I don't believe that this has anything to do with getting to the bottom of what the actual interaction between the government and the contractor was and what those costs were.

I agree with the additions of Mr. Johns and Mrs. Vignola. I consider them friendly, and I'm happy to add them.

With respect to the other request of Mr. Johns'—to use the word “maintenance” and not just say “with a focus on...development and launch”, but to say “undertake a study on the development and maintenance of the ArriveCAN app”—I'm happy to do that as a friendly amendment as well and add that to my amendment.

I agree with Mrs. Vignola, who has moved that we ask to receive the documents within 10 business days. I have no problem with the list she read out either.

Mr. Chair, I hope that, given these changes, we will come to a consensus to allow the majority of committee members to support the amendment.

I can draft the revised amendment, but the clerk can also do that. That's fine with me either way, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

Before I go to Mr. McCauley and then Mr. Kusmierczyk, Mr. Housefather has basically read off and pointed out some of the changes he's agreed to from Mr. Johns and Mr. McCauley, so at this point in time, rather than having to redraft, I want to make certain that everyone is comfortable with those amendments as proposed by Mr. Housefather, as we discussed. It's just to make those changes to his amendment.

We're just talking about the changes, just so everyone is comfortable. That way we have that on the record, and now we're discussing the sort of amended amendment as we go forward. Is that okay?

We have Mr. McCauley, and then Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

Mr. Housefather, I appreciate your comments and your attempt to find a solution, but I have to say that it seems that, rather than pushing to bring transparency to this whole issue, you're pushing to avoid transparency. The two companies that did the hackathons and Mr. Hyatt, who was quoted in the article, I think are very important experts to address this issue of the cost overruns and the massive costs to Canadian taxpayers.

I do not want to sit and listen to bureaucrats come in front of us to read talking points about how great this program is, how many lives it saved, etc. Canadians want to hear why this cost so much. What were alternatives to using GC, and how could they have delivered this program for a lot less money? I think excluding industry experts would basically neuter this study.

I'm not sure why it appears to me that you're trying to hide and neuter rather than bring light to this massive cost. We're willing to move from six meetings to two. We've made a lot of compromises, but I don't think we're going to compromise on this. We do need to hear other experts. We're hearing from someone from the union on how they were consulted. We're hearing from outside people. I certainly think Canadians, Canadian taxpayers, are owed it to hear from these other companies, as well as Mr. Hyatt.

We're happy to give on a lot of things, leave the ministers for now, shorten the meetings and shorten the witness list, but I think these three that we have should be included.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Go ahead, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Chairman, of course I will be supporting my colleague's amendment. I believe it is clear. I believe it demonstrates collaboration. It finds that common ground, and it's common sense. It acknowledges the work that Mr. McCauley has done raising this issue and important conversations with this committee. This is an important conversation. Canadians have questions, and they want to make sure that we establish the facts.

I do believe we're going to be able to establish some critical facts when the officials come here for two days, with some additional witnesses that Madame Vignola and Mr. Johns have proposed. I think that is a very good start to this conversation. In addition, the fact that the amendment accepts Madame Vignola's suggestion or recommendation that we produce the documents within 10 business days also underscores that we take the urgency of this matter very seriously and that we want to get to the bottom of it, ask some questions and establish some facts on the ground.

This amendment is clear. It is commonsensical and it's collaborative. Again, it demonstrates the urgency of this matter.

At the same time, I just wanted to add that, in terms of moving it from six to two meetings to start, I also consider the fact that there is some important work that we want to get to as a committee. Working on diversity in procurement is a study that we want to get into. It's the same thing with advancing our study on naval procurement, the outsourcing of federal contracts. This is a really good start. It's timely, and we're going to get some answers for Canadians when the officials come to committee.

For that reason, I fully and wholeheartedly support this as a commonsensical, common-ground and collaborative path forward.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk. I appreciate that.

Just so everyone is aware, we're talking about the changes and additions to Mr. Housefather's amendment, as opposed to what was originally proposed.

Mr. McCauley, go ahead.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate, Mr. Kusmierczyk, what you're saying.

Can we settle on, perhaps, Mr. Housefather re-amending the amendment to the amendment to add a third meeting as a compromise among all four parties?

We would be happy with the changes that Mr. Housefather has brought forward, if we could add the third meeting to add our witnesses, whom we consider extremely important to this issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Right now, there is a proposal to change it from two to three meetings. In recognition of all the added names, that might be something worth considering from a time point of view.

At this point in time, I see Mr. Housefather's hand is up.

Mr. Housefather, go ahead.