Evidence of meeting #82 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 cbsa.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Yes, I am. Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses coming to the committee.
Right off the bat I want to get some clarification, Mr. Wood.
Did Botler at any time work through GC Strategies on ArriveCAN?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
The Botler AI project was not related in any way to ArriveCAN.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Neither Amir nor Ritika's time was spent in any way on ArriveCAN. Okay.
What was the involvement that your company had, and also Mr. Yeo as far as Dalian is concerned, regarding ArriveCAN?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
Okay. I can speak to that, Mr. Chair.
Our involvement on ArriveCAN began in 2000 when we were awarded a contract in August 2019. On this contract to provide services to the BTID group at CBSA, we began receiving in May 2020 task authorizations related to the ArriveCAN project.
All the way through into May 2023 until the last consultant finished their assignment, through the course of providing those, we provided 20 consultants, and I will give you the exact details on that.
Three of the 20 consultants worked on deliverables-based contracts where the client must accept and sign off completion of the project milestones before accepting invoices and making payments. The value of these contracts was $1.2 million and the work was done over three years, for an average of $133,000 per consultant per year.
The remaining 17 consultants worked approximately 5,100 days over a three-year period. The cost of this was $3.7 million, on average $725 a day per consultant. The 5,100 days over the three years works out to an average of 100 days a year per consultant and there are 230 business days per year.
Our total amount invoiced to CBSA was approximately $4.5 million.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
The amount of development and resources that you put come to roughly $4.5 million. This is the testimony we had heard before about ArriveCAN, so thank you very much for that.
Who do you specifically work with when you are trying to form this contract with CBSA? Do you go through GC Strategies and GC Strategies comes in, or do you have a direct relationship with someone in CBSA?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
Like I indicated, we competed for and won a contract at CBSA in 2019 and were subsequently awarded the contract through that competitive process in August 2019.
The work we performed for CBSA was all based on the receipt of task authorizations provided by various clients at CBSA. GC Strategies is not involved in this at all. They are a subcontractor that we have occasionally done work with.
Liberal
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to jump right into it.
Mr. Yeo, how many years would you say Dalian has been working on federal contracts?
President and Founder, Dalian Enterprises Inc.
Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.
I started the company 23 years ago. We started out as a hardware and software company back in 2001. We ended up coming into the time frame around 2007. We started adding professional services contracting online, meaning TBIPS, SBIPS and those types of professional services contracts with the federal government.
We're both—
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you.
I'm going to ask the same question of Mr. Wood.
For how many years has Coradix been awarded federal contracts?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, Coradix is nearly 30 years old. I would say it goes back approximately 27 or 28 years—our beginning to respond to RFPs provided by the federal government. Our first wins would have been in and around that time period.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
During our previous meeting, representatives from Botler claimed that Dalian's alleged aboriginal ownership of at least 51% was a cover to allow Coradix to do the actual work. In their words, they called it “monetisation and theft using the trauma of marginalized communities.”
How do you respond to this accusation?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
Mr. Chair, if it's okay with you, I'm going to allow Dave Yeo to answer this question. He can give some clarification on how the PSIB works.
President and Founder, Dalian Enterprises Inc.
I'll try to be quick.
I'm very proud to be part of the PSAB and the PSIB, which is the procurement strategy for indigenous business. I helped form the policy. I've worked with Allen Frost, INAC and ISC. I still continue to do that today. We are completely registered and have audits very regularly—any time we do JVs. We are completely compliant with the PSAB and the PSIB.
These types of accusations don't ring true, in my opinion.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Mr. Yeo.
Thank you, Mr. Bains.
Ms. Vignola, go ahead, please, for six minutes.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Wood, I'm trying to sort out how all of this happened. Please confirm or refute what I'm about to say, as needed.
You were awarded a contract by the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA. You then subcontracted that work out to GC Strategies, which further subcontracted the work out to other people.
That's three levels of subcontractors. How did you ensure data security when ArriveCAN was being developed? All of those people had access to sensitive information.
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
Mr. Chair, again, ArriveCAN is in no way related to the Botler AI project.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
I didn't even mention Botler AI. I was talking about the ArriveCAN app.
I'd like you to clarify some things.
You were awarded a contract by CBSA. You then subcontracted that work out to GC Strategies, which then used its own subcontractors—guess who. That's three levels of subcontractors. With all those people involved in developing the app, how did you ensure data security?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
I believe there are a couple of questions in there, Mr. Chair.
We had no contracts and did not do any work with GC Strategies on ArriveCAN.
As for the security process, I can walk you through how it works, particularly at CBSA, for all the contractors we provided for the ArriveCAN project.
When we receive a task authorization, every consultant we propose and put forward in response to that task authorization goes through two processes. They either need to have an existing secret clearance, or we apply for their security clearance through CISD and PSPC. In addition to that, CBSA conducts their own internal security screening. Any consultant working on a project at CBSA—and, for that matter, on any contract in any federal government department—must be security cleared.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you.
What is your contractual relationship with Ritika Dutt?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
We have no contractual relationship with Ritika Dutt whatsoever.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
You never sent anyone an invoice listing the name Ritika Dutt and work she performed in respect of the contract. That never happened, not even in 2021.
Is that correct?
President, CORADIX Technology Consulting Ltd.
The task authorization requests that we received from CBSA for the Botler AI pilot were subcontracted through GC Strategies, which was in partnership with Botler AI. As part of our submission and response to that task authorization, Ritika Dutt's profile was submitted by them, through us, to CBSA.
Bloc