Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, my name is Colin Wood. I joined Coradix in 2016 and have been president since November 2021.
I am also a director at Dalian. I have been working in the IT professional services sector for more than 20 years. Coradix is an IT consulting company that has been operating for close to 30 years—since 1995.
Dalian is a hardware and software cybersecurity company that has been operating for more than 20 years. Coradix and Dalian are in a joint venture under the procurement strategy for indigenous businesses.
Coradix and Dalian share a two-floor commercial office in downtown Ottawa. We have several corporate functions including business development, proposal services, account management and administration. We have more than 40 employees and currently have 475 consultants working on a range of IT projects for the Government of Canada.
Over the years Coradix and Dalian have provided IT products and services to most federal government organizations. We have also provided thousands of IT consultants with a broad range of technical skills, expertise, education, training and experience to support, implement and successfully deliver hundreds of projects for the Government of Canada departments and agencies.
In every project for the government, Coradix and Dalian follow all procurement and contracting rules and policies. We deliver according to the scope of the task authorizations we receive, and only invoice for work performed, completed and signed off by technical authorities according to the terms and conditions of the contract.
The outsourcing of IT professional services is an effective approach that allows the government to access the leading-edge skills and expertise that it needs to plan and execute specific projects within a defined period of time. These specialized expertise and skills are not available internally.
Coradix and Dalian compete for, maintain and manage a variety of standing offers and supply arrangements with numerous federal government organizations. We've also obtained and maintain a variety of security clearances for our company, employees and consultants, which allow us to work on highly sensitive and confidential projects. There is, of course, a business cost to all this.
On projects we undertake for the government, we provide task response and administration project planning, contract management, account management, security clearances and CISD administration, and administrative functions including contracting, invoicing, and payments to employees, consultants, and contractors.
These consultants, who provide services to the government, report to and are under the direction, supervision and control of Government of Canada employees.
On ArriveCAN, in May 2020, Coradix and Dalian began receiving task authorization requests to support software development work on mobile applications. This was under our task-based informatics professional services contract with the CBSA.
From May 2020 to May 2023, we provided 20 IT professionals to perform various functions on the ArriveCAN project, including software development, testing, project management, technology architecture and cybersecurity.
The billing rates for these IT professionals ranged from $540 to $1,000 per day depending on the service they were providing, their level of expertise and their experience. These rates are consistent with market rates for IT professional services.
While this does not in any way relate to ArriveCAN, I would like to use my remaining time to provide a few comments relating to Botler.
On November 11, 2020, we were contacted by CBSA for a a task authorization under our BTID contract.
GC Strategies was informed by CBSA that we had received the task request for these services. They then contacted us to advise that they had a team with the experience and expertise that CBSA was seeking to work on this project. GC Strategies provided us with the CVs of the Botler team, which we then submitted to CBSA with our task authorization response.
This project with CBSA was deliverable-based. There were six expected deliverables, each with a budget of $70,000. CBSA received and accepted two of the six anticipated deliverables provided by Botler and were paid $112,000 by GC Strategies. Coradix and Dalian were paid $14,000 per deliverable for the tasking oversight account planning and management, security clearances and administration services related to the project, as well as accepting the overall risk associated in a deliverables-based task authorization.
On December 14, 2021, CBSA advised Coradix, Dalian, GC Strategies and Botler that they were terminating their project. This happens when the client decides the project is no longer needed or is not meeting expectations in terms of quality, timelines and/or budget.
That is the extent of our dealings with Botler.
Mr. Chair, thank you.
