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.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
As well, you didn't do any research into privacy law or any of the other legal security stuff or privacy stuff that needed to be done, correct?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
That's in terms of an app like this, to comply with Canadian legislation.
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
Yes, we did not do research.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
No, we didn't do internationalization.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Okay. I appreciate that.
And you didn't do user testing to see if what you did was usable.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
So I think we can both agree that what you did was valuable. It shows that Canadian developers are out there to assist the government. Maybe things could always be done more cheaply and better, but your goal was never to show that this was a terrible thing that could have been done for a tiny amount of money versus the millions of dollars that got spent.
4:15 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lazer Technologies
No, that was never our goal. Our main goal was to show that there's talent inside Canada that can build apps like this, but that the way the app could be built in the future could be done in a more cost-efficient or timely manner.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you.
Can I also ask you if any member of Parliament or their staff reached out to your company before you did the hackathon?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Okay. You did it based on your own inclination to try to show something.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
That's perfect. Thank you so much.
Mr. Chair, do I have any time left?
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
December 8th, 2022 / 4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Okay. That's great.
Thank you very much, Mr. Manji.
Mr. Ossowski, can I turn to you, please?
Thank you so much for coming. You know, you're not in the public service anymore, and it's very nice of you to come to committee without the resources you would have had if you were still there to go through documents to assist you.
Can you just make something very clear? I think you answered Mr. Barrett on this. No politician ever directed you to contract with any particular company on ArriveCAN. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
And you are not aware—and you would be—of monies having gone to any companies that did no work on ArriveCAN. Is that correct? That's not how the system works.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You would agree that the people who were working on the app from your department, PHAC and PSPC and everyone else are all professional public servants who always do their best to deliver the best products for Canadians, even if sometimes we make mistakes. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
The CIO of Public Safety came to this committee and said that the app, she felt, was developed in a relatively cost-effective way and that it was very complex and in the end delivered most of what was needed. Would you essentially agree with her?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, I'd go a little further and say that if you divide the amount of money it took for the development of the 70 different versions we did across three different platforms, that's about $125,000 per version, which to my mind was very inexpensive.
We learned a lot as we went along. This was a new thing for us, to be fair. We started off with something quick and dirty, and then it got very sophisticated in terms of its ability to validate PCR testing pre-arrival—
