Public Accounts committee  The Auditor General has pointed to the necessity of having this kind of specific governance in place. I would say that a letter of intent was established when the app was required to be mandatory in July 2021. Initially, we were working in close collaboration with the Canada Border Services Agency at high speed, and at the time, a decision was not taken to slow that down to put in place the governance around it.

Public Accounts committee  The Public Health Agency has never had to undertake operations of this nature, including at the border, as the pandemic required that response. I can't say exactly how long it would take, but there is very detailed and sequential governance around the development of IT projects.

Public Accounts committee  The role of KPMG in this contract was really to do the work to assess the industry impacts and the traveller journey using the app, so the app had to be deployed in an airport environment, working with air services and the aerospace industry. They were looking at the process maps, at the journey maps, at the rollout and other implementation around the app—

Public Accounts committee  No. The $59 million associated with the contract was related to the development of the app and its technology, so these were—

Public Accounts committee  —part of support services related to border measures that included a wide variety of different measures at the border.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, these are additional costs related to the implementation of border measures.

Public Accounts committee  The contract has a sole-source justification on file that identifies the expertise of the vendor in aerospace services and in administering public health and health projects at the municipal, provincial and local levels—

Public Accounts committee  There is a sole-source justification on file, but there is no documentation of the initial contact with the company.

Public Accounts committee  There's no documentation on the file. They were chosen from a list of pre-qualified contractors—

Public Accounts committee  —that was established by Public Services and Procurement Canada, PSPC, so PSPC—

Public Accounts committee  —would have made the initial contacts with those companies to establish contracts with them.

Public Accounts committee  There was no reduction in the deliverables.

Public Accounts committee  I can say there was no reduction in the amount of work that was required for the deliverables. Yes, the categories of the work that was being done were broadened, and the Auditor General has pointed out that this meant they were less specific. However, that was done in response to a rapidly evolving pandemic.

Public Accounts committee  As the business owner, the Public Health Agency laid out the public health requirements for the apps. The Public Health Agency was responsible for making sure the appropriate privacy protections were in place, making sure there was legal and other broad policy coordination taking place.

Public Accounts committee  In March 2020 you'll recall there were border measures being put in place around the world. Canadians were having trouble moving abroad. There was a need to find ways to speed up the implementation of public health measures at the border. The overriding importance at the time was placed on making sure that we had multi-layered public health measures in place.