Information & Ethics committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. I'm very pleased to speak to you today and provide some information on the roles and responsibilities of the Canada Border Services Agency with regard to refugee asylum seekers and to discuss more specifically the agency's operati

Information & Ethics committee  I'm happy to give some information on this point. When somebody crosses the border between the ports of entry, the RCMP intercepts those individuals and they do their own criminal record checks, and then they deliver the individuals to the port of entry to do an admissibility ch

Information & Ethics committee  We have to provide humanitarian assistance to those individuals as soon as the RCMP hands them over to us. This is why we have to have the infrastructure. It's very important to know that our infrastructure has provided the facilities for those individuals, but once they are proc

Government Operations committee  To answer your question, I can confirm that we spent $80,000 to develop the initial app, version 1.0. Then we spent a further $8.8 million to develop for free different versions of the app—one for iPhone, one for Android and one for website users—with over 70 different adjustment

Government Operations committee  That's for the development of the application, not the operation of the application and the CBSA—

Government Operations committee  Thanks very much. Initially, the ArriveCAN app was managed by the Public Health Agency, and they provided us $12.37 million in 2021-22 as part of a supplementary estimates (B) budget transfer. That was based on our forecasts for expenditure in 2021-22. We received an additiona

Government Operations committee  The CBSA has now published on its website a full analysis of the ArriveCAN costs that have been incurred by the agency. For example, $7.5 million was spent with Service Canada on the call centre. Those individuals answered more than 650,000 calls from users of the ArriveCAN app

Government Operations committee  They are outside of the development of the app. My previous answer around the $80,000 for the first version, and the $8.8 million, relates to the application. The rest of the expenditure relates to how the public health process operated over the last two and a half years.

Government Operations committee  As of today, we have $34.8 million paid to third parties. As I explained before, that's not necessarily to companies; that includes $7.5 million to Service Canada. It covers contracts, but also memoranda of understanding.

Government Operations committee  Version 1 of the ArriveCAN app cost $80,000. Then it was subject to 70 different amendments; our colleague from the Public Health Agency referred to 80 different OICs. Each of those OICs required some additional work to be done on the app. That accounted for $8.8 million to updat

Government Operations committee  That is correct.

Government Operations committee  The number I quoted you was for all of the external costs not associated directly with internal costs.

Government Operations committee  The $8 million is a wider contract for other services.

Government Operations committee  It was $110,000.

Government Operations committee  We paid $7.5 million to Service Canada for the call centre. That covered 650,000 calls from members of the public.