Two federal officials suspended without pay following allegations of misconduct in awarding government contracts told MPs on Thursday that they are being scapegoated by current and former executives at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Told.
Antonio Utano and Cameron MacDonald, who helped develop the ArriveCan app while at CBSA, appeared before a Congressional committee that has been studying the ArriveCan app for several months.
They said they were targeted after CBSA executives told the same committee in November that they had misled Congress when they appeared before lawmakers in the early fall to answer questions about the ArriveCan app.
MacDonald told committee members Thursday that after he and Utano testified in November, the CBSA began an internal investigation and expected to issue a report based on the investigation in December 2023, called a “preliminary fact report.” He said he created it.
“In reality, this document is nothing more than a collection of baseless accusations with no substantiation, accusations of wrongdoing supported by selective emails and calendar entries. This is a false preliminary statement. “It should be called that,” McDonald said.
At a parliamentary committee hearing, Cameron MacDonald referred to the CBSA’s internal report submitted to MPs as a “collection of baseless accusations”.
A preliminary statement of facts has not been released and the allegations against the men remain unclear.
Lawyers for MacDonald and Utano told CBC News that their clients should order their statements sealed by a judge because the allegations contained in them could cause irreparable damage to their reputations and careers. He said he was looking for.
Mr. Utano, currently Commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency, and Mr. Macdonald, currently Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Canada, told MPs on the Government Operations and Estimates Committee that when the allegations in the statement were brought to their new employer, He said: Both were suspended without pay.
$60 million app
Auditor General Karen Hogan reported earlier this month that the government had overpaid for the ArriveCan app and had grossly mishandled the CBSA’s files.
The app cost taxpayers about $60 million, which was significantly higher than originally estimated. But Hogan said the CBSA’s record-keeping was so poor that even that $60 million figure was only an estimate.
Hogan said the CBSA and the Public Health Agency of Canada “repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application.”
She also questioned the possible cozy relationship between GC Strategies, the company contracted to develop the app, and the civil servant ultimately responsible for the procurement process.
On Thursday, McDonald and Utano told committee members that they do not have a friendly relationship with the people at GC Strategies and did not recommend that the CBSA hire the company to develop ArriveCan. .
Utano and McDonald said they were solely responsible for the initial “execution and technology delivery” of the ArriveCan app.
“We didn’t have a contracting authority, so we weren’t responsible for signing contracts. We weren’t responsible for approving ArriveCan’s budget. We weren’t responsible for selecting GC Strategies to work on ArriveCan. [former CBSA vice-president] With Minh Doan [former CBSA president John Ossowski’s] It’s a decision.”
Mr. Utano said neither he nor Mr. McDonald were responsible for many of the deficiencies that Mr. Hogan identified in the ArriveCan investigation.
RCMP said it is reviewing the conclusions of Hogan’s report. McDonald and Utano told lawmakers Thursday that the Mounties have not yet contacted them.
MacDonald also mentioned reports that the estimated cost of the app was just $80,000, but it ballooned to tens of millions of dollars by the time it went live.
“There’s no way an app costs $80,000,” he says. “The $80,000 was to build a digital prototype that would take paper to an online form that could be used on a mobile phone. It was used to show that something could be digitized.”
He said the actual estimate was closer to $6.3 million.
Mr MacDonald attributed part of the app’s rising costs to other departments who argued that because their work was related to ArriveCan, they should be able to carry out activities within the app’s funding framework. He said it was possible.
“There were federal public servants who wanted to partner with ArriveCan to get the funding they needed to move their efforts forward,” he said.
“If you can put it under the ArriveCan tagline, it will be easier to achieve funding and get the desired budget from the finance department.”
Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald said they have been unsuccessfully trying to obtain answers from the CBSA through access to information systems since they were suspended without pay.
“I think it’s clear that tens of thousands of emails were deleted by Mr. Minh Doan,” McDonald told the committee.
They said they believe documents and emails were destroyed or not passed on to the auditor general in an attempt to cover up what happened at the CBSA.
Conservative MP Larry Bullock asked MacDonald if former and current CBSA executives had “lied” when answering questions on the same committee.
“Minh Doan completely lied to Canadians,” MacDonald said.
Asked directly by Bullock whether current CBSA president Erin O’Gorman “lied” when she told councilors in committee last week that she didn’t know who made the hiring decision for GC Strategies, McDonald said: He answered, “Yes.”
