Public Accounts Committee on May 14th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I call this meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to meeting number 121 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Pursuant to the Standing Orders, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other participants in the room of the following important preventive measures.

To prevent disruptive and potentially harmful audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all in-person participants are reminded to keep their earpieces away from all microphones at all times.

The following measures have been taken to prevent audio feedback incidents. The new earpieces are black in colour; please use only these earpieces and not the older, grey ones. By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of the meeting on your desk. When you're not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker for this purpose, which you will find on the table, typically to your right, as indicated. Please consult the cards on your table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.

As you can see, the room layout has been adjusted to increase the distance between microphones and to reduce the chance of feedback from an ambient earpiece. These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, in particular our interpreters.

I thank you all for your co-operation.

As a reminder today, all comments should be addressed to the chair.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), the committee is resuming consideration of Report 1 of the 2024 reports of the Auditor General of Canada, entitled “ArriveCAN”, referred to the committee on Monday, February 12, 2024.

I would like to welcome our witnesses. From the Canada Border Services Agency, we have Erin O'Gorman, president. It's nice to have you back. We also have Chulaka Ailapperuma, director, from the same agency.

You have five minutes for your opening remarks, and then we'll turn to our round of questions.

[Erin O'Gorman, President, Canada Border Services Agency]

Good morning. At my appearance here on February 13, I spoke about the findings of the Auditor General's report and the procurement ombud and how they're informing the actions I had taken to improve procurement processes and financial controls at the Canada Border Services Agency.

As I mentioned, I set up teams to overhaul and strengthen financial controls and project oversight. A new governance system is in place to oversee the approval of all contracts over $40,000.

We've reduced our consulting footprint. At the start of the fiscal year, we had 25 fewer consultants than at the same time last year, and today we have 68 fewer consultants working at the CBSA in the IT branches than we did when I was here in February. We're undertaking this reduction carefully and with purpose, making sure that we transfer knowledge and skills to our internal teams as we go.

However, we must continue to rely on outside expertise. In addition to the CBSA processes to validate the skills of contract resources, individuals working under contract with the agency must also certify their qualifications and experience to support the ongoing assessment of value for taxpayer dollars.

We will also be requiring vendors with active IT service contracts to certify that none of the resources they provide to CBSA are actively employed as public servants who have not disclosed this information. Should it be discovered that this is not the case after they have certified, we will terminate the resource and likely the contract. All CBSA employees will have to validate their conflict-of-interest declarations and will renew these declarations on a recurring basis. In addition, all employees involved in procurement will be required to certify that they do not have conflicts of interest, real, apparent or perceived, relating to individual procurements, at the outset of each process.

The fact remains that we cannot have documentation for all scenarios. That's why I say, trust but verify.

I want to be clear: My working assumption is that, as public servants, we comply with the rules of our workplace. That's why our code of conduct is so important.

On May 6, the CBSA published a refreshed code of conduct for employees at the CBSA. It's been updated to reflect current scenarios with more inclusive language, so that all employees can see themselves in the code. What hasn't changed are the fundamentals of the code: respect, integrity, stewardship and the pursuit of excellence. What also continues to guide us is the important mandate the CBSA has to serve and protect Canadians and the professionalism and dedication with which CBSA employees deliver on this mandate every day across the country and around the world.

Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. We'll now begin our first round of questioning.

Mr. Barrett, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Mr. John Ossowski is the former president of the CBSA. Is that correct?

[Erin O'Gorman]

Yes.

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

Did the CBSA enter into a paid contract with Mr. Ossowski surrounding his testimony on ArriveCAN?

[Erin O'Gorman]

In the federal government, when former public servants are called to testify before commissions of inquiry, in litigation, before the FPSLREB or perhaps at parliamentary committees, it's not uncommon for them to be brought back on a casual contract to facilitate their access to the information and support they need to prepare themselves to testify on behalf of the Crown.

Therefore, I brought him in on a casual contract to facilitate his access to the information that he sought to prepare. That's the convention that I was working under when I made that arrangement. If it turns out that this was not required for him to access the information that he needed, I'll take responsibility for that.

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

Mr. Ossowski left the public service and now works for a big consulting firm. Is that right?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I don't know that he still works there, but I do know that he was working with a consulting firm.

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

Was PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm at which he was working at the time you brought him in on contract to get aligned before he testified at committee, doing any business with the CBSA?

[Erin O'Gorman]

They weren't doing any business.

I'm not sure I understand the comment “get aligned”. He asked for access to documents he'd had when he was in the position of president, to prepare for the—

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

We'll circle back to that, ma'am. The question is this: Does PricewaterhouseCoopers have any contracts with the Canada Border Services Agency?

[Erin O'Gorman]

No.

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

Do they have any contracts with the Government of Canada?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I presume so. I don't know. I know what's happening in the CBSA.

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

How much was Mr. Ossowski paid?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I believe he billed one day for his preparation for testimony, and that was approximately $500.

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

He set the terms of the contract—the price for it.

[Erin O'Gorman]

No. He was brought in at a certain level. I believe it was an EX-1 level, but I'd have to confirm that. Then he signed a letter of offer that included conflict-of-interest declarations and the fact that this would be the mechanism by which we would facilitate his access.

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

What documents did he have access to?

[Erin O'Gorman]

You'll have to ask him. I believe he's appearing on Thursday.

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

I'm asking you, actually. You're the president of the Canada Border Services Agency. You brought in someone who works for a consulting shop that does consulting with the Government of Canada, and you wrote them a cheque. You wanted to get back to this.

I'm very interested in who he met with, so I'm not going to ask Mr. Ossowski. I'm going to ask you who he met with and what he saw, because this is really important. What it looks like to me is that we have a former executive who's involved in a massive scandal, a $60-million scandal, with the department that has investigations that include the RCMP kicking people's front doors in. Therefore, I think it's pretty interesting that he's getting paid by his former employer, and it looks to me like he was getting paid to get his story straight.

Who did he meet with, and what documents did he see? I'm asking you, not Mr. Ossowski.

[Erin O'Gorman]

I don't understand the insinuation about getting stories straight. As I just said, it was to access information that he wanted to review in order to prepare to come and answer the questions of this committee.

I'm not aware that he met with anybody other than the person who was obtaining those documents for him. They were not new documents. They were documents that existed when he was the president.

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

Did any of them require a security clearance?

[Erin O'Gorman]

We validated that he has a security clearance. I don't believe that any of the documents were classified, but again, I didn't review the documents that he accessed. However, I can say that the documents were—