Mr. Speaker, when my flight was landing last night, at about 10 o'clock, I got a text from our party saying it wanted me to speak on a concurrence debate. I said, “Which debate?” It said, “The scandal”, so of course my first reaction was, “What scandal?”
Was it the green slush fund scandal, where the government was funnelling $400 million to Liberal insiders, and where board members and executives admitted they purposely ignored conflict of interest issues? Today in public accounts, we had the vice-president from SDTC, and she is also on the executive of the SDTC. She stated she knew about the conflicts, but that it was not her job to do anything about them. She knew for years about the conflicts, but she stated that they were someone else's job to deal with. Then, the Liberals moved a motion to kill the study. Before we could even debate the motion, they moved a further motion to move the debate in camera, so they could hide their closure motion and the debate from Canadians.
Here we have a privilege debate that has been tying up Parliament for eight weeks now. The Liberals are trying to kill the study as well. We also found out that this would stop the industry minister and the environment minister from appearing before the public accounts committee on the green slush fund, even though they had been called months ago to attend. They are both refusing.
Of course, the environment minister, as we are aware, owned shares of a company called Cycle Capital, one of the companies that his friend, who is a founder and co-owner, used to bilk taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars, despite having a clear conflict of interest. However, that was okay because the minister's partner said that she and the minister only benefited a little from the corruption. It was only several hundred dollars.
I want to read from the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act. It states in subsection 12(2) that “no director shall profit or gain any income or acquire any property from the Foundation or its activities.”
Here we have the minister of environment's partner violating the act itself, and the Liberals voted to shut down the motion. The minister of environment and his partners stuff their pockets with taxpayers' money, and the Liberals moved to stop the investigation, but it turns out that was not the scandal we wanted to talk about today.
I wondered if it was the sister scandal of the green slush fund, the net-zero accelerator, where the government gave $8 billion to corporations it turns out were not eligible. Canadian dollars actually went to a company that produces cars with Uyghur slave labour. This company has also been named as a war sponsor for Putin's war against Ukraine for supporting Russian finances, but the government gave money to it through the net-zero accelerator. I have great news for Canadians: They are subsidizing Putin's war against Russia thanks to the government.
We also found out that a company receiving money from the net-zero accelerator is being sued right now because it was using the money to pay off ISIS. Canadian taxpayers' money is going to a multi-billion dollar international company that is diverting the money to ISIS so it can operate in Syria. However, it was not that scandal.
Perhaps it is the “other Randy” scandal, where the former minister of employment continued to do business with shady business partners while in cabinet when, of course, the rules say he cannot. Of course, he denied that and blamed the other Randy, perhaps the same other Randy who claimed indigenous status to bid on government business contracts and the same other Randy whose business shared an address with someone who was tied up in cocaine trafficking. Stephen Anderson, the other Randy's partner, is probably somewhere out there expressing extreme disappointment in his choice of business partners, but it was not that scandal either.
The scandal I was being asked to speak to, of course, was ArriveCAN, where the Liberal government paid millions to well-connected shady middlemen for nothing, to do no work, for an app that did not work. It was an $80,000 app that ballooned to about $60 million, and we do not know how much more. The Auditor General cannot even track how much because of the poor record-keeping. For this app, the government paid GC Strategies, a well-connected duo, $15 million to merely outsource the work to other consultants.
What was the Liberal reaction when we first brought up this egregious use of taxpayers' money? We had the government claiming that we were vaccine deniers if we thought ArriveCAN was a waste of money. There was nothing about the warnings of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money going out the door, nothing about the shoddy oversight and nothing about companies writing their own requirements for sole source contracts to be given to them. No, if we were disagreeing with any of it, we were anti-vaxxers.
Apparently, the Auditor General, to the government, is an anti-vaxxer. If we were concerned, of course, about cost overruns, insiders getting rich and an app that sent 10,000 people into quarantine in error, yes, we were vaccine deniers. The app error that sent the 10,000 people, by the way, was not even checked to see if it was working correctly before it was released by the government. In committee, CBSA admitted that it did not even check the update to see if it worked before sending all those people in.
When people got angry and started confronting the government about this, it changed its mind. It was no longer calling us a vaccine denier if we had a problem with ArriveCAN. It was that ArriveCAN was saving lives.
The member for Mount Royal said, “Madam Speaker, we will not apologize for an app that saved lives. [It] was put in place at the beginning of [COVID].” We had the member for Oakville North—Burlington say that it saved lives. The member for Eglinton—Lawrence, when he was minister, said that it saved thousands of lives. We put this question to the Public Health Agency, and they came back and said that, actually, it did not save lives, but it helped it keep track of paperwork.
What is amazing, after all of this, is that the government gave an award to CBSA for purchasing. They gave them an unsung hero award, which was awarded to the procurement team for the purchase and development of ArriveCAN. The Liberal government would give an unsung hero award to the iceberg that sank the Titanic or perhaps to Andersen Consulting for their great work on Enron.
On the report itself, I want to read a few things. This is the from the “At a Glance” section of the report of the Auditor General on ArriveCAN:
Overall, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Public Services and Procurement Canada repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development, and implementation....
The Canada Border Services Agency’s documentation, financial records, and controls were so poor that we were unable to determine the precise cost of the ArriveCAN application.
These were three of the largest departments managing this. Members can think about that. We think it is $60 million, but it could be a lot more. The Auditor General, even with all of her resources, cannot determine, because of the mess of the government, how much was spent and wasted.
The [CBSA]'s disregard for policies, controls, and transparency in the contracting process restricted opportunities for competition and undermined value for money....
We also found deficiencies in how the [CBSA] managed the contracts [and a lack of concern] about value for money.
Further, it says:
...we are concerned that essential information, such as clear deliverables and required qualifications, was missing. We found that details about the work performed were often missing on invoices and supporting time sheets submitted....
This gets to the root of ArriveCAN, but also of the green slush fund and all the other scandals. Taxpayers are being defrauded. The Auditor General stated very clearly. The evidence has stated as such and we heard as much in committee. It is time for the government to come clean.