Madam Speaker, I put my phone away, but I do not know whether that will change anything.
As I was saying, the ArriveCAN case was a blatant failure from beginning to end. When the Auditor General released her report on that fiasco almost a year ago, the first thing we asked was that it place the Canada Border Services Agency under administrative supervision. In fact, we were tired of seeing that nothing had been working right at the Canada Border Services Agency for years. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot made the same request yesterday for another program, the CBSA assessment and revenue management system, or CARM, which is supposed to provide a service. However, we know that, despite the more than $500 million this program cost, it is almost completely inoperative at this stage. How can we put half a billion dollars into a system managed by an agency and not see any positive results? It is scandalous. This leads to huge losses for companies trying to get access through the portal. It is another fiasco. Is it a future Phoenix? Only time will tell. I hope not, however, since I hope that by then the government will have listened to us to finally impose some order in the Canada Border Services Agency.
I will continue, because there is still a lot to be said.
The Auditor General tabled numerous reports on the government's management during the pandemic, and the last one is pretty interesting. To help businesses, the government created the Canada emergency business account. The aim of the program was to help 900,000 businesses by giving them funding, some of it in the form of loans and some in the form of grants. A lot of businesses benefited from the program with some being kept on life support. We know that the program failed on a number of levels.
The most interesting thing is once again how the government managed the program. Someone in cabinet decided to implement the program, which we were fine with, since we supported it. Then, the Department of Finance, which appeared before the committee yesterday, was mandated to manage it, but it instead decided to delegate it to a Crown corporation. We all know that Crown corporations do not have to follow the same rules and are not subject to the same accountability requirements as government departments. In this case, the Department of Finance washed its hands of the program. The Crown corporation in question was Export Development Canada, or EDC, which told the Department of Finance that it did not have the ability to manage the program. The Department of Finance said not to worry and to go ahead anyway. Then, in a non-competitive process, EDC subcontracted the management of the program to a company in exchange for $300 million. In the end, all of the businesses that benefited from the program were served, often very poorly, by Accenture.
There is one small detail that is nonetheless important. My colleague from Trois-Rivières told me about it, because I was a little young at the time. In 2000, during the infamous Enron scandal, Andersen, which was both performing and transforming the audits, was to advise the company. It had therefore hidden certain information, because it was acting unethically. We now know that that is fortunately no longer the case, because regulations were put in place. When the company split from its audit branch, Andersen Consulting became Accenture. Yes, it is the same company. Obviously, some of the people who were there at the time have since left, but it is the same company that simply changed its name to change its brand and its image. Accenture managed the program.
The Auditor General's report once again showed extremely poor management of public funds. This is not only poor management during a pandemic, because a lot of people were left in limbo. I will give an example. A lot of companies that were deemed eligible at first received a loan and a subsidy, then almost a year later, a few weeks before they were to repay the loan, they were told that, in fact, they were not eligible. They had to pay everything back, including the subsidy, which the vast majority of these companies had already spent because they needed the money. That was the first failure.
The second failure was the call centre created by Accenture. In some cases, Accenture invoiced 14 hours per agent, despite the fact that the call centre was only open for nine hours. It was overbilling. We also know that the call centre was created much too late and that 19,000 calls were answered by the banks, and even by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, even though that is definitely not their role. Evidently, there was a bit of a problem with the call centre, which cost almost $30 million.
They are proud of their call centre, but many businesses never actually received a response to their messages. Either they got an automated message telling them to call back because there were 900 other businesses in line ahead of them, or they finally got through to an agent after calling for days, only for the agent to say sorry, but they did not have the answer. What fantastic service $30 million buys.
Since EDC could not handle things, it left everything in the hands of the consulting firm, Accenture. We know that EDC even asked Accenture to manage a call for tenders. On the pretext of being more competitive, it asked Accenture to manage this call for tenders. Accenture accepted and proceeded to award itself the $36‑million contract. That is what Accenture did. It awarded itself a public contract worth $36 million. Is that acceptable? Absolutely not. It is totally unacceptable. When questions were asked, EDC and the Department of Finance said they had no intention of asking Accenture for any money back, even though we know that it was overbilling and that taxpayers paid far too much.
Actually, I have my doubts about whether it was malicious because, having been a consultant myself, I know that when people invoice things, they pay close attention to the amount being invoiced. Usually, clients look at what is in the invoice. People are very careful about invoicing the fewest things possible. In cases of overbilling, questions arise as to whether this was done intentionally to make more money. Here again, the responsibility does not lie with Accenture. It lies with the government, to whom we entrust part of our salary. That is what it comes down to. Someone who works does not even have access to their full pay because they trust the government to manage that portion of it and of their hours worked and to provide them with appropriate services. This is not what we are seeing and it is not what we saw during the pandemic.
The Auditor General's many reports on the government's pandemic management left no doubt: There was catastrophic mismanagement. This is not the case either when it comes to the management of public funds. The Liberal government's management of public funds is a catastrophe. I cannot wait for Monday, when we will likely hear the bad news that the deficit is even higher than expected. That is what we get from the Liberal government: gifts and goodies that no one wants, and meanwhile the deficit keeps ballooning. This is hardly sound management of public funds.
I could go on and on about this, but what I am basically trying to say is that, looking at the pandemic management as a whole, there are certain recurring themes. I named two: the Canada Border Services Agency's mismanagement of our borders, and inventory mismanagement. How many times have we heard the Liberal government say that it was a pandemic, that no one knew quite what to do and that it was unprecedented? All right, but as the Auditor General said numerous times when the question was put to her, there is no justification, during the crisis, for all the systems and all the protections put in place to prevent abuse to disappear all of a sudden. Suddenly, sound management of public funds went out the window. Suddenly, sound management of the various policies, either for public health or border management, went out the window. How is it that everything got tainted? Why did that happen? It is as though the government was caught like a wide-eyed deer in the headlights, with no response for weeks in certain cases, including border management.
Let us face it, this is truly shameful.
What I find very surprising about the Canada emergency business account, or CEBA, is that the federal government, the finance department, disagreed with one recommendation. It was the recommendation inviting it to reflect on what had happened, to share in the responsibility and to establish an accountability process for CEBA. However, the finance department said that it was washing its hands of it and that it was up to the Crown corporation to take responsibility. That is odd, because the Crown corporation says that it is the departments that are directly accountable, along with the company. That is because departmental accountability also means the minister is accountable for the Crown corporations that the minister has mandated. This case is very clear. The Department of Finance and Global Affairs Canada mandated Export Development Canada to manage CEBA.
Why is the government still unwilling to take responsibility? Last week, Quebec's auditor general tabled a report showing that a government corporation had been badly mismanaged. What happened that very day? The CEO was fired. That is how a government with a modicum of responsibility toward its taxpayers operates. In this case, the government took action.
Does anyone know how many people were fired after the infamous ArriveCAN saga? Two people are on leave as of now, and an investigation is under way. That is all. We know full well, however, that the chain of command extends far beyond that. Why has no one taken responsibility? Why was the former CBSA president, who appeared before the committee, able to then bill the CBSA for the time he spent testifying? Yes, taxpayers paid for questions to be put to the government and to the former CBSA president. This CBSA president is now employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, so he is receiving a full salary from that company, and on top of that, he is billing the CBSA for the time he spent preparing for his appearance before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. That is how the former president of the CBSA, who was there during the ArriveCAN saga, shows his respect and sense of responsibility toward taxpayers, who paid far too much for an app that we know was defective.
I would like to conclude by addressing something important. If the Liberal government wants to take responsibility, it will have to do something. We know that it is a government on its last legs, but that does not mean that it does not have to take responsibility, at least when it comes to the Auditor General's report. We are seeing things now that we have never seen before. Departments are rejecting the Auditor General's recommendations.
The government should at least do something about the Canada Border Services Agency. Everyone knows that there is a cultural problem with the CBSA bureaucrats. The CBSA really needs some attention and really needs the government to take it in hand. We will continue to try to hammer that message home. We will continue to ask questions until the problem is resolved. We firmly believe that the Canada Border Services Agency should be put under administrative supervision.