The ArriveCan app, commissioned by the government to gather contact information and quarantine plans from people coming into Canada at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, attracted attention in late 2022 for its $54-million price tag. That initial scrutiny has morphed into something much larger.
Revelations about ArriveCan’s development, first in The Globe and Mail and later in more than a dozen probes by federal watchdogs and parliamentary committees, have called into question the government’s reliance on staffing and information technology companies such as Dalian, which win government contracts and then charge fees to farm out work to technical specialists. The head of GCStrategies, a two-person staffing operation that won more ArriveCan work than any other contractor, told MPs at a committee hearing that his company’s fees were at times as high as 30 per cent of a contract’s value.
But the ArriveCan investigations have also raised questions about the PSIB, the program Mr. Yeo participated in. It has come under scrutiny for a feature that some critics say can be exploited: non-Indigenous businesses are allowed to receive federal contracts under the program, as long as they partner with Indigenous businesses in joint ventures. In those cases, the government requires that at least a third of the total value of the work be performed by an Indigenous company or Indigenous subcontractors.
This aspect of the program has been key to the success of Mr. Yeo’s company.
Dalian Enterprises, which last month was suspended from federal contract work, received $7.9-million in taxpayer funds to build ArriveCan, according to a recent report from the federal Auditor-General, who said her numbers were only an estimate because of poor recordkeeping. The company has long availed itself of the PSIB, including for the ArriveCan work. Mr. Yeo told parliamentarians at a hearing in March he had advised the government on designing and implementing the program. “It’s a very good policy,” he said via video conference.
Dalian often works in tandem with Coradix Technology Consulting Ltd., a larger non-Indigenous company that has also been suspended because of the ArriveCan probes. For more than a decade, the two companies have won contract after contract through the PSIB joint venture program. Dalian has just two full-time employees. Coradix’s president told MPs at a hearing in the fall that his company had more than 40.
Ottawa spends more than $15-billion a year on outsourcing. Since 2003, Dalian and Coradix have collectively been paid $635-million through federal contracts, according to the government’s public accounts. Of this total, $496-million was directed to Coradix, while Dalian received $139-million.
During Mr. Yeo’s appearances before parliamentary committees, he said the PSIB is working exactly as it’s supposed to. His lineage, he explained, makes him Indigenous, which makes Dalian Indigenous-owned and therefore eligible. The program also specifically allows him to partner with larger, non-Indigenous companies such as Coradix to win business.
To be considered Indigenous under the program, a company must be majority Indigenous-owned.
But Mr. Yeo’s description doesn’t match what Indigenous business leaders say are broader objectives of the PSIB, which include producing an economic boost for Indigenous communities and workers.
When pressed by MPs, Mr. Yeo was unable to tell them how many of the 20 subcontractors hired by Dalian to work on ArriveCan were Indigenous.
What’s more, experts say, Ottawa has done a poor job measuring whether the program has served as a boon to the people it was meant to help.
“There was never any deep understanding of who was benefiting and whether the program was leading to higher employment,” said Allan Clarke, who worked as a director general responsible for economic development policy at what is now the Department of Indigenous Services from 2008 to 2017. Mr. Clarke said “successive evaluations” of the program have called out the need for “a proper monitoring function.”
As The Globe first reported in December, Indigenous Services, which is responsible for overseeing the PSIB, has never conducted after-the-fact audits of the work Dalian and Coradix performed to determine whether the program’s requirements were met, including the one-third threshold.
The department has only conducted advance audits, which tested whether Dalian qualified as an Indigenous business.
Last year, a group of more than 50 Indigenous finance institutions warned in a report that the program was encouraging the use of “shell companies and other modes of obfuscation to gain an advantage in procurement processes, and more – all to the detriment of legitimate Indigenous Peoples of Canada, communities and businesses.”
Coradix and Mr. Yeo declined to answer a list of questions for this story. Mr. Yeo has testified that his company has hired Indigenous staff members in the past. Sarah Musgrove, a Dalian employee from 2008 to 2016, confirmed this to The Globe.
When he appeared before MPs, Mr. Yeo also rejected the suggestion that he should have a robust history of hiring Indigenous workers to be compliant with the program’s requirements.
He said the intent of the PSIB is to allow companies like his to “get access to government contracts” and “compete against bigger companies.”
Grift upon grift.
Some people would go to jail for this.
MPs agreed to a motion Monday that found GC Strategies partner Kristian Firth in contempt of Parliament for refusing to answer certain questions during a House government operations committee appearance last month.
GC Strategies was the main contractor for the controversial ArriveCan app. In addition to being found in contempt, Firth is also being ordered to appear "before the bar" of the House of Commons to receive a public rebuke from the Speaker.
The motion, adopted by unanimous consent after nearly a full day of debate, orders Firth to appear after question period on Wednesday, April 17.
An auditor general report found that the soaring cost of the project — estimated at roughly $60 million — was in part due to the government's over-reliance on outside contractors like GC Strategies.
That same report found that GC Strategies was involved in developing requirements that were later used for an ArriveCan contract. That contract — valued at $25 million — was later awarded to GC Strategies, the report says.
A separate report by Canada's procurement ombudsman found that the criteria used in awarding the $25 million contract were "overly restrictive" and "heavily favoured" GC Strategies.
During his committee appearance, MPs repeatedly asked Firth which government officials he worked with to develop the criteria for that contract. Firth avoided those questions, citing an ongoing RCMP investigation into ArriveCan, even though he said he hadn't been contacted by the police force.
He is but a scapegoat.
No comments:
Post a Comment