Pandemic no excuse for ignoring basic rules with ArriveCan, says auditor general
Karen Hogan’s report found poor record-keeping, disregard for competition in development pandemic travel app
Auditor General Karen Hogan says she understands that public servants responding to the pandemic had to move fast, but adds "an emergency is not an excuse to ignore the most basic requirements of maintaining complete and accurate records."
Hogan has just issued a new report into the creation of ArriveCan, a federal government app launched during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to screen travellers entering Canada.
It found that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and Public Services and Procurement Canada "repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application."
The CBSA previously said the app cost $54 million to make. Hogan estimated it cost $59.5 million based on the information available to her, but says poor record-keeping means the real price tag is impossible to calculate.
Pressed on the report, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc called ArriveCan's contracting process "unacceptable" and said the Liberal government "accepts that taxpayers' money needs to be treated with the utmost respect."
Hogan spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal about her report. Here is part of their conversation.
You've said that you are deeply concerned by what this audit did not find. What were you looking for that wasn't there in front of you?
I was looking to see that public servants would have documented well, during the pandemic, decisions that were made around the ArriveCan application, so that they could demonstrate due diligence and prudent use of public funds as they developed and implemented this application.
So basic paperwork?
Basic paperwork around contracting processes, but also normal, good practices when it comes to project management and maintaining good financial records in order to demonstrate prudent use of public funds. So it's more than just paperwork. It's also making sure that you have all the checks and balances in place.
You've gone even further and said that government officials showed a "glaring disregard" for the rules while developing the ArriveCan app. Just tell us a little bit more about what you mean by glaring disregard.
I would have expected that when a project is launched, that someone sets out an end game, a goal, and that a budget is put into place. It's really hard to manage something against your budget when there isn't a budget established.
And that's what we found here, is that neither the Canada Border Services Agency nor the Public Health Agency of Canada had really laid out some of those foundational elements you would see in the management of a project.
When you turn to procurement practices that we looked at, there's a lot of rules and regulations in the … federal government that tell you what you should do…. And we were just not seeing some of those key decisions about who made the decision to choose which vendor and why that was the right vendor to choose. And then when we looked at the invoices, we didn't see who carried out the work or what it related to.
What is behind it, in your view? Because I'm sure you've heard people say it was the pandemic [and] they had to move quickly on things.
We've definitely heard that from many people that we spoke to wanting to remind us that this was the start of the pandemic. It was the height, when there was a lot of confusion and uncertainty, and that the public service was asked to be fast and effective and respond to support Canadians.
And while I agree with that, even the secretary of the Treasury Board had issued a letter to all of public servants saying: While we need to be fast, and you can eliminate some of the typical processes or hoops that you might ask people to jump through, remember that you need to document well your key decisions.
Your report also describes government officials receiving invitations to "dinners and other activities." Can you tell us who was making those invitations and what those activities were?
We did see some invitations, usually via email, to individuals in the branch that was responsible for developing and implementing the ArriveCan application. Those invitations came from a few vendors … to several people. We have no documentation to know whether folks attended those events or they didn't.
The agency has a code of conduct, and that code of conduct requires that a public servant inform their supervisor if they receive an invitation to a private function from a vendor. That disclosure is needed so that the supervisor can then decide if measures need to be put into place because this increases the risk that there is real or perceived conflict of interest or bias in making procurement decisions.
If individuals informed their supervisors, none of it was documented. And we were unable to show whether or not appropriate measures have been put in place to mitigate the risk.
The CBSA responded to your report by saying, it was "working as quickly as possible to replace a paper process that was not meeting public health needs and was also impacting the border." That goes back to the issue of this was the pandemic and we had to act quickly. But is it sounding to you like "it was the pandemic" is the new "the dog ate my homework" here?
I do want to point out that we did two reports in 2021 related to measures at the border. And in the second, we actually found that the ArriveCan application improved the quality of the information that the government was collecting from travellers entering into the country. And it also improved the timeliness of the ability for the government to follow up with travellers.
So there was definitely some value and it improved the service to Canadians and the ability to track border measures. But the need to be quick and effective doesn't eliminate the need to show accountability and transparency to Canadians.
I don't think every decision or every step along the way needed to be supported and documented. But some of the really key ones should have been done. An emergency is not an excuse to ignore the most basic requirements of maintaining complete and accurate records for transparency and accountability.
Conservative Leader Pierre Pollievre is responding to your report today and promising if he was in charge to reverse what he says is the Trudeau government's "doubling of outsourcing." You mentioned procurement a moment ago. But outsourcing in particular, how much was that a part of the problems you found?
We found that the agencies — the Public Health Agency as well as the Canada Border Services Agency — had identified early on that they just didn't have the skills or the capacity at the start of the pandemic to develop this app. So it's very reasonable that the public service would turn to a third party to help them develop it.
What I would have expected, however, as time went on — we're going into a few years — that that dependency and reliance on an external resource would have been reduced, for a few reasons.
One is it's important to transition some of the knowledge and work into the public service, but also reducing that dependency on a third party would have provided better value for money. And in this case, we did not see that happening.
Prime Minister Trudeau has already said the decision to use outside contractors to develop the app was "illogical." Are you sensing that lessons have been learned here?
I think time will tell. I recognize that at the height of the pandemic, some decisions were made very quickly. And it'll be interesting to see what the public service does now when it comes to contracting.
With files from CBC News. Interview produced by Kevin Robertson. Q&A edited for length and clarity
