Canada’s auditor general is opening an investigation into all government contracts related to GC Strategies, the company at the centre of the ArriveCan controversy.
In a letter to
House Speaker Greg Fergus on Oct. 21, Auditor General Karen Hogan said her office will be conducting a performance audit of all payments to GC Strategies and other companies incorporated by the co-founders, as well as all federal contracts including all related subcontracts that have been awarded to GC Strategies and its other companies under those contracts.
“We are in the process of gathering information that will allow us to properly scope and plan the audit based on our mandate and available resources,” Hogan said in the letter. “We will inform the House of the timing of the audit once the scope has been determined and will submit our findings to Parliament as soon as possible.”
Hogan’s investigation comes in response to a
request from the House government operations committee on Feb. 14, concurred by the House in September, while a number of other parliamentary committees have also been scrutinizing the role of GC Strategies in the ArriveCan project.
Hogan had released a report in February 2024 specifically on the ArriveCan application—which was used during the COVID-19 pandemic to check the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers crossing the Canada-U.S. Border. Her report found that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Public Services and Procurement Canada did not follow proper management and contracting practices throughout the app’s development.
The report said CBSA’s documentation, financial records, and controls were “so poor” that the precise cost of ArriveCan could not be determined, but estimates based on available information put the cost at approximately $59.5 million.
In a press conference following the report’s release, Hogan said the public service “did not ensure that Canadians received the best value for money” in the app’s development and that “we paid too much.”
Hogan said in her report that a reliance on contractors resulted in ArriveCan’s excessive cost. The report estimated that GC Strategies
received around $19.1 million for its work on ArriveCan, but it said that figure only included money paid to the company until March 31, 2023. It also said there was little documentation to show why or how the two-person consulting firm was chosen for the project.
Canada’s
comptroller general told the House public accounts committee on March 6 that GC Strategies and its predecessor Coredal had been awarded 118 contracts totalling $107.7 million between Jan. 1, 2011, and Feb. 16, 2024.
Kristian Firth, a
managing partner at GC Strategies, was brought before the House of Commons on April 17, and admonished by House Speaker Greg Fergus for previously failing to answer MPs’ questions around ArriveCan. A day earlier, the
RCMP raided Firth’s house but said the raid was not related to their investigation into ArriveCan and there were no charges pending against Firth.
Firth has criticized some of Hogan’s findings during his appearances at committee and denied the allegations made against him and GC Strategies.
