Government Operations Committee on Jan. 18th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes, keep speaking a bit longer, please, Mr. Bains. Tell us about how the Vancouver Canucks are doing this year.

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

We are very proud to send five members of the Vancouver Canucks to the all-star game, and it looks like we have a Norris candidate in Quinn Hughes. It looks like we're going to have to pay a lot of money to Elias Pettersson.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, Mr. Bains. Just bear with us for a couple of moments while we check with the translation booth.

We're going to suspend for a couple of moments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Colleagues, we're going to now switch over to Mr. Jowhari because we still have to work out some IT issues with Mr. Bains.

We'll start with a full five minutes with you, Mr. Jowhari. Thank you very much.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ossowski, I'm going to go back to you. You were reflecting on your observations and what you noticed when you were going through a number of emails. You were talking about the outreach to you around various requirements from various provinces and all of those things. Can you expand on that? Had we not gone with ArriveCAN the way we did, what would potentially have been the impact?

[John Ossowski]

When I was looking through my emails, the best way I would describe it—and the memories that were refreshed—is that the airports were clogged with people trying to fill out paper forms. People then had garbage bags full of these paper forms, and they'd have to digitize them so that the information could be passed to the provinces.

You might recall that, at some point, provinces were looking at checking in on people to see if they were okay. They were trying to make sure that they were enforcing mandatory isolation. Initially, it was done on a sampling basis, and then it moved to something more persistent. I think the initial piece at the airport, as well, was complicated because you had all these people getting off an airplane all at the same time, and they were concerned, quite frankly, of a superspreading event happening while they were waiting, doing the paper process.

It was logical to sort of look for some way to capture this information in advance, if possible. There was a web-based version of this, as well, for people who didn't have a mobile app so that we could capture that very simple information, give it to the provinces, and also allow the Public Health Agency of Canada to do the analytics—to say, “This person came from this country. This is what variant that turned out to be, following the testing.” It was much more sophisticated and much more effective than a paper process.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

So, the reference to a $54-million boondoggle is not really true. Can you share with us—if you know it—the dollar cost of the development of the application?

[John Ossowski]

I don't have those details, but I remember your asking me a similar question on December 8, 2022, when I first appeared. I think that, at the time, the estimate was that the processing of a paper form was about $3 per form and that the application was.... I think we talked about 60 million people using the application or 60 million travellers. That worked out to about 65 cents per form.

I want to take the opportunity, if I may, in terms of the cost of this.... Unlike all of the other references that this committee has heard on what an app costs to develop, we did not know the requirements at the time. We did not have the luxury of weeks of thinking about how we wanted to situate this, what the true business requirements were, and what data we had.

As you can appreciate from my remarks, what we were dealing with was a million different things at once, quite frankly. This constantly evolved as we brought in new measures, and the Public Health Agency, along with our provincial counterparts, tried to prevent the spread of the disease based on what was coming into the country. That's where we tried to help them. These references that we could have done an app cheaper than this.... It was not the same situation by any means whatsoever.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

As a reference for the committee, I believe the development cost of the application, with 70 different iterations that were coming in rapid fire, was about $9 million. Therefore, the reference that this application has cost $54 million in development is not factually correct.

Ms. O'Gorman, in your opening remarks, you talked about the fact that the investigation led to information that you shared with other department heads and that they then made the decisions that they made. Also, some of our colleagues on the opposite side refer to the statement that you provided as not a true statement.

Madam O'Gorman, can you tell us why you asked for an in camera meeting as opposed to a public meeting?

[Erin O'Gorman]

As I said, I'm trying to balance information that this committee is seeking with the integrity of an investigation that remains ongoing and that hasn't heard from key individuals. I am anxious for that to conclude, and I'm very conscious of not prejudicing that investigation.

The CBSA conducts internal investigations, and individuals who have been subject to those investigations have talked to me about how stressful those can be, whether they are respondents or even witnesses. I can't imagine the stress that would cause somebody who is subject to an investigation with such a public profile.

I'm concerned about people's mental health. I would like the investigation to have the space to conclude, and I would like to protect its integrity. Those are the reasons why I asked.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jowhari, thank you for your flexibility.

Ms. Vignola, you're next for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. O'Gorman, to your knowledge, have any government officials or senior public servants put pressure on or threatened reprisals against people who testified before this committee, such as Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Utano and Ms. Dutt? Have there been any legal notices or requests of that nature?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I don't have that information.

I think we should know the facts at the end of an investigation. I know that different information was presented in the testimony.

I was concerned by that.

I'm not sure that I understand what whistles are being blown, and I want to get to the bottom of what happened. I have trust in the investigation, and I look forward to it concluding.

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

If there was any pressure, it was beyond your control and knowledge. People would have acted on their own initiative.

[Erin O'Gorman]

Yes, indeed.

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

During your investigation, did you ask internally to meet with all the players involved, such as Botler AI?

[Erin O'Gorman]

You're asking me if—

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

As part of the internal investigation, was there a request for a meeting, perhaps not from you, but from someone else?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I believe Botler AI was asked to provide information, but I don't know if the team asked to meet with its representatives.

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

I'd like to talk about the language requirements in the contract applications I've read. I'm told that everything is done in English in IT, but these applications state that people will have to work in English only. When French is mentioned, which doesn't happen very often, it's in the conditional tense. They say that people may have to work in both languages. So it's not even French that would be required, but bilingualism, while English is mandatory.

Do Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish or Russian programmers only program in English too, or can there be experts who speak other languages?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid you didn't leave enough time for an answer, but perhaps you could get back to that in the next round.

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

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

Ms. O'Gorman, can you please tell me the date on which CBSA officials commenced the internal investigation into Botler's allegations, as well as the date on which the Botler task authorization was cancelled?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I'll have to get back.... The investigation was late in fall—in November, I believe. I don't know the exact date and I don't know when the task authorization was cancelled. That was before I was at the agency.

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

I thought Mr. MacDonald said that the investigation started in January, but I'll go to the next question.

I have a few questions about Mr. MacDonald's claims that the CBSA was covering his and Mr. Utano's legal fees. When did CBSA begin covering their fees with private legal counsel? Who made that decision, and does this include legal fees related to the RCMP investigation for MacDonald and Utano?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I'm going to speak generally about covering legal fees. There are criteria in terms of determining whether legal fees should be covered. The criteria are different for appearances before parliamentary committees and for legal investigations. Any requests that I received to cover legal fees were consistent with the policy.