Earlier today, Canada’s Auditor General released its audit report on the $54 million ArriveCAN app. Well, it turns out the app cost beyond $54 million, now at an estimated nearly $60 million, with its final tally unknown because there are so many missing pieces. That doesn’t sound right…
In response to the damning audit report, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), along with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the trio of federal departments responsible for ArriveCAN, have issued a statement on the matter.
In what sounds like a classic gaslighting attempt, the CBSA says, “the app was built during an extraordinary time and on an emergency basis. ArriveCAN data was an integral part of Canada’s monitoring program for the early detection and identification of new COVID-19 variants of concern, and critical to the federal government’s ability to monitor, assess, and respond to COVID-19 as it evolved.”
“The CBSA was working as quickly as possible to replace a paper process that was not meeting public health needs and was also impacting the border with significant wait times that disrupted the essential flow of people and goods. The Auditor General recognized in her report that the Government improved the speed and quality of information collected at the border by using the app rather than the paper-based form,” said the CBSA.
But ArriveCAN not only saved you from using a paper-based form—it also saved you an astonishing five minutes when crossing the border!
The #ArriveScam story in a nutshell:
The Liberals blew at least $60M taxpayer dollars, failed to provide proper documentation, rigged the procurement process and now refuse to take responsibility.
It's yet another blatant abuse of taxpayer dollars — a hallmark of this… pic.twitter.com/Tq0nh94I5H
— Stephanie Kusie (@StephanieKusie) February 12, 2024
“Travellers saved significant time by using the app – about five minutes each time they crossed the border, saving hours of wait times. It was an effective and necessary tool to collect mandatory health information while facilitating travel and trade. Beyond the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the app remains available today for travellers who want to make their customs declarations in advance and save time at the border,” said the CBSA statement.
“Despite these circumstances, we recognize that the gaps found by the Auditor General are unacceptable and we are taking steps to ensure all government departments are better positioned to undertake projects of this nature in the future,” noted the CBSA.
The report noted the two-person team from GC Strategies was paid $20 million–not to work on ArriveCAN itself, but to find outsourced contractors. These so-called workers didn’t even do any work apparently. Procurement processes were not followed and documentation was missing. The final tally cannot be found–the Auditor General said it’s impossible to find the total cost.
There was no mention of accountability or consequences for the $60 million+ that was spent on this app. I guess that’s for Canadian taxpayers to figure out on their own.
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Let’s not bury the lede here: this was supposed to cost $80,000. Not, $80,000,000, or $8,000,000, or even $800,000 … $80,000.
This reeks of corruption, not incompetence.
The government got its donators money back, that’s all they care about.
The fact that a simple app costs more than $100,000 to develop speaks volumes to how much taxpayer money went in corporate/government pockets.
The CBSA was not keeping track of the money it was spending on this. Let’s not gloss over what was built, it was an app. There was no quality control and no financial oversight. Who was responsible for this and who was their boss? And who got all the money? Why were financial controls obviously not in place. These things need to be followed, pandemic or not. Someone took an awful lot of money for doing very little.
They also did not have the security clearance required to handle citizens private data. Many were screaming about red flags from day one and now the Trudeau gov wants to pretend they weren’t aware.
Won’t be at all surprised if it turns out that the money flowed to large LPC/Trudeau donors. Whenever our money goes missing it always seems to end up in the pockets of Trudeau friends that make big donations.
There was a recent story that the media hasn’t covered much. Trudeau funded a climate lobby “charity” almost $30m. That was basically their entire budget and it almost all went to salaries. So, Trudeau gov paid a group millions to lobby themselves. Canadian Climate Institute. I expect ArriveCan was a similar grift.
As long as we keep mixing up the “need” for ArriveCan with the fact that it was wildly overpriced… we’ll never be able to make anybody accountable.
If we were able to say, “yes, at that point this was something that we needed to build in the situation”, we will actually be able to determine that it was a relatively simple app/platform and it likely would have cost $5-10 million.
Then we can start asking real questions about why we had to waste so much on nothing… who decided this, who benefited. Real grown-up questions that matter right now.
Any nonsense about if ArriveCan was necessary is an outdated or separate conversation, completely irrelevant to this excess.
I don’t think anyone is mixing the two questions, whether it was needed and how the managed to bungle it so much.
Also, I don’t see a need to concede it was needed in anyway in order to ask the question about how it cost more than $100k, how so much corruption was allowed to happen in plain sight.
And the “nonsense” is relevant. Clearly they used the fear and panic they were able to install in people to get them to buy into this. One can easily see that they shamed people into turning a blind eye to the nonsense and the excess. Even now, they use the same argument to excuse the fiasco “we were just trying to save lives”. Same pathetic, irrational fear mongering used to convince otherwise smart people that vaccine passports would keep them safe. Just as easily used to bypass and override _any_ concerns about ArriveCAN when it was being developed.
“… paid $20 M to find outsourced contractors…”?!! So, is the two-person team from GC Strategies retired now?
Will likely land another lucrative Trudeau contract. That, or will end up with some patronage appointment. Might depend on how much of the $20m they “donated” to the Trudeau foundation or LPC.
We need to turf these grifters ASAP.
The whole reason for enduring a slow government bureaucracy is to stop from this kind of thing happening. Something is still missing in this story.