Government Operations Committee on Nov. 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, Mr. MacDonald.

Mrs. Vignola, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. MacDonald, in your presentation, you said that you would have preferred Deloitte, which was already very involved with the Government of Canada in the procurement of personal protective equipment.

In the email you sent to Mr. Doan in November 2023, you wrote that you had found a company in Montreal and that you had contacted GC Strategies to assess the options and move forward. My understanding is that this happened after Mr. Firth sold you on Botler in his email, unless you had found Botler and then went through GC Strategies.

[Cameron MacDonald]

Mr. Chair, I was not there at all in 2023. I was already at Health Canada. I wrote the email to Minh Doan because he had asked for my help with his appearance before this committee. It's been a year.

Mr. Doan asked for my help on October 27, 2023. A member of his inner circle called me.

This person called me to tell me that Kelly Bélanger and Minh Doan were considering telling this committee that I was the one who made the decision to select GC Strategies.

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

Okay.

[Cameron MacDonald]

On August 28, 2023, I received a call from Minh Doan telling me that Minister Marco Mendicino wanted someone's head on a platter, but that he did not know whether it would be the head of the chief financial officer, Mr. Moor, or his own as chief information officer. Then he changed his mind and decided that he was going to tell the committee that I was responsible. I told him that I had not made the decision and that I had given him two options. I also told him that this is what I would say to the committee.

However, Mr. Doan became ill and did not appear before the committee. On Monday morning, I told my former supervisor, Nancy Hamzawi, that I was being threatened. She told me to talk to my supervisor, who was the associate deputy minister at the time, Heather Jeffrey. I did so on Tuesday morning. She then called the CBSA to say that I was being threatened, and then she met with me to tell me not to talk to the CBSA or Minh Doan because of what was going on. She told me that the CBSA was aware of the situation and that I should step away and stay away. That's what I did.

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

So two weeks ago, when Minh Doan told this committee that he had no part in the decision, according to you, that was false. You say that he was the one who imposed GC Strategies, while you wanted to select Deloitte.

[Cameron MacDonald]

That is a lie told to this committee. Everyone knows it, and we have our team here behind us. Everyone knows that it was his decision to make, not mine.

Others could also confirm that, when he made the decision to eliminate Deloitte, he said it was because the president said that no one could work with Deloitte because of a project involving the CBSA assessment and revenue management branch that was not going well.

The night he made the decision, I called the Deloitte partner to tell him that he would not be selected because of the problems with that project. He told me that my colleague Sandy Kyriakatos, the chief data officer at the CBSA, also told him that she wanted to select Deloitte.

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

In the email that Kristian Firth sent you on November 19, 2019, he calls you by your first name. Is it because he already knew you, and if so, where did you have contact before 2019?

[Cameron MacDonald]

I only had contact with Mr. Firth in 2009, and then no further contact until 2018 or 2019.

Also, almost everyone calls me “Cam” or “Cameron”. That is normal, because I am a fairly informal person with everyone, not just with him.

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

In your presentation, you said that you had not taken part in the review of GC Strategies' solution. Who was involved in that review?

[Cameron MacDonald]

Mr. Utano was the team manager. There was a cloud director, a mobile centre of expertise manager, and maybe four to eight other technicians and developers who analyzed the products, companies or solutions that could be put in place.

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

So was it Minh Doan who made the decision to award the contract to GC Strategies?

[Cameron MacDonald]

He made the decision to select GC Strategies, and he gave me permission to leave to develop the solution. He knew he had only two of the five days we had given him to make a decision. If he had not wanted to choose that solution, he could have said that we had more time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, Mr. MacDonald.

Go ahead, Mr. Johns, please.

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

Thank you very much to both of you for your testimony.

I just want to be clear from the outset. This committee is not trying to destroy anybody's career, especially that of hard-working public servants, but we need to get to the bottom of this, and we want to make sure that situations like this don't occur again.

Mr. Firth acknowledged that he mistakenly sent Coradix the wrong versions of Ms. Dutt's and Mr. Morv's CVs, in which he had inflated their experience.

Mr. MacDonald, he said he went and did a back-and-forth. Was it a back-and-forth with you before he altered the résumés?

[Cameron MacDonald]

Never, Mr. Chair. As the DG, I don't deal with any of the CVs or security clearances. It's done by a procurement team.

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

I appreciate that. Coradix submitted these documents, this altered résumé that Mr. Firth admitted to, to Public Services and Procurement Canada. Subsequently he received a task authorization to deliver Botler software.

To the extent that you are aware, would Ms. Dutt and Mr. Morv have been eligible to perform work for this task authorization had Mr. Firth not inflated their experience, given, Mr. MacDonald, that you know the alterations now that you've been following the committee on what took place?

[Cameron MacDonald]

I'm not aware of the particulars of the contract. I've been following these meetings, obviously.

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

They had seven years' work experience, and suddenly that was inflated to 12 years.

[Cameron MacDonald]

Mr. Chair, I don't believe that they would have qualified under the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Let me just pause, and I've got your time paused, Mr. Johns.

We apparently have bells ringing right now, unfortunately. I assume that we have 25 minutes. I'm going to double-check, but if they are, can we have agreement to continue until five minutes before the vote time?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

I'll have your time restarted, Mr. Johns. Don't worry.

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

That's great.

Would they have been eligible to perform the work for the task authorization if they had revealed the true experience that they put on their résumé and sent once to Mr. Firth?

[Cameron MacDonald]

I don't believe so—not under the categories that Mr. Firth presented them in.

I don't validate that. That would have gone through PSPC. It would have gone through CBSA procurement and a procurement team.

I didn't see the CVs. I've never seen the CVs.