(Ottawa) The former president of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) does not know who chose to award contracts to GC Strategies for the development of the ArriveCAN application. John Ossowski also defended himself Thursday from having placed himself in a conflict of interest. He was paid $500 by the government to prepare his last testimony before a parliamentary committee while he was employed by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“I don’t know who chose GC Strategies. The Auditor General was also not able to say who chose GC Strategies,” he admitted when questioned by Conservative MP Larry Brock as part of the Public Accounts Committee study. on the financial fiasco surrounding ArriveCAN.
Mr. Ossowski indicated that he did not play a role in awarding contracts except when they required ministerial approval or involved the Treasury Board, which had not been the case for the development of the application .
Looking back, yes, there are lessons to be learned and if I could have gone back, there would have been changes. But I remain proud of my work and that of my team during the pandemic.
John Ossowski
The CBSA had to manage an “extremely stressful” situation with the closure of the Canada-US border, he recalled.
These words still raised eyebrows among NDP MP Rachel Blaney and Conservative MP Kelly Block.
“It shocks me,” reacted Mme Blaney. This is an app that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and now we’re trying to get to the bottom of it. »
“It is absolutely mind-boggling that the former president of the CBSA would state that he remains proud of the work undertaken by his department when it was in fact the CBSA that started the ball rolling for the fiasco now known as “ArriveSCAM and all the other problems that have started to arise in terms of supply,” said M in turn.me Block.
The Auditor General of Canada indicated in February that she was unable to determine the exact cost ofArriveCAN due to poor record keeping at the CBSA. Karen Hogan nevertheless estimated that the application ended up costing taxpayers nearly 60 million while the bill for the first version initially amounted to $80,000.
The largest share of this amount, 19.1 million, went to the firm GC Strategies which has only two partners and whose role was limited to recruiting IT developers. The awarding of the first contract is, however, unclear, since she participated in the development of the criteria for the call for tenders and ended up obtaining it without a competitive process.
Mr. Ossowski acknowledged that the rules had not been respected and that there should have been better monitoring of contracts and invoices. He recalled that the application was developed in the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic at the request of the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“In the beginning, there was no budget, there was no plan for the project or any other elements that we would normally have in place for the development of a tool like this,” he said. he explained.
If the first version cost $80,000, each of the 177 updates according to the new health directives required a lot of work, he stressed. It was necessary to hire cloud computing services, test the security of the application, set up a call center to answer people’s questions, develop a version on the web, elements which all ended up increasing the price. Invoice.
$500 to prepare a testimony
The former big boss of the CBSA was in his fourth testimony before a parliamentary committee in the file ofArriveCAN. He also denied having placed himself in a conflict of interest by agreeing to be rehired as a freelancer for a day with a salary of $500 to prepare for one of his appearances.
The Conservatives raised the fact that he accepted this amount while he was working at the same time for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“I needed to have access to my emails and my calendar to refresh my memory,” he explained.
During his first testimony, he indicated that he had never met Kristian Firth, one of the two partners of GC Strategies, before changing his version. He said he remembered that he had participated in a meeting where he was present as part of the project of the Montreal firm Botler AI, which is the subject of other allegations of irregularities.
“Not remembering is not lying,” he defended himself, adding that he had followed the rules and that he had not benefited in any way for his work at PricewaterhouseCoopers from the access he was given. given. He also said he was ready to repay the $500 if necessary.