Government Operations Committee on Nov. 14th, 2023

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Then someone came to you and said, “We have the option of fully outsourcing to Deloitte, or we have the option of a partial outsourcing solution, but we're not going to tell you what company is involved,” and then you made the decision. Is that how it happened?

[Minh Doan]

About 10 days before this started, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. About five days—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Sir, that's not what we're talking about at all. Could you answer my question?

[Minh Doan]

This is an important context. Five days later, Canada closed its borders. Four days later, we unprecedentedly closed the border with the United States.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Sir, you're already accused of lying to this committee. I think it's in your interest to be forthright and direct, and you have an obligation to be forthright and direct in any event.

Is my description of events correct? Specifically, when presented with this choice, you were given either fully outsourced to Deloitte or this partially outsourced solution in which they didn't tell you what company was involved, and you made the decision in the absence of that information. Is that what you're claiming?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Give a very quick answer, Mr. Doan.

[Minh Doan]

The decision wasn't to partially outsource. It was staff augmentation, and it was to build an app to replace a form. That was all it was. It was not a $54-million decision. We didn't know that simple app would become—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Sir, you're not answering my question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is our time, gentlemen.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, I would ask you to call the witness to order on this point. He has an obligation to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is our time. Perhaps on your next round we can get to that.

Thanks very much.

Mr. Jowhari, please go ahead for five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming today, Mr. Doan.

You were presented with an option to fully outsource as opposed to staff augmentation using existing cloud and existing code. Can you explain the existing code piece that you were talking about?

[Minh Doan]

The CBSA, at the time, already had an application called “eDec”, which is short for eDeclaration, so we had some basic understanding of mobile development. Now, I won't pretend eDeclaration was anything near ArriveCAN in terms of complexity. Part of the work we're doing on innovation, following direction from Treasury Board, is to start experimenting with cloud and to do more things on cloud, given the different benefits and the security that it brings.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

There was existing code based on something you had.... I think that's the one that cost about $80,000 to start with. Am I...?

[Minh Doan]

For the first version of ArriveCAN, to replace a simple paper form, yes, it cost $80,000.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's subsequently about $6.9 million to implement all the 70 changes that came over the two-year period.

[Minh Doan]

This is where it becomes the $54 million, but that $54 million is misleading. Only a part of that number, to your point, was actually for application development.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I want to go back and talk about your knowledge of the suppliers. Who would provide those services? Would it be Apple or Deloitte, and would it be part of an outsource approach or a combination of outsource and staff augmentation, as you call it?

Where did the name Deloitte come in?

[Minh Doan]

To my understanding, Deloitte was contacted by Mr. MacDonald to very quickly come up with a proposal.

When I say quickly, it was about 24 hours. The pandemic was there. We needed a solution quickly, so there was a proposal there. I've included it in the material.

The proposal was very rudimentary. It's basically mock-ups of what the screen could look like and where it could eventually go.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Deloitte was asked—your claim is that it was by Mr. MacDonald—to put out a proposal within 24 hours.

[Minh Doan]

To be clear, I don't know who contacted whom first. At that time, as CIO, I was getting approached by every single vendor—like IBM, Accenture and others—with offers to help deal with this global pandemic.

Did Deloitte reach out to Mr. MacDonald? Did Mr. MacDonald reach out to Deloitte? This was happening so fast that I'm not sure anybody knows for sure.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

There is a claim that you told Mr. MacDonald to go with GC Strategies as Deloitte was in the penalty box due to a very large project being off track.

Is this a true statement?

[Minh Doan]

As I've said many times, I picked a direction. I did not pick GC Strategies. I did not name them. I did not ask them for a proposal.

In terms of Deloitte being in the penalty box, my decision on this was not about what they were doing with us on a different project. My concern was this: It was fully outsourced to a third party, and sensitive data wouldn't be on our cloud—it would be on their cloud. The decision was about the lack of flexibility and the lack of agility, which is why I preferred staff augmentation instead of a fully outsourced solution on something so mission critical.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Is it fair to say that you at no point made reference to Mr. MacDonald, directly or indirectly, about not extending the contract to Deloitte or not going with outsourced solutions with Deloitte, as Deloitte was in the penalty box for something? In your mind, that conversation never took place.

[Minh Doan]

I don't recall using the term “penalty box”. I don't watch a lot of sports. That's not a term that would be very familiar to me.

In terms of extending the contract that we have with Deloitte, that would have been another project led by another vice-president. I would not have that decision.