Testimony of IT Firm Partner at Centre of ArriveCAN Scandal Not ‘Believable’: MPs

A person holds a smartphone set to the opening screen of the ArriveCan app, which requires people to declare their vaccination status to be able to enter Canada. The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini

The co-owner of an IT firm at the centre of the ArriveCAN scandal has testified that his decision to submit resumés to the government that inflated the work experience of contractors was a mistake and not fraudulent—a claim that caused several MPs to express disbelief.

“GC Strategies made a mistake by sending the wrong version of the resumé, which in turn ended up being submitted to the government of Canada for the task authorization,” GC Strategies partner Kristian Firth said in his opening statement at the Government Operations committee Nov. 2.

“However, this regrettable mistake was not intentional and in no way determined the awarding of the contract.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis described Mr. Firth as “without a doubt, the least believable witness I have ever had appear before a parliamentary committee.”

The Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates is examining how GC Strategies, Dalian, and Coradix received millions in taxpayer dollars to develop the ArriveCAN app, which was used by Ottawa to track the COVID-19 vaccination status of travellers entering Canada. Critics have claimed the app could have been developed for a fraction of its $54 million cost.

The co-founders of Quebec-based Botler AI, which was acting as a subcontractor for the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA), testified Oct. 26 that they were concerned about the development of ArriveCAN after witnessing subcontracting deals that lacked transparency about where federal dollars went.

Botler co-founders Amir Morv and Ritika Dutt alleged Mr. Firth routinely boasted that he and his friends, who were senior government officials with contracting authorities, “had ‘dirt’ on each other, essentially guaranteeing silence through mutually assured destruction.” They also said government contractors are “openly engaged in various criminal activities” and commit fraud on the government in exchange for “promising influence and requesting material benefit.”

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 has two employees and was paid $8.9 million as a general contractor on the ArriveCAN project.

‘Cooking the Numbers’

During his testimony, Mr. Firth was repeatedly asked about the resumés of Mr. Morv and Ms. Dutt that Coradix had sent to the government for their pilot project, which contained inflated work experience that had been modified without the knowledge of Mr. Morv and Ms. Dutt. When testifying before the committee on Oct. 31, Coradix President Colin Wood said he had submitted the resumés that GC Strategies had provided to him.

New Democrat MP Gord Johns said Mr. Morv’s work experience had been inflated from seven years to 12 years, while Ms. Dutt had her work experience at an accounting firm increased from two months to 51 months. Mr. Johns suggested that Mr. Firth had inflated their work experience to meet the task authorization.

Mr. Firth said while he had only received one version of Mr. Morv and Ms. Dutt’s resumés, he had modified them into several versions that fit an “evaluation matrix” of scores needed to be compliant in a certain category of government contracts. Mr. Firth said he had mistakenly sent the “wrong version” of the resumés to the government, which ended up being used for the task of authorization.

Mr. Genuis said that while asking someone to provide more information on their resumé was understandable, “massively inflating a number associated with a particular field” was not.

“So you just intentionally changed the numbers, but you didn’t have time to check in with them, and you just sent in the resumé without checking?” he asked. “That doesn’t sound to me like a mistake, that sounds like cooking the numbers.”

“It was an honest mistake and I’m apologizing,” Mr. Firth replied.

Conservative MP Larry Brock said the resumé issue caused him “great discomfort,” adding that it appeared Mr. Firth had manipulated the resumés to ensure Bottler AI would qualify for government funding. “Quite frankly, sir, whether you call it a mistake, whether you call it a lack of intent, whether you refer to it as an embellishment, in my respectful submission, sir, that is a lie. No one believes you in this room.”

Claims of Government Influence

Conservative MP Michael Barrett asked Mr. Firth if he knew that then-CBSA director-general Cameron MacDonald owned a cottage, to which he replied “I don’t know if he had a cottage.”

When asked why he would lie about the cottage question, Mr. Firth replied that Mr. MacDonald had referred to it as “a chalet.”

Mr. Brook accused him of having a “very limited ability in terms of telling this committee the truth,” adding that the “RCMP is going to have a field day when they come to interview you.”

Mr. Firth told the committee he never claimed to have any influence on government officials. Mr. Brock then read out a transcript of a recorded conversation from 2019 between Botler AI’s co-founders and Mr. Firth, where he said he had the “ear” of then-CBSA president John Ossowski.

“If that’s not influence or claiming to have influence over government officials, I don’t know what is,” Mr. Brock said.

Mr. Barrett criticized Mr. Firth for needing to be summoned to appear before the committee to testify, and for not being able to supply the “basic details” of how much money he had made from contracts with the federal government and from the ArriveCAN app.

In his opening statement, Mr. Firth said that he had been willing to testify in front of the committee for an hour, but when he asked for an additional week to prepare for a two-hour session, he was portrayed as a “reluctant witness.”

“The problem we have today is that with all of my questions, we have to assume that you’ve lied about absolutely everything,” Mr. Barrett said on Nov. 2 after several MPs accused Mr. Firth of being dishonest.

“What you’re doing is disrespectful to members of this committee, and it’s disrespectful, frankly, to the government of Canada who is paying your rent. And taxpayers should be very concerned that a dollar has flowed from the government of Canada to your organization because everything you’ve said here today is absolutely unacceptable.”

Members of the committee agreed to order Mr. Firth to provide a copy of his banking records related to ArriveCAN, and summoned him to appear again before the committee at a later date.