Government Operations Committee on Nov. 7th, 2023

[Cameron MacDonald]

I can start, and maybe Mr. Utano can help me.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

—and/or the team that he mentioned?

[Cameron MacDonald]

They're doing an assessment. There are three or four companies—some of them are big; some of them we already worked with at CBSA; some of them are outsource; some of them are insource. I see one floating to the top. I'm like, “This isn't good.” I also see about 100 requests coming in. It's the middle of the pandemic. That's why we were given only five days to do all of the options assessment. HR is coming. Commercial is coming. Travellers are coming. I wanted to bring in some Clydesdales—Deloitte—to be able to help out.

I worked in the evenings with Deloitte and the partner, and he put in an innovation team. I told them the same requirements that the technical team had to work with. They came up with a concept. Mr. Utano and his development team came up with a concept. On March 24 he sent the options for GC Strategies and I sent the option for Deloitte into Mr. Doan. Subsequent to that, I had a meeting with Mr. Doan, where he told me that Deloitte was not an option because of CARM.

[Antonio Utano]

Can I add to that, Mr. Chair?

The technical team, the mobile centre of excellence, looked at a lot of other options, but the theme around it was in surge capacity. They wanted to participate in the development. They saw that was a better approach in the long term. They worked in developing this concept and forwarded it to me, which I then forwarded directly, actually, to my CIO, Minh Doan, and then left it there for a decision and a reference.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

You said “they”. Who are “they”?

[Antonio Utano]

We had a technical team—a very small mobile centre of excellence team—that was just getting off the ground and working in mobile. When this pandemic hit and the Public Health Agency of Canada came to us in urgency, requesting this capability for mobile to deal with the contact tracing, we had to look for options. We went to our teams and asked them for options.

This one surfaced as a viable option. It was based on a few things, or more than a few: security; the ability to provide a secured, protected e-cloud; the ability to have secured resources; the skill sets, etc. When they took all that into consideration, a viable option that came to the top, if you will, was this proposal. Again, I just forwarded it on to the CIO.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Then the CIO makes the...or who finally makes the decision?

[Antonio Utano]

At that point, the CIO would have had two proposals, two viable proposals—

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Which were....

[Cameron MacDonald]

When you all get your packages, you'll see that there's a Deloitte proposal that was sent by me and there's a GC Strategies proposal that was sent by Mr. Utano.

I had a meeting with Mr. Doan afterwards. Mr. Doan told me that Deloitte was not an option. We talked about the fact that there would need to be a sole-source contract. I have an email in my package from March 24 that I sent Mr. Doan, letting him know that we would have to talk about methods of supply and suppliers, because we didn't have any contracts in place at the time of the pandemic. We would need resource categories that were outside of what we had within the Dalian contract.

We had that discussion, and I was told this: You need to do what you need to do. These are exceptional circumstances. I trust you to get it done.

The whole thing was around whether or not we could have a release within a month or not.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

In your time at CBSA, on the many projects, did you use GC Strategies to source talent all the time? You said they brought forward six a year.

[Cameron MacDonald]

We used primarily our general IT services contract, which was with Dalian. Our understanding is that Dalian has subcontracted various resources through GC Strategies and other companies. My understanding is that this is their modus operandi. For the most part, it's how they work. There were GC Strategies-represented subcontracted resources working, secret cleared, within the CBSA when the pandemic hit. They were the ones working with the technical team that helped to develop the GC Strategies proposal.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Did you ever encourage contractors to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, Mr. Bains. That's our time.

Ms. Vignola, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm listening and I'm ultimately trying to understand how procurement works and how it has worked, not only with Botler AI, but also with ArriveCAN.

The best example I can give right now is Botler AI's case. The Dalian and Coradix companies, basically two guys, find computer technicians and other computer specialists—such as programmers, designers, network architects, and so on—and provide those resources to the Government of Canada. On the other hand, we have GC Strategies, which does exactly the same thing—that is to say finds specialists in various computer areas. In that case, one uses the other to find contacts, and each time, a profit is made because each party collects its share. If one takes a minimum share of 15% and the other does the same, you end up paying a share on a share to have employees. I think that's huge, massive.

Mr. Utano, was there no one on your teams, absolutely no one, who was able to develop an application for the division of prototypes? Did you not have this in‑house specialization instead of paying millions of dollars in profits to four guys?

[Antonio Utano]

Mr. Chair, the answer is no. The level of complexity that was developed for the mobile application—and I want to remind the committee of this—has progressed to what you see today. It started with a basic digital form, and we were able to do that internally. It then progressed to pre-border, at-border, post-border, transactional, and then holding on to very private information of travellers to Canada.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

So you did not have that specialization at the time. However, has the government now started to take action to fill this gap? These applications are essentially the tool of today and tomorrow. Will we eventually stop paying millions to subcontractors' subcontractors?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that is our time. Perhaps you can save it for the next round with Ms. Vignola.

Mr. Johns, go ahead for two and a half minutes, please.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Utano, CBSA's policy on internal investigations into alleged or suspected employee misconduct requires you to provide any misconduct reports to your vice-president, which was Minh Doan.

Did you provide the September 27, 2021, Botler report to Mr. Doan, internal affairs or any other supervisor?

[Antonio Utano]

I am going to say yes. The email from September 27 that I received from Ms. Dutt was not a report but rather an email that raised two issues. One was a payment delay and the second was a concern about Botler's relationship in the partnership between GCS, Dalian, Coradix and Botler AI—nothing more. There were no allegations in that email.

In fact, Mr. Johns, I provided the actual email in the package. If you look under tab 23 you'll see the actual email. I want to confirm for the committee that I was aware of the email when it came in. I knew that my team was addressing it, and within 24 hours we successfully resolved the issues—so much so that Ms. Dutt sent a follow-up email the next day expressing her gratitude. Given the nature of the email and the prompt resolution, it wasn't necessary to address it.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

The next day, Ms. Daly ordered that a payment be made to Botler, and Botler got a payment. Can you explain why that happened so quickly?

[Antonio Utano]

Part of the resolution was that we reached out to our prime contractor, with whom we had the contract, Dalian and Coradix, and reminded them quite frankly that when we pay an invoice, we expect them to pay their employees. That was the resolution. Dalian and Coradix confirmed that they were going to make that payment. They were apologetic, and then the matter was closed.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You put forward in your statement, although you didn't get a chance to finish it, the following:

I have lost faith in the public service, in those who in a position of authority had the opportunity to uphold these same values. Yet here at the Committee, given the platform to do so, chose not to.

Who are you identifying there? Is there anyone who has come forward to testify at this committee who, you feel, has not been upfront and has not told the truth?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Could we have just a brief answer, please?

[Antonio Utano]

The opportunity to access the email was there, Mr. Johns. I was disappointed that the email of September 27 was not accessed and presented at this committee when our leadership came here to speak to the committee.