Auditor General Investigating $208M in Payments Through Crown Corp. for Pandemic Relief Program

Auditor General Karen Hogan appears as a witness at a House of Commons standing committee on Public Accounts on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Canada’s auditor general is investigating more than $208 million in payments made through a federal Crown corporation to manage a pandemic relief program.

Export Development Canada (EDC) was assigned to manage the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program in 2020. The program offered interest-free loans of up to $60,000 to small businesses and not-for-profits. The work was given to contractor Accenture PLC, an Irish multinational consulting firm, without open bidding, a move that cabinet and EDC did not disclose.

“We have already begun looking into the program,” Auditor General Karen Hogan told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, according to Blacklock’s Reporter in an article published March 4.

Ms. Hogan intends to make the results public by November, she said, adding: “There may be delays because we need the information and the financial data. It is already underway.”

Accenture’s fees totalled $208,087,622, according to figures disclosed in a document tabled last April in the House of Commons.

EDC President and CEO Mairead Lavery told the Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 29 that there were 31 contracts covering activities that “Accenture performed over the period for when the [CEBA] program was launched.”

No other contractors were invited to bid, Ms. Lavery said.

According to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, it is currently in the “planning phase” of its investigation into EDC.

“Our planned audits page will be updated once information is confirmed,” spokesperson Natasha Leduc told The Epoch Times.

EDC confirmed in early January that one-third of the workers involved in the CEBA contract, 46 individuals, were based in Brazil. An EDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the Brazilian team works for Accenture subsidiary One Financial and is involved in the “configuration of the supporting loan accounting system.”

Sole-Source Contracts

Conservative MP Arnold Viersen asked Ms. Lavery during her testimony before the Public Accounts Committee if the contract was sole-sourced to Accenture. Ms. Lavery said it was, as were all 31 contracts with the company.

Mr. Viersen asked if it was normal for all contracts to be sole-sourced.

“There were different components to the contract which I guess no one anticipated at the start,” Ms. Lavery replied. EDC already had an arrangement with Accenture on other matters before it began work on CEBA, she added.

“That meant we were able to avoid what would be a six- to eight-month RFP [request for proposal] procurement cycle to actually get the funding in the hands of companies,” she said.

Ms. Lavery testified that the $208 million included Accenture’s running a call centre that received up to 10,000 calls a day.

Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné challenged the claim, saying she found it “hard to believe” there were 10,000 calls a day and asking how many employees were at the call centre. Ms. Lavery said there were as many as 150.

Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné said the $208 million cost was “hard to understand.”

“I really find it hard to understand how a government can set up a program during the pandemic, delegate it to an agency that then delegates it to a contractor,” she said. “I don’t know why this company had to spend tens of millions of dollars to set up a call centre and a website. It really is astonishing.”