Liberal Corruption. It Must Be Tuesday

It never ends with this cabal of robber-barons who think (and know) that they can act as they please and never be held to account:

A government bureaucrat who worked on the controversial ArriveCan app said she has felt pressured to blame two suspended civil servants for the mess and compared the app to the sponsorship scandal in testimony before MPs Wednesday.

Diane Daly, who worked on the procurement but insisted she had no decision-making authority, said she was called into an interview with Canada Border Services Agency where she felt it was clear she was being asked to blame Antonio Utano and Cameron MacDonald.

Article content

Utano and MacDonald were suspended after the CBSA conducted an internal review of their actions in the awarding of the ArriveCan contract to GC Strategies. The pair have disputed the report’s finding and insist they are being unfairly blamed for what happened with ArriveCan.

Daly told MPs she believes she is now suspended because she wouldn’t blame Utano and MacDonald.

“I never saw Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Utano do anything nefarious.” she said. “I am currently on administrative leave from public works. I believe this is because CBSA and public works did not get the negative narrative expected about two former bosses at CBSA.”

She asked for the same consideration as Allan Cutler, a whistleblower who first raised the alarm about the sponsorship scandal in the early 1990s.

“I’m here to tell the truth, but I’m very concerned that if I tell the truth here, I’m going to lose my job.”

Daly said she was seconded to the CBSA to clear a backlog in procurement in 2018 and transferred back to the public works department in 2023.

**

Canada’s conflict of interest commissioner said he is not investigating the ArriveCan scandal because it is not under his jurisdiction.

Conflict of interest commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein told MPs at the public accounts committee on Thursday that no one who has been named in the scandal so far is under his supervision.

“I understand there are ongoing investigations by other organizations. To our knowledge, no person subject to the act or the code were involved in this matter, and we have no jurisdiction,” he told MPs.

Article content

Von Finckenstein’s office oversees the conflict of interest act, which covers public office holders, including cabinet ministers, their staff, people appointed to federal boards and deputy ministers.

Deputy ministers are the highest ranking bureaucrats in government departments and appointed by cabinet, but other bureaucrats are not subject to the act. von Finckenstein said everything that has come up so far about the scandal has involved contractors or lower-level bureaucrats.

“None of the people involved in this so far, that have been mentioned, either in the AG’s report or in the public proceedings before you, qualify as reporting public office holders so I have no jurisdiction to look into it.”

The auditor general found the ArriveCan app, which returning travellers were forced to use to report their vaccination status and quarantine plans during the pandemic, cost at least $60 million.

The auditor’s report said the documentation of the apps rollout was so poorly done that she couldn’t even be certain about the final price tag.

Conservative MP Larry Brock suggested that the Liberals had wanted to waste time by bringing in von Finckenstein.

 

Bingo.