A Canada Border Services Agency director says he regrets having dinner with contractors working on ArriveCan without disclosing it to his supervisor, calling it an “error in judgment” while adding that they did not discuss the app’s development.
“I made an error in judgment and I do regret not informing my superiors as well as going to the event,” Chulaka Ailapperuma, a Canada Border Services Agency director, testified before the Public Accounts Committee on May 14.
Mr. Ailapperuma said he attended two social outings in Ottawa in 2020 with contractors working on the ArriveCan app, which was used to check the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers in Canada.
“At that time, ArriveCan was a very intense project,” said Mr. Ailapperuma. “We were spending long hours working on ArriveCan and I saw this as a team celebration and I wanted to socialize with some of my teammates.”
Roughly five people attended the dinner, which was organized by GC Strategies managing partner Kristian Firth, Mr. Ailapperuma said.
“I wouldn’t say any financial or contractual discussions were had,” Mr. Ailapperuma added. “It was the day-to-day grind of ArriveCan that was discussed.”
Conservative MP Michael Barrett said he did not think it was “believable” that ArriveCan was not discussed at the dinner.
“So we’ve got this dinner, drinks are flowing, we’ve got subcontractors of the government taking people out, and no one’s talking to them,” he said. “That doesn’t sound believable.”
“We were talking about people’s lives, our day-to-day family issues, as if it was a social gathering,” Mr. Ailapperuma replied. “We did not talk specifically, absolutely, we did not talk about any contracting issues or any financial matters.”
Reduced Reliance on Outside Consultants
A Feb. 12 report from Auditor General Karen Hogan found the ArriveCan app cost roughly $59.5 million, but said the figure was an estimate because information about the app was not available and record-keeping was “poor.” Ms. Hogan said CBSA employees had failed to disclose invitations to private functions that they received from ArriveCan contractors, which is required by the agency’s code of ethics.The report said the relationship between vendors and the CBSA, as well as the lack of evidence that agency employees reported the invitations to dinners and other activities, created a “significant risk or perception of a conflict of interest around procurement decisions.”
The CBSA failed to follow policy, controls, and transparency around the app’s contracting process, which “restricted opportunities for competition and undermined value for money,” Ms. Hogan’s report said.
When testifying before the Public Accounts Committee on May 14, CBSA President Erin O'Gorman said the agency had reduced the number of outside consultants it uses following the auditor general’s report.
“We’ve reduced our consulting footprint. At the start of the fiscal year we had 25 fewer consultants than at the same time last year, and today we have 68 fewer consultants working in the CBSA in the IT branches than we did when I was here in February,” she said.
Ms. O’Gorman also said the border agency has strengthened conflict of interest rules for contractors and employees to ensure no one working on a contract is also working for the government.
“We will also be requiring vendors with active IT service contracts to certify that none of the resources they provide to CBSA [are] actively employed as public servants,” she said.
