Evidence of meeting #122 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was documents.
A video is available from Parliament.
10:45 a.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
I'm a recent member of this committee, and I know many questions have been asked on this issue.
Mr. Ossowski, in terms of your professional background, how long have you been working in the public service?
10:45 a.m.
As an Individual
I spent just over 32 years in the government. I worked as a deputy minister, in the deputy minister ranks, for 10 years, serving both the Conservative and Liberal parties.
10:45 a.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
You have served under both administrations in a deputy minister role?
10:45 a.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Ossowski, and thank you for your service to the Government of Canada and, obviously, its citizens.
In terms of your experience in going into when the pandemic happened, obviously it was what we call a once-in-a-lifetime event, hopefully not to be repeated any time soon. In terms of the challenges of ramping down and then ramping up and the staffing challenges that you saw and obviously were intricately involved in just because of the nature of what was happening, can you comment on that with regard to the early days of the pandemic and what you were seeing?
10:45 a.m.
As an Individual
You know, when you go back and look at your emails, you see the complexity of the environment that was happening at the time.
As I mentioned, we had to deal with fear in our own workforce around our frontline officers and the exposure that they might have despite their training. There were a lot of unknowns, and there was a lot of hesitancy in terms of what was coming. We were constantly readjusting our resources. We were shutting down the largest unprotected border in the world. It took a lot of effort to coordinate with our U.S. colleagues to make sure that there would be continued flow of food, medicine and supplies in and out of the country. It required a great deal of co-operation from everybody involved, and it was a hands-on, 24-7 environment until we faced whatever the next change was that was happening.
There was remarkable flexibility on behalf of the workforce and all of my colleagues in other departments to do the best we could. There was no playbook.
In fact, I was reading in the paper today about fears of avian flu and another potential pandemic. I hope there were a lot of lessons learned here in terms of what the future might hold for us in terms of how we would respond to a situation like that.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Of course, sometimes we need to remind ourselves that nearly 60,000 Canadians died of COVID-19 during the pandemic. It behooves us to remember that we needed the government to marshal all the resources via the various agencies, including the CBSA, to protect Canadians and to protect our economy so that we could snap back out as soon as possible and ramp back up, which we did.
Mr. Ossowski, much mention has been made of your role in the CBSA and in terms of meeting with vendors, third party suppliers. There's an RFP, which goes out at all levels of government and stuff. How would you characterize when you would meet or not meet with contractors and subcontractors? Would it be only within the work purview, or would it be outside of the work purview?
10:50 a.m.
As an Individual
Certainly, it was only ever in the work purview unless there was some sort of event that I was at where vendors were present. In terms of people pitching me, that happened very infrequently to me directly. Usually that was handled within other parts of the organization.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Ossowski.
In terms of the rollout of the ArriveCAN app and that app process, is there anything in hindsight that you think we could have done differently regarding the development oversight of the application?
10:50 a.m.
As an Individual
First of all, it's important to understand...and the Auditor General said that it was reasonable to go and get outside help at the beginning. This procurement vehicle that we used was the only option that was available to us. Speed was of the essence. It was the quickest way to ramp up our capacity to deliver a very simple app at the beginning to replace a piece of paper with people's basic tombstone information—biographical information.
As you've heard from others, in retrospect, yes, there should have been financial coding set up right at the very beginning so that we could track the expenses more carefully. However, I want to remind the committee that, as I said in my opening remarks, all the rules were in place. It appears, unfortunately, that they were not always followed. I make no excuses for the lack of documentation and the other things that the Auditor General found in her study. That's not acceptable. That should not have happened. I'm sure that, as we move forward, the agency is putting in measures to make sure that doesn't happen again.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
10:50 a.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Ossowski, I will continue on that last point. While you were the CBSA president, the Auditor General issued a devastating finding: All CBSA's expenditures were poorly documented, public funds were mismanaged, there was a general lack of basic information and some public servants engaged in questionable practices. All this happened while you were the CBSA president.
Do you believe that you did a good job as head of the CBSA?
10:55 a.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Right.
If you were in my shoes, would you think I was right in saying that the CBSA president didn't do his job during those years, particularly at that time, given everything we now know thanks to the Auditor General's report?
10:55 a.m.
As an Individual
Obviously, as the person responsible for the day-to-day agency, responsible to the minister of the day for the running of the agency, in hindsight, yes, there are lessons learned. If I could roll back the clock, there would be some changes, but I remain proud of the work that I did and that my team did during the pandemic.
10:55 a.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Let's move on to an interesting subject, which is the awarding of non‑competitive contracts. In that respect, ArriveCAN is only the tip of the iceberg.
When the CBSA was under your leadership, the number of contracts awarded to companies and consulting firms exploded, as did the number of non‑competitive contracts. At the end of your tenure, nearly 20% of all contracts were awarded on a non‑competitive basis, which is high.
Were you aware of that? Otherwise, how did the CBSA lose control of the situation?
10:55 a.m.
As an Individual
I have no recollection of the percentages of contracts that were awarded competitively or non-competitively. Obviously, if something is valued under whatever the threshold is—I think it's $25,000—
10:55 a.m.
Bloc
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, your time is up.
Next is Ms. Blaney.
You have the floor for two and a half minutes, please.
10:55 a.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I found it interesting.... Mr. Ossowski just said that he is proud of the work that happened around the app.
It is shocking to me that this would be your testimony. I understand that it was also your previous testimony at OGGO.
It's an app that cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars, and now we're spending a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of this. If that is your opinion, I'm just curious.... You talked about doing things differently if you could go back. What would you change if you could restart this process?
10:55 a.m.
As an Individual
There was no choice but to develop an app. It was clear that the Public Health Agency needed a better way to collect this information. I am proud of the way the agency responded.
Obviously, I'm basing it on what I knew then versus what is being revealed now. The app was still the right answer to the challenge we had. It facilitated our ability to manage the border, and it will continue to facilitate, in its new form, legitimate travel and trade across the country. Other countries are using similar approaches. In terms of how it was...what was spent, that's the debate of the procurement system, and people are looking at that in terms of how to manage that better. However, it was the only option available to us at the time—to procure these outside resources to help us build the app.