Mr. Speaker, I cannot hear myself speak.
House of Commons Hansard #375 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was documents.
House of Commons Hansard #375 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was documents.
The Deputy Speaker Conservative Chris d'Entremont
The individuals in question can see me now.
They are taking up much of the time and the sound in the chamber.
The hon. member for Terrebonne.
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The curtains are not soundproof. People should know that.
The committee unanimously adopted a report about a particularly troubling issue. This is the report: “That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit any government employee from simultaneously working as an external contractor”.
It is like asking a young student to do their homework. It is as simple and basic as that. For years, a public servant employed by what is supposed to be one of the most secure departments, the Department of National Defence, was also working as a subcontractor for that department and for other departments as well. How could the government let that happen? It is not very encouraging that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts had to make this kind of request.
Let us talk about this. I will go over the context surrounding ArriveCAN. I do not think we have talked enough about it yet, because there is still no accountability when it comes to what happened with ArriveCAN. No ministers or agency heads have taken responsibility. No one has taken responsibility for the ArriveCAN fiasco.
I will remind members of what happened. In early 2024, the Office of the Auditor General published a report on the management of the ArriveCAN application. The Auditor General described it as the worst bookkeeping she had seen in her career. The ArriveCAN app was supposed to cost $80,000, but ended up costing $60 million.
The Auditor General's report took a fairly extensive look at the role of GC Strategies in this whole business. It also discussed Dalian, the second company that received the largest share of funding in this affair. The Auditor General reported that Dalian had pocketed $7.9 million, which Dalian's owner refuted, claiming that the Auditor General did not know how to count. That is a new one. He said that his company received only $4.9 million. However, for a one-person company, that still seems like a lot to pay for an app initially expected to cost only $80,000.
What we are discovering with the ArriveCAN file is that this saga is just the tip of the iceberg and there are various issues at stake, including the one we are talking about today in this committee report, namely, double-dipping. It really just means that two things are done simultaneously. Here, it means being paid by taxpayers twice for the same hours of work. I do not believe that anyone can work effectively 24 hours a day, even if they say they are working multiple jobs. It is just not possible.
It is only natural, then, in a self-respecting, healthy democracy for parliamentarians to be responsible for ensuring that the government functions properly. It is only natural for us to take a closer look at what may have happened and, above all, to ensure that it does not happen again. Clearly, if it has come to this, that means there are huge procurement problems within the federal government.
That is how the government has been operating for at least 15 years now. It is so difficult to get onto the pre-selected list of companies that the government deals with a lot of small companies that do not actually provide any services at all, but merely act as intermediaries to find subcontractors that will ultimately provide services to the government. The government started investing huge sums. It tripled or even quintupled the number of contracts being offered to consultants. Often, it was done through these agencies, which ultimately just inflate the price of the service that taxpayers receive.
The government has to pay these agencies a commission. The Dalian CEO we are talking about today, Mr. Yeo, claims to have pocketed a commission of 12% to 20% for providing no service other than finding subcontractors. Often, these subcontractors had already been found by government officials. In the end, taxpayers pay far more than they should with a dysfunctional federal apparatus.
Moreover, the federal government has hired a lot more civil servants. Often, the civil servants and the subcontractors were the same people. It is still happening today. In the end, we pay more than twice. We pay for the subcontractors, we pay for the employees, who bill us for practically the same hours, and, on top of that, we hire more civil servants to manage the subcontractors we already pay as employees. Do people realize how absurd this is?
We are talking about a company that took advantage of a broken system and pushed that advantage to the extreme.
Let us briefly look at who David Yeo is. He has owned Dalian since 2001 and, according to his own LinkedIn page, he has been a subcontractor for the Department of National Defence since 1987. Dalian has received $200 million from the federal government since 2015. Another company, Coradix, bought a 49% stake in Dalian. The two companies shared the same offices. The owners of Coradix were actually also the directors of Dalian. I will come back to Coradix a little later, but there was also a connection with Coradix.
More specifically, in the ArriveCAN affair, on September 19, 2023, David Yeo was hired by the Department of National Defence. He signed a contract with the Department of National Defence. He had to fill out a conflict of interest declaration form. On September 28, nine days later, a contract was signed between that same department, the Department of National Defence, and Dalian. Who signed that contract? It was signed by David Yeo, the same David Yeo who had started working at the Department of National Defence nine days earlier.
On October 31, last fall, while working as a full-time employee at the Department of National Defence, Mr. Yeo appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates as the owner of Dalian. When I asked the Department of National Defence representatives how one of their employees could appear before the committee without anyone noticing, they just laughed and said they did not really watch parliamentary committees. Public servants had the nerve to say this to members of a parliamentary committee who were asking them why the same person was being paid twice for working the same hours. They do not watch parliamentary committees. It is shameful.
On February 28, the department learned about the relationship between its new employee, Mr. Yeo, and Dalian, one of its frequent subcontractors. It was not until March 5 that David Yeo resigned from the Department of National Defence.
We also learned from media reports, which we corroborated using various sources, that Mr. Yeo has accounts in tax havens. Obviously, when we received Mr. Yeo in committee, we asked him about that. Mr. Yeo's answer was staggering. I asked him about his tax haven accounts and he said that he was interested in international business and how business is done in other countries, like Bermuda or whatever other Caribbean island interested him. He was interested in learning how business is conducted over there. He would go around opening accounts just for the fun of it. I am not even joking. That is exactly what he told me. He likes doing business in tax havens. There we have it, a tiny glimpse into the character of the person we are discussing today.
Here is another example involving a company. I mentioned the commissions that some companies were paying even though they did not deliver any services at all. There was the case of one well-known company, one of the “Big Four”, KPMG, which received an $80,000 commission for GC Strategies. Again, this was in the ArriveCAN case. Civil servants had settled on KPMG as the company capable of delivering the services. However, an official said that the government did not want to sign a contract directly with KPMG, even though KPMG had already been pre-selected. The government preferred to go through GC Strategies. In the end, taxpayers paid even though the company that was to provide the services had already been found. Taxpayers still paid an $84,000 commission to GC Strategies, even without GC Strategies providing the service it had offered, which was to find the subcontractor. The subcontractor had already been found. That $84,000 commission was pure theft.
I think the most important point of the report we are debating today is that it was adopted unanimously in the House. That is because it is so self-evident. It reflects a feeling that Quebeckers, and Canadians for that matter, experience quite often these days on a regular basis: the feeling of being cheated.
Yes, there was the ArriveCAN affair. I would also very much like to talk about the saga of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, but I think that even my own colleagues are a bit fed up with hearing about it. I am going to do it anyway, though, because I believe it is a very important issue.
My colleague from Beauport—Limoilou's questions beautifully sum up what I have been trying to explain to the House for months. We are paying double for everything. The federal government is interfering in Quebec's areas of jurisdiction while mismanaging its own areas. Just look at the passport saga or the Canada Revenue Agency. It is all so poorly managed, yet it is a federal responsibility. The government is hiring consultants to help it operate more efficiently, while also expanding the public service. Under the nose of government officials, some people have decided to double-dip, probably thinking that there will be no consequences. This is a huge problem. The public service seems corrupt, and that is a big problem. Ultimately, some people are double-dipping.
As I said earlier, average citizens feel they are being cheated. I mentioned two scandals, but there are so many other examples. I am not even going to touch on Conservative scandals, but I could. I have a little list here.
We could talk about the sponsorship scandal of 2002. We could talk about Chinese billionaires donating to the Liberal Party of Canada in order to have a chat with the Prime Minister. We could talk about the Prime Minister's fashion faux pas in various countries where, actually, those clothes cost quite a bit of money. We could talk about the SNC-Lavalin scandal and WE Charity. We could talk about ArriveCAN. We could talk about the travel expenses scandal, about the $190,000 spent on food and airfare for a single trip, the $160,000 spent on a Christmas holiday vacation in Jamaica and the $1,660,000 spent on a trip to India. We could talk about the scandal involving the member for Edmonton Centre, the former employment and official languages minister, who just resigned. We could talk about the SDTC scandal. Once again, we are talking tens of millions of dollars.
What I found out about SDTC and what was revealed last week in committee is quite serious. The former chair of the SDTC board was investing in what is known as a venture capital fund. She was investing in a venture capital fund that was investing in companies that were receiving money from the government. She was getting richer as a result, and she got richer still from the money she obtained from the government. I do not know what people want to call it, but if that is not a scandal, then I do not know what is. However, maybe people are used to scandals by now.
Let us also talk about Coradix, the firm that partnered with Dalian and whose owners have a 49% stake in Dalian. Do members know that Coradix is now suing the government? It takes a lot of nerve to sue the government for the contracts that have been suspended. It was Coradix's ties to David Yeo, the founding president of the consulting firm, that cost the company its bread and butter. The contracts were suspended. The two companies had formed a joint venture to get contracts that were being awarded to indigenous entrepreneurs because David Yeo belongs to one such community. They shared offices in downtown Ottawa, had the same chair for their respective boards of directors and managed a total of 475 IT consultants for the federal government in return for the lucrative commissions that I mentioned earlier. Coradix was well aware of Mr. Yeo's activities, but it did not say anything and continued to bid on tenders. There were tons of people who knew what was going on and simply said nothing.
Now this company has had the nerve to come and ask the government for financial compensation for the suspended contracts, even though they knew that the company's owner, who owns 49% of the shares, was double-dipping. They came and asked for compensation for that, compensation for turning a blind eye, essentially. It was not about getting reimbursed for previous contracts. It was about future contracts being suspended. Obviously, there will be no future contracts. They thought that was too harsh a punishment for turning a blind eye to the highly reprehensible act of stealing from taxpayers.
In that regard, I really hope the government takes a hard line on this. It is doing things that make it look a bit ridiculous. Let us hope that it does not get any more ridiculous, that it does not go so far as to pay this company again for turning a blind eye to this reprehensible misuse of taxpayer money. I really hope the government takes a hard line. I do not want the tax dollars of my constituents, Quebeckers and Canadians to be used to reimburse such a company.
In closing, respect for institutions is very important in a healthy democracy. I repeat that often in the House because it seems to be forgotten. It is one scandal after another right now, and the public is feeling cheated. The media is not even reporting on the SDTC scandal anymore, except for the fact that it is obstructing the work of the House. This is a major scandal, though. Maybe ordinary people feel like it is just another scandal.
What is going to happen next week when the Auditor General releases her new reports? Will the public and the media feel jaded and say that it is just another Liberal scandal?
I hope not. It really is important for people to stay informed and take an interest in what is going on at the federal level, in how their money is being managed. In a healthy democracy, it is fundamental for people to have confidence in their institutions.
What I really want today is to remind the government that such a self-evident report must be respected. It was important to move concurrence in this report in the House, however. It is a matter of maintaining confidence in our institutions. That is the foundation of democracy.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate working with my colleague from the Bloc on the various issues of Liberal scandal.
I want to ask the member specifically about the company owned by the member for Edmonton Centre, who is still a member of the Liberal caucus. This company continues to be eligible for bids on government contracts. It has committed indigenous identity fraud, falsely claiming to be indigenous-owned, and continues to be owned by a member of the government caucus. Our position in the Conservative Party is that this company should no longer be able to bid on government contracts. It does not make sense for a company that has committed indigenous identity fraud and is owned by a member of the government caucus to simultaneously be bidding on government contracts.
Would the member agree that Global Health Imports, owned by the member for Edmonton Centre, should be barred from bidding on government contracts?
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Mr. Speaker, let us just say that the response has to be carefully considered.
However, there is one key point. I think it is appalling that programs intended to support the development of indigenous and first nations entrepreneurs are being misused. These are programs designed to help first nations develop their economies and build their capacity and expertise so that they can become more and more self-sufficient. However, the funds are being misappropriated, as we saw in the case of the former minister of employment, workforce development and official languages. It is totally outrageous. As my leader said at a press conference, we are relieved that the minister resigned.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is now two months that Parliament has done nothing but debate the same thing over and over again. I feel like we are immature children in a sandbox as a tsunami is coming.
We are facing president-elect Trump. We have to deal, as a nation, with serious issues, from what he is going to do with Putin, to trade wars. If he moves forward with deporting 12 million people with bayonets and soldiers, it will have a massive impact on the border. There is also Robert Kennedy, a kook who believes there is no such thing as safe vaccines. I know many in the Conservative caucus probably agree with that, but this disinformation will have serious impacts on our nation and our ability to keep people safe.
Why are we sitting around going in circles with the lazy Liberals and toxic Conservatives when we need a plan in place to show that this democracy can work to address what is going to be coming after January 20?
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question, and I must say that I agree with him 100%. There are a lot of very important files that we are unable to talk about in the House simply because the government refuses to send us the documents. As we now know, these are important documents. The further the Standing Committee on Public Accounts gets into its study on Sustainable Development Technology Canada, the clearer it becomes that certain documents were concealed from the consulting firms. There are no HR complaint documents and no lists of past conflicts of interest. Those are all reports that were not sent to the consulting firms tasked with conducting the investigations.
We would very much like to get that information from the government. However, the government still refuses to send us the documents. This is paralyzing the House and I agree that that it is unfortunate. However, as my leader so aptly said, seeing the Liberals and Conservatives taking shots at each other and ultimately refusing to govern Canada only reminds us, the Bloc Québécois, that it is high time we got out of this country.
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Terrebonne for her speech, but, at the same time, every time I hear this, I shudder. I am a bit shocked, actually.
A few months ago, I replaced my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. The meeting was on hiring external consultants. This was around the time when we were seeing news reports about the huge number of public servants who had been hired. I asked whether it was contradictory to hire more public servants and more external consultants at the same time. The answer I got was that it was because the public servants did not have enough expertise.
That suggests the government was hiring public servants without expertise, then paying for external consultants to provide the expertise that the newly hired public servants did not have. I am trying to understand that. I am not sure if my colleague can explain it to me.
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question gives me an opportunity to provide a little background on what happened.
The Harper Conservative government made a lot of cuts to the public service, and some expertise was probably lost at that time. When the Liberals came to power, they started hiring en masse to recover that expertise, while relying on consultants to fill any gaps in the expertise.
That is how we ended up with one government that just wants to cut and another that just wants to hire and spend. Our money is quite simply being mismanaged.
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on comments the member made about indigenous identity fraud. We have been studying the Liberals' indigenous contracting scandal and how non-indigenous elite insiders, such as the member for Edmonton Centre, have had companies try to gain access to government contracts that are supposed to benefit indigenous entrepreneurs. One of the concerns I have been hearing from indigenous leaders is that indigenous identity fraud is a growing problem that is not taken seriously. The penalties that would normally be associated with fraud do not seem to be applied in the case of indigenous identity fraud.
We have people in various places, including when they seek government contracts, pretending to be indigenous and not facing any consequences. Even if they are found out and are not able to access whatever the opportunities are, there are still no penalties. We see this happening with the former minister from Edmonton Centre, in particular with his company. The company he owns is still eligible for government contracts. In other instances of fraud, this would automatically be taken more seriously, yet Liberals are turning a blind eye. They are not taking it seriously. They are not applying penalties when a company or an individual misrepresents themselves for commercial advantage by pretending to be indigenous.
Why does the member think the Liberals have consistently failed to take the concerns of indigenous leaders seriously when it comes to the growing problem of indigenous identity fraud?
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Mr. Speaker, in the history of the Americas, many wrongs have been done to first nations. That is why Quebec established a nation-to-nation approach with indigenous peoples, with first peoples, quite some time ago. I think it works much better to ensure that every nation feels respected.
In contrast, with the Indian Act, the federal government continues to treat some first nations like children who need help. Unfortunately, this is not the best way to right the wrongs of the past. When some people try to make a buck by taking advantage of the assistance that the federal government is trying to provide to first nations, it is even more outrageous. It essentially tells first nations that the wrongs of the past were not real wrongs and that the assistance they are supposed to get is ultimately going to the government's cronies. That is seriously problematic.
Quebec takes a different approach, with the hope that first nations will become our brothers and sisters in a future sovereign Quebec.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise this afternoon to speak to a report produced by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, of which I am a member. To be exact, this is a motion to concur in the 37th report of the committee, which dealt with the first 2024 report of the Auditor General of Canada, tabled last spring.
I will say off the top that I was not a member of this committee when the report was produced. The report consists of a single sentence that reads, “That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit any government employee from simultaneously working as an external contractor.”
The motion that was put forward to create this report was supported by all the opposition parties, but not supported by the Liberal members of the committee, and I must say that it seems like a completely logical report, if extraordinarily short, so I am not sure why the Liberals voted against it. Be that as it may, the ArriveCAN app has been studied by numerous committees of the House of Commons, and for good reason. This is one of the most egregious examples of fiscal scandal that we have encountered from the government, and there have been many. On top of the public accounts committee, it has been dealt with in detail by the government operations committee, the industry committee and the international trade committee. I am sorry if I left any out. It might have been brought before the ethics committee. It certainly has been a clear lapse of ethics in many ways.
While I am a newly minted member of the public accounts committee, I was a member of the international trade committee when we studied and reported on ArriveCAN, so today I would like to direct my comments on ArriveCAN to the economic impacts of the app, in particular in reference to that study, entitled “The ArriveCAN Digital Tool: Impacts on Certain Canadian Sectors”.
We debated the report on that study a year ago, so some of my comments today will be similar to those I gave last November. Just to remind people, in case they forgot about the pandemic, the COVID pandemic hit North America in March 2020, closing this place on March 13, and a week later, on March 20, the governments of Canada and the United States agreed to temporarily restrict all non-essential travel across the border.
The pandemic had huge effects on the Canadian economy, and many of those impacts arose from restrictions that were placed on crossing the Canada-U.S. border. The ArriveCAN app was launched in April 2020, so basically a month after the pandemic was recognized. It allowed travellers entering Canada to input their quarantine plans and later their vaccination information in digital format. Then on November 1, 2020, use of the ArriveCAN app became mandatory for travellers entering Canada. I have to point out here that it was not so much the use of ArriveCAN that affected travellers, but the fact that for almost two years, from November 2020 to September 2022, the app was mandatory. Everyone crossing the border into Canada was required to use it. They could not fill out their information on the paper forms that had been used initially in the pandemic.
The international trade committee study I am discussing was concerned with the impact that the mandatory use of ArriveCAN had on certain sectors, in particular tourism. I think the most obvious impact was that when we create an application that can only be used on smart phones or tablets and then make it mandatory, it has an immediate impact on anyone who does not own a smart phone or a tablet, or even on those who find using smart phones a challenge. As such, I was a bit surprised that when the government was deciding to make this mandatory, no one asked the obvious question: What about people who do not have smart phones? Seniors are clearly a group that broadly fits that description.
This problem caused a lot of delays at border crossings, especially land border crossings. I heard a lot about that from my constituents, as there are six land border crossings in my riding, probably the most in the country for any riding. My constituents are used to travelling back and forth across the border for business, for shopping or for tourism, and many of them were affected by the mandatory requirement to use ArriveCAN. One of the additional problems in my riding is that several of these border crossings are found in areas without cell coverage, so people could not use the app at the border, or if there was cell coverage, it was from a U.S. cell tower so they had to pay extra roaming charges. All this resulted in extra work for travellers and border agents alike.
Mark Weber, the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, said in testimony:
What I can tell you is that the numbers provided to you earlier by the CBSA, which said that 99% of air travellers and 94% of land travellers have the app completed, are absolutely false. Those numbers are the percentages completed after we helped them complete with the app. In the Eastern Townships branches, the numbers were closer to 60%, for example. Overall, we're looking at closer to 75% to 80% having it completed.
Essentially, our officers now largely work as IT consultants. You have land borders that have essentially become parking lots, with us helping people complete the app.
Mr. Weber's point was that it would have been quicker and more efficient for those who could not use the app to simply continue providing the paper form for giving information about quarantine plans and showing their proofs of vaccinations to CBSA officers, rather than having officers help them enter the information on phones they did not have or did not know how to use. Workers in duty-free stores had to help travellers with the app as well.
I want to remind people that it was not completely straightforward to use the app. Even with all this incredible amount of money spent, the app was filled with glitches. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy; I use two smart phones every day. However, it took me some work to save my vaccine certificates as images, find those files and upload them to the app.
There was an adverse impact on seniors, both Canadian seniors returning from the U.S. and American seniors trying to visit Canada. For one thing, the app asked for an address in Canada where the traveller would quarantine if needed. This requirement forced day trippers from the U.S. to lie because they had no real Canadian address to enter. We heard one story of a bus full of American seniors planning to spend the day on the more scenic Canadian side of Niagara Falls; they turned around at the border because of the ArriveCAN requirements.
A friend of mine was caught in a catch-22 web when she only uploaded one of her vaccine proofs, even though she had been vaccinated twice. The app did not like that, and it triggered a series of collection agency-like calls at all hours, threatening her with massive fines and worse. When she complained to the CBSA, she was told to simply ignore the threats.
The mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app had an impact on travel across the border, especially in terms of tourism. There are data I could cite that clearly show the immense impact of the pandemic in general on tourism, but it is hard to parse the exact economic impact of the ArriveCAN app itself.
The international trade report had some important recommendations about the app, as well as how the government could respond to support the tourism industry, which is still recovering from COVID restrictions. I would just like to mention two of those recommendations here.
The first was this:
That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders, including through the use of appropriate digital and non-digital tools, and through the provision of adequate human and other resources. These efforts should be informed by consultations with relevant stakeholders, during which particular attention should be paid to concerns about the potential for significant disruptions, confusion or delays at Canadian ports of entry. The focus should be airports and land crossings, including international bridges.
On this recommendation, I would just comment that we should encourage travellers to use digital tools when crossing the border by making these tools easy to use and ensuring that their use will make the travellers' entry into Canada easier, quicker and more efficient. That will result in more people using the tools. The lesson from ArriveCAN is that making digital tools mandatory will almost always result in unintended negative consequences.
The other recommendation I wanted to point out was this:
That the Government of Canada ensure that international bridge authorities and commissions, as well as duty-free stores in Canada, are eligible for federal financial support if the Government decides to close—for any length of time—the borders that Canada shares with the United States.
On this recommendation, I would like to comment on the incredible impact the COVID pandemic had on one sector within the tourism sector, and that is land-based duty-free stores. They suffered the biggest impact of any sector in Canada. My constituent Cam Bissonnette has two duty-free stores; he found that his business was in an essentially impossible position when the borders were closed because of COVID. For months on end, his business suffered a decline of over 95% in revenue. He and others in his sector were stuck with perishable inventory that they could not legally sell to anyone. While things have improved slowly since the borders reopened, the devastating impact of those times when the borders were closed have made it almost impossible to survive. I will simply add that I think the duty-free sector is generally misunderstood by the federal government in several ways, and I would ask that the government listen to its concerns carefully.
The main scandal here is the wanton waste of public money on an app that should never have been made mandatory. We are hearing plenty about that waste today. The ArriveCAN scandal is a very serious issue. It deserves to be studied thoroughly here in the House of Commons. As I mentioned earlier, it has been and is being studied at a number of committees. I know that public accounts has yet to produce a final report on it.
I will finish by saying that many of these scandals were directly caused by the rampant contracting out of work that could and should have been done by the public service. I want to mention the example the member for Terrebonne mentioned in her speech about the ArriveCAN scandal, in which not only did someone gain a lot of money through the wanton, terrible use of contracting out, with overspending on a massive scale, but that person was also already a member of the public service. They were getting money from both ends at the same time.
The latest file the international trade committee was looking at is CARM, the CBSA assessment and revenue management system, which is being developed by Deloitte. Again, it was farmed out to Deloitte, which is being paid almost $200 million to do that. It has been delayed again and again because, for various reasons, it was not working as planned. This is something that should have been developed in-house by the CBSA or by some part of the public service so that we would not have that incredible overspending. It suffices to say that the NDP is very much in favour of the House of Commons finally getting to the bottom of the ArriveCAN scandal. Today's debate will provide some opportunity to do that.
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
Madam Speaker, I think if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for me to answer three questions today.
Chris Bittle LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing
Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 3057, 3058 and 3068.
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
With regard to the funding programs falling under Employment and Social Development Canada’s Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, broken down by fiscal year from 2018 to the present: (a) which organizations received funding, broken down by (i) funding stream, (ii) province, (iii) federal riding; (b) how much funding did each organization in (a) receive, broken down by (i) funding stream, (ii) province, (iii) federal riding; (c) what evaluation criteria were used to determine which program applications were successful, broken down by funding stream; and (d) what evaluation criteria were used to determine whether or not a successful program applicant was provided renewed funding in subsequent years, broken down by funding stream?
Question No.3057—Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Windsor—Tecumseh Ontario
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment
Mr. Speaker, Employment and Social Development Canada, ESDC, undertook an extensive search in order to determine the amount of information that would fall within the scope of this question and the amount of time that would be required to prepare a comprehensive response.
After a thorough analysis of the ESDC grants and contributions database, the department concluded that over 200,000 data entries would be required to ensure a comprehensive response to this enquiry. Producing and validating this volume of information is not possible within the allotted time, as this could lead to the disclosure of incomplete and misleading information.
Shuv Majumdar Conservative Calgary Heritage, AB
With regard to the government's reaction to Euroclear's acknowledgment of the Canadian dollars it holds as a result of maturing Russian-owned securities: (a) what initiatives, if any, has the government taken to determine or exert Canada's jurisdiction over Russian state assets held in correspondent banks or invested in Canadian dollars by Euroclear directly held in Canada or those re-invested in Canadian currency, held in correspondent banks in Canada, or invested in Canadian dollars by Euroclear and other depositories and foreign partnerships; (b) what is the government's estimate of the value of the assets in (a) subject to Canadian jurisdiction (cash, securities, bonds, etc.), including those directly held in Canada and those invested in Canadian currency, broken down by the nature of the assets; and (c) what steps has the government taken since the announcement of the Canada-Ukraine Strategic Security Partnership on February 24, 2024, related to the seizure of Russian state assets held in correspondent banks in Canada and invested in Canadian dollars by Euroclear and other depositories and foreign partnerships, including the (i) date of the event associated with the seizure, (ii) collection information regarding total amounts seized or subject to Canada's authority to seize, (iii) nature of the assets that were seized or subject to the authority to seize?
Question No.3058—Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
University—Rosedale Ontario
Liberal
Chrystia Freeland LiberalDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
Mr. Speaker, with regard to part (a), the Department of Finance continues to engage closely with international partners to hold Russia to account for its illegal invasion of Ukraine, including through the Russian elites, proxies, and oligarchs task force, REPO, whose members include Australia, Canada, the European Commission, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. REPO members have collectively immobilized around $280 billion U.S. in Russian sovereign assets.
With regard to part (b), on the basis of these consultations, the Department of Finance understands that approximately 8% of the immobilized assets held by Euroclear are denominated in Canadian dollars. These assets are held in the form of cash or near cash, that is, highly liquid assets such as short-term treasury securities or certificates of deposit. The Department of Finance has sought details on the nature of these assets and their owner or owners. That information remains a commercial confidence of Euroclear.
With regard to part (c), Canada has led work in concert with the EU and other G7 countries on ways to use immobilized Russian sovereign assets to contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine, the restoration of peace and security, and the compensation of victims of the conflict. In June 2024, G7 leaders confirmed their intention to provide financing that will be serviced and repaid by future flows of extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian sovereign assets held in the EU and other relevant jurisdictions. The Prime Minister announced in June 2024 that Canada is ready to contribute $5 billion to G7 extraordinary revenue acceleration loans for Ukraine, which aim to bring forward future revenues from frozen Russian sovereign assets in order to provide Ukraine with approximately $69 billion Canadian or $50 billion U.S.
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
With regard to Health Canada’s (HC) and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) decision to withdraw the market authorization of and to destroy the COVID-19 XBB.1.5 vaccines and future assessment of upcoming mRNA vaccines: (a) are there material differences between the XBB.1.5 COVID-19 vaccines and the new 2024-2025 formulation beyond the mRNA coding for a different spike protein strain; (b) if (a) is affirmative, what are the differences; (c) if the answer to (a) is affirmative, how will Canadians processing claims against the vaccine manufacturers be able to prove their allegations when physical evidence is required and has been destroyed; (d) what is the estimated number of COVID-19 vaccine vials that will be destroyed, broken down by manufacturer (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, others); (e) what is the estimated dollar cost to Canadians to destroy these vaccine products, per vaccine and in total; (f) what is the regulatory process for COVID-19 vaccines which resulted in a “contractual obligation for Health Canada to withdraw all XBB products from the market until a lot could be released and distributed in Canada” (Global news); (g) what is the contractual obligation in (f) and with whom; (h) will provinces be able to order any interim supply of the COVID-19 XBB vaccines and, if not, why not; (i) with respect to the statement made by Pfizer/BioNTech on October 20, 2023, found on page 56 of Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) 2024-000097-2024-08-22, that Pfizer “would be open to discuss the outcome from the plasmid backbone modification evaluation with Health Canada”, does HC expect the removal of the SV40 sequences from the updated Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for 2024-25; (j) is HC considering the assessment of future mRNA-based vaccines to continue under the Centre for Vaccines, Clinical Trials and Biostatistics or to be transferred to another Centre or Department within Biologic and Radiopharmaceutical Drugs Directorate or elsewhere, and, if so, what would be the criteria or rationale?
Question No.3068—Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Ottawa Centre Ontario
Liberal
Yasir Naqvi LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health
Mr. Speaker, with regard to parts (a) to (j), as part of the standard regulatory process for drugs and vaccines, when a new drug or vaccine is authorized by Health Canada, a drug identification number, DIN, is issued. The product DIN is a unique number that identifies the following product characteristics: manufacturer, product name, active ingredients, strengths of active ingredients, pharmaceutical form, and route of administration. As the circulating strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus change, companies update their COVID-19 vaccines based on the latest evidence to ensure Canadians have access to vaccines that target the latest strains of the virus. The updates are filed to Health Canada for review and are considered as modifications to the existing drug rather than a new drug. Therefore, a new DIN is not issued for the updated vaccines should they be authorized by Health Canada, but the previous vaccines should be quarantined or removed from sale to ensure that there is no overlap of two different vaccines with the same DIN. The DIN is an important element that is used to track vaccine safety, and it is important to have a discrete vaccine assigned to the DIN to ensure adverse events following vaccination are tagged to the correct product. This is the same approach that is taken for the annual influenza vaccines and is consistent with the approach of our international regulatory partners such as the European Medicines Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.
COVID-19 vaccine targeting the XBB 1.5 variant are no longer available on the Canadian market, as an updated formulation with increased effectiveness has now been approved. The Moderna Spikevax and Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty KP.2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were authorized by Health Canada on September 17, 2024, and September 24, 2024, respectively and are available to provinces and territories to support 2024-25 immunization activities.
In September 2024, Health Canada authorized two updated mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines that more closely match circulating strains: Spikevax by Moderna for the KP.2 strain, and Comirnaty by Pfizer for the KP.2 strain. Beyond the mRNA coding for a different strain, the formulations of the updated vaccines remain unchanged. The Pfizer presentation has been expanded to include a single-dose syringe in addition to the multidose vial.
Health Canada cannot comment on the mRNA sequence of the Pfizer vaccine, as this is confidential business information. However, it is noted that the presence of the SV40 promoter enhancer sequence is not the same as the presence of the whole virus itself. The SV40 promoter enhancer sequence was found to be a residual DNA fragment in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The fragment is inactive, has no functional role and was measured to be consistently below the limit required by Health Canada and other international regulators.
The biologic and radiopharmaceutical drugs directorate, BRDD, within the health products and food branch of Health Canada is responsible for the review of biologics, including mRNA-based vaccines. The products assigned to each review centre are determined by product indication, product technology, reviewer expertise and workload. Currently, mRNA vaccines are reviewed in the centre for vaccines, clinical trials and biostatistics of the BRDD.
The estimated number of COVID-19 vaccines in federal possession requiring destruction is approximately 670,000 doses of Pfizer. The estimated cost for the destruction of the 670,000 doses is approximately $137,000.
Chris Bittle LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing
Madam Speaker, if the government's responses to Questions Nos. 3059 to 3067 and 3069 could be made orders for return, these returns would be tabled in an electronic format immediately.
