(Ottawa) The official responsible for technology in Canada, Minh Doan, defended Wednesday of having deleted thousands of emails in the wake of the financial fiasco surrounding ArriveCAN. He also maintained that he had not made the decision to retain the services of GC Strategies, the firm of two partners, which would obtain the lion’s share of the contracts for the development of the application.
“I have never spoken on the phone with GC Strategies,” he said, taking care to point out that other officials had had hundreds of calls with the firm. “I have not participated in events with GC Strategies and I have not been invited to these types of events,” he added.
He then indicated that it was Antonio Utano, one of his former employees when he worked for the Border Services Agency (CBSA), who had selected the firm. Mr. Utano is one of two officials suspended along with Cameron MacDonald in the wake of this scandal. They were involved in the contracts awarded to GC Strategies for the development ofArriveCAN and had participated in a whiskey tasting evening organized by the firm, according to another witness.
During their testimony before a parliamentary committee in February, they instead placed the blame on Mr. Doan, who at the time held the role of vice-president and chief information officer at the CBSA. Instead, he accused members of his former work team of having hidden information from him.
Mr. Doan was testifying for the third time to the House of Commons government operations committee since last year. After taking the oath, he answered questions from parliamentarians for about three hours, interspersed with breaks due to his heart problems.
He denied intentionally deleting emails in an attempt to hide evidence. “That’s not true,” he said, before launching into a lengthy explanation about how files were corrupted when he tried to transfer them from his old work computer to a new device. Copies of the emails reportedly still exist on government servers.
His explanations for the disappearance of these thousands of emails did not convince the conservatives. No more than those on text messages where he wrote that he could not give all the information in committee so as not to harm certain ministers.
“It’s expressing my level of frustration after working so hard for two years and coming here and being questioned […] And [se faire] say it’s a useless app “, he replied without giving names.
Dissatisfied after trying to hound him, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis grew impatient and tabled a motion that could have forced the witness to also explain himself at the bar of the House of Commons. This rare procedure was used in April for the first time since 1913 to force Kristian Firth, one of the partners of GC Strategies, to give information that he had until then hidden from elected officials. The motion was defeated by the Liberal, Bloc and New Democrat elected officials on the committee.
Development of the application ArriveCAN during the pandemic gave rise to numerous cost overruns. The bill ended up reaching nearly $60 million, according to the Auditor General. Its initial version had a total budget of $80,000.