Government Operations Committee on Oct. 24th, 2023

[John Ossowski]

I was not alive to any of that conversation in the background while I was getting the demonstration from Botler.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Ossowski, was the single meeting that you had on Teams the only communication that you believe you had with anyone related to GC Strategies?

[John Ossowski]

The only other record the agency provided me was an email from Botler about their being selected to be on a G7 EU thing as a result of their work, and he was cc'd on that email. There was no other meeting that I attended with him. I don't recollect him even being at this meeting.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

All right.

Mr. Ossowski, do you still communicate with Mr. MacDonald?

[John Ossowski]

No.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

What was the role of Mr. MacDonald in obtaining the services of GC Strategies? How would you describe his role specifically, Mr. Doan?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Give a brief answer, please.

[Minh Doan]

He was director general in charge of innovation.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

We have Ms. Atwin, please, for six minutes.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to echo the comments of Mrs. Kusie in terms of the serious nature of the discussion today. I was not here for the previous discussion, so I'm pretty much new to this, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it as well. I'd also like to acknowledge that this is probably pretty tough on you as witnesses. I thank you for your honesty and for being here today and being willing to answer our questions.

Here's my first question. We see that the Canada Border Services Agency oversaw most of the contracts with regard to the ArriveCAN app, but I'm also noting that some contracts for ArriveCAN began as early as 2017. Can you explain, perhaps, Mr. Ossowski, this timeline for me?

[John Ossowski]

Mr. Doan might be better placed to talk about that.

[Minh Doan]

To the best of my memory, the contracts were not for ArriveCAN. They were with different companies that would allow skills in terms of mobile application development and security. Those would eventually be used and leveraged to build the ArriveCAN app, but the need at the time obviously was not there, because the COVID pandemic hadn't started yet.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Ossowski, now that you've spent about a year outside the government, what is your analysis of the usefulness of ArriveCAN, and your experience? Did it deliver what it was intended to deliver?

[John Ossowski]

Absolutely. As I said in my testimony last December, at the time—and I'm going by memory here—100,000 people around the world had died, and 30,000 infections had been recorded in Canada. The provincial health authorities were demanding better information on who was coming back to Canada, where they had been and if they were infected. All of this information had been collected in paper form by my officers and then handed over to the Public Health Agency, which was drowning in paper. No one was getting the information they needed in a timely manner.

The Public Health Agency came to us and asked us to build a contact-tracing app, and 70 versions of the app and millions of users later, I think the app delivered.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

How would you respond to Botler Inc.'s allegations of misconduct related to vendors contracted for ArriveCAN?

[John Ossowski]

I don't think that's what Botler complained about. Botler complained about their own contractual relationship. I have no knowledge of that or any business relationships they had with these other firms.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Ms. O'Gorman, now that you're in this new role and taking on some of the difficulties of the past, during their investigations, if the Canada Border Services Agency or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police determine there is wrongdoing on the part of the suppliers, what could be the possible consequences?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I won't speak for the RCMP, but internally we have various forms of discipline that can be issued depending on the nature of the misconduct. We have a committee that looks at allegations of misconduct. If they are founded, then there are decisions about the consequences of that.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Doan, if true, would any allegations raised by Botler breach the Public Services and Procurement Canada code of conduct for employees or the values and ethics code for the public sector?

[Minh Doan]

I only know the allegations as I've read them in The Globe and Mail. In terms of some of the allegations that are made, they would contradict some of the values and ethics, for sure, in terms of integrity and conflict of interest. Those are only allegations, and I don't know the state of the investigation.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Do you feel that these allegations reveal any gaps in the above codes?

[Minh Doan]

In terms of the allegations, I've only recently found out about them, so I'm not quite in a position to comment on the state of the investigation or the outcomes of the investigation.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I see that a lot of the issue is with regard to subcontractors. How could the contracting process be modified to provide the federal government more oversight on self-contractors?

[Minh Doan]

The CBSA worked very closely with PSPC, and the guidelines are set forth regarding PSPC and what is acceptable in terms of subcontracting.