(Ottawa) The president of Dalian Enterprises inc. will have to explain to a parliamentary committee how he was able to be both a consultant and a civil servant for the same ministry. David Yeo, whose company received a large share of public funding for the development of the ArriveCAN application, had also obtained several million dollars in National Defense contracts.
Minister Bill Blair and three senior officials will also be called to testify before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts. A motion to this effect was adopted unanimously on Tuesday.
Mr Yeo was suspended by the ministry last week after The Press had his background checked in the Canadian Armed Forces. The one who was a candidate for the People’s Party of Canada in 2021 did indeed have a military career from 1987 to 2016.
However, we learned that he had recently worked as a civil servant for National Defense. The ministry did not want to specify how long or what position he had held or whether his suspension is with or without pay. An internal investigation was launched and all Dalian contracts with this ministry.
The government comptroller general must also conduct a thorough review of all suspicious contracts awarded not only to Dalian, but also to other companies like GC Strategies. The two firms are those which obtained the largest contracts for the development of the ArriveCAN application. After GC Strategies which received 19 million, Dalian received 8 million, according to a devastating report from the Auditor General.
The first version of the app cost $80,000, but the bill ended up reaching nearly $60 million.
Mr. Yeo already testified in October at the Government Operations Committee due to the explosion in the costs ofArriveCAN. He then struggled to explain what exactly he was doing on behalf of the government. Dalian does not do the work itself. She takes a commission and then subcontracts the work to other expert IT consultants.
The Press also discovered that Mr. Yeo had opened two companies since 2011 in tax havens that are known by experts to facilitate the camouflage of fund transfers and tax evasion, according to confidential documents obtained by two consortia of investigative journalists to which The Press collaborates. A gesture which is not illegal in itself, but which should serve as a “red flag”, according to the CEO of the private investigation firm Vidocq, Jonathan Légaré.
Dalian forms a joint venture with Coradix Technology Consulting which is listed on the federal government’s Aboriginal Business Directory. Ottawa has set itself the goal of annually awarding at least 5% of the total value of all government contracts to Indigenous businesses, the equivalent of the proportion of the country’s Indigenous population. This represents approximately 1 billion per year. Mr. Yeo is a member of the Alderville First Nation in Ontario. He never responded to messages from The Press.
With Vincent Larouche, The Press