Following a damning report by the auditor general on the ArriveCan application, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) President Erin O'Gorman said she understands Canadians’ “disappointment” around the app but does not want it to impact their trust in the country’s border agents.
“I share the concerns. I do hope that it doesn’t risk the trust of Canadians in the functioning of the CBSA and the critical work being done by employees, border service officers across the country and around the world,” Ms. O'Gorman told the Commons Public Accounts
Committee on Feb. 13.
“We are fixing this, we are troubled by this, but I would hate for that to get extended to the people who are doing that and other critical information and activities across the organization.”
Ms. O'Gorman’s statement came a day after Canada’s Auditor General Karen Hogan released a long-awaited
report on ArriveCan, in which she said the CBSA, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and Public Services and Procurement Canada showed a “
glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices throughout ArriveCan’s development and implementation.”
The report found that due to improper documentation and financial record-keeping, the precise cost of the ArriveCan app could not be determined. The auditor general’s best estimates put the app’s cost at $59.5 million, while
CBSA previously said the development and operation of the app cost $54 million.
“I am deeply concerned by what this audit didn’t find. We didn’t find records to accurately show how much was spent on what, who did the work, or how and why contracting decisions were made and that paper trail should have existed,” Ms. Hogan, who testified before the Public Accounts Committee on the same day as Ms. O'Gorman, said in her
opening remarks before the committee.
Ms. O'Gorman, for her part, said that she did not disagree with Ms. Hogan’s characterization of the report and that her agency would be abiding by the auditor general’s recommendations. The CBSA has already created an
executive procurement review committee to increase oversight of contracting activities, she said, adding that the agency has also established a “centre of expertise” to help employees fully understand their authorities and obligations.
GC Strategies ‘Rigged’ Procurement Process
The CBSA president said the failure to document decisions around the contracting and procurement for ArriveCan was not acceptable. “This audit points to significant gaps, and I do not put that at the feet of the pandemic,” she said.
Ms. O'Gorman added that while the CBSA was abiding by PHAC’s request to work “as quickly as possible” to develop the app during the COVID-19 pandemic, “that doesn’t justify cutting and pasting contracted resources experience directly from statements of work, or collaborating with a company on a document they will eventually build on.”
A previous report by Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic found that GC Strategies, a two-person company that received a $25 million contract to work on ArriveCan in May 2022, directly copied and pasted government requirements as project experience for subcontractors when submitting proposals to CBSA officials. The auditor general’s report also found that GC Strategies was involved in developing the requirements that were used for a competitive contract.
When working on ArriveCAN, GC Strategies outsourced the work to six other companies and pocketed a commission of between 15 and 30 percent. Its employees are also accused of forging the resumes of other contractors when submitting applications to the government, and are under investigation by the RCMP.
Ms. O'Gorman, when asked by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis whether she believed this was evidence that the procurement process was “rigged in favour of GC Strategies,” answered that “what you set out is what the evidence is demonstrating.”
“The fact that there was one bidder, and that bidder collaborated, I would agree that the odds were stacked in their favour,” Ms. O‘Gorman said, adding that she did not have information on the motivation for doing so and that she was not with the CBSA at that time. Ms. O’Gorman was
appointed CBSA president in July 2022.
