Two Canadian Tech Companies Are Recreating ArriveCan to Show It Can be Done Much Cheaper Than $54 Million

A smartphone set to the opening screen of the ArriveCan app is seen in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini

Two Canadian technology companies have attempted to recreate the ArriveCan app over the thanksgiving long weekend in a bid to show that the federal government didn’t have to spend a reported $54 million on the border-crossing app.

TribalScale and Lazer Technologies, tech firms that specialize in building apps and other software for corporate clients, each announced their projects on Oct. 7, which they said would be voluntary for employees.

“We are so upset over the waste spending on ArriveCan that [TribalScale] will rebuild this app over the weekend!” said Sheetal Jaitly, co-founder of TribalScale, in a Twitter post on Oct. 7. “We have the worlds (sic) best digital product builders right in Canada and our government allowed this to happen.”

Zain Manji, co-founder of Lazer Technologies, announced a similar project shortly after Jaitly’s announcement.

Manji said on Oct. 10 that one of their developers “built an ArriveCAN clone in less than 2 days.”

“It’s important to be a bit empathetic towards the challenges involved in building out a complete project like this, but hopefully it demonstrates that there can be more ways for Canada to tap into it’s (sic) amazing talent pool to produce great technology in a more cost-efficient manner,” Manji told The Epoch Times in a message.

The Globe and Mail recently reported that the federal government spent $54 million to build the ArriveCan mobile app, which travellers were required to use until the end of September when entering Canada to report their vaccination status and to provide COVID-19 test results if applicable. The report added that the Ottawa-area company that was granted most of the work has fewer than five employees, and used more than 75 subcontractors for the development. However, the company and the federal government have said they can’t disclose the name of the subcontractors, citing confidentiality provisions, the Globe said.

The Epoch Times contacted TribalScale to get an update on its progress but didn’t immediately hear back.

Jaitly told The Globe that TribalScale staff came up with the idea to recreate the app while discussing the government’s spending on the app.

“We all started laughing and one started feeding off the other. ‘Hey, why don’t we just go do this and show the world that this is completely ridiculous?'” he said.

One user on Twitter pointed out on Oct. 9 that the ArriveCan app had to be compliant with the government’s Information Technology Security Guidance Publication 33 (ITSG-33), which stipulates cybersecurity obligations for government programs, and wrote, “I’d be curious to see how the app that you build over a weekend will meet ITSG-33.”

“Do you trust your banking apps? Good chance we built it,” replied Jaitly. “We understand security and regulatory and $54m is still wasted [spending]—how are you defending this?”

The Epoch Times contacted Public Services and Procurement Canada for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

‘No Apology’

Conservative MPs criticized the government’s ArriveCan spending during question period in the House of Commons on Oct. 7.

“What Canadians need is an about-face from the Liberal government on its wasting of Canadian tax dollars, like it did on the $54 million ArriveCan app that tech experts are confounded by it costing more than a low-seven figures at worst,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett.

“And we know that the app wasn’t based in science. It was all based on dividing and stigmatizing,” he added. “So if Canadian tech experts do not know why [the federal government] spent this much money, what we want to know, what Canadians want to know, is which Liberal insiders got rich on these contracts?”

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather defended the government’s spending on the app, saying the $54 million price tag was related to “multiple different contracts.”

“I will make no apology for an app that saved the lives of tens of thousands of Canadians,” Housefather said. “This was part of a global health strategy in order to protect Canadians.”

Conservative MP Luc Berthold said ArriveCan “was surely put in place to make some people rich.”

“Fifty four million dollars would be a million hours at work for an engineer,” he said. “That’s 31,000 weeks or 596 years for one person. The numbers just don’t add up.”

Housefather said the $54 million was not just used for the app’s development, but also its accessibility and maintenance support.

“We’re not going to apologize for an app that saved lives,” he reiterated.

Andrew Chen contributed to this report.