:
I call the meeting to order.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to meeting number 122 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
[English]
Today's meeting is taking place in hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.
[Translation]
Before we get started, I'd like to go over the following important safety measures for all the members and meeting participants in the room.
[English]
To prevent disruptive and potentially harmful audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all in-person participants are reminded to keep their earpieces away from all microphones at all times.
[English]
The following measures have been taken to prevent audio feedback incidents.
All earpieces have been replaced by a model that greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. Those new earpieces are black. Those of you in the room, please ensure that you use a black earpiece.
By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting. If you plug it in, when you are not using it, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker—typically to your right—for this purpose that you'll find on the table as indicated.
Please consult the cards if you have any questions about the process.
As you can see, the room layout has been adjusted to increase the distance between microphones and reduce the chance of feedback from an ambient earpiece.
These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, especially our interpreters.
[Translation]
Thank you everyone for your co‑operation.
[English]
I would remind you that all comments today should, as usual, be addressed through the chair.
[Translation]
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), the committee is resuming consideration of Report 1, 2024 from the Auditor General of Canada, entitled “ArriveCAN”, referred to the committee on February 12, 2024.
[English]
Before we begin with our witness, I have just three items to highlight.
We've received correspondence from Mr. Paul Girard and his doctor. His condition makes him unable to attend at this time. Based on the information provided, it would be best to discharge the summons to allow the individual to focus on his physical health. In fact, I took it upon myself as chair to inform him of this last Friday.
Could I seek the consent of the committee to discharge the summons, so that it is not active or hanging over him?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: That's very good. That is done. Thank you.
Additionally, I'd like to assure members that, as per the motion adopted on Tuesday, they can expect a subcommittee report presented at each public PACP full committee meeting that proceeds a subcommittee meeting.
I'll note for the record, as well, that this will be the first time that the committee has requested this type of reporting in this Parliament, and I'm happy to work with the subcommittee to oblige and report back to the full committee.
Members will notice that I have added some business after this meeting. This is optional. We can deal with most or all of this on Tuesday. I would like to deal with one issue, which involves the release of documents.
[Translation]
I know Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné wants to ask us a question about that.
[English]
Here is what I'm going to do. Once we're done with our witnesses today, if we proceed to business, I will make a commitment to members that, if we deal with that and then want to adjourn, I will vote to adjourn the meeting. This is my commitment to you that this won't turn into a lengthy meeting. Any other business that we have we can deal with on Tuesday. You might still want to wrap it up, and that's fine. That's, of course, your decision, but I am committing.... All I have is my word, and my word is my bond to you. My vote will be to adjourn that meeting should members want to adjourn without any other discussion, if we're able to deal with the document in question.
Further, if we find that we get into a lengthy discussion and members want to end the discussion, I will also vote to end the discussion. If we can wrap it up quickly, we will, and if we can't, we will end it. My commitment to you is to not keep everyone here all afternoon; it is to try to resolve it quickly. Therefore, I'm telegraphing up front how I will vote on these two: I will not allow additional business unless the committee wishes it, and I will not allow the debate to go on for hours and hours or for any lengthy period of time. You can mull that over.
Now I'd like to welcome our witness. We have, as an individual, John Ossowski.
Sir, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it.
You have five minutes for your opening remarks, and then we'll turn to our questions. I'll turn the floor over to you, sir. Thank you.
I will begin by taking issue with repeated references to my having lied, fibbed or been demonstrably dishonest. I corrected my testimony last October, and I apologized for not remembering all those who attended a Teams meeting three years ago. Mr. Chair, not remembering is not lying.
What more does the committee want from me?
On Tuesday, May 14, it was further implied that as a result of my casual employment status with the CBSA, I was gaining some improper business advantage. The sole purpose of this arrangement is to facilitate my access to my emails and calendar and to get the support required to prepare for a committee appearance.
Let me be clear. No business advantage has been sought or received as a result of this arrangement, and I have always followed all conflict of interest requirements of myself.
I would now like to remind the committee of the exceptional circumstances we found ourselves in during the spring of 2020. We were shutting down the largest unprotected border in the world while trying to ensure that critical supply chains remained functional for the essential trade of food, medicine and personal protective equipment, etc. We had repatriation flights for Canadians returning home and had to manage a myriad of issues with the United States.
Coordinating all of this with our U.S. counterparts and supporting the government in this historic time was my priority. ArriveCAN helped us administer the pandemic border measures, and I relied upon my officials to deal with the procurement details.
With respect to the Auditor General's report, the agency has accepted the findings and put measures in place to ensure that this type of situation doesn't happen again. As it has been stated by the Auditor General, the rules were in place, but unfortunately, it appears they were not always followed.
I would now like to offer the following important context. We were asked by the Public Health Agency to develop the app to replace a paper process so that it could get critical health information and pass it along to provinces in a timely manner. This was not planned for in any way. Certainly, at the beginning, there was no budget and no project plan, or any of the other things we would normally have in place for the development of a tool like this. It was about responding as quickly as possible, and no one could have predicted at that time the dozens of versions that would be required to support the orders in council.
Mobile app expertise is a relatively new field for the government, and while the agency had some nascent capability, it was not sufficient, especially as the app changed frequently and became increasingly complex. While the Auditor General stated very clearly that, at the outset, getting outside support was reasonable, the value for money assessment appears to be partially based on the expectation that we should have hired public servants at less cost to do this work. I find this expectation downplays some important facts.
First of all, these skills are in high demand, and the committee has heard that there is roughly a 30% vacancy in IT positions in the government, so I'm not sure we could have run a successful staffing process.
Second, it takes months to hire somebody.
Finally, with respect to funding, I would remind the committee that the agency absorbed a significant portion of these expenses and there was no ongoing funding. While “make or buy” decisions are made by managers, hiring public servants without an ongoing source of funds is not considered a prudent management practice. To be clear, as the end of the pandemic was starting to come into sight and border volumes were increasing, what we needed was more border services officers, not app developers.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
It's nice to have some time with you, Mr. Ossowski.
I think the biggest challenge, of course, is that for Canadians, who are living through so much in a time of inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, seeing all of these resources go out the door has really made a huge impact on them. I think of how a lot of money, like $60 million in profits, would have made a huge difference in multiple ridings across the country to help people alleviate food insecurity, for one example.
This committee heard valuable testimony, in an earlier meeting with the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, that frontline officers were never consulted on the development of the app or any of its 70 updates. This really concerns me, especially as someone who works closely with people out on the front line, because they often have the most effective solutions since they're the ones doing the work. I know that my colleague also brought up this issue with the current president, Ms. Erin O'Gorman, but since you were the decision-maker during the development of that, can you tell us why it is that frontline border officers weren't consulted for this app development?
We also heard from Mr. Weber, the president of the union, that the CBSA was short-staffed by about 2,000 to 3,000 workers prior to the beginning of the pandemic, which gave way to the need for an application in the first place, and which I think tells you that if you're not working on the ground when crisis strikes, then you really have a problem. This is devastating to understand, so it gave way to the application in the first place, and the funds allocated to the ArriveCAN app could have hired 500 officers instead.
I understand that we were in the middle of a pandemic, but I'm wondering if there's any reflection on what happened prior to the pandemic and how not having enough people trained and ready created this crisis in which we've seen a huge amount of taxpayer dollars go to someone out there who's walking away with a huge amount of profit when the app didn't even work and we could have seen officers on the ground, providing services and doing it safely, if there had been planning put into place. I'm just wondering if there's any reflection on making sure you listen to the union, and that when there are not enough people to do the job, that is rectified.
:
You know, when you go back and look at your emails, you see the complexity of the environment that was happening at the time.
As I mentioned, we had to deal with fear in our own workforce around our frontline officers and the exposure that they might have despite their training. There were a lot of unknowns, and there was a lot of hesitancy in terms of what was coming. We were constantly readjusting our resources. We were shutting down the largest unprotected border in the world. It took a lot of effort to coordinate with our U.S. colleagues to make sure that there would be continued flow of food, medicine and supplies in and out of the country. It required a great deal of co-operation from everybody involved, and it was a hands-on, 24-7 environment until we faced whatever the next change was that was happening.
There was remarkable flexibility on behalf of the workforce and all of my colleagues in other departments to do the best we could. There was no playbook.
In fact, I was reading in the paper today about fears of avian flu and another potential pandemic. I hope there were a lot of lessons learned here in terms of what the future might hold for us in terms of how we would respond to a situation like that.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I echo my colleague's comments when it comes to the fact that it is absolutely mind-boggling to have the former president of the CBSA state that he remains proud of the work his department undertook, when it is actually the CBSA that has served as a bellwether for the complete debacle we are studying, now known as arrive scam, and all of the other issues that have started to arise when it comes to procurement and contracting across all departments in the Government of Canada.
I'm going to circle back to some of the questions that my colleague Mr. Barrett asked, just to make sure I heard your answers correctly, Mr. Ossowski.
I'll start by restating the umbrage you seem to have taken or are taking with the fact that individuals have accused you of lying when you came to committee, yet when you appeared before the government operations and estimates committee, you did lie about ever meeting Kristian Firth. You did not say, “I do not recall,” when the question was asked of you. You gave a definitive no. We have that in the testimony.
As we know, at a subsequent meeting, you then corrected the record to say that you had in fact met with him. You stated that you were able to make the correction because the CBSA paid you to provide you with a document stating that you had in fact held this meeting. I think most Canadians would find it strange that a former employee gets rehired as a casual employee under a temporary contract to gain access to information needed to correct the record or defend themselves when most people pay to get access to information from the Government of Canada through ATIPs.
From your earlier response, are we to understand that this is a common practice, people getting hired to gain access to information so they can defend themselves?
:
Okay. Is there anything you would like to add?
You know what? I understand and I appreciate it. I really want to thank the CBSA and the officers who were on the front lines during COVID-19, which was the most difficult time Canada has gone through in a very long time. Our CBSA officers were there. They were supportive. They were trying to make sure that Canadians were protected.
Going through all of this.... Just to reframe exactly what we're doing, we're talking about the ArriveCAN app, which we think cost too much money. It is not about the fact that the app was not effective, that it didn't work or that it was not helpful to Canadians. It is literally about the fact that it cost too much money and about how that procurement process happened.
I just want to differentiate between the work our CBSA officers do and what happened here with the ArriveCAN app.
Mr. Ossowski, I'll leave you with the last words, if there's anything you want to add to that.
We've heard a lot about double-dipping, where we have folks who are providing services to the Government of Canada while also working for the Government of Canada.
We know that PricewaterhouseCoopers does hundreds of millions of dollars in business with the government. The fact that this is further evidence of the disregard for the public dollar in the ongoing scandal of double-dipping is unsurprising, of course, but troubling for Canadians.
You said that you were proud of ArriveCAN. I've talked to frontline border services officers. I speak to them regularly. I spoke to them during the time that you talk about, the challenging time of 2020 to 2022 and in the time since then.
This cost $60 million, and it wasn't necessary. It absolutely was not necessary. You know, you said you would have spent more on hiring border services officers if you had money to do it. However, you had the money. The border services officers have been very clear with me that they could, with resources made available to them, have done more than was done with the app. They would also have been able to do the job they're there to do: to make sure that the travelling public is safe and that we have the proper flow of commerce into our country.
Instead, scammers and grifters were paid. Pools and decks were put on the houses of contractors who added no value to this app, charging 30% in commissions and bonuses paid to executives, while border services officers weren't able to execute their core functions.
To be clear, you're proud of the $60-million price tag on the app.
:
So you're refusing to answer the question. Understood.
You're appearing here as an individual. You're refusing to answer the question, which is quite mind‑blowing, since you were the CBSA president when public servants did this. You now have the chance to say that, had you known, you would have taken serious action, including dismissing those employees. It's really unfortunate that you're refusing to answer that question.
You're appearing here as an individual. On Tuesday, we learned that some employees who attended these events were still working at the CBSA. Not only are they still working there, but they haven't faced any consequences and they have even been promoted. Do you believe that this is normal? I'd like a clear answer, please.
:
Thank you, Chair. It's a pleasure to be here this morning, bright and early out here in British Columbia.
I sit on the international trade committee, and we've studied the ArriveCAN situation from the perspective of how it affected movement and trade across the border. Here we are today, talking more about the financial misdoings, I would say.
All of this irresponsibility, in addition to the facts the Auditor General has brought to light, leads me to believe there was misconduct or, at the very least, some terrible management practices at the highest level of the CBSA. There was no formal agreement between PHAC and the CBSA between April 2020 and July 2021 to clarify roles and responsibilities. There was the absence of a designated lead, and good project management practices—such as developing project objectives, goals, budgets, cost estimates and risk management activities—weren't carried out. There was also a lack of financial record-keeping. Eventually, it became impossible to have a check and balance system.
My simple overall question is this: Wouldn't you say, in the end, that this is your legacy and that the CBSA, under your tenure, is responsible for this?
:
Let's resume the meeting, please. We are back in order.
I made a commitment to keep this very brief and even, subject to everyone's agreement, to proceed with it. This is an issue that Madame Sinclair–Desgagné raised to me. I'll speak to it and then turn things over to her.
This is in regard to information provided by TBS on April 15. We received media requests to have these documents shared. The documents were distributed to members and, as they themselves are not confidential, we can choose to publish them on our website or look at adopting a routine motion in regard to how to treat these types of requests, given the number of documents we received. Maybe we won't have a long discussion unless members want to.
Madame Sinclair-Desgagné, would you like to address this, since I know you raised it with the clerk and me?
In light of the article that appeared in The Globe and Mail on Monday morning, it seems quite obvious to the people following the ArriveCAN file that the newspaper received copies of the documents sent to the committee on April 15. To be clear, these documents contained written answers to questions put to witnesses by MPs during public meetings. Those responses were provided to a journalist. Consequently, the information in these documents became public without the committee's consent, which I find unfortunate. I'd like to correct this mistake on behalf of the committee by making these documents public for a number of reasons. I'm talking about the documents from April 15 only.
First, this article was published in English. I believe that journalists representing the francophone media should also have access to the Treasury Board documents translated for the committee. That would be normal.
Second, this is about fairness to the media, the fourth estate of a healthy democracy. When documents are shared with a newspaper, the least we can do is to make them public, so that there's some transparency in this democracy.
I'd like the committee's opinion on this matter. It's important to right this wrong. I suggest that these documents be simply published on the committee's web site. Again, I'm speaking specifically about the April 15 documents sent to us and made available to the committee members. This is the Treasury Board document on conflicts of interest, as well as the amounts allocated to Dalian, Coradix and GC Strategies over at least 15 years. This includes years spanning two successive governments. I'd like those two documents made public, now that the most of the information has been disclosed to a single journalist.
:
Thanks very much, Chair.
I really appreciate Madame Sinclair-Desgagné's raising this very important point.
I, for one, would really like to know who in our committee is leaking these documents, and who in any committee is leaking documents that are supposed to be confidential. We are supposed to maintain respect and decorum in our committees. I'm hoping that we can find the answers to those questions. If Madame Sinclair–Desgagné has those answers, I would love for her to answer them.
However, I think this is a very important point: We must always maintain the decorum of our committees, Chair. I know I have raised this with you, in many ways and at many different points, to ensure that each and every one of us is respecting how our committees are operating, because if we don't operate effectively and respect the democratic values that govern our committees, then we're not doing our country much of a service, to be honest.
I would love to understand exactly what happened here before we go into the depth of Madame Sinclair-Desgagné's motion.
[English]
I'm not seeing more hands. I have Ms. Khalid and then Monsieur Drouin.
Our regular clerk is not here today to maybe give us an update on what happened, at least behind the scenes. I'm not in a position to do so either.
I guess I'm looking to the committee on how to proceed. Do we want to deal with Madame Sinclair-Desgagné's motion to release these documents?
[Translation]
Should we also ensure that these documents are available in French and English? These two points have been raised today.
[English]
Then, of course, we can come back and have a discussion another time about a protocol, because it did put the chair in an awkward position when documents were available to some but not all.
Ms. Khalid.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
I am very agreeable to the main motion. I think it is unfortunately lacking a big aspect, which is why we are in this position right now. I think we should amend the motion to investigate who released these documents and give discretion to the chair to deal with the repercussions accordingly.
I think this is a very serious issue. We abide by very stringent rules as to what is in camera, what kinds of sensitive documents are presented to us and how we study them. I used to sit on the international human rights subcommittee, where the release of documents or the release of the names of witnesses would often have severe impacts on the security and safety of the witnesses who came before our committee. I think protecting the sanctity of what is presented to our committee is very, very important. As the public accounts committee, I think it is incumbent upon us to really investigate this matter and figure out why this happened, who did it and what the consequences are.
I sincerely believe, Chair, that there should be consequences to this.
:
I'm in a position where I am certainly open to hearing more about this. I consulted the clerk on it. I don't want to speak for her, so I'm going to nudge the committee to push this off and deal with it when the clerk is here to speak to what is considered in camera, confidential information and what is not.
From my point of view, both in discussion with the clerk and as a matter of practice, a response to a public question is certainly not in camera sensitive. Now, having said that, there's no doubt that information provided to members is committee business, but this is not at the level of a report being made public.
Having said that, we can discuss this, but I think we should hear from the clerk before we proceed too far down this path.
I have Madame Sinclair-Desgagné.
Ms. Khalid, is your hand up again, or is that a previous hand?
[Translation]
Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné now has the floor.
:
Thanks very much, Chair.
On the main motion, we support the motion. With respect to the secondary issue raised by Ms. Khalid, having heard your comments, notionally, that's fine. I'll defer to the chair's suggestion, so I want to put that off as a separate issue until the clerk returns.
Generally speaking, however, on the issue of the chair reporting back to the committee following an investigation of the particular circumstances, that's fine, but if we could deal with the main motion and then, if we have consensus, direct the chair and the clerk to be prepared to report back to the committee at its next sitting, that would be great. It would achieve both objectives. It would satisfy exactly Madame Sinclair-Desgagné's motion, but it would also then chart us to the right place.
We'll hear from the clerk, through the chair, at the next meeting. If more steps are required, generally speaking, we'll be supportive of that, but let's deal with the main motion. We'll support that.
The spirit of what Ms. Khalid is asking is fine, but if we could hear from the clerk and then vote on that as a separate issue, that would be our preference.
This hour, which you scheduled, was supposed to be for a witness who.... I'm not sure what happened. I was able to hear her very clearly, sitting in Mississauga—Erin Mills. I'm really wondering how those technical issues occurred.
However, I believe the amendment I have proposed and moved is a big part of the motion that Madame Sinclair-Desgagné has moved.
I take your advice, Chair, and I think we should perhaps wait until our clerk is back at this committee. In so doing—taking your advice, Chair—I move that this meeting do now adjourn.