(Ottawa) The Federal Court rejected the attempt of two suspended civil servants linked to ArriveCAN to cancel an internal investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and entrust it to an independent third party. Cameron MacDonald and Antonio Utano were involved in the contracts awarded to GC Strategies for the development of the application. They recently challenged their suspension without pay and were able to recover their salaries.
Their request is premature, Judge Russell Zinn concluded in his decision rendered Tuesday. He notes that they have not exhausted all their administrative recourses before going to the Federal Court and that there are “no exceptional circumstances” which would justify its intervention.
He also argued that the Integrity Commissioner has opened its own investigation into allegations of wrongdoing committed in connection with the development of the application and those of reprisals against the two suspended officials.
“Mrs. MacDonald and Utano acted correctly and in accordance with their ethical obligations, argued their lawyer, Chris Spiteri. They will be and always have been ready to cooperate and participate. They just want to be treated fairly and not have the process manipulated to make them scapegoats. »
They already won a grievance last month, which allowed them to continue to be paid during their suspension. Mr. MacDonald is now assistant deputy minister at Health Canada and Mr. Utano is director general of information technology at the Canada Revenue Agency.
They also contest the preliminary conclusions of the CBSA investigation which led to this suspension and have not ruled out going back to the Federal Court once all their other recourses have been exhausted.
The document was tabled at the parliamentary government operations committee, but was never made public. It is based on a file prepared by the Montreal firm Botler AI which dealt with the two officials and with GC Strategies as part of a conversational robot project prior to ArriveCAN.
Its leaders, Ritika Dutt and Amir Morv, affirmed before a parliamentary committee in October that there was “systemic corruption” in the federal apparatus, particularly at the CBSA, pointing the finger at MM. MacDonald and Utano. The two officials reject these allegations and believe they are victims of reprisals. They accused CBSA senior management of lying in this matter in order to cover up its own incompetence, during their appearance before the parliamentary committee in February.
Imraan Bashir, a partner at the firm KPMG, told the public accounts committee on Thursday that Mr. Utano had asked him to submit a proposal related to security ofArriveCAN at GC Strategies. “He was weighing his options to find the quickest way to deliver the goods,” he explained.
“Don’t you find it strange that the Government of Canada is asking a company the size of KPMG – 11,000 employees as you said in the introduction – to subcontract through two guys who obviously take a percentage of the total amount of the contract? “, asked Conservative MP Michael Barrett.
The leaders of Botler AI had also previously described GC Strategies, with whom they had worked for their project, as a “ghost company”. The firm, which has only two partners, was singled out by the Auditor General in her report on cost overruns.ArriveCAN. Karen Hogan had noted irregularities in the contracts totaling 19.1 million awarded to GC Strategies by the CBSA to act as intermediary. This constitutes 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.
The director of the CBSA, Chulaka Ailapperuma, indicated two weeks ago that MM. MacDonald and Utano had participated in a whiskey tasting evening organized in 2021 by GC Strategies which he also attended. At the time he was responsible for the project ArriveCAN.
Documents from the CBSA’s internal investigation were submitted to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who opened an investigation. The RCMP carried out a search in April at the home of Kristian Firth, one of the associates of GC Strategies the day before his testimony at the bar of the House of Commons.
With Joël-Denis Bellavance, The Press