(Ottawa) Federal government contracts with GC Strategies, the company at the heart of the app scandal ArriveCANhave been suspended since November, said the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Jean-Yves Duclos, on Wednesday while the Conservatives are calling for a new investigation by the Auditor General.
The consulting firm, which has only a handful of employees and whose main address is a bungalow west of Ottawa, has won no less than 140 contracts totaling nearly $258 million since 2015, including 46 without calls for tender, according to a census carried out by The Press. She finds herself at the heart of a political storm after the release of a damning report from the Auditor General on Monday.
“Contracts with this company have been suspended since November 2023 around the same time the Auditor General began [son audit] », Reported Minister Duclos in the press scrum before the weekly meeting of the Liberal caucus. “It applies to the Border Services Agency, so everything that connects my colleague Minister LeBlanc,” he added.
CBSA alone has awarded GC Strategies almost half of these 140 contracts for various IT services over the past eight years. The agency reports to the Ministry of Public Safety managed by Dominic LeBlanc. The minister did not appear to answer journalists’ questions at the entrance to the caucus on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not stop to comment.
The Auditor General unveiled a damning report Monday which reveals irregularities in the awarding of contracts totaling 19.1 million awarded to GC Strategies by the CBSA, solely for the development of the application ArriveCAN. This is almost a third of the $59.5 million that this application used to collect 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,” she said, pointing the finger at the agency for paying 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 and invited the senior officials responsible for the file to a whiskey tasting afterwards, casting doubt on the impartiality of the process.
The CBSA launched an investigation in 2022 into the conduct of some of its employees in this matter, and two of them no longer work there. She also forwarded certain information to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The Auditor General’s conclusions raise doubt about all the contracts awarded to GC Strategies since the Liberals came to power. The Press attempted to contact the firm’s two partners, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony, and two other employees without success.
“There are no details or indication that what we noted on Monday extends to other contractual aspects with GS Strategies, but out of an abundance of caution all contracts with GC Strategies are suspended,” said the Minister Duclos.
He stressed that there has been a tightening in procurement processes since November “from the moment the Canadian government understood that in the management ofArriveCAN there was a glaring lack of good record keeping and good management and sharing of information. »
The Conservative Party, for its part, plans to ask Auditor General Karen Hogan to investigate all of the contracts that have been awarded to GC Strategies over the last eight years. Pierre Poilievre’s political lieutenant in Quebec, Pierre Paul-Hus, confirmed the Conservative Party’s approach before the Conservative caucus meeting Wednesday morning.
“After seeing the scandal ofArriveCANwhere a company GC Strategies received 20 million dollars for no work, we learn that this same company which has only two people [la firme compterait plutôt quatre employés, selon les vérifications de La Presse] had $258 million in contracts. […] We are asking the Auditor General to investigate each of the contracts that were awarded to GC Strategies in order to really find out what happened,” said Mr. Paul-Hus.
“The Auditor General is completely confused about the management of the files ofArriveCAN. Now we learn in The Press that $258 million in contracts were given to a two-person company. There are a lot of questions and that’s why we have to get to the bottom of things,” he added.