Public Accounts Committee on March 6th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have two minutes, Mr. Barrett.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Doan was hired as CTO, chief technology officer, in June 2023. How much in bonuses would he be paid for this year?

[Dominic Rochon]

Decisions around bonuses will not have been made, so I don't have that information.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Doan perjured himself in front of a parliamentary committee. That's “lying” for the uninitiated. Is that the type of thing that disqualifies a CTO from a bonus?

[Dominic Rochon]

I'm not sure how to answer that question in the sense that there are a lot of hypotheticals in the way you've posed it.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

If someone lies to a standing committee of the Parliament of Canada—

[Dominic Rochon]

If you're putting it that way, absolutely.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

They cannot be bonused, then.

[Dominic Rochon]

If it's a hypothetical, I would say yes.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

I'm going to back up there. Would you get fired for that?

[Dominic Rochon]

Quite possibly. It might even be.... I would imagine the RCMP would take an interest in perjuring yourself.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Okay.

Ms. Cahill is nodding her head.

[Karen Cahill]

When employees get their security clearance, there are some criteria, and obtaining a valid security clearance is a condition of employment in the public service. Therefore, should the findings be founded, it could really happen.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Is it known how many emails Mr. Doan deleted?

[Dominic Rochon]

I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with deleted emails.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

You're not familiar with the tens of thousands of documents that it's been alleged Mr. Doan deleted.

[Dominic Rochon]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is the time, Mr. Barrett.

I'll turn to Mrs. Shanahan.

You have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

In the time that I have allotted, I want to address the situation.

Auditor General, in your report regarding ArriveCAN, you make mention in paragraph 1.6 of the report you did in 2021, “Report 15—Enforcement of Quarantine and COVID-19 Testing Orders”, and say, “the government improved the quality of the information that it collected and how quickly it was collected by using the ArriveCAN application rather than a paper-based form.”

What we seem to be hearing specifically from the Conservatives is an ideological objection to the idea of collecting information altogether, yet the value for money here was having a digital form of collecting information versus a paper-based form. Can you please comment on this?

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we're ideologically opposed to not collecting information, which is what they—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Genuis, that is not a point of order. I would ask you to restrain yourself.

Mrs. Shanahan, I have stopped the clock. You have four minutes to go.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you.

I would like the Auditor General to comment on that, because we can all agree that rules were not followed in the procurement of the ArriveCAN contracts to produce ArriveCAN and in following up thereafter. That is certainly evident for all to see, but the value of the ArriveCAN app is greater than the malfeasance we see before us. I'd like to hear the Auditor General on this.

[Karen Hogan]

When it comes to talking about value of ArriveCAN, I would put it into two buckets: the value we saw during the pandemic and the value that would endure should the app continue to be used for automating the immigration and custom declaration forms.

Back in 2021, we did two audits on border measures, recognizing that it was the first time measures like that had been implemented at the border of our country. At the beginning, it was done by paper, and it was taking in some cases 28 days to get information to the Public Health Agency, which was required to follow up on whether people were actually quarantining for 14 days.

The digitization of that form and the automation of what was happening at the border allowed Canada Border Services Agency officers to physically distance, which was important at that time, and to then improve the quality and timeliness of information so that the Public Health Agency could take action and pass it along to provinces, which were also using that information.

Those were some of the findings we had about the value at the beginning. As I mentioned, now the enduring value may be whether the Canada Border Services Agency continues to use it as a measure to automate some of the aspects of crossing into our country.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

That certainly will be important to monitor going forward, but in those early days, when there were no vaccines and no one really knew how to handle this, the only option we had was to quarantine travellers and limit public exposure to COVID. Can we quantify the value of saving lives at that point?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm sorry. I'm unable to do that. I didn't do it at the time, and I would not be able to speculate on whether individuals quarantining had an impact.