Canada’s Auditor General Karen Hogan didn’t mince words when she explained the findings of her long-awaited
report on the ArriveCan application.
“I’ve been an auditor for a few decades. I’ve been the auditor general for almost four years now, and I would tell you that this is probably some of the worst financial record-keeping that I’ve seen,” Ms. Hogan told reporters at a
press conference on Feb. 12.
Ms. Hogan said her audit found that the three government bodies tasked with managing the procurement, development, and implementation of ArriveCan—the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC)—showed a “glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices throughout ArriveCan’s development and implementation.”
“Most concerning was that the Canada Border Services Agency did not have complete and accurate financial records,” she said, adding that her team was thus unable to calculate the app’s exact cost.
While the CBSA previously said ArriveCan cost
$54 million for its creation, launch, operation, and maintenance, Ms. Hogan estimated the cost at $59.5 million. But she said that figure could be higher or lower, as she only made the determination based on available information.
The auditor general’s report came weeks after Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic released a
report in January which found that in
76 percent of the contracts issued, “some or all of the resources proposed by the successful supplier did not perform any work on the contract.” The ombudsman also found that key documents related to ArriveCan’s contracting and development were often missing.
While the two reports have shed some light on the app, many unanswered questions remain. Here’s a look at the history behind ArriveCan and information revealed so far.
An App to Check COVID Vaccination Status
The ArriveCan platform was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to obtain health information, including COVID-19 vaccination status, from travellers entering Canada electronically, rather than on paper-based forms. The app quickly gained a bad reputation for glitches, such as when it
sent messages to some travellers in June 2022 telling them they needed to quarantine even though they were fully vaccinated and did not have COVID-19.
Under mounting pressure from tourism groups and ordinary Canadians to scrap the app, the federal government
made ArriveCan optional starting in October 2022, around the same time all COVID-19 border restrictions were dropped. However, this was just the beginning of controversies surrounding the app, as the House of Commons passed a motion in November 2022 for the auditor general to conduct a
performance audit of ArriveCan.
The vote came in response to the CBSA revealing that the price tag of the app was $54 million, compared to its initial cost estimate of $80,000. The cost got more attention after two Canadian tech companies
managed to recreate the ArriveCan app in a single weekend, and some estimate the app could have been created for under $250,000.
To create the app, the companies GC Strategies, Dalian, and Coradix received more than
$17 million in 2022 after CBSA had received allegations of contracting misconduct on the ArriveCAN app. GC Strategies only has two employees and was paid $8.9 million as a general contractor on the project.
Contracting Misconduct by 3 IT Companies
The investigation by the Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO) into the ArriveCan scandal got off to an explosive
start, with the co-founders of Montreal software company Botler AI testifying on Oct 27, 2023, that factions within the federal government engaged in potential corruption, extortion, and “ghost contracting.” While Botler AI did not work on ArriveCan, it dealt with one of the main contractors that did.
Botler AI co-founders Amir Morv and Ritika Dutt, whom the CBSA subcontracted for a separate project, said private entities were exploiting vulnerabilities in the federal government’s procurement regime to funnel tax dollars into private entities that “lie outside of public purview.” They added that contractors were “openly engaged in various criminal activities” and defrauding the government “by promising influence and requesting material benefit” in exchange.
MPs
criticized the heads of Coradix and Dalian on OGGO on Oct. 31 for being “very expensive” middlemen for their role in developing the ArriveCan app, which involved subcontracting the work to other companies and then pocketing the difference.
On Nov. 11, 2023, GC Strategies partner
Kristian Firth also came under fire from MPs for apparently having inflated the work experience of Mr. Morv and Ms. Dutt in their resumes without their knowledge. Mr. Firth told OGGO that he had mistakenly sent the wrong versions of the resumes to CBSA, an explanation that MPs said was not believable.
Following the OGGO hearings, PSPC announced it had
launched a review of the three IT firms for alleged contracting misconduct, adding it would take “appropriate actions” once the review is complete.
Who Hired GC Strategies to Work on ArriveCan
Who hired GC Strategies to work on ArriveCan in the first place became a central question in OGGO’s investigation and one that has still not been fully answered. On Oct. 24, former CBSA Vice President Minh Doan and former CBSA President John Ossowski testified that they
did not know who had hired the IT company to develop the app.
But on Nov. 7, 2023, former CBSA director general Cameron MacDonald said
Mr. Doan was the one who had made the decision to hire the company, adding that Mr. Doan threatened to blame him and former CBSA executive director Antonio Utano for the choice during a phone call.
In early 2024, Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald 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.
During the press conference on Feb. 12, the auditor general said that when it came to hiring GC Strategies, there was a contract requisition form signed by the executive director of the Business Application Services Directorate, who at that time was Mr. Utano. But Ms. Hogan said there was also “very little to support who made the decision and as to why GC Strategies was the right party.”
Ms. Hogan is set to testify in front of the Standing Committee of Public Accounts on Feb. 13, along with CBSA President Erin O'Gorman and PHAC President Heather Jeffrey. OGGO voted to
suspend committee hearings on the app on Feb. 7, with Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Québécois MPs citing concerns that further hearings could put at risk current CBSA and RCMP investigations into the scandal.
