Juno News - Feds wasted millions on ArriveCan app

00:00:00.000 so the crucial part of this is that public servants were not trying to get value for money

00:00:14.260 they weren't making an effort of adequately tracking how much was being spent they didn't

00:00:19.720 do their due diligence they didn't do basic management and it's not enough just to blame

00:00:23.280 it all on covid and this is what the government has tried to do and you could even see in the

00:00:28.180 liberal questions that were being put to karen uh hogan this morning on committee they were trying 0.56

00:00:32.680 to just pass the buck anywhere and everywhere but on the government so at a certain point cbsa is

00:00:37.800 going to be made out to be the fall guy and some lowly bureaucrats going to be made to be the fall 1.00

00:00:42.200 guy but it really is the government that has to own this because the bureaucrats were implementing 0.78

00:00:47.160 a government program this unnecessary app which we're just talking about the mismanagement of it

00:00:52.600 not even the fundamental question of whether this app was just and constitutional and violated or

00:00:59.360 violated people's civil liberties which i suspect it did but that wasn't part of what the auditor

00:01:04.400 general was delving into but the real takeaway here even with the benefit of hindsight she could not

00:01:11.920 adequately figure out the cost of this thing she could not adequately figure out how much canadians

00:01:18.540 spent on this she did her best came up with a figure of around 60 million dollars way more than

00:01:24.840 the 54 million that was initially uh said and way more than the 80 000 it was supposed to be but she's

00:01:31.960 had to do some guesswork because of how shoddy the records are aaron woodrick is the head of the

00:01:38.080 domestic policy program over at the mcdonald laureate institute and joins me on the line now aaron always good

00:01:45.200 to talk to you here i mean at a certain point you have to wonder did any of this go the way it was

00:01:50.460 supposed to and it really doesn't seem like it no it doesn't i mean it's not every day that you have

00:01:55.200 the auditor general coming out and saying you know i can't even tell you how much this costs there's so

00:01:59.780 little of a paper trail and i think her comments are just damning look it look it is possibly true

00:02:06.080 that during a pandemic and you know people were panicking remember this is early 2020 people are in a

00:02:11.080 real hurry okay so maybe everything isn't exactly by the book but her point is in some cases there's

00:02:16.760 not even the most basic notation there aren't even basic invoices this is not just a matter of

00:02:22.500 you know rushing through the process because you think that the sky is going to fall they just

00:02:26.780 completely gave up on some of the most basic safeguards and the result is you know tens of

00:02:32.200 millions of dollars wasted um for taxpayers and and again you know this is just one aspect of spending

00:02:38.500 during the pandemic this is just an example of the lack of safeguards in place and you know

00:02:44.300 canadians have just paid an eye-watering sum for for basically nothing yeah and i mean obviously she 0.90

00:02:50.840 was focused just on arrive can here but i i have to assume and and you would know this uh better than

00:02:56.560 than i would given your work but i have to assume that there is underneath this revealing i think a

00:03:03.200 bigger problem with procurement in canada because something like jumps out here and says that this to

00:03:09.120 me is not an aberration this is probably business as usual the fact that there's an entire company

00:03:14.560 set up that doesn't produce anything that just cashes a huge fat check and then finds other people

00:03:19.440 to do the work strikes me as evidence that this is pretty much business as usual in ottawa yeah it's a

00:03:25.680 serious problem and there's a bunch of layers i would say with respect to procurement that are the

00:03:29.600 problem i mean you do have this sort of basic ignorance of the rules uh you have people issuing

00:03:35.100 uh you know sole source contracts when they should be open to competitive bids um you also have in a

00:03:40.480 lot of areas you know very sort of strange political layers to rather than getting sort of the best bang

00:03:46.580 for your buck and i'm thinking particularly for military procurement you have government trying to

00:03:50.820 fiddle with making sure that well they got to be made in canada they have to create certain number of

00:03:54.640 jobs in this region and anyone who's followed for example our our disastrous shipbuilding program

00:03:59.880 i mean if you think if you think wasting 50 million dollars on a phone app is bad wait till you hear

00:04:05.380 about the tens of billions of dollars that we're getting for for not receiving ships yet i mean it is

00:04:11.340 these are just eye-watering sums of money um and procurement in this country is badly badly broken

00:04:16.740 um there needs to be a real top to bottom rethink about how we can ensure this process is fair it's

00:04:22.400 competitive and it is immune from political interference yeah and i i think that is where

00:04:29.180 we get to the point here of whether this was a bureaucracy run amok or is this something that is

00:04:35.600 uh laid at justin trudeau's feet i know there's an argument that justin trudeau has to own what

00:04:40.480 the bureaucracy does when they're implementing his strategies but what's your read on that from what's

00:04:44.560 come out so far well they certainly as you can as you as you mentioned they're trying to barge pull

00:04:49.820 away from this and i mean part of that is just basic politics this is a government that's in very

00:04:53.520 deep trouble in the poll so they're not obviously looking to take ownership of any more problems

00:04:57.880 but there's no getting around it i mean you are responsible at the political level for the mistakes

00:05:02.600 of the department underneath you and that's one of the questions that i have here is the money's

00:05:06.400 already gone and that's unfortunate but will there be any consequences is anybody going to get fired is

00:05:11.380 anybody going to get reprimanded is any minister going to resign for this i do think is is something

00:05:16.360 that's extremely frustrating for a lot of canadians right now is that even when you make mistakes it

00:05:21.220 used to be just assume that someone would take responsibility there would be some consequence

00:05:25.720 to failure or or or stealing or mismanagement we don't have that anymore we have uh you know the

00:05:31.420 best you're going to get is a minister go out solemnly before the cameras and say you know i take

00:05:36.180 full responsibility and and then they won't do anything they'll just say those words and they and they

00:05:40.660 sort of that's almost worse doing it that way andrew because it deprives them of any meaning

00:05:44.820 what is the point in saying you take responsibility if there's just no consequence other than having

00:05:48.980 to say the words yeah and i don't want to compare apples to oranges here because there there was a

00:05:53.420 lot going on with ad scam back in the day that i have not seen evidence of here but just to compare

00:05:58.980 the numbers here the ad scam was i think about two million dollars in contracts without a proper

00:06:05.540 bidding system with arrive can we're talking about something that went up to 60 million dollars

00:06:10.440 yeah it look it's a lot of money and it's funny how in this country scandals over waste often don't

00:06:16.480 depend on the amount right people everyone will remember bevota's orange juice that was only 16

00:06:20.600 dollars right whereas in other cases i just mentioned the shipbuilding procurement now you're

00:06:24.780 into tens of billions of dollars or these subsidies for electric vehicle batteries so sometimes it's not

00:06:29.740 the dollar it's just the egregiousness of how it's done and i think arrive can in that respect is

00:06:34.880 particularly um controversial because as you mentioned a lot of people were very put off

00:06:40.480 um you know by the the nature of this app you know this sort of um you know whether or not it was

00:06:46.260 violating canadian's rights it was very draconian uh so you add that layer onto it it wasn't just

00:06:51.920 that 50 million dollars was wasted it was in service of something that was pretty dark in and of itself

00:06:56.680 so explain to me what could come of this i mean obviously the conservatives are making a bit of

00:07:03.440 hay about this as i think is reasonable enough to do the liberals it seemed like from the little bit

00:07:09.340 of the committee that was on earlier are desperately trying to just to shove the blame somewhere in a

00:07:13.900 corner like ran some random procurement officer with cbsa they want to own this whole thing where

00:07:19.620 do you think it will go yeah i mean i don't see anybody resigning and it would be nice if someone

00:07:25.260 actually had the dignity to resign over this a minister or even a civil servants or whether it would

00:07:30.040 be investigations of the specific individuals responsible for this um i i just don't see that

00:07:36.100 happening uh in a lot of cases uh you know the tactic first of all is to deny and then to stall

00:07:41.980 um in the hopes that something else will pop up in the news cycle and people will lose interest in

00:07:46.620 this and i i unfortunately think that there's a not a non-zero chance that that's what's going to

00:07:51.540 happen here so one thing that i i would be very curious about it as well to get your take on it is

00:07:57.940 whether this you think is the tip of the iceberg because you alluded earlier to this is just one aspect

00:08:03.520 of pandemic uh pandemic spending we had uh billions and billions of dollars going out the door

00:08:09.140 uh we've already seen with serb there were a lot of people that got it that didn't have to

00:08:13.820 cra has had mixed success in collecting that but you go to other programs and other spending

00:08:18.700 there's never really been a deep dive into it no and i think that there needs to be a top to

00:08:24.320 bottom review of all of that spending from from the pandemic period and i mean in addition we've

00:08:29.020 called for a review of the all the covet 19 pandemic measures generally right so not just not just the

00:08:36.680 spending but all the programming decisions all the policy decisions taken during that time we all

00:08:41.560 know what some of those are that were some of them very controversial to this day but this was a lot

00:08:46.300 of money that went out the door and i think a lot of people at the time said okay we're willing to

00:08:51.020 we're willing to to lower our standards um because it's an emergency but not indefinitely and not

00:08:57.680 without a review after the fact and i i still think that needs to happen um this is this is you know we're

00:09:03.640 not talking about a little bit of money here we're talking about a significant amount of money and if

00:09:07.200 for no other reason then to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again because some of these

00:09:11.960 problems um can't be attributed to the pandemic it's just there's just poor mechanisms in place

00:09:17.640 um to to ensure that money can't get wasted this evening aaron woodrick is the domestic policy

00:09:24.760 program director over at the mcdonald laurier institute thank you very much sir as always for

00:09:29.160 your time thanks a lot thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating

00:09:34.760 to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - February 17, 2024

Feds wasted millions on ArriveCan app

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