Madam Speaker, I would like to start by taking the time to read the motion the Conservative Party moved today:
That, given that,
(i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living,
(ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer states that 40% of new spending is not related to COVID-19,
(iii) Canadians are now paying higher prices and higher interest rates as a result,
(iv) it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending,
the House call on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and sub-contracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation.
Is anyone else getting that déjà vu feeling today? It is actually “déjà vu” in both official languages. Yes, it is déjà vu, because, once again, here we have a member of the Bloc Québécois rising in the House to ask the Liberal government questions about contracts awarded to party friends, contracts so redolent of collusion that even amateur detectives can identify it in their sleep.
We have just lived through an unprecedented event in our time. The government tried, in good faith, to react to the unknown. Is it any surprise that, in this situation, the age-old reflexes of the Liberal Party of Canada resurfaced? It is illegal but, after all, “a friend is a friend”.
What did the government do? It did the same thing it always does when it does not know what to do: It threw money at the problem, hoping that it would go away. The federal government's management of the airports at the start of the pandemic was shamefully inept. Let us not forget that the City of Montreal had to send its own staff to tell people arriving in Canada that they needed to be careful about bringing in COVID-19. The government did not act quickly enough. It spent untold amounts of money on a shiny new app. It contacted two friends of the Liberal Party directly to take charge of the situation. After all, “a friend is a friend”.
GC Strategies patriotically answered the call. The company said that of course it would help make Canadians safer in these troubled times and that it would find subcontractors capable of coding the app for a modest middleman's fee of 15% to 30% of $9 million.
What were these people thinking? When I worked in the private sector, if I had suggested taking such a big cut simply for acting as an intermediary, I would not have kept my job for very long, but “a friend is a friend”.
I have had the opportunity to work in the private sector, providing institutions in developing countries with training on contracting integrity. I worked in Mexico, Central America, Brazil and Palau, where we helped the finance department improve their contracting process. In any self-respecting country, contracts are awarded only after a rigorous process that prevents cronyism. Obviously, that is not the case in Canada.
In the interest of justice and fairness, the Bloc Québécois believes it is important to ensure that no one profits off of the COVID crisis. As the people of Terrebonne are facing the rising cost of living, it goes without saying that the government's contract-awarding process must be transparent. However, there have been many indications that the process for awarding the ArriveCAN contract was problematic. First of all, GC Strategies was handed an untendered contract. It was actually the government that reached out to the firm, which has only two employees. They did not develop the app, but rather acted as intermediaries for which they made a profit of between $1.3 million and $2.7 million. That is a pretty hefty fee just to be an intermediary.
This is somewhat reminiscent of several other questionable contracts that have been awarded by this same government. Between 2017 and 2020, under the Trudeau government, WE Charity was paid $120,000 across at least five contracts—