Public Accounts Committee on May 14th, 2024

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Why did you not inform anyone? Is the reason that it is common practice at the CBSA to accept gifts like these and so you did not need to inform your superiors?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

No, I don't think it is common practice.

At that time, ArriveCAN was a very intense project. We were spending long hours working on ArriveCAN. I saw this as a team celebration, and I wanted to socialize with some of my teammates.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

However, I imagine that you read your code of conduct and know that public servants are not allowed to accept gifts, especially from consultants.

Can you give me the date, or at least the approximate date, of the 2020 whisky tasting?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I will have to get back to you on the exact date. I do not have it, and the—

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Do you know in what season the event took place? Was it in the spring, summer or fall?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I believe it was in the spring.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

It was around April 20, when a multi-million dollar contract was signed by GC Strategies.

On the one hand, a multi-million dollar contract was awarded to GC Strategies on a non-competitive basis. On the other hand, several employees from the CBSA, including you, were invited to a whisky tasting, but no one saw fit to declare that invitation.

You say that you don't think this is common practice, but do you think it was entirely acceptable? Do you regret accepting the invitation and not informing your senior managers, or even the president of the agency at the time?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I made an error in judgment, and I do regret not informing my superiors as well as going to the event.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

You acknowledge, then, that it was an error in judgment. That's great.

Were Mr. Ossowski and Mr. Doan aware of these events?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I do not know.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

You have no idea whether Mr. Doan, who was overseeing your work, was aware of the invitations and the social gatherings attended by public servants and consultants.

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I do not know.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

You were also copied on the emails exchanged between Mr. Utano, from the CBSA, and Ms. Durigan, from Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC. In them, doubts were raised by the department about the non-competitive awarding of the three-year contract that GC Strategies finally obtained in April 2020 thanks to the efforts of Mr. Utano.

At any point, did you ever think that the department was right to think a contract that large should not be awarded non-competitively? There was time to call for tenders. Did you not conclude it was a bad idea to award the contract without a call for tenders? Was there a point at which you realized that this was not acceptable and that the department was right to raise such issues? Did you talk to Mr. Utano about it, or did you turn a blind eye?

[Chulaka Ailapperuma]

I was not involved in the contracting processes at all within CBSA. My role was to lead the technical development of the application.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, your time is up.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being present today.

I'll start with the CBSA regarding the conditions that the customs union president, Mark Weber, gave testimony on to this committee, which highlighted some of the key issues that are persistent within the CBSA that have led to conditions that made a scandal like ArriveCAN possible.

He made very clear that the number of supervisory officers exceeded the number of border officials, so it's a very management-heavy work environment, resulting in extreme workloads for those at the front lines. Of course, those at the supervisory level do not necessarily have to be directly supporting that work. There was a lack of consultation of the union's employees with regard to this kind of application, the ArriveCAN app.

How can technology replace border officers when Canadians' data privacy and safety are involved?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I've spoken to Mr. Weber about the concerns he's raised about the span of control, and those conversations are constructive and ongoing.

Of course, we have many different workplaces and work locations and situations in the CBSA—Toronto Pearson has many, many BSOs, and remote ports of entry have only a couple—so it's hard to put a number on span of control. Sometimes there are fewer people under a chief or superintendent by virtue of where they're located. I don't want to undermine his concerns, and I remain happy to have that dialogue with him. He certainly has a perspective I'm interested in.

I don't foresee technology ever replacing border service officers. The fact is that right now people do put their information into the kiosk or through advance declaration. What we are aiming to do, however, is free up border service officers to do higher-value work and targeting, rather than collecting papers and keying in information.

I don't want to speak for Mr. Weber and his team, but that's where I think we can have a constructive dialogue—on where we are using technology to allow people to focus on the higher threats.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you for that, Ms. O'Gorman.

I think where our unions, particularly those for public service workers, are concerned is that we saw this pattern of concern in the last government's scandal with the Phoenix pay system. We saw public servants lose their jobs in favour of an application that just doesn't work.

In this case, I think it's very reasonable that the president of the customs union is concerned over the fact that there could be a more heavy reliance on this. The Auditor General makes a point of this in exhibit 1.2 of the audit of ArriveCAN in relation to the continued heavy reliance on external resources to develop ArriveCAN, particularly for the period of April 2020 to March 2023. You can look at that in the report, on page 7.

What evidence can you suggest to public servants and the union that you are, in fact, trying to reduce the reliance on external resources, given the fact that the most recent application, ArriveCAN, relied so heavily on them?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I do not foresee CBSA needing fewer border service officers. The fact is that travel volumes are increasing and commercial volumes are increasing. Efforts to—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'm sorry. I mean to make the app. On technological development, there's an increase in reliance on external resources. Do you have a plan to actually begin the work to see CBSA have these kinds of public servants within the CBSA as an example of how you can rely less on external contractors?

In looking at an appendix, for example, to a document we asked for, for evidence: “Appendix B: Contract Values for GC Strategies, Dalian and Coradix”. This is a new document since you've been present at this committee. This committee asked for information in relation to these three companies, which have a few or a handful of individuals within them. They reported that since January 1, 2011, the period we requested information for, the CBSA was one of the main external receivers of contracts. As a matter of fact, the previous company, Coradix, which helped the former government and the CBSA in particular, took in almost 42 million dollars' worth of contracts.

It doesn't seem to me like you're undergoing the work of trying to reduce this reliance. It's been going on for over a decade now.

[Erin O'Gorman]

As I said in my opening remarks, I have actually reduced the number of contractors to the tune of 25%, and several since I appeared here last time. We have 180 systems, and most of them are legacy, so what I don't want to do is precipitously decrease our reliance on the few people who know COBOL and then find ourselves unable to address a system problem. We're doing it deliberately, but we're actively doing it and our senior level 1 committee is reviewing every contract before we put it in place.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I appreciate that, Ms. O'Gorman. That's the answer I was looking for in many ways, the evidence that you're doing this work and that it's going to actually happen, because this continued reliance creates a vulnerability. As I said before, since 2011, almost a billion dollars' worth of contracts have gone to shady insiders between both governments that have existed in that period of time.

My last question is this: What consultations have happened with the unions in light of this scandal? What lessons have been learned, key lessons in particular, that you can share with the union that would actually create some confidence that one, there will be a reduced reliance, and two, their skills will be respected?

[Erin O'Gorman]

The issue of what you're talking about, and particularly ArriveCAN information coming to light, does come up at our union-management meeting, but the unions are consulted on any initiatives, including our current traveller modernization initiative, our CARM initiative. Therefore, I believe there's good and frequent and open dialogue with employees and bargaining agents and representatives on an ongoing basis. However, I'm always happy to add more if the feedback is that these aren't sufficient.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Beginning our second round, Mr. Nater, you have the floor for five minutes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for joining us here today.

It appears that Mr. Ossowski was only invited back to be a contractor with CBSA after he was caught in a fib, telling the committee that he had never met with GC Strategies when we know that was not the case and that he had in fact met with GC Strategies and Kristian Firth on a Zoom call.

My question to you is this: Was Mr. Ossowski hired as a casual employee or as a contractor?