Public Accounts committee  You asked me if I knew why that was the case. I answered that the size of the agency could be one explanation and that the pandemic might be another. I agree that these are circumstances and that we still need to be properly accountable. The Secretary of the Treasury Board had a

Public Accounts committee  That's a question you'll have to ask the agencies and the department.

Public Accounts committee  Our mandate really is to look at how the federal public service takes action once a decision has been made by a government—in this case, the decision to enact certain border measures—and then how that was operationalized. In the course of doing an audit like that, we might often

Public Accounts committee  Yes. We looked for it more at Canada Border Services Agency, because they were doing the main contracting and development.

Public Accounts committee  While I acknowledge that the Public Health Agency rightfully needed to make the overarching contract more flexible, given the evolving nature, that's where task authorizations then become really important to pull down off of this broader contract when you're asking for something

Public Accounts committee  You've broadened the subject to contracts issued to a contractor or supplier that isn't related to ArriveCAN, so I can't comment on that. It's undeniable that, at the beginning of the pandemic, this agency had a lot of things to manage. But it was very small at the time. It aske

Public Accounts committee  There was a lot of discussion in committees, but as the chair testified today, it was more about the health aspects and necessary changes, not about project oversight, timelines and costs.

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps there was concern, but it didn't leave a trail that a third party or an auditor could see.

Public Accounts committee  Definitely my office has seen some similar failures in the lack of a governance structure or accurate and timely information. I think it's easy to point to the Phoenix pay system as an example of that. When it comes to failures at so many different layers, this is the first time

Public Accounts committee  In this instance if you're talking about the record-keeping, I think it was the fact that many individuals didn't seek the many opportunities they had to seek extra clarity and specificity, whether it be in a contract, in a task authorization, in reviewing an invoice or in the ti

Public Accounts committee  I can read it back to you. There were deliverables, and the deliverables were then relaxed. They were very clear, and then they were made less specific in order to provide flexibility.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. You've quoted part of my report.

Public Accounts committee  When documents don't exist, it's either that they never existed or that they were destroyed. In this case, we can't tell you which it was, but there is a glaring lack of documentation that should be maintained.

Public Accounts committee  As you know, because the files were so incomplete, we turned to emails, which are typically transitory in nature. It's in those emails that we saw invitations from three or four vendors to at least five Canada Border Services Agency employees and about a half of a dozen others fo

Public Accounts committee  I am not certain. I can tell you that at least five of the employees on the emails we saw—granted, we potentially did not see all of them—were Canada Border Services employees.