The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - The ArriveScam Scandal never fails to disappoint.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blue Pritch. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:09.180 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Cawortha Lakes Brock, with new content

00:00:13.120 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time on today's show. Is it a cottage? Maybe a

00:00:19.960 chalet? We'll talk this and much, much more as we investigate the Arrive Scam app and everything

00:00:26.080 that comes with it. To talk about this much, much more, we have the Brockinator, the Prosecutor,

00:00:31.560 Larry Brock, Member of Parliament, Brantford Brant, here to join us. Thanks for coming on the show

00:00:36.440 once again. Thank you, Jamie. Always a pleasure to be on your show. Should call this the Brock

00:00:40.580 print again. We keep saying we'll rename it. Maybe one day we'll get to that. All right. You are in

00:00:45.200 committee, along with Michael Barrett and others, investigating the Arrive Scam app. I guess Arrive

00:00:52.220 Cannes Arrive Scam. It looks like a scam. There's money going everywhere. People are tripping over

00:00:58.000 themselves to try to get ahead of this story or maybe put their lean on the story out there.

00:01:03.320 Why don't you tell us, we've got a few clips, so we're going to get into that, but I want you to

00:01:09.240 give kind of a brief overview for our viewers and listeners, and then we'll get into the clip.

00:01:15.500 I think it's important that we set the stage. So at the heart of this scandal, and this is exactly

00:01:21.420 what it is, it's a scandal, is that we have three consulting companies, one of which in the clip

00:01:30.240 you'll see the president of GC Strategies, who has received tens of millions of dollars in hard-earned

00:01:40.960 taxpayer money over the course of the last five or six years for essentially not producing a product,

00:01:48.940 not producing anything of any substance, but rather simply acting as a middle person to locate

00:01:57.460 professionals to actually do the work on behalf of the government. Take the Arrive Can app. They didn't

00:02:05.060 perform anything, no intelligence, no services. They simply use their network of IT professionals

00:02:14.840 and other entities to locate people who could actually do the work. In exchange for that,

00:02:23.360 they receive commissions of anywhere from 20% to 40% of the contract price. So we know-

00:02:31.840 Not a bad gig.

00:02:32.840 Not a bad gig if you can get it. We know that the Arrive Can app cost taxpayers $54 million.

00:02:39.840 For an app that could have been developed over a weekend for $250,000.

00:02:44.520 Precisely. That's the one.

00:02:46.360 That's the one.

00:02:47.360 So it begs the question, how much commission did GC Strategies actually receive? And why are they,

00:02:54.360 Jamie, taking on the role of a bureaucrat within the CBSA? We already know that the Trudeau government has

00:03:03.840 increased the size of our federal bureaucracy by close to 40% during pandemic and post-pandemic.

00:03:11.360 Why aren't these individuals simply opening up their Rolodex and trying to find companies that could

00:03:18.240 actually fulfill the needs of the government? They could have done that and save the taxpayer

00:03:24.560 tens of millions of dollars. GC Strategies doesn't even have a business. He's essentially working out of

00:03:30.960 his basement. How many employees? Two employees. The whole two employees. Yes. They win a $54

00:03:36.160 million contract. Correct. Not doing any work. No. None. Zero. That's, that's a heck of a job.

00:03:43.040 Okay. Quite a scandal. That is quite the scandal. $54 million. This was the app. Of course, when you're,

00:03:48.080 you're leaving Canada, you're coming back, you write down how you're feeling, all that other stuff.

00:03:52.400 Now they have dedicated lines coming in. So people still, I guess for $54 million, they want to keep using it.

00:03:57.840 They can't just throw it in the garbage now. Precisely. I know it's voluntary, but it's still

00:04:01.840 there. It's still in the airport. It is. I see the signs. Yeah. With more lines than I think Nexus

00:04:06.400 and the kind of the normal stream. That's correct. Yeah, that's quite correct. That's correct. So,

00:04:10.960 so last Thursday at committee, we had the president of GC Strategies on the stand. Seems like a stand-up

00:04:18.080 guy. So in this clip you're about to see, he references Mr. McDonald. He was the Canadian Border

00:04:24.720 Service Agency. Correct. Okay. So maybe without giving too much away about the clip, what was kind

00:04:29.840 of, well, I guess we should play the clip first. Maybe we should. Let's play the clip and I'll provide

00:04:35.040 some context. All right. Cue up clip one. This is about a two minute long clip. Stick with us. I promise

00:04:40.400 you it will be worth it. Two minutes of your time. The ending's kind of unbelievable. If you don't throw

00:04:46.560 your hands up in the air like the broccinator did, I got problems. All right. Play cut one. 0.99

00:04:51.040 Mr. Firth, I'm sure that the millions of Canadians who either are watching this or will learn about

00:04:59.040 this in the press or seek out the transcript of this particular meeting will be very, very grateful

00:05:07.280 that the RCMP has access to this particular evidence. What I can understand is why you would

00:05:16.720 take active steps in misleading this particular committee and Canadians with respect to your role

00:05:24.640 as it relates to fraud and forgery with respect to modifying without permission and consent these

00:05:31.840 transcripts, not sorry transcripts, but the resumes to the government. What I can't understand is why

00:05:39.120 you would deliberately lie to this committee on a very innocent question that was put to you by my

00:05:46.560 colleague, Mr. Barrett, when he asked you if you knew whether or not Mr. Cameron McDonald from the CBSA had

00:05:54.160 a cottage and you said no. Do you know if Cameron McDonald has a cottage?

00:06:06.240 I don't know if Cameron McDonald has a cottage. Do you know if he had one?

00:06:10.640 I do not know if he had a cottage. Do you want to reflect on that answer?

00:06:16.320 Yeah, Mr. McDonald has never referred to it as a cottage. It's a chalet. It's not a cottage.

00:06:23.440 I'm thankful for that clarification, Mr. Firth.

00:06:35.440 Are you kidding me?

00:06:40.160 Are you saying you knew all along that he had something that was equivalent to a cottage or a cabin?

00:06:46.800 Cottage, cabin, chalet. What was the, so that the cottage, it really plays no real part in all this,

00:06:55.600 but why was it important? Why was it important that you play that clip?

00:06:59.600 So what you have not shown the audience for, I appreciate it because of the limited amount of

00:07:05.760 time that we have for this podcast, is leading up to that exchange. And I still view that particular

00:07:12.320 exchange as really a non-important element. Whether or not Mr. McDonald owned a chalet, a cottage,

00:07:22.240 a cabin, a camp. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever it is. Whatever it is.

00:07:26.080 A secondary residence of some kind. A secondary residence of some kind. Whether he had that's

00:07:30.960 not material, but what it does show is that there is a pattern of deceit. The questions that preceded

00:07:38.880 that we, we spent a great deal of time on the issue of he and he alone, modifying certain pertinent

00:07:48.640 details of resumes that were given to him by a company named Bottler. So Bottler's not involved in

00:07:56.880 ArriveCamp. They're, they're involved in a completely different government service, but they're intertwined

00:08:02.640 with GC strategies. So to qualify for funding from the government, Mr. Firth did not inform the two

00:08:13.360 principal partners of Bottler that he was actually taking steps to change their experience level. In

00:08:20.480 some cases, having an experience of two to three months and then mushrooming that to several years

00:08:28.720 of experience, it was important for him to deliberately commit a fraud on the government,

00:08:36.000 because that is the only way that Bottler would have qualified for the project. And if Bottler qualifies

00:08:42.800 for the project, then GC strategies collects commission, right? If they didn't qualify, there is no commission.

00:08:50.880 So to make matters worse, he admitted to not only changing and altering and doctoring

00:08:57.360 the pertinent information on this resume. Once he did it upwards to six times, to again, to continue

00:09:03.840 to qualify Bottler in receiving government funding to increase obviously his commission. I was gobsmacked

00:09:12.320 as a former prosecutor that he would freely admit to that type of criminal enterprise on more than one

00:09:19.520 occasion. So that was the backdrop. So we established that he's prepared to lie, he's prepared to cheat,

00:09:25.920 he's prepared to commit criminal acts on the government for the sake of his millions of dollars in commission.

00:09:32.880 So then we dovetail into the cottage issue. Again, it's a really modest little point. Whether he owns it or not

00:09:40.560 is really immaterial, but it displays a pattern of conduct. And it's a pattern of deceit that really bothered me as a parliamentarian.

00:09:49.200 Of course, of course. So where does it go from here? Like, well, first of all, there's a couple of things there.

00:09:54.880 But to, to, you know, if for someone like him, if he was, he's trying to hide what he did, I'm assuming, just by

00:10:03.280 watching it. But why would you, why would you lie or potentially mislead about something as small as that?

00:10:11.120 That's something that could be easily figured out, which puts then a bigger lens on everything else

00:10:17.520 he has said. Why would you do that? In my view, it has completely tainted his overall credibility.

00:10:23.920 Every response that he has given to all the questions put by all members of the committee is now put under

00:10:31.600 a spotlight. And that's why, no surprise, we hardly completed our examination within two hours.

00:10:41.520 We are now summonsing him to return to that particular committee for a meeting upwards to three hours.

00:10:48.880 Because there are so many little hanging threads based on the evidence that he has provided that

00:10:54.160 requires a little more clarification. This goes to the larger picture too that we've been

00:11:00.000 setting the stage for in terms of revealing piece by piece to Canadians as we discover it.

00:11:05.920 The government's overuse, in our opinion, of consultants, outside consultants, despite,

00:11:12.640 as you said earlier, growing the bureaucracy. At one point, I believe nine out of 10 jobs that

00:11:18.800 were created coming out of the pandemic were all government jobs. So what are people doing? What is

00:11:26.480 this government doing? And, you know, we couldn't get a passport. People needed Service Canada when

00:11:31.600 the pandemic happened. It all closed down, right? There were, there were a whole bunch of failures

00:11:36.960 on behalf of this government, which is supposed to be leading Canadians through their day-to-day lives.

00:11:42.960 This government is asleep at the wheel. They are not guardians of taxpayer funds. They are doing an abysmal job.

00:11:53.120 Their view is that's money for them to spend as they see fit. Again, bolstered by the support that they're

00:12:01.600 receiving from their NDP coalition. They are governing as if they have a majority. They've never respected

00:12:08.400 taxpayer monies. This is just a gross example of that misuse.

00:12:13.520 Just like to remind people that one of the first things this Prime Minister did, the first piece of

00:12:18.560 legislation that he was contemplating putting before Parliament after March 2020, when the world had

00:12:24.480 shut down because of the pandemic, would have given that Prime Minister complete power to do or spend

00:12:31.280 or borrow or tax anything that they wanted, the government wanted. They would basically bypass

00:12:36.560 Parliament for two years, bringing it to 2022, long past when the restrictions were being lifted.

00:12:42.720 That's how this government operates. They've been operating that way since 2015.

00:12:50.000 Again, mere words. They projected something that would be responsible to do to show Canadians they were

00:12:58.640 going to be open and transparent by default. But quite frankly, Jamie, I have lost track of how many

00:13:06.640 instances of misuse of taxpayer money, scandal after scandal, shutting down committee, just all kinds of

00:13:18.320 political gamemanship that this government is deploying to prevent Canadians from seeing the truth.

00:13:25.440 And even when we have our national policing agency, the RCMP, who is charged with investigating crimes,

00:13:34.320 I know this is an off topic, but it's near and dear to my heart, when the RCMP was investigating

00:13:40.640 Justin Trudeau for his deliberate, constant interference in the independence of our Attorney General,

00:13:49.920 and him pressuring her to offer a remediation agreement to a Quebec multinational company,

00:13:59.040 and her refusal cost her her job. And then the RCMP wants to investigate, but then again,

00:14:06.000 they hide behind cabinet confidence and refuse to release the information requested numerous times

00:14:14.400 by the RCMP and also requested numerous times by the Ethics Commissioner. This is the style of this

00:14:22.000 government. They are not open. They are not transparent. They have a hidden agenda,

00:14:27.760 and that hidden agenda is fleecing the taxpayer. And they're feeling it right now. So when the

00:14:32.480 pandemic happened, we printed $400 billion out of thin air. Parliamentary Budget Officer looks over

00:14:39.120 the spending that the government did. Half of what the government spent had nothing to do with COVID,

00:14:44.240 but was couched in the language of COVID. And because we were printing, we were borrowing,

00:14:48.960 we were taxing, all of it combined, leads us to the path we're in now, the situation we're in now,

00:14:56.560 which is an inflation crisis. More and more people are using food banks than ever before in history,

00:15:02.960 including first-time users. And that, I got to tell you, to cross that threshold to use a food bank

00:15:09.440 for the first time, when most people that are using it have jobs, have an income, but they just can't make

00:15:17.280 it under this Prime Minister. It's just not worth the cost. So all of this combined leads us to what

00:15:24.320 we're dealing with now, and that is the inflation crisis hurting Canadians because they misspent

00:15:29.680 taxpayer dollars, not just on Rivecan, on a whole bunch of other things. And now taxpayers are feeling the

00:15:36.320 consequences. And we're talking about billions, billions with a B of taxpayer misuse.

00:15:44.160 Yeah, and it's sad because people are crying for help right now, and this government does not have

00:15:50.960 a clue how to fix that problem, because you have to also look at cause and effect. You have to remember

00:15:57.200 how we got here was the cause. This government, bad policy, compounded. Yep. And for a future show,

00:16:04.800 I'd be happy to share my thoughts and observations of the latest scandal that's rocking this Justin

00:16:11.840 Trudeau government, and that's the Green Slush Fund scandal, which according to some senior bureaucrats,

00:16:18.640 is the equivalent of the sponsorship scandal 2.0. We all know how that ended for Jean Chrétien as our

00:16:28.400 Prime Minister. I'd be happy to share my thoughts on that on a future episode. Hopefully the same way it's

00:16:33.200 going to end for Justin Trudeau. All right, we've got to run off the question period. Good show, by the

00:16:36.880 way. We've got so much more to dive into. Final words? The floor is yours. This country needs more

00:16:42.720 than ever a common sense, economically responsible government led by our future Prime Minister, Pierre

00:16:51.360 Pauliev. Larry Brock. Well said. Member of Parliament for Brantford. Brant, we appreciate his time.

00:16:57.280 Thank you, James. As always, we appreciate yours. This is probably something you're not hearing in

00:17:01.920 the mainstream media. I know it's tough to flush out, but eyes have to see this program, ears have

00:17:07.280 to hear this message. You do that by liking, commenting, subscribing, and sharing this program.

00:17:13.360 We'll have new content for you every single Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Until then,

00:17:18.480 remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's The Blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - November 09, 2023

The ArriveScam Scandal never fails to disappoint.

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