Evidence of meeting #38 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 app.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
The airlines do want it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Mrs. Kusie.
Mr. Kusmierczyk, please go ahead for five minutes.
November 14th, 2022 / 11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Moor, it's worth reiterating once again: What is the cost to Canadians of developing, building, the actual ArriveCAN app? That's not the back-end stuff, not the marketing, none of that, just the actual building of the app itself.
11:55 a.m.
Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, Canada Border Services Agency
Version 1 of the ArriveCAN app cost $80,000. Then it was subject to 70 different amendments; our colleague from the Public Health Agency referred to 80 different OICs. Each of those OICs required some additional work to be done on the app. That accounted for $8.8 million to update the apps.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Okay, so it's $8.8 million.
Ms. O'Gorman, how many times has the ArriveCAN app been downloaded?
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
That's a lot of data, a lot of submissions.
This question is for Mr. Allison: How important was ArriveCAN from PHAC's perspective to protecting the safety of Canadians?
11:55 a.m.
Vice-President, Health Security and Regional Operations Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
I'll be responding.
You have to remember that the ArriveCAN app was merely a tool to operationalize the OICs. The OICs were the meat of the Canadian response. It was a multi-layered approach to protecting Canadians' health, as well as our health care system.
From our perspective, based on a number of assessments, the OICs that were operationalized by ArriveCAN have obviously contributed to protecting the health and safety of our population.
Noon
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
So it's fair to say that ArriveCAN helped protect Canadians' safety.
Noon
Vice-President, Health Security and Regional Operations Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
It's fair to say it operationalized the multi-layered approach, yes.
Noon
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Perfect.
Being from a border community here in Windsor, I can tell you that about 400 million dollars' worth of goods cross the border each and every day. You're talking about auto parts that keep our factories going during COVID, and PPE and vaccines that cross the border.
Ms. O'Gorman, you talked about 1,600 nurses in Windsor who cross the border every single day to work at hospitals. What role did the ArriveCAN app play in making sure that we had the free flow of people and goods across that border, which was vital during COVID? How important was the ArriveCAN app to making sure that the border flows freely?
Noon
President, Canada Border Services Agency
It was critical. We had the experience at the beginning of the pandemic with paper and individuals having to communicate to border service officers the information that was being sought by the Public Health Agency. That was being inputted manually—I'm referring to the land border—by border service officers. What were approximately one-minute interactions before the pandemic became about seven-minute interactions, before ArriveCAN became mandatory and people were able to send their information ahead. What happened is that they would send their information ahead, and it would be validated by ArriveCAN with its interaction with other systems. The border service officer would see a green check mark.
It didn't go back down to one minute, but it became approximately a two-minute interaction. So when we're comparing it, it's not really prepandemic versus pandemic; it's the paper time during the pandemic versus the ArriveCAN time during the pandemic. Because those lanes are shared between commercial and travellers, holding them up had a significant implication beyond just travellers having to wait, but to back up the trucks that were crossing as well.
Noon
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
ArriveCAN kept Canadians safe, kept the economy going, kept the flow of essential, vital goods across the border in a just-in-time manner.
Privacy was also a key consideration. Can you talk to me a little bit about how much investment went into making sure that the privacy of Canadian data information is protected? We know the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has said that privacy is a fundamental right for Canadians.
Can you tell us a little bit about the efforts and how we prioritized protecting the privacy of Canadians through this development?
Noon
President, Canada Border Services Agency
The Treasury Board Secretariat issues requirements with regard to security and accessibility for public-facing applications such as ArriveCAN. We did spend money, approximately 4% of the overall funding, on security requirements.
Noon
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
That was on security. That's great.
The Leader of the Opposition has described ArriveCAN as an app that could have been designed over a weekend. Had we taken the Conservative Leader of the Opposition's advice and built an app over a weekend, could it have protected the safety of Canadians? Would it have guaranteed the free flow of essential goods across the border and would it have protected the privacy of Canadians?
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
You have about four seconds. Perhaps you can provide that in writing.
Noon
President, Canada Border Services Agency
—two and a half years of changes also went into adjusting the ArriveCAN app.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
We're back to the Conservatives, with Mrs. Block for five minutes.
Go ahead, please.
Noon
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today for this really important conversation.
On July 28, 2022, the Minister of Public Safety stated that ArriveCAN was created for COVID. However, the RFPs long precede COVID, and the documentation the CBSA submitted to our committee stated that contracts used for the development of the ArriveCAN app were issued prior to the pandemic, some as early as 2017.
I'm wondering if you could describe for us the purpose of the contracts to MGIS and eight other vendors that began long before 2020.
Noon
President, Canada Border Services Agency
I will invite my colleague, but I will just clarify that ArriveCAN was to help manage COVID and the public health requirements. On your question, Kelly can discuss the specific contract.
Noon
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Canada Border Services Agency
With respect to the MGIS contract, that was used for numerous items, such as project management, across CBSA prior to COVID. We did have other contracts as well that we did leverage throughout COVID for things like cybersecurity and some mobile app development, as well as for our back end and cloud. So the actual contracts that are listed, the ones that predated COVID, had been used for other IT systems within CBSA prior to COVID, and we continue to use those today for those items.
12:05 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Perhaps you could also explain the original concept of the app and how closely it was related to the product that was launched in 2022.