Those Involved in the ArriveCan Fiasco Must Be Held to Account

Both the comptroller general and the auditor general have concluded that regular procurement rules were not followed; neither has suggested that more or stricter rules are necessary. Mr. Huppé said “procurement is already complex enough.”

In hearings at the House of Commons public accounts committee, officials of the Treasury Board Secretariat were unable to say who had the duty to ensure that existing rules governing procurement and avoidance of conflict of interest had been followed. Liberal MP Iqra Khalid said that the two individuals at GC Strategies “were able to take $100 million from our government starting in 2011 under the Harper government and then moved on to change their name and continue” to profit “from the procurement process. Either they were the most brilliant company in Canada and the world or something went wrong here.”

The suspect nature of these procurement arrangements is amplified by the fact that on several occasions the leader of the Official Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, asked the prime minister if he was going to investigate the ArriveCan application. Justin Trudeau said that he wished to find out what happened and promised that if there had been any wrongdoing it would be pursued. In furtherance of this, the Conservatives introduced a motion citing a number of questions that should be answered, and all of the other political parties carried the vote—against Liberal objections. This U-turn by the prime minister is not a confidence-builder, and since the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens joined with the Conservatives on this issue, they do have the ability to elevate it into a confidence issue and defeat the government if it does not adhere to Trudeau’s promise in Parliament to unearth the facts.

Again, it would be unjust to leap to conclusions, but if the bidding process was entirely appropriate and followed the allegedly exacting rules required, the burning question remains of why the program was such a failure. While it was in the works and after it was implemented, was impossible to find a single person who thought that ArriveCan was a good idea, and this investigation should not be allowed to be reduced to the persecution of a couple of people for failing to impose correct guidelines.

There are two distinct problems here: The country—the taxpayers—were bilked for an astonishing overrun to the original cost estimate. But more serious was the fact that the travelling public for an inexcusably long time had this fatuous and unspeakably annoying arrival process inflicted on them. The program was misconceived and the development of it was deeply flawed and hideously expensive. But even if it did come in on price and on time, it was a disaster, and the country should find out who was responsible for it.

Four Taschereau terms came to an abrupt end and the first of five Duplessis terms began. There is no reason to expect anything so dramatic to occur here, but over $100 million to a two-person firm and substantial amounts to a serving senior federal government employee—apparently to set up programs that didn’t work and inconvenienced huge numbers of people—deserve a much more serious analysis than the government seems happy to give it. It also smacks of the government’s relations with WE Charity and the Kielburgers.

The public interest requires that the ArriveCan debacle be pursued to its conclusion and not whitewashed and forgotten.