Government Operations Committee on Nov. 14th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have a minute left.

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

Of those appearing before us today, who can identify themselves as being able to get the information on who can sign off on the waiving of security clearance, the potential implications of that, and whether a threat assessment is done before, during or after that contractor has done work? Can they provide that information to the committee in writing? I imagine it will take a little bit of research.

I'm not sure, Mr. Chair, if we can just get someone from the witness panel to identify that they would be able to do that.

[Erin O'Gorman]

We'll get back to you with that information.

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

Okay. CBSA will provide that information.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bains, we go over to you, please, for five minutes.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests for joining us today.

I'm just going to pick up from where one of my colleagues left off earlier with the CBSA.

What was the total cost paid to third parties for ArriveCAN, as of today, that was not related to development of the app? Please explain what these amounts were for, in general buckets.

[Jonathan Moor]

The CBSA has now published on its website a full analysis of the ArriveCAN costs that have been incurred by the agency.

For example, $7.5 million was spent with Service Canada on the call centre. Those individuals answered more than 650,000 calls from users of the ArriveCAN application. Another example would be data management. We spent $5.2 million providing data management facilities both to us and the Public Health Agency.

We spent $4.6 million on data storage and cloud services. This is around the storing of that data on secure cloud.

We spent $4.5 million on integrating the ArriveCAN application with the other basic systems within the organization that would allow the border services officers to see the information on ArriveCAN at the primary inspection kiosks.

We spent $2.3 million on security around the application, and we spent $1.7 million on accessibility.

All of those details are reported on our website and open to scrutiny.

Thank you.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

To be clear, those costs are all outside of the development of the app.

[Jonathan Moor]

They are outside of the development of the app.

My previous answer around the $80,000 for the first version, and the $8.8 million, relates to the application. The rest of the expenditure relates to how the public health process operated over the last two and a half years.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Based on your answers to the previous questions and this one, you said that the total amount was, I believe, $8 million and then $80,000.

You said that the total amount paid to third parties was in these buckets. Can I correctly assume that the total cost paid out to third parties related to the ArriveCAN app...? As of today, what's the exact total?

[Jonathan Moor]

As of today, we have $34.8 million paid to third parties. As I explained before, that's not necessarily to companies; that includes $7.5 million to Service Canada. It covers contracts, but also memoranda of understanding.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay.

Moving on, 18 million people downloaded the ArriveCAN app, so it's fair to say that its usage was ubiquitous amongst Canadians.

Can you tell the committee what kind of support an application needs, whether from an HR perspective or a data storage and cloud service management perspective, to maintain an app that is being used as frequently as this one was?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I can maybe start and then invite my colleague to add some detail.

It was also the monthly changes that were made to the application, both in terms of improvements and responding to the changing health measures. Sometimes those were significant: plugging into provincial and territorial proof of vaccination systems, providing COVID test results, and also facilitation techniques, having people being able to save their profiles. That was very helpful for truckers going back and forth across the border and to our nurses in Windsor, to not have to put their profile in every time they crossed. So there were two aspects, two changes, that took place virtually on a monthly basis.

When we talk about the app, the cost of making those changes as well as the security and the accessibility, as you mentioned, plugging into CBSA's systems and the cloud maintenance, I can invite my colleague Kelly to give some details on that. I just wanted to paint the picture of what the app looked like over the two and a half years in which it was being used.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have about 15 seconds.

[Kelly Belanger]

Above and beyond what Ms. O'Gorman noted, there was additional work required around cloud expertise, back-end systems and, as noted, cybersecurity and accessibility, which were the core pieces to keeping the application running.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That was five minutes. It goes by fast.

Mrs. Vignola, you have two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Casey, I'm going back to my question about bilingualism among information technology staff. As I was saying, Carleton University made a recommendation about that, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about it, and on the impact it could have on staff.

[Kristina Casey]

Thank you for your question.

I have not seen the report, so it's very hard for me to provide an answer. I will have to provide an answer in writing.

I will say that we ensure the bilingualism of our IT resources. When we hire IT resources, we ensure that they meet bilingual requirements and we have a program to ensure that we maintain bilingualism through training.

We will be happy to provide a more detailed answer in writing.

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

Thank you, Ms. Casey.

Mr. Cormier, according to various databases, the two owners of GC Strategies do not appear to have lobbied anyone in the government, nor did they contribute to any election campaigns or partisan funds. That's great. The company is nothing more, nothing less than a talent recruitment agency, active in IT, among other fields.

For years, we've heard from small and medium-sized businesses about how difficult it is to gain exposure and win contracts from the government.

How, then, did a tiny business gain the government's trust to the point of entering into contracts with various departments totalling over $9 million to recruit staff to design ArriveCAN?

Also, how do you explain the government's decision to give a sole-sourced type contract to GC Strategies, which is essentially a talent recruitment agency, instead of approaching IT businesses that already specialize in developing health-related apps?

[Ron Cormier]

Thank you for your question.

GC Strategies as a company has been registered in a supply arrangement with PSPC for a number of years. The task-based informatics procurement, or TBIPS, supply arrangement is where they're presently registered. They are a tier 2 supplier, which requires them to have done business for a minimum of three years and to have proven invoices for over $12.5 million in historic contracting in the domain in which they're being assessed to be able to provide services.

GC Strategies, in particular, was already in the TBIPS instrument before the pandemic began. They were also already working in the CBSA environment on other mobile applications.

In terms of the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to have to cut you off there. We're out of time. Perhaps you can submit the rest of the answer in writing to the committee.

Mr. Johns, you have two and a half minutes.

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

I'll stay on that theme.

The mandate of Shared Services Canada is to “implement enterprise-wide approaches for managing IT infrastructure services and employ effective and efficient business management processes.”

What portion of services provided to other departments are done with in-house resources, compared to outsourced contracts?

Ms. Casey, maybe you can help me with that.

[Kristina Casey]

I don't have that exact answer in front of me, but we'll get back to you in writing about the percentage.

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

Would Shared Services have had the capacity to develop the ArriveCAN app using in-house resources?

[Kristina Casey]

I'll pass that question to my colleague.