Government Operations Committee on Nov. 14th, 2022

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Do you have an estimate on when you'd be able to provide that? Is it this week, next week, this month, next month, or before the end of this year?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I don't have an estimate. We can get back to you. We are pleased to provide the invoices as they are translated. We can provided them in tranches as they are done.

The list of invoices themselves—I believe approximately 500—has been provided.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

I'm short on time.

I can't stress enough that this is certainly a matter that's in the public interest. We gave a very reasonable timeline to allow for CBSA to provide that information. It hinders the work of this committee. It causes Canadians concern when there are tens of millions of dollars with questions that have been raised. Some questions are arising of amounts being paid to groups that didn't receive them, and some are based on the entire amount of the project. I do look forward to receiving an update on when we can expect all of the documents.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

Mr. Housefather, you have six minutes, please.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the departments for being here today.

The first thing I want to do is establish why we're here. We're here because we want to understand whether the amount spent on ArriveCAN was reasonable under the circumstances and what the amount was. Therefore, I want start by establishing what each department was responsible for.

As I understand it, Public Services and Procurement, as a common provider, went to tender and negotiated umbrella agreements to satisfy demands and specifications of client departments. Basically, this is a set of terms to which client departments could issue purchase orders for services related to ArriveCAN. It is my understanding that PSPC did not issue any such purchase orders.

Is that correct, Mr. Mills?

[Michael Mills]

Actually, there would be a combination of...they're called “task authorizations”. In some cases, the task authorization will be in a dollar value, where the departments themselves would issue the task authorizations, but above their delegated authorities, we would actually issue the task authorization.

Nevertheless, we do work with the department to make sure that the task authorizations are within the stream of work within the overall contract, to make sure that they're tasking what was in the contract in terms of the types of services that they would be getting from the firm.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Mills, are there any purchase orders or are there any contracts related to ArriveCAN expenses that are not on the document that we received from Public Safety or the CBSA that came from your department?

[Michael Mills]

Not to my knowledge. There would be nothing that we would put in place by ourselves, for ourselves. We would only put in place—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That was what I was asking from the beginning. Thank you.

For Shared Services, my understanding is that you provided cloud connectivity, security and monitoring services for the app, but it is my understanding that, again, you created a list of companies for cloud services that, if another department wanted to contract with, you would authorize, but you did not put forward any contracts yourself or any purchase orders yourself related to ArriveCAN to third parties. Is that correct?

[Kristina Casey]

Yes, that is correct. We provide a list of cloud service providers from which the departments can select, but we did not put any purchase orders directly related to the ArriveCAN app.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That's what my question was.

PHAC, did you put any purchase orders directly to ArriveCAN or, again, is everything on the list that we received from the CBSA?

[Christopher Allison, Director General, Data Management, Analysis And Innovation,Public Health Agency of Canada]

We did not provide any purchase orders to the development or maintenance of the ArriveCAN app.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to go to the department that is responsible, which is the CBSA.

For the CBSA, in the document you provided, you had some numbers that I need to better understand. You stated that $8,070,394 is the entire contract value for a contract with IBISKA for professional services. Later, in footnotes, you say that the expenditure for the contract for this time period was $110,175, not $8,070,394.

Please explain to me exactly what that means. What was the amount—the exact amount—that was paid to IBISKA related to the ArriveCAN app only?

[Kelly Belanger, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Canada Border Services Agency]

The amount paid to IBISKA was what was noted in the footnote: $110,175. The amount of $8 million was the full contract amount for IBISKA, and it was a different—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That was not what was at.... I understand that you had a contract with IBISKA, and that a certain part of the contract related to a purchase order for ArriveCAN, but you create confusion when you provide the number of $8,070,394, leading people to believe that that entire amount related to ArriveCAN, when in fact the amount in the footnote appears to be $110,175.

Can you confirm to me—yes or no—that $110,175 was the amount paid to IBISKA for ArriveCAN and that nothing else beyond that was paid to IBISKA for ArriveCAN?

[Kelly Belanger]

That was the amount paid to IBISKA up until March 31, 2022.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

For ArriveCAN?

[Kelly Belanger]

For ArriveCAN.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

It was $110,175, not $8,070,394.

[Kelly Belanger]

That's correct.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Okay.

What was the total cost paid to third parties for the development of the ArriveCAN app as of the date you were mentioning of March 2022?

When I say “development”, I mean initial development costs and the costs of updating the app over 70 times. I do not want you to include costs under a contract that were not relevant to ArriveCAN or costs unrelated to development, such as telephone support to users.

What was the amount paid to third parties simply for the development and updating of ArriveCAN?

[Jonathan Moor, Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, Canada Border Services Agency]

To answer your question, I can confirm that we spent $80,000 to develop the initial app, version 1.0. Then we spent a further $8.8 million to develop for free different versions of the app—one for iPhone, one for Android and one for website users—with over 70 different adjustments to the application.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you.

Basically, the correct amount that we should be using when we're talking about the development of ArriveCAN is approximately $8.8 million plus $80,000. Is that correct?

[Jonathan Moor]

That's for the development of the application, not the operation of the application and the CBSA—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I said the development.

What was the total cost paid to third parties for ArriveCAN that was not related to development? Outside the $8.8 million, what was the actual amount? I'm not asking for the contractual amount—