The ongoing investigation into Canada’s $54 million ArriveCan app contract continues, according to The Globe and Mail.
Cloud computing services company ThinkOn based in Etobicoke, Ontario, is listed as receiving contract work worth $1,183,432 related to ArriveCan. The work was from the period of Jan. 21, 2020, and March 31, 2022. The problem? The company’s CEO says it never worked on ArriveCan.
Craig McLellan told The Globe, “We have received no money from the CBSA,” which listed his company provided “experimentation of mobile QR code scanning and verification” for the ArriveCan app.
But McLellan says QR code scanning is totally unrelated to his company and he received numerous calls from friends in the tech sector after ThinkOn was listed in the ArriveCan suppliers list.
“It caught me by surprise,” McLellan told The Globe. “I think the amount of money they attributed to us was probably more than our total revenue generated within the federal government in the last fiscal year.”
ThinkOn has contract work with Shared Services Canada, but no contracts with Canada Border Services Agency. No existing work from ThinkOn is linked to ArriveCan, says the CEO.
Earlier this week, The Globe reported CBSA gave more info on ArriveCan, showing the app first started out as an $80,000 app, before ballooning to a whopping $54 million.
Contractor GCstrategies has received the most money for working on ArriveCan at $9 million. The company has no office and fewer than 5 employees and instead subcontracted the work out to over 75 other private entities, which the federal government says it cannot reveal.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Question Period on Wednesday, “Will the Prime Minister supply Canadians with a full list of all the contractors who got the money?”
Trudeau replied, “As Canadians well know, since day one of the pandemic we were focused on providing them the support and the safety necessary in this unprecedented time, despite the political games the Conservatives chose to play throughout the pandemic.”
The Prime Minister added, “Obviously, the amount cited includes far more than just the initial development of the app. It includes services like cloud storage, IT call centre services, upgrades and future costs.”
You can watch the debate during Question Period regarding ArriveCan below:
The House of Commons committee on government operations and the estimates has hearings on Thursday again, to investigate the spending of ArriveCan and how the $54 million cost came to be.
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Money laundering 101.
Yes, money laundering is shockingly bad in CA and USA, but the media always paints the picture and tone it down quickly so most people don’t realize.
Media have become nothing more than compliant script readers and forwarders. While most of the time they’re fawning and sycophantic.
I’ve never despised someone or a political party more than I despise Trudeau and the Liberals. Poilievre can’t become PM fast enough.
At least Trudeau told the truth about spending “hundreds of billions” of tax payer dollars during the pandemic. Thanks, Trudy, for confirming that your government over-spent and contributed to our inflationary deficits!
wish i worked at that fake tech firm
To be impartial here, I work in the tech industry. $80,000 for an app with a big user base is not a lot. And it is nonsense that someone made it over the weekend. The UI might look like the ArriveCan app, but without any QA or ‘backend’ investigation it cannot be considered the same thing. That being said, the missing $1.2 mil should be taken seriously, the Canadian population is entitled to this information. And I am not on Parler, Facebook, Gettr, Gab, etc.
That’s peanuts folks. Where did 187 billion from the Canadian infrastructure fund go?? Yes, 187 billion! Gone, no trace of it, zero accountability. Also, all the money spent during the pandemic, half of that is unaccounted for as well. No wonder the Liberals suspended parliament. These are the ones we know of.
These are the people Canadians voted to be in charge of our money….Twice.
Between this and Freeland telling us how great the carbon tax is because her whole family lives in central Toronto and doesn’t drive it is astounding how out of touch these people are with the majority of Canadians.