Public Accounts Committee on May 30th, 2024

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

There was no board of directors. It was a partnership. It wasn't a corporation.

Let's move on to the other checks.

[Imraan Bashir]

My understanding is that they look for any public lawsuits, adverse media attention or things of that nature.

However, Ms. Lee, please, if I'm missing anything in our....

[Lydia Lee]

That's right. That's correct.

[Imraan Bashir]

At that given time, given that these are point-in-time assessments, nothing of concern was raised.

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

A leading multinational consulting firm exercises the bare minimum of due diligence to determine that you are legitimately dealing with an IT company that lied to you. Don't you recognize the problems inherent with what you just stated to me? Don't you think that you need to revamp your investigative measures to determine who you're actually dealing with?

[Lydia Lee]

If I may, Mr. Chair, I want to comment on the testimony from Hartaj the last time we were here. He was referring to the client engagement and the engagement acceptance process that we go through for every single project that we do, which is the—

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

Ms. Lee, that's fine. This is my time. I have some other questions to ask of you.

Mr. Utano asked you to deal specifically with GC Strategies in the virtual meeting that you had with him. Is that correct?

[Imraan Bashir]

That's correct.

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

Did he say why?

[Imraan Bashir]

At that time, my understanding was that he was exploring a variety of procurement options—

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

He didn't give you any other companies to deal with. He didn't say that you could deal with GC Strategies or with Dalian or with Coradix, and that you could choose. He just said that he wanted you to work with GC Strategies. Is that correct?

[Imraan Bashir]

That's correct. At the time, we were exploring going out to full RFP, using the CEPS vehicle or using GC Strategies. Those were the three options.

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

That's the first time that you had ever, working with the Government of Canada, worked with a contractor that wasn't directly the Government of Canada. Isn't that fair to say?

[Imraan Bashir]

For me, personally, that was my first time, but as our written response stated, our firm has subcontracted in the past with approximately 13 companies.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is is your time.

We'll turn now to Mrs. Shanahan for five minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for appearing here today.

I regret the accusatory nature of some of the questions that you have been subjected to here today. I also apologize for your having been subjected to some housekeeping that I did earlier, but I firmly believe that members of Parliament should be held to the same standard that they expect contractors, employees and the public who have dealings with taxpayer money to be held to. That was the nature of my interventions earlier. We can see that it was shut down for today, but it may be revisited at another time.

In the meantime, I would like to ask you about the Auditor General's report.

Were you—and I think someone did answer this—contacted by the Auditor General's office during the writing of the report, Ms. Lee?

[Lydia Lee]

KPMG was contacted, I think, a week in advance of the publication of the Auditor General's report to confirm some of the facts that were documented in the report. As I said before and will say again, we read the report, understood all the findings and co-operated fully.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Very good. You were able to confirm the facts.

When the report was issued, did you learn anything? Was there anything in that report concerning KPMG that you were not aware of?

[Lydia Lee]

Thank you for the member's question.

We learned only one thing, which was that she documented that there was no documentation. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was to the effect that there was no documentation or rationale provided by the Public Health Agency for the direct award to KPMG after the original CEPS contracting.

Our understanding is that the Public Health Agency actually spoke with their internal procurement folks to provide that rationale. We were not given access to any of that documentation, nor were we part of any of those conversations.

That was the only thing that stood out for us that was different from what we understood happened.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

You were not contacted after the report came out about any follow-up or providing any additional documents.

[Lydia Lee]

We were not. That's correct.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

All right. The same question is goes to Donna Cona and Mr. Dowdall.

Were you contacted about the Auditor General's report prior to the report coming out?

[Barry Dowdall]

Yes. Prior to the release of the report, we received a very brief email, stating that the report would show that we did three million dollars' worth of services work on ArriveCAN. We responded back, after we had gone through our time sheets, and said that, from our records, we believed that number was probably in the range of $500,000. We reported that back.

We didn't hear anything after that. We had no other contact after that with the AG.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Once the report was released, was that when you learned that the number of $3 million was still there?

[Barry Dowdall]

Yes.