Public Accounts Committee on April 3rd, 2024

[Jonathan Moor]

It's a complicated answer to a complicated question.

I think the principle set out in the directives is to always have competition in all of our procurements. Sometimes, however, for reasons of national security, that's not possible. There are also other good reasons, with things like intellectual property rights. It depends on the contract.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay, we understand that national security reasons were invoked during the pandemic. However, in 2023, there wasn't a pandemic anymore, and there wasn't much of an emergency anymore.

Why are so many contracts still being awarded non‑competitively?

[Jonathan Moor]

We have to look at them individually. For example, just recently we approved a national security exemption for biometric data capture, and that was for security reasons. I'm pleased to say that, unlike what happened during COVID, we discussed that national security exemption at the procurement review committee twice before agreeing to it, which we then sent over to PSPC, so we have greater oversight and greater governance on these decisions.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay. Still, it's more than 20%. That's huge. That's a huge number of contracts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars that are awarded non‑competitively, once again. You mentioned an example of a national security argument. You also mentioned that this wasn't always the case, especially today, when the pandemic is behind us. Again, these are huge sums of money.

There are procurement rules, and exceptions are provided, but it's important that they remain exceptions. It becomes problematic when one in four or one in five contracts are non‑competitive. In this case, these are no longer exceptions; the awarding of non‑competitive contracts is practically becoming the norm. I think that's a problem. It's also a problem for a lot of people, because there's no way to demonstrate good value for taxpayers' money.

[Jonathan Moor]

I certainly agree with you that non-competitive contracts do not always—

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Are you going to do anything about it? Will you take a more in‑depth and detailed look at why so many contracts are awarded non‑competitively?

[Jonathan Moor]

We are looking at that through the procurement review committee. One of our first challenges for every single contract we look at is asking why it's going to be non-competitive. As I said before, doing that for reasons of national security was acceptable, but I don't believe the procurement review committee would accept it if there weren't a very strong case.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Moor, you mentioned in our last round of questioning that, although everyone in your ministry is responsible for financial oversight and for ensuring accountability and more responsibility, you were accountable for ensuring that some of the costs here and, most particularly, the transparency and accountability piece with contracts were met.

What level of accountability have you faced given what has taken place, and what changes will you make as you continue this work?

[Jonathan Moor]

As I previously said, we have a very comprehensive procurement improvement plan, which we are now working through to ensure that we deliver improvements, recognizing that—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

How does that hold you accountable?

[Jonathan Moor]

I am accountable for that procurement review plan. I established the procurement review committee, and I have overseen the procurement improvement plan over the last nine months.

I'm also looking very extensively—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Can you see the problem, though, Mr. Moor, with having you do this work, particularly considering the fact that so much of the basic information regarding this work couldn't be found? It's reasonable to suggest that Canadians might not have trust in the internal systems you're creating, considering how, for a very long time in CBSA, this information wasn't always up to par. We see that particularly in the governance structure, for example.

The governance structure was lacking between Public Services and Procurement Canada and CBSA. We heard from Public Services and Procurement Canada that at the time, they didn't know who was responsible for what. It's likely, we can assume, that if they didn't know that and they were your contracting partner, your ministry also didn't know that. Is that correct?

[Jonathan Moor]

No, that is not correct. It was very clear who the technical authorities on all of those contracts were.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That's not what Public Services and Procurement Canada said though.

Who is right? Who are we to believe, Public Services and Procurement Canada or you?

[Jonathan Moor]

I do not think we're disagreeing. I think it's clear what the responsibilities of the contracting authority are and what the responsibilities of the technical and project—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

The Auditor General herself said:

In our examination of contracting practices, we saw little documentation to support how and why the Canada Border Services Agency initially awarded GC Strategies the ArriveCAN contract through a non-competitive process. Only one potential contractor submitted a proposal, and that proposal did not come from GC Strategies.

Can you explain that?

[Jonathan Moor]

I think that is partly subject to the internal investigation review, which I can't comment on because I do not know how that has progressed. I think there was also a wider recommendation arising out of our action plan about knowledge management systems and how we record.

As I said before, employees at all levels are responsible for documenting, but there's still a lot of work for us to do to ensure that that's happening. That's why—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

But how could you not see that as mismanagement?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is your time, I'm afraid. It is my intention to give you one more slot before we wrap up today. We're still working on that.

Mr. Brock, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Moor, I am so grateful you're part of the panel with the Auditor General. In fact, you're sitting right next to Mr. Hayes, the deputy auditor general.

Last week, exactly a week ago, I asked you a question and you couldn't answer it. I want to know why you deliberately—your agency, CBSA, not you personally—misled and lied to the Auditor General when saying that GC Strategies provided a proposal for the initial contract to work with CBSA. That's what CBSA confirmed to the Auditor General, and the Auditor General confirmed that this was, in fact, false.

Here's your opportunity, as a representative of CBSA, to come clean to Canadians and to members of this committee. Why did you mislead the Auditor General?

[Jonathan Moor]

As a representative of the CBSA, I do not believe the CBSA misled the Auditor General. There were different choices at that time, and one of the choices was to have a project developed in-house using staff augmentation, which was the GC Strategies—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

I'll stop you right there. Are you suggesting that the Auditor General simply got it wrong? They looked for a proposal on the initial contract with CBSA that you said you had in your possession from GC Strategies, and they confirmed it wasn't there.

[Jonathan Moor]

Well, I think what you're referring to is missing documentation, which I think has been subject to a number of different inquiries. Lots of different people have been looking for the documentation, and part of the investigation is to see whether the documentation is missing because of COVID or because of something—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Firth of GC Strategies, when he attended a few weeks ago, refused to answer questions regarding his involvement in the $25-million IT service contract, stating that responding to that question would somehow jeopardize the RCMP investigation.

We know through the Auditor General's report, which I'm sure you have read, that GC—Government of Canada—Strategies was directly involved in the drafting of the narrow terms of that $25-million IT service contract.