Financial fiasco linked to the ArriveCAN application | More than a million paid in bonuses to the agencies involved

(Ottawa) Singled out in a recent Auditor General’s report on the financial fiasco linked to the design of the application ArriveCANthe Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the responsible department, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), have been generous to their senior managers during these same years marked by cost overruns.

In total, the CBSA and PSPC jointly paid $1 million in bonuses to their senior executives during the years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, show data published on the Treasury Board website. The bonuses paid in 2022-2023 should be published by the Treasury Board only during the summer.

The first contracts aimed at launching the application ArriveCAN were granted in 2020, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, to the consulting firm GC Strategies, which is at the heart of the political storm caused by Auditor General Karen Hogan’s report released last week.

In 2020-2021, CBSA senior executives received a total amount of $190,068 in bonuses, or approximately $5,000 on average per executive. The following year, an amount of $224,049 in bonuses was paid to them.

In the case of senior PSPC executives, they received $347,836 in bonuses in 2020-2021, again around $5,000 on average each. The following year, bonuses totaled $264,898.

The issue of bonuses was raised by Conservative MP Larry Brock at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Wednesday. “Were bounties paid during the ArriveScam fiasco? Yes or no ? he asked PSPC Associate Deputy Minister Michael Mills.

“During the years when the government had to respond to COVID, some senior managers in the PSPC department received performance pay,” he confirmed. He was not able to say how much, but said it was “an integral part of the compensation of executives of the Government of Canada.”

He also did not want to name the senior officials who received them.

The CBSA did not indicate whether the executives who received bonuses had worked on the ArriveCAN project or the contracts awarded to GC Strategies.

“Senior executives whose performance does not meet expectations or cannot be evaluated are not eligible for the performance bonus,” said its spokesperson, Guillaume Bérubé. Retroactive revisions to a bonus are also possible and determined by general administrators and managed at the level of each ministry or agency. »

“A total failure for taxpayers”

According to Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus, such bonuses should never have been paid in light of the management of the contracts that were awarded to GC Strategies by the CBSA and PSPC in the application file.

“The Auditor General’s report demonstrated that the management of the application ArriveCAN was a total failure for taxpayers,” said Mr. Paul-Hus in a statement sent to The Press.

“Now, to add insult to injury, we learn that executives of government agencies responsible forArriveCAN received over $1 million in bonuses. No one responsible for wasting $60 million in taxpayer money and unjustifiably quarantining 10,000 Canadians should receive a bonus. »

In her report, the Auditor General noted irregularities in contracts totaling $19.1 million awarded to GC Strategies by the CBSA, solely for the development ofArriveCAN. This is almost a third of the $59.5 million that the application used to collect the contact details and vaccination status of travelers upon their arrival in Canada during the pandemic ended up costing. Its initial version had a total budget of $80,000.

“This is probably some of the worst financial record keeping I’ve ever seen,” Ms.^me Hogan last week, pointing the finger at the agency that paid incomplete invoices to consultants.

GC Strategies notably participated in the development of the criteria for the call for tenders which it won without a competitive process. But the Auditor General was unable to find documentation on discussions between the firm and the CBSA to justify a first contract of 2.35 million in April 2020.

GC Strategies also invited the senior officials responsible for the file to a whiskey tasting afterwards, casting doubt on the impartiality of the process.

She noted at the public accounts committee on Wednesday that PSPC had raised questions about the no-tender process, but the CBSA decided to move forward anyway. M^me Hogan also noted that the Department had co-signed several task authorizations without description or elements, which made it impossible to determine whether the work had indeed been carried out. “It increased the value of the contract without any additional benefit,” she said.

Senior PSPC officials told the committee they have added new controls to prevent this from happening again.

Called to testify

Furthermore, the Government Operations and Estimates Committee finally adopted a motion on Wednesday requiring that the two partners of GC Strategies, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony, be called again to testify following the publication of the auditor’s report general. They have already answered questions from parliamentarians twice, but they declined a third summons to testify in December, citing mental health problems.

Like the courts, parliamentary committees have the power to compel witnesses to appear.

The motion adopted provides that steps be taken to have the witnesses appear after a period of 21 days and that the sergeant-at-arms be responsible for enforcing this notice to appear. However, elected officials agreed to take into account the state of health of the two individuals before calling on the services of the sergeant-at-arms.

With the collaboration of William Leclerc, The Press