Border Employee Has ‘No Idea’ Why Admonished ArriveCan Contractor Implicated Her

Canada's ArriveCAN app log-in screen seen on a mobile device in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2024. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) employee Diane Daly says she is unsure why ArriveCan contractor Kristian Firth mentioned her during April parliamentary committee hearings related to the ArriveCan investigation, as she had no role in establishing the contract criteria.

“I did not meet with Mr. Firth in person, and communicated virtually due to the pandemic,” Daly said during testimony in front of the House Public Accounts Committee on Aug. 7.

“My role was administrative, coordinating information for various stakeholders. I do not recall discussing IT requirements with Mr. Firth,” she said.

The ArriveCan app, which was used to track the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers during the pandemic, cost $59.5 million to develop. The app was found by Auditor General Karen Hogan to not have been “value for taxpayer dollars spent.”

Hogan’s report also found there was poor record-keeping when it came to the app’s development, and that, as a result, the full cost of the app could not be determined with certainty.

Firth and his partner Darren Anthony, whose company GC Strategies received an estimated $19.1 million for work on the app, did not abide by two summons to testify before the government operations committee in late 2023 and early 2024 and failed to answer several questions. In April, Firth was called before the House of Commons and was admonished.

When asked about the government officials GC Strategies worked with to develop criteria for ArriveCan, Firth provided Daly’s name as one of the employees.

Daly said she would not have been responsible for developing the contract requirements, and would have forwarded any information she received from Firth to the CBSA’s IT team.

Daly also said she had raised issues with GC Strategies’ “very poor documentation, errors with submissions, and slow responses to resolution for the errors.” She said she dealt with Firth when it came to incorrect invoices.

Encouraged to Give False Testimony

During her opening statement to the committee, Daly said she had been “muzzled for some time now” and feared she would lose her job if she told the truth to MPs. Daly said some of her superiors at the CBSA told her to give false testimony to an internal investigator, and that she had since been placed on administrative leave.

Earlier this year, former CBSA employees Cameron MacDonald and Antonio Utano were suspended without pay from their positions in the federal government over allegations of misconduct related to ArriveCan. Both men said the allegations were an attempt at “intimidation” to silence their criticism of the CBSA when it came to ArriveCan.

Utano and MacDonald said their supervisor Minh Doan had been responsible for selecting GC Strategies to work on ArriveCan, while Doan denied those allegations and blamed the two men.

Daly told the committee that she never saw Utano or MacDonald do anything nefarious, and that she could not confirm that Doan was the one who selected GC Strategies.

Daly said senior management and political employees had been “pitting federal government workers against each other to create false allegations and divert investigations,” something akin to making a malicious 911 call on a co-worker.

“My job is under threat for what I saw, not what I did,” she said.