The Information Commissioner of Canada, Caroline Maynard, announced Friday evening the opening of an investigation into the destruction of documents covered by access to information requests in the ArriveCAN affair.
“In light of allegations relating to the destruction of documents that were the subject of access to information requests, the investigation will focus on all questions relating to the request or obtaining of documents concerning ArriveCAN between March 2020 and on February 23, 2024,” the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada said in a brief press release.
On Thursday, Cameron MacDonald, a senior civil servant currently suspended without pay for his possible involvement in the explosion of costs of the ArriveCAN application, told a parliamentary committee that “thousands of emails were deleted to hide the truth” in this affair.
The person who was employed by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) during the development of ArriveCAN also claimed that he did not have timely access to the documents necessary to defend himself against the allegations against him. place. Mr. MacDonald and his former CBSA colleague Antonio Utano were suspended from their positions following the release of a preliminary report blaming them for the program’s ballooning costs.
The Auditor General of Canada, Karen Hogan, also highlighted last week in a devastating report that the CBSA did not keep any documentation on the awarding of a contract without a call for tenders to the company GC Strategies.
“We found that there was no documentation on file regarding the initial discussions and interactions between the Canada Border Services Agency and GC Strategies,” the Auditor General wrote.
The firm GC Strategies ranks first among the subcontractors having obtained the most lucrative contracts in the development of ArriveCAN, with a total of $19.1 million. The total cost of the application is estimated by the VG at $59.5 million, while the first prototype only cost $80,000.
The commissioner specified by press release that under “section 30(3) of the Access to Information Act, the Information Commissioner can herself take the initiative of a complaint s “there are reasonable grounds to believe that an investigation should be conducted into a matter relating to the request or obtaining of documents.”