Evidence of meeting #34 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 border.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
As you said, your markup was at industry-standard levels.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Perfect. I'm not going to pry further into that.
Let me also understand, because you're saying that you didn't supervise the people. When you say that, did you did supervise certain aspects of the task. For example, since you were the employer of record, you would have made sure they got to work and they were doing the job they were supposed to do. You just weren't directing them as to the technical specifications they were supposed to build. Would that be correct?
Partner, GCstrategies
Yes.
Obviously, everybody was working during this pandemic. This is the whole reason we built this application, because everybody was working from home. The project managers and the team leads, provided by the organization, would be monitoring, maintaining and making sure.... We would only get a call if they weren't performing and they needed to have a resource replaced.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
The manager of the team.... For example, did you assemble people who were working for a manager within the government, or did you also have a team manager for the people you assembled?
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
There was combination of both. How many managers did you have amongst the people you engaged as contractors?
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Of your employees, who were subcontractors to the government, how many people in total were the team and how many were managers?
Partner, GCstrategies
Over their tenure, there were five or six subject matter firms that each had their own project leads.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Each had a project lead. Okay, perfect.
Now, I know you guys are not technical, but I imagine you understand enough about what was built to be able to distinguish between a hackathon, where people take plans that were already developed over the course of a weekend, don't build a back office that speaks to the CBSA system and don't build in the need for vaccination proofs versus what people did over 18 months of complex engineering. Could you speak to me how we would best differentiate what happened over a weekend versus what you put a team together to create over 18 months?
For example, as somebody coming from the industry, the way I would look at it is almost like you build the plans for a race car that can go 300 kilometres an hour, and the race car is set to the best safety standards. Then somebody, after two years of work on this, will copy the plans and build a model of the car that doesn't have to drive and doesn't need to meet safety standards. Would that be a fair analogy?
Partner, GCstrategies
I'm glad you referenced that I am not a technologist. I'm a generalist, but I fundamentally understand that.
Again, I know we did a very good job, and we executed on everything we were charged to do, but, from what I read, the things that were mentioned that weren't considered were, from my understanding—and again we weren't part of that—some of the most intricate and most detailed pieces, which is, like you said, back-end integration.
The organization had legacy systems that needed work. There are the vaccinations. There was a lot of stuff that were.... I saw a quote that we can all trace the Mona Lisa, but that doesn't mean it's a masterpiece.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Yes, those who would try to paint what happened over a weekend versus the app you helped the Government of Canada to develop.... It would be a totally unfair comparison. It's not apples to apples; it's apples to an orchard. Is that right?
Liberal
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Given that I won't be able to finish any real questions, I just want to thank both of you for coming today. I know it's not easy coming before a parliamentary committee. Thank you so much.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Mr. Housefather.
Ms. Vignola, you have six minutes, please.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Firth, if I understand correctly, GCStrategies is acting as an intermediary and has received $4.5 million for its services.
Were you directly involved in the production and programming of ArriveCAN or did you choose people from the government to act as programming managers?
Partner, GCstrategies
We are an IT staffing firm. We are not involved. We have no direction on the projects or the objectives. We are not in any conversations for budgeting or cost controls. We have quality control. If a resource isn't performing, we will then work with the government to replace that.
To answer your question, our team, under the guidance and supervision of the federal government, was responsible for the programming and the development, but again, it was only for certain aspects of ArriveCAN and not the full overall build.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
All told, how many people worked with GCStrategies on the ArriveCAN app?
Partner, GCstrategies
During the two years, it scaled up and down. The team could be anything from 17 or 18, which was the lowest number, to 25 to 30.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
During question period yesterday, the Prime Minister said that the $54 million reported by the media included future costs.
Can you give me more details on what these future costs include?
Partner, GCstrategies
I can comment on exactly what we did, which was, again, a component that was responsible for the mobile and web application and, subsequently, the 150-plus releases that came out over the three years.
For the future, the costs would be maintaining the staff, depending on whether the pandemic comes back up and on whatever the decision is to do with ArriveCAN moving forward, but the application needs to be maintained while it's still in service.