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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, BQ)

Nov/1/23 6:56:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am continuing a speech I was able to start a few days ago. I would like to start from the beginning, but quickly, and present a chronology of the whole ArriveCAN affair. On April 29, 2020, the government launched the ArriveCAN app nationwide. It then took several months for it to make the app mandatory, which happened on November 21, 2020. This meant that anyone re-entering Canada from that point on had to register and use the ArriveCAN application. Everyone who left the country and returned to Canada realized that the ArriveCAN app was not very sophisticated. On October 24, 2022, the Canada Border Services Agency announced the costs of the application on its website. We are talking $55 million over three years. Costs totalled more than $55 million over the three-year period from 2020 to 2023, including $80,000 for the first mobile version of the app and $8.6 million for more than 70 updates to the app and the related website. It is worth nothing that 70 updates is a lot, especially for an app that, on the whole, is pretty straightforward. Another $7.9 million was spent on data management and $6.4 million on data storage and cloud services. That is a lot of money. That is the first observation. Second, on October 31, 2022, pursuant to a motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, the Canada Border Services Agency provided an updated table of non-salary expenditures related to ArriveCAN, along with the names of the companies contracted to develop the app. On November 2, 2022, one year ago tomorrow, the House voted in this very chamber to adopt the motion calling on the Auditor General to investigate and audit the ArriveCAN app. I point out that this motion was adopted by a majority in the House of Commons, but not unanimously. On January 23, so about two months later, when the Prime Minister was asked about it, he replied that the contracting process for ArriveCAN had been illogical and inefficient. On October 4, 2023, so just under a month ago, two articles in The Globe and Mail reported allegations of misconduct in the Canada Border Services Agency's IT contracting process. On Thursday, October 12, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, on which I have the pleasure of sitting, convened an emergency meeting to ensure that the information gathered by The Globe and Mail would be taken into consideration by the Auditor General, who, I would remind the House, is to conduct an audit on the matter. The chair of our committee explained that he convened that meeting following the announcement of an RCMP investigation into allegations of misconduct in the contracting process. Madam Speaker, there is a lot of background noise. I would like to be able to deliver my speech in a more conducive environment.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Nov/1/23 6:59:29 p.m.
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I am sure that it was unintentional and that the member in question is sorry. The hon. member for Terrebonne.

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Nov/1/23 6:59:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the look I gave was enough. As I was saying, the audit report of the Auditor General of Canada was expected to be presented this month. However, because of new allegations made in the newspapers, the Auditor General of Canada told us during the special committee meeting that she would be extending the deadline for her audit into the winter. I will briefly summarize the main points of the article, which is very interesting. I have to point out that a healthy democracy needs this kind of real investigative journalism. Two IT experts from the Botler company say they witnessed dubious or at least questionable practices in the procedure used to allocate public funds for software development contracts. Specifically, they received money from a contract that they had not even signed and that had been signed without their knowledge. That is serious. There were also ties to CBSA staff, and the GC Strategies firm is being particularly hard hit by the potential scandal. GC Strategies, the consulting firm, has been singled out. It has not yet been charged, but is potentially being charged with transferring data to third-party, unknown companies that are potentially dubious once again. We are talking about personal data. People who travel and put personal information on a government platform expect their data to be respected. We know that potentially dangerous data transfers have occurred. This controversy is in addition to the $54-million price tag for the ArriveCAN app last year. As I said, the first thing is that there was a very high price tag for a rather simple app. On top of that, the contracts that were awarded to companies for developing this app are especially dubious. We are very much looking forward to seeing the report of the Auditor General of Canada. I would like to mention one last thing about the special meeting that we had. The Globe and Mail reported that the Canada Border Services Agency received warnings about the questionable ties between the IT consultants and some federal public servants, so people at the CBSA had the information. What happened is that they decided to launch an investigation themselves on their end. We know that the RCMP and the CBSA launched investigations at the same time as the Auditor General of Canada's audit. What comes next is very important. During the special meeting that was held about the ArriveCAN app, during which we spoke to the Auditor General of Canada, I asked her the question and she answered that she was not even aware that those investigations were taking place. The Auditor General herself was not informed of the fact that government agencies and departments were conducting an investigation on their end, when that is her job and she had been mandated by the House to conduct an audit. There was no communication there. It is rather typical of the government not to consult interested parties, but it is rather inappropriate that it did not inform the Auditor General of Canada that it was conducting its own investigation into a potential scandal. From day one, ArriveCAN has been a clear example of government incompetence. Before even knowing that the RCMP was investigating allegations of criminal misconduct in the awarding of contracts, we already knew that the app cost a lot of money. Nearly a year later, we find out other things from the article in The Globe and Mail. The Auditor General of Canada confirmed that she is not aware of an investigation being conducted by the Canada Border Services Agency and by the RCMP. When the articles came out, we were able to hold a special meeting. However, the report of the Auditor General of Canada still not having been published, we wonder why the focus on wanting to talk about this app. It goes without saying, but we think that the Auditor General should carry out her work with the collaboration of all the departments. Given that she is mandated by Parliament, we expect the Auditor General of Canada to present her report so that we can get to the bottom of things and find out what happened with ArriveCAN. We know that there were some questionable actions, but we do not know exactly what happened. A professional person and third party needs to conduct the investigation and settle the matter. We are dealing with a government that voted against the motion calling on the Auditor General to conduct an audit. On the face of it, that does not look good for our current democracy. Meanwhile, motion after motion is moved, and we are currently debating a third-party committee report about an app when the Auditor General is already investigating the matter. We cannot help but wonder what the Conservatives are up to. Are they trying to block the work of Parliament? That is what I am wondering, and that is what the folks in my party are wondering. We would like to move on to serious matters and get to work. The Conservatives' actions today are not worthy of a party that wants to be in power. At the end of the day, we are the only ones acting responsibly in this Parliament.

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Mr. Tony Baldinelli (Niagara Falls, CPC)

Nov/1/23 7:05:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I take issue with my colleague's comments on our role as the opposition. In fact, I called for, at the international trade committee, the study of ArriveCAN in the winter of 2022. That is why we are here today. It is because of the negative impacts that application had on the tourism community. We lost two years because of COVID. We lost a third year of tourism because of the ArriveCAN app and its implications for the tourism sector. What were the impacts on the tourism community in your riding? Why is it that you are criticizing us for wanting to continue to raise and alleviate the concerns we are trying to look at with the tourism sector?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Nov/1/23 7:06:30 p.m.
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I do want to remind the member that he is to address questions and comments through the Chair, and not directly to the member. The hon. member for Terrebonne.

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Nov/1/23 7:06:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know, and it is our party's position, that there may have been problems with the tourism industry and that it potentially paid the price for the application. However, we are supposed to be debating a number of other topics. At the moment, we are debating committee reports when we should be moving bills forward. Why is it that every day in committee a constant stream of motions prevent us from really doing our job?

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Nov/1/23 7:07:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise this evening to speak to a report produced by the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade, of which I am a proud member. This is a Conservative motion to concur in the sixth report of the committee on international trade, entitled “The ArriveCAN Digital Tool: Impacts on Certain Canadian Sectors”. I will say off the top that I became a member of the committee while the study was under way about a year ago. I was not present during some of the testimony, but I did take part in the meetings that drafted the report early this spring. This report, as its name implies, is focused on the trade implications of the ArriveCAN app, the travel implications and the effect the application had on travel back and forth across the Canadian border during the COVID pandemic. As we all know, the COVID pandemic hit North America in March 2020, which closed this place in the House of Commons on March 13. A week later, on March 20, the governments of Canada and the United States agreed to temporarily restrict all non-essential travel across the Canada-U.S. border. The pandemic had huge impacts on the Canadian economy, many of which arose from the restrictions that were placed on crossing the Canada-U.S. border. The report we are debating today summarizes testimony about the ArriveCAN app received by the committee during its study. It was divided into three sections. The first provides information about the impacts of ArriveCAN on Canada's border crossings. The second is about the impacts of the use of ArriveCAN on certain sectors, particularly tourism. The third section presents the views of witnesses about proposed government actions that could support the recovery of specific sectors affected by the mandatory use of ArriveCAN. The ArriveCAN app was launched in April 2020. It allowed travellers entering Canada to input their quarantine plans and later their vaccination information, thus digitizing the information collected through the paper forms that travellers had to complete before that time. On November 21, 2020, the use of the ArriveCAN app became mandatory for travellers entering Canada, so they could not use the paper forms that they could use before. I have to point out here that it was not so much the use of the ArriveCAN app that affected travellers, but the fact that for almost two years, from November 21, 2020, to September 30, 2022, the app was mandatory, they had to use it to cross the border. They could not fill out their information on the paper forms that had been used initially in the pandemic. I also want to point out again that this study was restricted to the impacts of the mandatory use of this app. Many other pandemic measures had negative impacts on economic sectors and industries in Canada. Vaccine mandates and COVID testing all impacted the ability and speed with which people could cross the border. Also, the study did not cover the development of the ArriveCAN app that we have heard so much about in this debate. That aspect was studied and is being studied by other committees in the House of Commons. I will talk more about that later. The international trade committee study we are debating here tonight was concerned with the impacts that ArriveCAN had on certain sectors, and I would say particularly tourism. What were some of those impacts? The most obvious one is when an application is created that can only be used on smart phones or tablets and is then made mandatory, it has an immediate impact on anyone who does not own a smart phone or tablet, or even those who find using smart phones a challenge beyond the simple act of answering the phone or looking at an email and that kind of thing. Therefore, I am a bit surprised that when the government was deciding to make the ArriveCAN app mandatory no one seemed to ask the obvious question: What about those people who do not own smart phones? Seniors are clearly a group of people who broadly fit that category. This problem caused a lot of delays at border crossings, especially land border crossings. I want to reiterate that the app was created to save time, but on the whole, in many ways, it caused delays, certainly from the travellers' point of view. I have heard a lot about it from my constituents. I have six land border crossings in my riding, probably the most in the country of any riding. My constituents are used to travelling back and forth across the border for business, shopping and tourism. My riding is very reliant on the tourism industry. Many of my constituents were affected by the requirement to use the ArriveCAN app. One of the additional problems in my riding is that several of the border crossings are found in areas without cell coverage, so people could not use the app at the border. They could not load their data at the border, because they did not have any way to use their phones. There was no cell coverage. In some places there is cell coverage, but it is from cell towers in Washington state, so they are paying extra roaming charges. All this resulted in extra work for travellers and border agents alike. Mark Weber, President of the Customs and Immigration Union, representing the people working at the border said in testimony: What I can tell you is that the numbers provided to you earlier by the CBSA— That is the group that was organizing the use of the app. —which said that 99% of air travellers and 94% of land travellers have the app completed, are absolutely false. Those numbers are the percentages completed after we helped them complete with the app. In the Eastern Townships branches, the numbers were closer to 60%, for example. The percentage of travellers who could do all this on their own was much lower than the 95% that CBSA reported. He goes on to say: Overall, we're looking at closer to 75% to 80% having it completed. Essentially, our officers now largely work as IT consultants. You have land borders that have essentially become parking lots, with us helping people complete the app. Mr. Weber's point was that it would have been quicker and more efficient for those who could not use the app to simply continue providing the paper form information about quarantine plans and showing their proofs of vaccination to CBSA officers rather than getting help to enter the information on phones they did not have or did not know how to use. Workers in duty-free stores also had to help travellers with the app. I want to remind people that it was not entirely, completely straightforward to use the app. I use two smart phones every day, and I think of myself as pretty tech-savvy. I remember when I first had to use ArriveCAN, it was not all that straightforward. I had to figure out how to save my vaccine certificates as images, find those images on my phone and upload them to the app. I can see how someone not familiar with those processes would have trouble. Seniors and others who were not used to using their phones were adversely impacted, both Canadian seniors returning from the U.S. and American seniors trying to visit Canada. As border crossing restrictions were lifted, and more and more people were trying to cross the border on day trips, the difficulties were exacerbated. For one thing, the app asked for an address in Canada where the traveller would quarantine if needed. This requirement forced day-trippers from the U.S. to lie because they had no real Canadian address to put into the app. We heard one story of a bus full of American seniors planning to spend the day on the more scenic Canadian side of Niagara Falls turning around at the border because of the ArriveCAN requirements. The mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app impacted travel across the border, and in particular impacted tourism. There is data I could cite that clearly show the immense impact on tourism of the COVID pandemic in general, but it is hard to parse out the exact economic impact of the ArriveCAN app itself. I am not only the NDP critic for international trade, but also the critic for small business and tourism. This report has some important recommendations about the app in general and also about how the government could respond, to support the tourism industry that is still recovering from the COVID pandemic. I am just going to read some of the recommendations in full so members can get a sense of them. Recommendation 1 is: That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders, including through the use of appropriate digital and non-digital tools, and through the provision of adequate human and other resources. These efforts should be informed by consultations with relevant stakeholders, during which particular attention should be paid to concerns about the potential for significant disruptions, confusion or delays at Canadian ports of entry. The focus should be airports and land crossings, including international bridges. To this recommendation, I would comment that we should encourage travellers to use digital tools when crossing the border by making these tools easy to use and ensure that their use will make the travellers' entry into Canada easier for them, quicker and more efficient. That would result in more people using the tools. The lesson from ArriveCAN is that making digital tools mandatory would almost always result in unintended negative consequences. Recommendation 2 states: That the Government of Canada enhance its efforts designed to increase domestic and international awareness that Canada has removed COVID-19–related public health measures, including the mandatory use of ArriveCAN. These efforts should occur in collaboration with other governments and relevant stakeholders in Canada, and should also be focused on the U.S. market. As a comment to that, I would say that we are well past the era of COVID restrictions now, and for long enough that this recommendation is more or less moved by now, but it was important at the time, a year ago, when we were writing these recommendations. Recommendation 3 states: That the Government of Canada ensure that international bridge authorities and commissions, as well as duty-free stores in Canada, are eligible for federal financial support if the Government decides to close—for any length of time—the borders that Canada shares with the United States. To this recommendation, I would like to comment on the incredible impact that the COVID pandemic had on one sector within the tourism sector, and that is land-based duty-free stores. My constituent Cam Bissonnette has two duty-free stores and found his business in an essentially impossible position when the borders were closed because of COVID. It is the biggest impact, I would say, on any sector in Canada. For months on end, his business suffered a decline of over 95% in revenue. He and others in his sector were stuck with perishable inventory that they could not legally sell to anyone. While things have improved slowly since the borders were opened, the devastating impact of those times when the borders were closed have made it almost impossible for him and others in that sector to survive. I will simply add that the duty-free sector is generally misunderstood by the federal government in several ways, and would ask that the government listen to those business owners' concerns very carefully. Recommendation 4 is: That the Government of Canada enhance safety and security, reduce delays and backlogs, and improve processing times at Canadian ports of entry through considering the recruitment of additional Canada Border Services Agency officers to serve at international bridges, maritime ports, airports and other ports of entry. This is something for which the NDP has been calling for years. Recommendation 5 states: That the Government of Canada fill positions that are currently vacant on Destination Canada’s board of directors. Recognizing that the summer 2023 tourism season will be the first season since summer 2019 without COVID-19–related public health measures, these vacancies should be filled as soon as possible. That takes us through the report that we are being asked to concur in or to agree with this evening. I have to mention the amendment that the Conservatives made to their own motion. This amendment would send the report back to the international trade committee to add in a study of the scandal surrounding the creation of ArriveCAN, how it was made and the contracts that were put out, as mentioned in the previous speech by my Bloc colleague from Terrebonne. This scandal is a very serious issue. It deserves to be studied thoroughly here in the House of Commons. It is being studied in the government operations committee and, as we heard, also in public accounts. In fact, it was studied there a year ago, and that study has been reopened to cover the latest allegations. That is where it should be studied, or at the ethics committee, since the scandal is an incredible mess of seemingly blatant corruption. However, suffice it to say that the NDP is very much in favour of the House of Commons' getting to the bottom of the scandal, and I have faith in the members of the government operations, public accounts or the ethics committee to do just that. What I really think we do not need is to study it again in the international trade committee as well, calling the same witnesses and coming to the same conclusions as the other committees will likely do. The international trade committee has some important business on its plate now, including study of the new Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. Adding in the business before us, something that is not at all related to international trade and is already being studied at government operations and public accounts, would literally be a waste of time. I will finish here simply by saying that I am very much in favour of the main motion to concur in this report, but that I am not in favour of the amendment.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Nov/1/23 7:24:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and fellow member of the Standing Committee on International Trade. We did that study together, in fact. I think we can both attest to the fact that we were able to do what had to get done, although any new important facts could well deserve further study. Can my colleague tell us more about why the Standing Committee on International Trade is perhaps not the best venue for that, despite how important and fundamental this scandal may be?

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Mr. Richard Cannings

Nov/1/23 7:24:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I was saying, the international trade committee exists to study issues about international trade, and when we studied the ArriveCAN app, thanks to the member for Niagara Falls, who put forward this motion to study this topic, it fit within the mandate of that committee because the motion was talking about the travel back and forth across the Canadian border and how that had been restricted in many ways by the mandatory imposition of the app. What the amendment to the motion asks of us is to dive into a deep mess of scandal surrounding the creation of the app, and that is much more something that government operations, public accounts or ethics should study. That is where this should occur, and it is occurring. If it were not occurring there, we would be asking that those committees study it, but we do not have to, because they are already studying it. I asked one member of the government operations committee how long he would be studying it, and he said there is a lot there and it would probably be until the next election. We think it is important that it be studied. It is being studied, so we do not need to study it at international trade. That would be outside the mandate of that committee.

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Mr. Tony Baldinelli (Niagara Falls, CPC)

Nov/1/23 7:26:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore. A lot happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, which stretched over three years, from 2020 to 2022. It was a time when the Liberal government tried to give itself full spending authority without any opposition scrutiny. This was in the spring of 2020. Then, the Liberal government thought it was a good idea to prorogue Parliament in the middle of a raging global pandemic later that summer. After more than a year of social distancing, public health restrictions, masking and vaccines, the hypocritical Liberal government plunged the country into a pandemic election. It is truly unthinkable, if one goes back to look at it. However, for the Liberals, it has never been about good and sound policy. It always was and always has been about politics. That is why we are here this evening, unfortunately, to discuss another disastrous Liberal policy objective, which did little to protect Canadians during the pandemic and almost single-handedly ruined any chance of a tourism recovery in 2022. It is an honour for me to sit as a member at the Standing Committee on International Trade. I was assigned to the committee on February 28, 2022. We have since covered a wide range of topics and issues impacting Canadian trade. While some people might not realize this, tourism has important elements of trade, as an export industry. When COVID-19 hit our country, tourism was hit first and hardest. We all knew early on that it would take the longest to recover. When we fast-forward more than three years, since the federal government agreed to close our international borders, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are still being felt in many parts of Canada's tourism economy. Recovery is not equal. Some areas are recovering more quickly than others, particularly those in rural, remote and northern communities. Further, thousands of tourism operators across the country continue to struggle with high levels of debt after taking out pandemic loans, through no fault of their own, and with a tourism visitation base that simply has not returned to be as strong as it was before COVID. Domestically, Canadians are now scaling back their spending and travel plans, impacted by stubborn inflation, increasing carbon taxes and higher interest rates, which make everything more expensive and life more unaffordable. Internationally, visitors are simply not coming as they did before COVID. After eight years under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada's tourism reputation has been damaged, and our country's overall tourism economy has lost its competitive edge to other countries. For reasons, many related to the Liberal mismanagement of our tourism economy, visitors are simply not making Canada their destination of choice as they once did. The reputational impacts on Canada's tourism industry that were caused by the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app should not be downplayed or ignored. When this dysfunctional $54-million app was made mandatory for anyone entering Canada, the issues faced by travellers were countless. Moreover, the issues were being faced by just about every person trying to arrive here, at every point of entry, ranging from major airports to land borders and international bridge crossings. My riding of Niagara Falls is the number one leisure tourism destination in Canada, employing over 40,000 tourism workers. Before the pandemic, it was generating over $2.1 billion in tourism receipts. My riding includes the city of Niagara Falls, the town of Fort Erie and the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. As a border riding, we also have four international bridge crossings, with at least one bridge in each municipality. From day one, simply put, the ArriveCAN app was an utter failure. Its impacts were so severe that I felt compelled to bring forward a motion to study this issue at committee. Upon agreement, we undertook this study, which eventually produced the sixth report, along with the motion and the amendment that we are debating here today. While I sincerely appreciate our committee's work on producing this report, the fact is that new and very troubling information about ArriveCAN has surfaced, beyond its astronomical price tag, which now stands at approximately $54 million. These issues should be of great concern to all parliamentarians, partisan politics aside, no matter one's political stripe. New allegations of misconduct, including identity theft, forged resumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price-fixing and collusion involving contractors, ghost contractors and senior bureaucrats have emerged. Canadian taxpayers deserve answers. I look forward to hearing from my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore, as she expands on some of these shocking revelations. There is a reason we now call the app and its implications “arrive scam”. Given that new information about ArriveCAN that we simply cannot ignore has come to light, it is only reasonable to support this amendment to the motion to extend the ArriveCAN study to get to the bottom of these issues. As badly as the Liberal-NDP coalition wants to move on and forget about its mistakes, bad decision-making and reckless spending, there is still a lot of unfinished business to take care of from the pandemic years, and the ArriveCAN app absolutely must be included in this. I see a trend growing here, whether it is the refusal to review $15.5 billion in potentially ineligible pandemic wage benefit payments because it is not worth the effort, wasting more than $600 million on a risky pandemic election or not caring that $54 million was required to develop the dysfunctional ArriveCAN app. The reckless and wasteful NDP-Liberal coalition has become far too complacent with the tax dollars of hard-working Canadians. It must realize it has a spending addiction that is costing Canadians and the country dearly. It is our job as the opposition to hold the government to account. That is why I support my colleague's amendment to the motion, to amend the sixth report to include reference to the $54 million of hard-earned Canadian tax dollars wasted on the application, the inaccurate evidence government officials provided during the committee's investigation, the serious allegations of fraudulent contract practices and the statement made by the RCMP that it is investigating criminality in the contracts that were awarded. Now the Auditor General of Canada wants to update Canadians on where all the money went. Canadians deserve answers. The people of Niagara deserve answers. This government's obstinance in removing the application until the fall of 2022 denied tourism recovery to those in my community and throughout Canada who were looking for it so badly. To add insult to injury, it is a government that feigned interest in responding to the concerns of our tourism community and simply did not care to ensure that hard-working Canadian taxpayers' dollars would be protected. Instead, we are now continually bombarded by scandalous revelations on how an application that could have been developed over a weekend wound up costing Canadians $54 million. After eight years in office, the tired and inept government and Prime Minister are not worth the cost. Let us get Canadians the answers they deserve. It is simply the common-sense thing to do.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

Nov/1/23 7:34:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I had the distinct honour during the pandemic of being the shadow minister for transport, and I worked hand in hand with the member who just gave his address. I wonder whether the member could comment, given his close proximity to the tourism sector, on the comments he heard relative to airlines, what they went through at that time and the impacts of the transport sector on tourism during the pandemic.

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Mr. Tony Baldinelli

Nov/1/23 7:35:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, being in a border community, I can relay some of the examples we have from the four bridge crossings into my community and about our visitor base in terms of tourism in Niagara, which would be about 30% American. Those American visitors represented 50% of the spend. On the ArriveCAN app and the terrible image it portrayed because of wait times and the glitches it caused, there were, for example, 10,000 Canadians who were told they had to quarantine, because of a glitch. It was incorrect. Those types of things halted any attempt at tourism recovery in 2022. Why did it take the government until October to end the ArriveCAN app? People knew it was not working; it had never worked, from day one. On top of that, the government then spent, from January to August, $400 million on rapid testing capabilities when we knew infectious disease experts were saying that it was not needed. Again, the government was wasting money and denying us and the people in the tourism community the ability to recover, which they so badly wanted to do.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Nov/1/23 7:36:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague. We work well together on the Standing Committee on International Trade. As the member knows, we have our work cut out for us. We are currently studying a Health Canada regulation that hurts Canadian and Quebec products and gives a leg up to our American competitors. After that, we will be studying the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. We will then study the Conservatives' proposals regarding the Port of Vancouver. We have a lot of topics to study. We also have motions from the government party on various trade issues from around the world. Is it really necessary to delay all this, only to repeat a study that we have already done whose link with trade remains, despite everything, far-fetched?

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Mr. Tony Baldinelli

Nov/1/23 7:37:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy working with my hon. colleague on the international trade committee as well. If we go back to the study we undertook, we were the first committee to undertake a study on this. The first recommendation asked, “That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders, including through the use of appropriate digital and non-digital tools”. If we are going to do that, we need to ensure that we get it right. ArriveCAN was a disaster. We need to get to the bottom of ArriveCAN before we can proceed forward to improve the borders and the digital tools we need moving forward. Why was it allowed to take place? Why did it cost $54 million when people were saying they could have created it over a weekend for a couple of a hundred thousand dollars?

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

Nov/1/23 7:38:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, another phenomenon we saw during the pandemic was Canadians flying out of U.S. border towns as a result of the halt of the airline sector by the government. I am sure that had a significant impact on tourism as well. Canadians were basically sent to three neighbouring airports: Buffalo, Bellevue and Bellingham. I would like to hear how the shutdown of the airline sector and the driving of Canadians to these border towns affected tourism for Canadians.

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Mr. Tony Baldinelli

Nov/1/23 7:38:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was an absolute shame to see what was happening at Canadian borders. We were essentially driving people to airports such as Buffalo. I questioned the previous minister and jokingly said the Buffalo chamber of commerce was going to hold a parade for him because of the additional business he was creating in Buffalo, instead of getting our act in order so we could get people back to Pearson and flying out of Toronto.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

Nov/1/23 7:39:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the fine constituents of Calgary Midnapore, especially on such an important issue that truly affects their tax dollars. I want members to take a moment and imagine a Lifetime movie that includes the elements of identity theft, forged resumes, contractual theft, fraudulent contracting and collusion. Members do not have to imagine this Lifetime movie, because it actually exists. It is the ordeal behind ArriveCAN. ArriveCAN was created for $54 million. Experts have said that the app could have been created with simply $200,000 over a weekend. Instead, $54 million was spent on the app. Of that $54 million, $11.2 million went to a company called GCStrategies, and $4.3 million went to two companies called Coradix and DALIAN. I will add that these companies have actually received $80.3 million from the federal government over a significant period of time. It is very concerning that these companies would receive these large amounts of funding for the $54-million app. Originally, this was an issue brought to the government operations committee last spring. I will say that the government tried to dismiss it. It tried to write it off as “nothing to see here”, and our objective at that time was just to try to get value for money for Canadians. As we have found out, it has become so much more than that. It has become a search for the truth. This was broken by The Globe and Mail's Bill Curry, when he broke the story of the RCMP's investigating this CBSA contract. The fact that GCStrategies, the group central to the creation of ArriveCAN, is the central player in the scandal leads to a lot of concerns. The company at the centre of this is a small company called Botler. It originally did some work for the Justice Department. It was eventually reached out to by GCStrategies, the company at the centre of the ArriveCAN scandal, to do a pilot for Bill C-65, relative to sexual misconduct. According to Curry's article: The developers said they were first approached by GCStrategies's managing partner, Kristian Firth, via LinkedIn in late 2019. Mr. Firth said he was reaching out on behalf of his ‘client,’ who he later said was the CBSA's then-director, Cameron MacDonald. [They said] they were shocked to discover that after interacting with GCStrategies and Mr. MacDonald for months, the funding for their software was approved through an agency contract with another company—Dalian—without their knowledge. They said they had never heard of Dalian at that time and never worked with any Dalian employees. They said they later discovered that Coradix had submitted forms to the agency about their work experience without their knowledge or permission. For instance, [one of the employees] said a two-month summer internship at Deloitte on her résumé was inflated in an invoicing points form to say she had 51 months of experience working for [an] accounting firm. Years of experience is used in federal contracting to determine whether a contractor qualifies for [those positions]. It is also used to calculate per diem rates. The story starts there, but it does not end there. GCStrategies' Mr. Firth also told these two employees of this company that: ...he could act as a broker to secure a contract with the agency. He also promised he could open doors for them to land contracts with other departments or have [their] software approved to use across the entire public service, which would be a substantial contract. He explained that he would do this for a fee that is contingent on successfully landing government contracts. This company went on to record conversations with Mr. Firth. Those recorded conversations show Mr. MacDonald directed Botler in February 2020 to “‘please work with [Mr. Firth]’ and ‘let [Mr. Firth] work his magic.’” “The conversations also reveal that Mr. Firth described Mr. MacDonald, in November, 2019, as a friend and said, 'I've been with him his whole career in government.' Mr. Firth referred to various senior public servants as friends.” “They said they were asked by Mr. Firth to start working on the project even though they had yet to...sign a contract.” We get into the fraudulent contracting piece here. “For months, [the two employees] said they were repeatedly denied answers when they asked Mr. Firth for a contract so their legal team could review it.” When called to appear last year before [the government operations committee] to answer questions related to ArriveCan, [the topic of discussion today], Mr. Firth said his company had invoiced $44-million in federal contract work with more than 20 different departments over the past two years. He said his company has no stand-alone office and just two employees—himself and Darren Anthony. Neither of them perform IT work themselves. Instead, they hire subcontractors to do the work in exchange for a fee of between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of the contract values. Mr. MacDonald wrote, “You asked me for advice on the key question of ‘why GC Strategies’”, as the government was struggling to determine why GC Strategies was chosen. Mr. MacDonald himself said that they were still “grappling with 'who selected GC Strategies'”. The article says, “Mr. MacDonald’s e-mail comments…suggested answers for the executives. The draft answers appeared aimed at convincing MPs that no one person was responsible for selecting [GS Strategies].” However, we know someone selected GC Strategies. Mr. MacDonald “set up meetings for Botler with the Canada Revenue Agency, Correctional Service Canada, Global Affairs, Shared Services Canada, Transport Canada, Treasury Board and others in an effort to have the software approved as a government-wide project to all public servants.” This is the crux of the concern for myself and my Conservative colleagues. When we are talking about ArriveCAN, it is a $54-million app, which, experts say, they could have done for $200,000. Here we have the company that received $11 million trying to arrange contracts across all of these other government departments. “During this outreach, Mr. Firth introduced them to another consultant named Vaughn Brennan, who Mr. Firth said had extensive government connections in Ottawa. Mr. Brennan recommended that they send and e-mail to [the Deputy Prime Minister] from Mr. Dutt's e-mail account.” In addition to the breadth of this fraud, we are concerned about the level at which individuals were complicit and informed. “The contract for Botler to provide its services was not a direct contract between Botler and the border services agency. In fact, Botler's company name was not mentioned at all, nor was GC Strategies. Instead, the agency relied on a contract with Dalian and Coradix.” “In a separate subcontracting document between Dalian and GC Strategies, which is not a direct contract with the government, GC Strategies is listed as a subcontractor to Dalian...along with an independent contractor named Patrick van Abbema—are listed as consultants.” Unannounced to you as Coradix/Dalian were brought in as a pass through and they demanded 15% for doing so, CBSA were pissed at the overall pricing and threatened to pull the contract,” Mr. Firth wrote in an e-mail. “Your cost, plus 15% for me and 20% for Coradix etc, it rose to close to $500k. I was not prepared to slow the process down and stop our first client from purchasing so I removed myself from the equation completely and gave them a 15% discount. “By September, 2021, Ms. Dutt and Mr. Morv [of Botler] had had enough and filed a formal misconduct complaint via the Sept. 27, 2021, e-mail to Mr. Utano and another agency official they had been dealing with.” I will add this initial complaint was ignored, so they had to go on and do an additional complaint as well. “They learned that the original contract through which their services were obtained was through an existing contract for IT services.” “Like with ArriveCan, the border agency had turned to a general standing offer contract for IT services and added a specific request...” “Through their research, [they] found that Dalian was submitting invoices and receiving payments...” To summarize, in the words of Ms. Dutt: This is about something that affects every single Canadian, every single taxpayer dollar that is taken from ... hardworking Canadians who are already struggling financially, that is given and spent through contractors through improper means. And I think that Canadians have a right to know what’s going on with their hard-earned money. That—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Nov/1/23 7:49:43 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

Nov/1/23 7:49:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, just because we disagree with the amendment does not mean we disagree with the report and do not think this issue warrants further investigation. More broadly, what does my colleague think of the fact that Canada has one of the worst records when it comes to protecting travellers? ArriveCAN is a scandal for travellers whose trips were cancelled and who had no rights. Air Canada has repeatedly said it will do nothing about it. When it comes to traveller protection and traveller rights, Canada is a backward country. What does my colleague think?

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Nov/1/23 7:50:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been many scandals under this government. That includes Canadian travellers. I am talking about ArriveCAN. It is truly the big scandal here today. In addition to the ArriveCAN scandal, we heard from witnesses at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that many more scandals exist. Of course there is the one in connection with Canadian travellers, but also with finances and government spending.

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