Suspended Border Services Managers Ask Judge to Rescind Report Making ‘Spurious’ ArriveCan Allegations

A smartphone set to the opening screen of the ArriveCan app is seen in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini

Two former managers with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) who were suspended without pay related to ArriveCan probes are attempting to quash what they say is a “scandalous” CBSA report that alleges potential criminal wrongdoing, according to Federal Court records.

The two former managers, Cameron MacDonald and Antonio Utano, asked on Feb. 16 that a federal judge rescind a 2023 “Preliminary Statement Of Facts” report by CBSA that led to their suspensions.

“The applicants were denied procedural fairness during the investigation by being denied the details of the complaint which triggered the investigation and by being excluded from the investigation,” their lawyer wrote to the Federal Court, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“The allegations set out therein are spurious, scandalous and clearly designed to discredit the applicants with unsubstantiated and untested accusations of such magnitude and severity any reader could only be left to draw the conclusion of malfeasance and potential criminal activity.”

Mr. MacDonald, a Health Canada assistant deputy minister and Mr. Utano, a director-general at the Canada Revenue Agency, worked together at the CBSA on the ArriveCan app, which was used to track the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers entering Canada. Mr. MacDonald previously wrote that the suspensions amounted to a “campaign of intimidation” meant to muzzle them, and that the CBSA’s internal investigation was being conducted in a “remarkably unusual manner.”

The report by CBSA’s executive director of professional integrity Michel Lafleur has not been made public. But on Feb. 5, Conservative MP Larry Brock read out a portion of the report at a meeting of the Committee on Government Operations and Estimates alleging that the CBSA asked the RCMP to investigate criminal charges.

Citing the report, Mr. Brock said it alleged “serious employee misconduct, so serious that [the CBSA] required the RCMP to investigate at least two criminal charges: fraud and bribery.” He added that the report said an ArriveCan contractor had also “solicited a bribe.”

The report also suggested that a CBSA executive tried to destroy four years’ worth of ArriveCan records under investigation.

“The approximate amount of those emails is roughly seven gigabytes or 1,700 emails,“ Mr. Brock said. “You would agree with me, sir, that deleting emails is an extremely serious offence?” Mr. Brock asked Mr. Lafleur, which he agreed would be ”a breach of the code of conduct.”

The auditor general’s report on the ArriveCan app found that government agencies did not follow proper management and contracting practices when it came to the app’s development. Key records around the development processes and financial decisions were also inexplicably missing.

“I am deeply concerned by what this audit didn’t find,“ Auditor General Karen Hogan said when introducing the report on Feb. 12. ”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.”

Ms. Hogan added that the bookkeeping for the app was “the worst I had ever seen,” and said the exact cost of developing it could not be determined with certainty. She said the $59.5 million figure her office came up with could have been higher or lower.