Public Accounts Committee on April 9th, 2024

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Did you do work for Dalian?

[Nicole Foster]

We did work for Dalian.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Did Dalian do work for GC Strategies?

[Nicole Foster]

I don't know if Dalian did work for GC Strategies.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Did you know Dalian did work for the government?

[Nicole Foster]

We were aware the work was for the benefit of CBSA.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Did you at any time say, “Maybe we should contact CBSA directly”?

[Nicole Foster]

That would have been inappropriate.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Do you believe it was more appropriate to work with this company—which was one person—as opposed to working with the body that would issue that task authorization?

[Nicole Foster]

We work with companies of all sizes that produce work. There may be customers of ours that are one person.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Then you do no reviews of customers.

[Nicole Foster]

Of customers...?

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

In this case, you're calling Dalian a customer, so I'm trying to understand your relationship with Dalian.

[Nicole Foster]

No, we do not do due diligence on all of our customers.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

What did you know about Dalian, then, when you accepted the work? Was it that they worked for the government?

[Nicole Foster]

We understood they needed work from us. They contracted us to do work for the benefit of CBSA, and we performed that work.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

You know that, as a public servant, it would be strange. Don't you know that, especially as a person formerly working in this place?

[Nicole Foster]

It's not strange. It's actually extremely normal in the course of our business that a number of—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That's exactly why we have this problem. It's because of the way your company is operating—taking advantage of general contractors, in this case, who are taking advantage of us.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Desjarlais. That is your time. You'll have another opportunity.

I'll turn now to Mr. Barrett.

You have the floor for five minutes.

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

I want to follow up on my colleague's question about Minh Doan, who was the chief information officer accused of destroying documents and records related to Justin Trudeau's $60-million arrive scam. This is something the access to information commissioner is investigating.

Is there any reason that comes to mind why emails and documents from Amazon would be in the destroyed documents?

[Nicole Foster]

I don't have any knowledge of what documents were or weren't destroyed.

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

Can you tell us the total amount in contracts that Amazon has had with the Canada Border Services Agency since 2015?

[Nicole Foster]

I don't know the value of the contracts. However, in the last year, we did approximately $20 million in work for CBSA. We expect that number may fluctuate based on usage of cloud computing.

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

How many active contracts do you currently have with CBSA?