Defence Department Suspends Employee Who Received Millions in Contracts From Own Department, ArriveCan Work

The facade of the headquarters of the Department of National Defence is pictured in Ottawa, on April 3, 2013. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

The CEO of Dalian, a company that received $7.9 million for its work on the ArriveCan app, has been suspended from his role at the Department of National Defence (DND) a day after Ottawa announced a review of its program supporting indigenous contractors.

“Due to the serious nature of the concerns raised, DND is launching an internal investigation into the matter. The individual has been suspended while this investigation is underway. We are in the process of suspending contracts with Dalian,” a DND spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

David Yeo, the CEO of Dalian Enterprises, is employed as a member of the Materiel group on the civilian side of DND, according to CTV News. His firm was contracted to work on the ArriveCan app used to check the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers crossing into Canada.

That application has been at the centre of a political firestorm in recent months due to its exorbitant costs, totalling an estimated $59.5 million. The auditor general’s recently released report on ArriveCan found that proper contracting and management practices around the app at several government agencies were not followed, key records were inexplicably missing, and there was little documentation to show why the IT firm GC Strategies was chosen to work on the project and paid $19.1 million.

Dalian and another company Coradix were also awarded contracts to work on ArriveCan, and have received a total of $400 million in government contracts over the last decade, according to the Globe and Mail.

According to an Inquiry of Ministry tabled by government on Jan. 29, DND has signed seven contracts with Dalian since 2019 totalling $1.9 million. One of those contracts, valued at $1.3 million, involved providing a senior information technology security design specialist to the Materiel Group, which Mr. Yeo was employed with.

Dalian has not responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

On Feb. 28, Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu announced the federal government was launching a review of how it awards contracts to indigenous-owned businesses.

“I think contracting fraud needs to be held accountable, if that’s what it is. We do expect contractors to be honest in their applications,” Ms. Hajdu said when asked by reporters about Dalian and ArriveCan.

Ottawa aims to give five percent of the total amount of government contracts to indigenous businesses by 2024.

Mr. Yeo has said online that he is the “direct descendent” of treaty-signing First Nations Indigenous Chief Robert Franklin of the Alderville First Nations.

In addition to working with DND, Mr. Yeo also ran as a candidate for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) for the riding of Ottawa West Nepean in the 2021 election.

That year, the PPC ran against COVID-19 vaccine passports and other pandemic restrictions being implemented by federal and provincial governments. Mr. Yeo stated his reason for running in that election was to “help ensure that every business is essential and end the lockdowns,” and that he ran with the party because it was “against mandatory vaccination and mandatory vaccine passports.”

In a statement released Feb. 29, the PPC said Mr. Yeo had not disclosed during the candidate vetting process that his company received a contract to work on ArriveCan. “This would obviously have been grounds for rejecting his candidacy,” it added.

The PPC said given that it had been highly critical of the Liberal government’s pandemic measures, it was “dismayed” by the revelations surrounding Mr. Yeo.

“We find it quite hypocritical that he was enabling authoritarian measures from the Trudeau government for personal profits, at the same time he publicly opposed these same measures as a PPC candidate,” said the statement.