Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you for inviting Botler to testify before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which is known as the mighty committee. I thought you'd like that. Botler is a Canadian public safety company focused on misconduct a

Government Operations committee  Actually, I would add to that. The other link is that they're the same party. It's the same contractors that are involved and the same contracting authorities from the government that are also involved. There are ties, but to clarify, Botler directly had no involvement in Arrive

Government Operations committee  We were supposed to have a contract for $350,000. The contract that actually came back was for $336,000.

Government Operations committee  There were several layers that the payments went through. It went from CBSA to Coradix and Dalian. Coradix and Dalian then released the payments to GC Strategies. Finally, GC Strategies released the payments to Botler. I would also add that Botler was actually not identified on

Government Operations committee  We were supposed to receive $350,000 in total, before taxes, for Botler's work. It came back at $336,000. We actually received only the first two payments, which came to a total of $112,000.

Government Operations committee  There were supposed to be six.

Government Operations committee  It was $112,000.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  Yes, actually. On the second payment we received from GC Strategies, there was an overpayment of about $2,000 and something. I'll have to confirm the amount. We knew there was something wrong with that amount. Recently, I reverse-engineered the math. If you multiply that $2,000 a

Government Operations committee  I would say that this is something that OGGO can ask for proof of, because we're not aware of the amount that was transferred between Dalian and GC Strategies, but we know that GC Strategies accidentally issued an overpayment to Botler of about $2,000. We don't believe that was a

Government Operations committee  Yes, we were threatened. When we reported the misconduct, there wasn't just the September 2021 misconduct report. We also reported in December 2021, after which the CBSA responded by cancelling the project. They had asked for us to provide the remainder of the work over to them,

Government Operations committee  Those were issued by Diane Daly. Again, this is an individual from the CBSA who got involved once we started reporting, and she started sending responses on behalf of the CBSA. What they were demanding, on behalf of Canada, was that we send over all records that we have of all no

Government Operations committee  That is correct. What I would add is that we handed over the work to the CBSA. We handed it over to Firth, Kristian Firth at GC Strategies, on February 3, 2022. Based on the PSPC contracting rules, I believe they have five days to review the work and get back to us if they have

Government Operations committee  That is correct, but there is some more context to it. At the same time that we sent the misconduct report to Antonio Utano, Amir had also sent an email to Ying-Ying Ong, who was another project liaison at the CBSA, requesting that immediately payments to the contractors—Dalian

Government Operations committee  Officially, we started work on the project at the beginning of February, I believe, but we had been working unofficially on the project for years. We started groundwork in I believe November 2019, when we were first contacted—