Evidence of meeting #105 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbsa.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
Mr. Barrett, you have the floor for four minutes, please.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Jamil Jivani, who is a common-sense Conservative from Durham, was elected in a landslide victory. He received an absolute majority, with a whopping 57% of the popular vote. His nearest rival, who only eked out 22.5% of the vote, had a visit from the PSPC minister to help him get that 22%. I don't know what help he got from the PSPC minister, and I have a question for our witness about that. I am excited that Mr. Jivani, of course, is going to help common-sense Conservatives axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Mr. Richard, when you were a financial adviser at PSPC, you obviously gained quite an understanding of operations in that department. The former minister for PSPC, new to her role in the summer of 2022, claimed that she was never briefed on ArriveCAN and had no information. It cost $60 million or so, and there are thousands if not tens of thousands of pages of documents that we believe have been destroyed. We aren't able to prove they existed because the Auditor General can't get her hands on them.
Is it believable that a minister wouldn't have been briefed on this? If so, would it tell you that it was deliberate that the information wasn't briefed to the minister? How does it come to pass that a project of this nature wouldn't have been presented to the minister?
5:30 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
Was she briefed on it or not? I couldn't speak to that.
I can tell you that if my members detect any anomalies or anything that needs to be raised, they'll raise it. They don't necessarily raise it to the minister's level, because there are many layers before we get there.
Again, we don't represent executives. However, we represent members and financial professionals. It is their duty and responsibility, if they are presented with information that makes no sense to them, to escalate it. They wouldn't do it directly and skip three or four levels. There is a chain of command we have to respect.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Some of the information we know now has been accumulated over nearly two years, since this was first escalated and raised by Conservatives, so your members would have seen some of this information. Would any of that get fed into their reporting workflow and what they've understood to come to pass? That information would then get passed up to their managers and to the ADM, DM and minister.
What's the formal process? Because it's only coming out through reports from independent officers to Parliament, does it only go to the minister, and your members don't interact with the information?
5:30 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
Generally speaking, if we were to follow the formal process of how things are supposed to operate, my members would have been involved on the front end, not the back end. Then, had they seen anomalies.... Maybe they were involved and they didn't see any anomalies. However, based on the survey we did, I can tell you that for this project, a lot more of our members should have said, “Yes, we were consulted and we were involved.”
Based on the limited available information I have based on the survey we did, I can tell you that not enough of our members were consulted or kept apprised of the situation throughout this process.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much. That is your time.
Ms. Khalid, you will round us out with four minutes, please.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
To go back to something my colleague said about the Durham election, 27% of the population voted, out of which 57% were so greatly voting for.... I forget the candidate's name; I'm sorry—
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Jamil Jivani is the next MP for Durham. He mopped the floor with the Liberal.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Please turn your microphone off. It is my turn. I didn't interrupt you.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much.
It really says how much misinformation is propagated through the Conservatives. Right now—and I'm sure they'll make a clip out of it—they say X, Y and Z, and they did this and they did that, with corruption and all of that. Over the past 24 hours, I've had to deal with a lot of hate mail with a lot of threats to my person based on disinformation spread by the Conservatives.
I'm leading into a question here.
When we propagate the disinformation that oftentimes our Conservative members are leading with, whether it's respect to vaccines, the purpose of the ArriveCAN app, how our CBSA operates or how our public service operates, how do members deal with that? What kind of punishment do they receive from the disinformation the Conservatives love to spread about them?
5:35 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
I'm not sure I get the question there. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? I'm not sure I follow the question.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Let me ask you this. How do disinformation campaigns impact the members you serve, the members of our CBSA and our public service, whether in relation to anti-vaccine campaigns or arrive scam campaigns—whatever they call it—when they're dealing with the general public in providing a service to Canadians?
5:35 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
I can say this. Whatever happens in the media or at a political level finds its way down to our members. Remember, our members are in the trenches. They're not senior management; they're the doers of the work. They see the numbers, the financial statements.
It can sometimes be difficult to tie what we are trying to achieve at a very high level with what they're saying. We're saying that we believe in integrity, that values are important, that we need to do due diligence and have value for money. However, when we see a report like the one from the Auditor General, it makes our members very frustrated because this whole thing could have been prevented had we just adhered to the existing financial framework.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I just want to clarify.
Could it have been prevented...in that we spent too much money, that this app was a waste of time or that COVID was a conspiracy? Where are we on the spectrum here?
5:35 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
I couldn't speak to the amount of money, to how much this should have cost. All I can tell you is that basic fundamentals in accounting best practices were not respected. At the end of the day, had our members been allowed to do their jobs, all of this wouldn't have happened.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Do you think Mr. Trudeau was the reason your members were not able to have their due diligence done on this app?
5:35 p.m.
President, Association of Canadian Financial Officers
I don't know who is accountable. There's not enough evidence to suggest.... Again, we would normally follow the paper trails, but unfortunately there are no paper trails.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
That is the time.
Thank you very much, Mr. Richard, for coming in today and for staying a bit late.
I'm now out of resources.
This meeting is adjourned.