One of GC Strategies’ partners disputes an auditor general’s report suggesting the firm made $19 million on its ArriveCan application, claiming the government’s poor record-keeping inflated that estimate. There is.
Christian Firth is appearing before the House Government Operations Committee today. This is his first public comment since Auditor General Karen Hogan released her report on ArriveCan last month.
Hogan’s report estimated the total cost of the ArriveCan app to be just under $60 million, and said the government’s over-reliance on outside contractors contributed to the ballooning project costs. Stated.
GC Strategies was the contractor that received the most funding for the project. However, Firth told the committee that his records show that his company only received $11 million for ArriveCan, not the $19 million the auditor general pointed to.
When asked why his calculations differed from Hogan’s, Firth blamed the government’s contracting process and record-keeping.
“There were three contracts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no contracts set aside just for ArriveCan, so I can understand why it was difficult for the auditor general,” Firth said. Ta.
In a scathing new report, Canada’s Auditor General said the final cost of the ArriveCan app is “impossible to determine” due to poor record-keeping by the Canada Border Services Agency. Andrew Chan details the report’s findings on this pandemic-era tool, which is estimated to have cost Canadians nearly $60 million.
Hogan said in his report that the final cost of ArriveCan was “impossible to determine” because of poor financial record-keeping at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).Firth agreed with that assessment.
“There are many reasons why discrepancies can arise. We understand that our financial system and code are not the best at CBSA,” he told the committee.
He also suggested that some CBSA officials may have added ArriveCan labels or “tagged” other projects as related to ArriveCan to secure funding.
“No one knows if it’s ArriveCan or not because of how it’s recorded internally,” he said.
Hogan said he found little documentation of how or why GC Strategies was selected for the ArriveCan effort.
Hogan’s report said the company entered into a sole-source agreement in April 2020 despite lacking evidence that it had submitted a proposal for the project.
Firth said Public Services and Procurement Canada first contacted his company.
Mr. Hogan also reported that GC Strategies was involved in developing the requirements that were later used in the competitive agreement. The contract, worth $25 million, was awarded to GC Strategies, according to reports.
Canada’s Auditor-General Locke Huppe told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee last week that GC Strategies and its predecessor Coredal had been awarded 118 contracts totaling $107 million since 2011.
However, Mr Firth insisted that he and partner Darren Anthony had no involvement with Coredal before 2015. He said the two bought the company in the same year and that he worked for another company from 2007 to 2015.
The government suspended all current contracts with GC Strategies in November. Last week, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) announced it had suspended GC Strategies’ security status, effectively barring the company from bidding on new contracts with security requirements.
A previous report by Canada’s Procurement Ombudsman, Alexander Jeglic, found that the criteria used in awarding the $25 million contract were “overly restrictive” and gave “highly preferential treatment” to GC strategies. It turned out that
Jeglic also found that GC Strategies repeatedly “copy-pasted” government-listed requirements for subcontractors when submitting proposals to CBSA officials.
