Suspended public servants say they’re being scapegoated for telling the truth about ArriveCan | CBC News

Two senior federal officials suspended without pay following allegations of misconduct in the awarding of government contracts told MPs Thursday they’re being scapegoated by current and former executives of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Antonio Utano and Cameron MacDonald, who both worked on the development of the ArriveCan app while employed by CBSA, made the comments while appearing before a parliamentary committee that has been studying the ArriveCan app for months.

They said they’re being targeted for telling the same committee in November that senior CBSA executives misled Parliament when they appeared before MPs earlier in the fall to answer questions about the ArriveCan app. 

MacDonald told committee members Thursday that after he and Utano testified in November, the CBSA launched an internal investigation and, in December of 2023, prepared a report based on the probe called the Preliminary Statement of Facts.

“The reality is, this document is nothing more than a collection of baseless accusations unsupported by any corroborating evidence, accusations of wrongdoing supported by cherry-picked emails and calendar entries. It should be called the preliminary statement of falsehoods,” MacDonald said.

The Preliminary Statement of Facts has not been released publicly and the allegations made against the men remain unclear.

The lawyer for MacDonald and Utano told CBC News his clients are seeking to have the statement sealed by a judge because the allegations it contains could cause irreparable damage to their reputation and careers. 

Utano, now a director-general at the Canada Revenue Agency, and Macdonald, now an assistant deputy minister at Health Canada, told MPs on the government operations and estimates committee that when the allegations in the statement were shared with their new employers, they were both suspended without pay. 

The $60M app

Auditor General Karen Hogan reported earlier this month that the government overpaid for the ArriveCan app and the CBSA’s handling of the file was woefully inadequate.

The app cost taxpayers about $60 million, a price tag considerably higher than initial estimates. But even that $60 million figure is an estimate, Hogan said, because the CBSA’s record-keeping was so poor.

Hogan said CBSA and the Public Health Agency of Canada “repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application.”

She also raised questions about a possible cozy relationship between GC Strategies, the company that was contracted to develop the app, and the public servants ultimately responsible for the procurement process.

On Thursday, MacDonald and Utano told committee members they did not have a friendly relationship with people from GC Strategies and did not recommend that CBSA hire it to work on ArriveCan.

Utano said that he and MacDonald were responsible only for the initial “execution and technical delivery” of the ArriveCan app.

“We were not responsible for signing contracts, as we did not have contracting authorities. We were not responsible for approving budgets for ArriveCan. We were not responsible for selecting GC Strategies to work on ArriveCan. This was [former CBSA vice-president] Minh Doan’s and [former CBSA president John Ossowski’s] decision,” he said. 

Utano said that neither he nor MacDonald were responsible for many of the flaws that Hogan highlighted in her examination of ArriveCan.

The RCMP has said it is looking into the conclusions of Hogan’s report. Both MacDonald and Utano told MPs Thursday that the Mounties have not yet reached out to them.

MacDonald also addressed reports that said the projected cost of the app was only $80,000 but had risen to tens of millions of dollars by the time it was up and running.

“The app could never have cost $80,000,” he said. “The $80,000 was to build a digital prototype that moved paper … to an online form that could be used on a mobile phone. It was used to show that you could digitize something.”

He said the true estimate was closer to $6.3 million.

MacDonald said that the rising cost of the app can be attributed in part to other departments who argued that since their work was related to ArriveCan, they should also be able to carry out activities under the app’s funding envelope. 

“There were divisions, federal public servants who wanted to associate with ArriveCan so that they could get the funding that they needed to move their initiatives forward,” he said.

“If you could just put it under an ArriveCan tagline, it was easier to achieve the funding and get the budget that you wanted from the finance branch.”

Utano and MacDonald said that, since they were suspended without pay, they have been trying to get answers from CBSA through the access to information system but have been coming up short. 

“I think it’s pretty clear that tens of thousands of emails have been deleted by Minh Doan,” MacDonald told the committee. 

They said they believe documents and emails have been destroyed, or were not given to the auditor general, in an effort to cover up what took place at CBSA.

Conservative MP Larry Brock asked MacDonald if former and current CBSA executives “lied” to the same committee when they appeared to answer questions.

“Minh Doan has completely lied to Canadians,” MacDonald said.

Asked directly by Brock if Erin O’Gorman, the current president of CBSA, “lied” to the committee last week when she told MPs she did not know who made the decision to hire GC Strategies, MacDonald said, “Yes.”