Public Accounts Committee on April 3rd, 2024

[Darryl Vleeming]

It is actually surprisingly easy. The reality is that Shared Services Canada is accountable for email and the policies around that. A person can choose to delete their emails. Emails are retained for 30 days—they can't be permanently deleted then—and after that they're deleted.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

It's “surprisingly easy”. I am quite frankly shocked by the fact that the Government of Canada, with all the resources of the state behind it, cannot preserve the emails of someone in a position like Minh Doan's, when there is a criminal investigation going on, and these documents simply disappear. I think that's incredibly concerning.

I want to move on to you, Mr. Hayes. In your opening comments, you echoed many of the concerns that were previously raised by you and the Auditor General about the lack of records, about not having paper trails and about things just not existing.

We received a letter recently from the Department of Public Services and Procurement Canada, the supposed experts on procurement. The assistant deputy minister wrote this:

On February 2, 2017, PSPC awarded a contract to GC Strategies for $24,977.52 through a supply arrangement for professional services to provide business and technical learning to PSPC employees using a new client relationship management system. A search of PSPC systems found references to the contract, including the total amount, however the contract document itself was misplaced during a reorganization and relocation of hard-copy files.

The department that's supposed to be the expert on procurement is losing documents on procurement and on contracts.

What's more, Treasury Board Secretariat, a central agency, wrote to us and said, “On behalf of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat...a NIL response to the expanded motion is provided.” There is no response about GC Strategies, yet the Public Accounts of Canada lists GC Strategies as having received a contract for the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Here we have two key agencies, neither of which can account for its own contracts with GC Strategies. Is that a concern for the Auditor General's office?

[Andrew Hayes]

We would expect that proper books and records are kept on contracts, and on payments made under those contracts, for the full retention periods required by law. Obviously, there are times when hard copies might be misplaced. It's important to find them. We've constantly made recommendations and findings about the importance of good record management and accurate data collection.

Yes, I would express concern over the fact that contract documents can't be located.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nater. That is your time.

Ms. Bradford is joining us virtually.

You have the floor for up to five minutes, please, Ms. Bradford.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for joining us this morning.

Getting back to the executive procurement review committee, who sits on that committee, Mr. Moor?

[Jonathan Moor]

I'm very happy to answer that question. I chaired it for the first eight meetings. The chair has now been taken over by the executive vice-president, because the president wanted to demonstrate her commitment to ensuring that we make these changes and implement the recommendations arising from the recommendations in the two audit reports. It comprises a number of vice-presidents, but also technical specialists from the procurement directorate and a number of other assurance providers, including security and internal audit.

It's a wide-ranging committee with the mandate to challenge all of the proposals coming up and to seek assurance that all of the procurement rules and regulations are being complied with.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

What's the total number of members on the committee?

[Jonathan Moor]

I think it's 10 to 12, depending on the numbers attending.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

How often do they meet?

[Jonathan Moor]

As I said earlier, the idea is to have it weekly. Ultimately, we would like it to become biweekly, but at the moment the volume of activity requires a weekly meeting.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Does the committee review all contracts? How do they decide which ones to look at, if they don't look at all of them?

[Jonathan Moor]

Initially, we set a level of $40,000. Below $40,000, we've delegated authority to the procurement directorate. Anything above $40,000 for contract or task authorizations has to come to committee.

In addition, at the moment, anything above $1 million also has to go to the whole executive committee, which includes the president and the executive vice-president.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Why was the amount of $40,000 chosen as the threshold?

[Jonathan Moor]

That was on the advice of the procurement directorate, based on the level of risk associated with contracts above and below that limit.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

What would happen if the committee were to have concerns about a contract during one of their reviews? What action would be taken?

[Jonathan Moor]

It has already happened a number of times. Normally, the action is to go back and ask additional questions that have to come back with answers. We have seen some contracts come back to the committee two or three times, depending on whether all the questions were answered.

Ultimately, it's an approval committee. If it is not approved by the procurement review committee, it will not go ahead.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Moor, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that about $6 million was spent on non-IT costs for ArriveCAN. Could you explain what kinds of expenses were included in the non-IT amounts?

[Jonathan Moor]

The amount of $6.1 million was spent with Service Canada at their call centre. The call centre was set up to take questions from members of the travelling public. They actually managed over 645,000 calls during the period under review. That was for individuals returning to Canada who may have had questions around ArriveCAN or questions around the vaccine certification or so on.

That's one example of costs not related to IT. We do recognize that the majority of the costs were IT-related.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Moor and Mr. Vleeming, has either of you worked with Minh Doan, Cameron MacDonald or Antonio Utano before?

[Jonathan Moor]

I joined the agency, as I said earlier, in January 2018. Minh Doan was certainly there at the time, so I have worked with him as a colleague on the executive committee.

I had less to do with Cameron MacDonald or Mr. Utano, because they reported directly to Minh Doan, but we did see them occasionally at some executive committee meetings.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Vleeming, what was your interaction with any of these individuals?

[Darryl Vleeming]

I've never worked directly with them at the CBSA. When Mr. Doan was CTO of Canada, I had a number of interactions relevant to that role.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Could you elaborate on those interactions?

[Darryl Vleeming]

The chief technology officer has monthly meetings with all the CIOs around town, which I would have attended as well. Additionally, I did meet with Minh shortly after I joined, just to get a debrief on the ISTB function at CBSA.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Did either of you have any concerns about their conduct with other contractors during the early days of the pandemic and during the development of the ArriveCAN app?