Public Accounts Committee on April 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I hope that was somewhat helpful.

I think we'll pick this up again in the subcommittee.

Ms. Foster, as a start, it's publicly available, but could you submit the contract that is available, nonetheless? If we have further questions, we'll come back to you.

Is that fair enough, for a start?

[Nicole Foster]

It's very simple to perform that. I'm happy to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'm sorry. There's one more request I'd like to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Through the Chair, it is for the correspondence related to the tasks of Dalian and the outcomes or deliverables related to the work that Amazon Web Services had done that are directly cited in the task authorizations.

For any relevant information that Dalian, through a task authorization, then off-loaded to the work of Amazon, we need to know what that work is.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'd be curious to get an answer from Ms. Foster, but we might have to circle back around.

Is that something you could provide?

[Nicole Foster]

We don't operate under a task authorization system, so no, we wouldn't be able to produce it. It's not how our work is engaged.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's all.

Thank you.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Is there no other communication between them and Dalian?

[Nicole Foster]

I would have to see what we still have. The work we did with Dalian was over five years ago now.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I think it would be important to see the information.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Desjarlais, let's discuss it in subcommittee business.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Foster has proven to be a candid witness today.

If we have questions, we'll get back to you and we'll see where we end up.

I do hear what you're saying about the timeline. I'd rather have a longer discussion when we're not on the clock. I have two more members to ask questions. Your concerns have been flagged. We will certainly discuss it and we'll see where it goes.

Is that all right for now, Mr. Desjarlais? Your concerns have been raised and noted.

I'll turn now to Mr. Genuis, who is the second-last member. Mr. Chen will finish up for the day.

You have the floor for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Foster, I want to ask you about the contracts that Amazon had with Dalian. You had said earlier that they were worth $1.1 million in total.

Were all of these contracts ones for which CBSA was the ultimate beneficiary of the work?

[Nicole Foster]

Yes. The initial program of work was really related to a migration that had nothing to do.... They needed assistance—

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

I understand they were distinct from ArriveCAN.

[Nicole Foster]

They needed assistance with migrating workloads to the cloud. That support was provided.

It is less than $100,000 of work that we can identify as being related to ArriveCAN. It was a very minimal amount of work.

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

It was migrating services to the cloud for Dalian, for which CBSA was the ultimate beneficiary.

Were there multiple companies working for Dalian on these projects or were you basically the ones providing that work for Dalian?

[Nick Markou]

On this one, we would have no line of sight on who Dalian was working with outside of us.

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

For the specific project, you didn't have a line of sight on any other companies involved. They received a contract for CBSA to do what, in general? Was it to do that same migration?

[Nick Markou]

We don't know specifically what their contract with CBSA was for.

In the case of this migration piece of work, we just had our own contract. We were not working with any other firms at the time and had no visibility.

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

These were CBSA files or CBSA information. It wasn't Dalian's internal files. It was CBSA's information that you were moving to the cloud as part of a contract that you had with Dalian.

Is that correct?

[Nick Markou]

It was CBSA workloads.