Debates of April 17th, 2024

Sitting Resumed

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I appreciate the intervention from the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader. I am going to take a moment to consult on this matter.

The Chair is going to permit the hon. member for Brantford—Brant to please put a question within 10 seconds so that the witness, Mr. Firth, can answer the question.

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

Mr. Speaker, does Mr. Firth think that he should be solely responsible for this scam, or should the Prime Minister, the Liberal cabinet ministers and certain members of the Liberal back bench be at this bar facing legal consequences?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I do not want to be elusive. I cannot comment on this; it is kind of speculative. I am not sure what I can do here.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to defend Canada's Parliament, an institution to which I hope one day Quebec will no longer have to answer. Nevertheless, I must defend the principles behind this Parliament, in particular respect for democratic institutions, and therefore of the parliamentary democracy in which Quebec participates.

A few weeks ago, the Office of the Auditor General submitted a report on the management of the ArriveCAN app. To quote the Auditor General, management of the app was the worst she had seen in her career. The ArriveCAN app was supposed to cost $80,000 and ended up costing $60 million. In the same report, we learned that one company composed of two people, the owner of which is here today, pocketed more than $19 million. That company is GC Strategies.

We also learned that the ArriveCAN affair is only the tip of the iceberg. The comptroller general recently revealed that GC Strategies, and its ancestor Coredal Systems Consulting, have obtained contracts totalling $108 million since 2011. Manual searches could reveal other contracts, so it might be even more than $108 million.

We learned in the Auditor General's report and from several witnesses that the witness here today, Mr. Kristian Firth, and public servants participated in whisky tastings, dinners, golf tournaments and dozens of other events. It is normal and healthy in a self-respecting democracy that the parliamentarians responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of the government take a closer look at what may have happened to prevent it from happening again.

That is the reason why the owners of GC Strategies were invited to testify several times in committee. Mr. Kristian Firth refused to answer several questions. He compromised parliamentarians' work by not submitting the requested documents on time. He lied to the committee. In particular, he refused to submit the list of public servants with whom he did business, a list he has just now submitted but that is incomplete based on the testimony we heard in committee.

It is clear that, if that is where we are, there are huge problems with the government's procurement processes. For almost 15 years now, it has been so difficult for companies to pass the preselection stage to do business with the government that small companies that provide no services at all are being paid a commission so that the government can enter into a contract with the company that will actually be doing the work. It is completely absurd.

Here we have a person who took advantage of our broken system and pushed it to the extreme. I will give members an example. When the Canada Border Services Agency identified KPMG as a company with which it could do business and as a company already on the list of pre-approved companies, it contacted KPMG. The contract would be pre-established. That is when a public servant at the CBSA called KPMG to tell them that there would be an intermediary in their contract. The intermediary was GC Strategies. We learned that Mr. Kristian Firth met with KPMG with respect to the contract. That is precisely the problem. Mr. Kristian Firth and his two-person company did not even provide the head-hunting service they claimed to provide. They did absolutely nothing and pocketed $84,000.

My question for Mr. Firth is as follows: Does he think that taxpayers got their money's worth for the $84,000 in this affair?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that this is common practice for people with existing contracts. They get subcontractors to come through their company, because typically the time to procure directly, even if one is one of the 635 vendors who could do work with the government, takes too long. Again, I was not aware of the file and what the urgency was and the deliverables, but I did know timelines were very tight. My assumption, and again this is being speculative, was that they were leveraging the contract I had, because it needed to be done quickly.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what we heard in committee is that the public servants did everything they could to make sure the contracts were awarded quickly. That is why many contracts were awarded non-competitively. Once again, we are hearing contradictory testimony.

According to Mr. Firth, why did the public servant agree to simply pick up the phone and call KPMG to tell them that there would be an intermediary and that that intermediary would be paid $84,000 to do absolutely nothing? Why does he think the public servant did that?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, again, not being elusive, I cannot comment on why somebody picked up the phone in a government organization and made a call.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, does Mr. Firth have a number in mind for the many gifts in money and in kind that he offered the federal public servants?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, that number is zero.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to summarize, Mr. Firth never paid for a coffee, never paid for a restaurant meal, never paid for a golf tournament and never paid for a whisky tasting, despite all the testimony we heard?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, I have admitted I would go out and I would invite government employees to lunches or to coffee, understanding that if they were to show up, they had already gone through their regular chain of command and already asked permission to accept that.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, here is a good example of a contradiction. We went from zero to yes, there were coffees, restaurant meals, golf tournaments, whisky tastings and on and on, with dozens of federal public servants.

I will repeat the same question. How much, in money or in kind, was given to the federal public servants?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, the first question was specific to what was given to receive contracts by government employees. That is why I said it was zero.

Once the contracts had been awarded through regular procurement practices, they became a client, and we would have frequent meetings to check on the health of the project, whether that was over lunch or whether that was during coffee.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, why do that if not to obtain federal government contracts?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, I am looking for a health check on how my resources are performing and whether, also, I need to replace any if they are not.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, had he previously identified those with whom he was having coffee and tasting whiskey as people who could grant him contracts, or were they simply people he met on the street?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, they were clients who we engaged with once we had won the contracts.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is clearly providing a service paid in kind to obtain a contract. It is the very definition of it.

Let us go on to the next question.

Mr. Firth justified his rate of $2,600 per hour by saying that he did not just work 9 to 5.

Does he think that Canadians and Quebeckers got their money's worth with the $2,600 per hour they paid for Mr. Firth's so-called huge number of hours?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, the hours that we were quoting were specific to ArriveCAN. We had 22 other departments and other contracts we were working on at that time.

I would like to also remind everyone that we were picked. We did not solicit. We provided services; over 50 resources were in there and delivered on 170 releases on the application.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Firth and Mr. Anthony met at Veritaaq, which was accused of colluding on contracts in 2009 while Mr. Firth was working there.

The judge who looked into the matter had ordered that all employees receive anti-collusion training.

Did Mr. Firth learn anything from that training?

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, in 2009, at Veritaaq, I was a recruiter. I was not involved in the sales cycle whatsoever, so I do not think I had training in 2009.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is too bad, because even a recruiter is considered a company employee.

I think that what we are seeing today is that there is a big problem when it comes to procurement and that there is a certain loss of control when it comes to the gifts that are being accepted by public servants. We saw proof of that today.

I think that the CBSA, which was one of the main government bodies that awarded contracts to GC Strategies, must be put under third-party management because Quebeckers and Canadians need to recover the money that was wasted on this company and others.

[Kristian Firth]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the clock can be stopped.

Can I have the question again, please? It was not coming through on my headphones very well.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I would ask the hon. member for Terrebonne to repeat her comments.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, does he agree that any public servants that did not follow internal procedures should lose their jobs and that if this is a widespread problem within the CBSA, then that agency should be put under third-party management?