Government Operations committee  Sir, did you or did you not have discussions with Dalian about the ArriveCAN project, the contracts, the work that was done, anything to do with ArriveCAN?

Government Operations committee  Sir, how do you justify to taxpayers that you, as a recruiter, were effectively billing them at over $2,500 per hour for your involvement in the ArriveCAN app?

Government Operations committee  You've shown this committee invoices for $9.6 million. You've also said that you got $11 million that you categorize as related to ArriveCAN, and $22 million in total. How do you explain the discrepancy between what you've shown us invoices for and what you've said you actually received?

Government Operations committee  First of all, the $22 million is not solely ArriveCAN. There were more projects we were working on during the pandemic. These were not ArriveCAN contracts. There were three pandemic—

Government Operations committee  We know that the Auditor General has said that this total application build and support and all of those things can be estimated at around $60 million. We don't know if that number is right or not. You are telling us that your part of the ArriveCAN build was $11 million. Can you clarify the difference when you specifically use the word ArriveCAN “build” with respect to GC Strategies and the big picture of what has potentially mushroomed into about $60 million?

Government Operations committee  Furthermore, the approximation and the valuation provided in the AG report was billing up until May 2023, whereas we previously gave numbers from the application build, which finished in July 2022. There's another year's worth of billing there, which may not have even been ArriveCAN. Again, no one knows if it's ArriveCAN or not because of how things were tagged internally.

Government Operations committee  MacDonald kind of gave testimony about this. Managers who didn't often get funding or funding for projects would put an ArriveCAN twist on them, or they'd put a pandemic twist on what they were doing. This is why, again, the Auditor General's report is inaccurate, because, as she attested to in her report, you can't get a true cost for ArriveCAN because there could be other projects or other resources associated with that cost.

Government Operations committee  For COVID Alert, somebody from Canadian Digital Service reached out to me, understanding the work we had been doing previously on ArriveCAN. That was how the communication started. They were understanding what capacity we had for teams, what our teams were actually doing at ArriveCAN and the types of categories and skill sets they had.

Government Operations committee  Therefore, I believe this motion will and should receive the quick support of this committee, and we can ask the Privacy Commissioner to undertake this important work. There have been a number of different investigations in relation to the ArriveCAN app, of course, but this is a unique element: the implications for the privacy and security of Canadians' data. Many Canadians put their personal data into this app, expecting that it would be protected, and I think we now need to ask the Privacy Commissioner to investigate the serious problems we've heard about today.

Government Operations committee  He was the face for ArriveCAN, yes.

Government Operations committee  No. Literally everything to do with the ArriveCAN scam was flowed directly through Kristian Firth. It had none of your DNA on it. Is that fair to say?

Government Operations committee  We heard yesterday from Kristian Firth—not only yesterday, but in previous testimony—that he's quite proud of the ArriveCAN scam. Are you equally proud?

Government Operations committee  I certainly don't believe you. Do you think Canadians got value for their money for the ArriveCAN scam?

Government Operations committee  Anthony, I want to come back to the procedural aspect and oversight. Was the work done by GC Strategies, specifically when it comes to ArriveCAN, overseen, validated and verified by the contracting authority, meaning the Canada Border Services Agency?

Government Operations committee  As for you personally, within the framework of the ArriveCAN contracts, did anyone at all from the Canada Border Services Agency supervise you or ask you questions?