Evidence of meeting #45 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 digital.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Yes, but my question is, did CBSA...? You said that CBSA—
4:10 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes. We developed the first version, and I think you've heard testimony that it cost roughly $80,000. I can't speak to whether or not that was all in-house or whether there were some contractors who helped with that.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Okay. That was my question.
I think I have about 10 seconds left.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Okay. We'll see if we have another chance for a couple more questions.
Thanks very much for your brief answers.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Mr. Barrett.
Mr. Housefather, I believe you're up for six minutes.
December 8th, 2022 / 4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Ossowski and Mr. Manji, for being here with us today.
Mr. Manji, I'm going to start with you.
I think the hackathon, or the work that you did—I also come from a tech background—has very much been misinterpreted and misused.
Let me start by asking you this: Did you ever claim that all of the costs for ArriveCAN—not just the development costs, but all of the costs—could have been $250,000?
Did you ever say that?
4:10 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
No. That wasn't me, or us.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You've heard members of Parliament and members of this committee get up in the House and make that claim. I'm glad you clarified that.
Of course, you also understand that development costs are not the same as all of the different costs that are associated with an app. We're not talking—
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
Yes. There are development costs, and then there's customer service and a bunch of other costs associated with it.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
On the question of the app itself, we've talked about this app, and we've heard a lot about it at this committee. There was an original version, and then it went through about 70 different updates.
When you did the front-end hackathon of the app, did you ever go through 70 different iterations and go from one update to the other update, or did you just take the 71st version—assuming that there were 71—and then replicate the front end?
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
Yes, we took the latest version and we replicated the front end completely.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
That's not the same at all as going through an original and then doing 70 different updates. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You also didn't do regression testing with each of the 71 different versions. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
No, because we did only one iteration.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
And you didn't also, as I understand it, replicate the back office. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
We didn't do any back-end infrastructure.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
That's probably the most complicated part of this type of app. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
It's hard to say, but yes. It depends.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
In this case, each of the different iterations had to work with different systems—whether iOS or Android—and had to link to all of these different vaccination systems of provincial governments and foreign states. You didn't do any of that. Is that right? You didn't do security stuff or any of that.
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
We didn't do any iterations, but I also don't know what the definition of those 70-plus iterations is.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
That's correct, but you never claimed to know, and you never claimed to have done it.
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
Yes, exactly. We just made the one app—the front end of the app—over two days by mimicking the latest version of the app.