I think it's important, considering the massive costs of this program and the controversy around ArriveCAN.
The massive cost is $54 million. We've seen that a couple of tech companies have stepped up and recreated the app for what they said would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, not $54 million. They would do it over a weekend.
It also goes into some of the further studies we're looking at on outsourcing government contracts.
Canadians are appalled that in Edmonton we have veterans on the streets having to go to food banks, yet somehow there's $54 million for an app that the experts are saying could have been done for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's very important that we see how this debacle—for lack of a better word—has happened, how a company with almost no employees received such a large contract and was allowed to subcontract out so many times to so many different companies, how the process happened, and how the costs overran so much. Also, who authorized the continuing cost increases for this app? Canadians deserve to know how the government is spending its hard-earned tax money, and why $54 million.
This reminds me of a book I am reading now called Victory on the Potomac. It's about U.S. defence reform. It talks about $650 hammers and $1,000 toilet seats. This reminds me of that issue. Canadians deserve to get to the bottom of it.
I hope the rest of the committee will support this study.