Government Operations Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2023

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I heard your opening statement, sir. My question is with respect to your billing for ArriveCAN.

[Kristian Firth]

Can you repeat the question, please?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

How much did you get paid for your work on ArriveCAN?

[Kristian Firth]

I'm sorry. I've already given up all this information. You have all of my invoices—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Sir, are you refusing to answer the question? It's a very straightforward question. As you said, this is a study about ArriveCAN. It seems to me that it would be quite pertinent for you to be able to tell the committee how many millions of dollars you, with your two-person company, were paid to do work on an app that you did not do any programming for. How much money were you paid?

[Kristian Firth]

I would be more than happy, once I get that number, to give you the answer in writing. I do not have that number with me right now—the exact dollars and cents. I apologize.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

If I said the number was $9 million, then, you wouldn't be able to dispute that?

[Kristian Firth]

No. I could dispute that.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

With what number?

[Kristian Firth]

I can tell you that it wasn't $9 million. Again, it's publicized in the media. It's somewhere between 15% and 30%. That's the number that everybody is going with.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

It's quite interesting that you're not interested in sharing the number, because of the amount of work that was not done by you on the app and the amount of money that you collected for work that was done on the app.

Are you familiar with the testimony that you gave at this committee—you talked about your previous appearance—in which you talked about relationships?

I am going to ask you this: Do you use relationships to get work from the Government of Canada?

[Kristian Firth]

My relationships come from meetings I've had since 2009 with multiple clients. We would go through a competitive process to win business, like every other one of the 600 or 700 vendors that go through the same thing.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Is your client list relationship-based?

[Kristian Firth]

My client list is people I continue to have meetings with from when I first picked up the phone for a cold call and still do to this day.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

We've heard testimony at this committee that you leveraged relationships with key people in the government in order to guarantee business, and that that's how you solicited the participation of subcontractors. Is that a fair characterization?

[Kristian Firth]

That is accurately the testimony you heard, but that's not what happened. You're making reference to a testimony and taking it as gospel.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Are you saying the witnesses lied to the committee?

[Kristian Firth]

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying the reason the business came about was that we continually had meetings and identified opportunities. It's about being ahead of it, getting partnerships with people who understand where the market is going, and being able to use procurement processes to get them in, while staying within PSPC guidelines.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Sir, you said in reference to your relationship with Mr. MacDonald that you'd been with him his whole career in government.

Is that correct?

[Kristian Firth]

That was an embellishment.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Is it an embellishment by you?

[Kristian Firth]

That's correct. While I sell to the federal government, I also have to sell to my clients and be—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Therefore, by selling, you lied to them.

[Kristian Firth]

No, that's not necessarily the truth. There's an—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry. That is our time.

Mr. Kusmierczyk, go ahead, please, for six minutes.