76% of ArriveCan Contractors Did No Work on the App, Procurement Ombudsman Finds

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

Over 75 percent of contractors hired to work on the ArriveCan application did not do any work on it, according to the procurement watchdog’s review of the file.

“In roughly 76% of applicable contracts, resources proposed in the winning bid did not perform any work on the contract,” said a report by Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic released on Jan. 29.

“While it is recognized that there may be legitimate reasons for some proposed resources being unavailable, the number of times it occurred and the absence of file documentation explaining why these resources were not made available raised serious concerns with these contracts.”

The ArriveCan app was used to track the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers entering Canada during the pandemic. Critics of the app have said it could’ve been developed for a fraction of its $54 million price tag, and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO) has been investigating procurement surrounding the app for several months.

After examining contract files for 41 ArriveCan-related procurements identified by the Canada Border Service Agency, Mr. Jeglic found that 28 did no work on the app and were for the most part “professional services contracts that were not established specifically for ArriveCAN.” Many of these 28 contracts only had one or two task authorizations (TAs) to complete.

The report also stated that 20 TAs under eight contracts did not list the specific tasks to be completed, including descriptions of the activities that would be performed. While the statement of work section for these TAs read “see attached,” there was nothing attached indicating what work was to be done.

Additionally, the procurement ombudsman found that for 12 ArriveCan contracts encompassing 22 TAs, there were no completed worksheets on file for more than 30 resources. In cases where resource assessment worksheets were on file, the results of the assessment were also often not supported with descriptions of past project experience in accompanying resumes.

GC Strategies

According to the procurement ombudsman, the IT staffing company GC Strategies was notable for failing to demonstrate that the resources met the mandatory criteria for completing the TAs. Of the 42 TAs under the company’s $25.3 million ArriveCan contract, 16 did not demonstrate that the proposed resource met the mandatory criteria.

The report said there were “numerous examples” where suppliers copied and pasted the mandatory requirements as their project experience. In one instance, GC Strategies stated that their proposed subcontractors’ past experience included “designing, developing and implementing mobile-based applications for two of the platforms below: iOS, Android, Blackberry,” which was a word-for-word description of an example criterion for working on the project.

The two-man company GC Strategies was paid $8.9 million as a general contractor on the ArriveCan project in 2020 before it outsourced the work to six other companies and pocketed a commission of between 15 and 30 percent. GC Strategies partner Kristian Firth was previously accused by Conservative MPs on OGGO of lying about forging the resumes of others for them to meet specific work experience criteria at CBSA.

Reaction from MPs

When asked about the procurement ombudsman’s report, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters the news was “obviously problematic,” and that while others in the federal government were reviewing the contracts, “it’s clear we must expect the highest standard from contractors.”

In response to the report, Conservative MP Kelly Block, the shadow minister for public services and procurement,  and Tory Quebec Lieutenant Pierre Paul-Hus called it “damning” and said the ArriveCan scandal was “the tip of the iceberg.”

“Federal officials in the Trudeau Government rigged the ArriveCan contract so it would end up with the well-connected, two-person consulting firm, GC Strategies,” the MPs said in a Jan. 30 press release. “In total, these two individuals did not work on the app, yet received $11 million dollars from taxpayers. Multiple investigations into ArriveCan have revealed millions in taxpayer dollars sent to connected insiders and consultants.”

The MPs highlighted that according to a programmer who managed to build a duplicate of the ArriveCan app over the course of a weekend, the app could have likely been built for around $200,000. “Unfortunately for Canadians, these recent allegations of abuse are starting to make the extreme $54 million price tag make sense,” said the release.

Ms. Block and Mr. Paul-Hus also questioned the increase in government contracts to GC Strategies in recent years, being awarded around $60 million since 2017.

“Canadians deserve transparency regarding how many consultants and well-connected insiders were awarded government contracts,” said the release. “In 2022, third-party consultants like GC Strategies, were awarded $17.7 billion in contracts, while ordinary Canadians are struggling to pay for groceries or heat their homes.”