Uncovering ArriveCan (Yet Again)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
152.36812
Summary
On today's show, the Broconator, Larry Brock, joins me to talk about the Arrive Scam, an app that was developed by two people in their basements, and made them millions of dollars in a matter of months.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm
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your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps with Alex Barak with
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new content for you every single Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Please like, comment,
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share and subscribe to this program. There are eyes that need to see the show, ears that
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need to hear the message. This is the Conservative Vueprints that helps get Pierre Polyev elected
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as Prime Minister of Canada. Don't forget, you can tell your friends to download this
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program on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. On today's show, I should
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actually rename the program. It's the Brock Print Today. Gives you a hint of who we have
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on. Of course, the prosecutor, the Broconator, Larry Brock, Member of Parliament for Brantford
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Brandt. Thanks for coming on the show to talk about Arrive Scam.
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Always a pleasure, my friend. Always a pleasure.
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Beautiful app on your phone when you were traveling. You had to check in and tell the government
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what you were up to. That performed so well. Yeah, that put 10,000
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people roughly and wrongly into quarantine. Yes, created the hours of delays at the border
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crossings, the chaos, the confusion at the airports. A true masterclass of government success.
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Absolutely. And made two people very wealthy, a company very profitable for only a few months
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in existence. That's pretty incredible. GC Strategies. We're going to get into some of what's going on to bring
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people up to speed on the committee meeting that was meeting during the break week, the constituency
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week. We had two of those. Parliament's back in session this week. What does GC stand for anyway?
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GC Strategies. It's a new company, two people in their basement. What's their name? Darren Anthony
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and Christian Firth. What does GC stand for? You know, there have been pundits bantering around
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for weeks now as to what the GC stood for in the name GC Strategies. I heard reference to
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get cash when it was revealed that this two-person basement firm was literally receiving millions,
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tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money for doing absolutely nothing. But it was revealed last
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last Wednesday when one of the business partners of GC Strategies confirmed when a question was put
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to him. What does GC stand for? And lo and behold, it stands for the Government of Canada. Wow.
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Strategies. Interesting. Very interesting. So somebody looking to do business with the government
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already named Government of Canada Strategies. So that's an interesting development. Probably explains
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the nice cozy relationship that this two-person has with a number of deputy ministers, a number of senior
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bureaucrats over a course of a number of ministries. So we have a $54 million app. Is that what the
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number we're on now? Actually, approximately $59 million. $59 million for an app? Approximately.
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Okay. So an app that two companies, aside from GC Strategies, made just as for a bit of a joke to see
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how much they can do it. Do it for under $100,000 each, I believe. Took them a weekend. GC Strategies makes
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an app costs roughly $59 million. They didn't actually do any work. They just farmed it out. Yes.
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Because apparently, notwithstanding the increase of our federal public service by 40% since Justin
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Trudeau took government in 2015, apparently there is no one qualified in our professional public service
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from actually doing a Google search and determining which engineers and which IT professionals actually
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exist in Canada to perform this work. We had to outsource that to a consulting company to find
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the professionals. That's at the heart of this controversy. We have a professional public, and I've
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heard at committee, we've heard from union presidents representing our federal public service that they
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had qualified individuals who could have easily performed the roles of GC, Government of Canada
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strategies. Absolutely. So we finally did figure out, we don't have the clip, we should have got it, but
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one of the so-called partners, we just found out it's a partnership, Mr. Shifty Eyes, as I like to call
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him, Darren Anthony, we're going to get a clip here. We'll get Super Producer Nick to cue that up. But he was asked,
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how is the company structured? But he wasn't exactly sure how the company was actually structured,
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despite being there for 15 years. And that's the ironic part behind all of this. Despite the fact
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that he's been in a relationship, a business relationship with his partner for, I guess, eight and a half years
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now since 2015, and knew him for up to 10 years prior to that and worked with him in a different company,
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he was unable to quickly tell me whether this was a business partnership or a business corporation.
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He had to ask for a pause so that he could speak with his lawyer to clarify that.
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Notwithstanding receiving millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, he had no idea how he was organized.
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I'm pretty sure if I received millions of dollars to my company, I'd probably have a good idea how it was structured.
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He did know for a fact that their business relationship is one of sharing 50-50 in profits.
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He does some consulting work on his own, he shares 50-50 with his partner, and likewise Christian Firth does the same.
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But it would appear, and the evidence that was led, is that this is really an unequal partnership.
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It would appear that most of the larger contracts, the multi-million dollar contracts, the ArriveCan contract,
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which cost taxpayers upwards to 19 million dollars, was solely sourced by Christian Firth.
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Now, that 19 million didn't go directly to both of them, they take a percentage of that.
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It's hard work picking up the phone and doing a Google search, right?
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That means they either shared, between the two of them, 4.4 million dollars for doing nothing, or 8.8 million dollars.
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I brought that up to him, because in his opening statement, he wanted to secure a little bit of sympathy,
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and wanted to have some empathy shown his way, because all of the financial hardships that he's going through now,
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Well, food bank usage in the country is through the roof.
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It's about a minute 15 long, but it is totally worth it, so you've got to listen to this.
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We heard yesterday from Christian Firth that, not only yesterday, but in previous testimony,
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Yes, I'm proud of the work that we were able to deliver.
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The end result that resulted in extremely long delays at the borders, chaos and confusion at airports,
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the faulty, glitchy part of the app that resulted in the illegal detention of 10,000 Canadians.
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Were you living under a rock for the last three years?
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How could, okay, I know there's another clip, I believe it was you, basically outlining how unprepared these two were.
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They woke up one day and they're being questioned about this app that had all these problems.
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That's a classic example how this company has zero credibility.
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This particular individual went on to say that he stands by everything that his partner had said the day prior.
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The day prior, his partner Christian Firth criticized the Auditor General's report and said that her conclusions were wrong.
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The Auditor General has decades worth of auditing experience.
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I think most Canadians, if not all Canadians, would trust an Auditor General's opinion on lack of value for this particular app versus these two individuals who took advantage of fleecing the Canadian taxpayer.
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But to Mr. Anthony's part, he didn't even take the time to read a 20-page report from the Auditor General.
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Didn't read her report, didn't read the procurement report, and when pressed on it, which was, we were complete amazement.
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Every person at the committee were in complete amazement that how would you even prepare for a meeting such as this,
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knowing full well we'd be asking you questions based on the conclusions reached by the Auditor General,
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you couldn't find 20 minutes in terms of your prep work to actually read the report?
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Let's queue up cut number two. We have the other individual, not Mr. Shifty Eyes, that's Darren Anthony.
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We have Christian Firth with a fun little clip of his own. Play cut two.
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I think our work was done very well, and I feel like the application was a success.
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I believe the application was a success. We had, I think, 260 million times the app was open.
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A success. You're saying that your application was a success. You're serious now, right?
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I think it did exactly what it was supposed to. It was a success for them. Firth and Anthony.
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Canadians who were told to quarantine for two weeks?
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And we heard from the union president who represents all the border agents, and he was very, very
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upset that the government, and particularly the CBSA, chose for whatever reason not to
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consult with the agents. The frontline individuals who would be processing the information contained
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on the app as visitors returned to this country. You would think they would be consulted for some
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degree of input. They were completely bypassed, and they relied upon these types of individuals.
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Absolute waste of money. Where do we go from here?
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Well, we continue to expose this corruption within this government and the incompetence by the CBSA
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and the handling of the ARRIVE scam. And it's not just the CBSA, it's the Procurement Ministry.
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It's also Public Health Ministry. All three individuals, all three ministers and ministries were involved
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in the rollout of this failed, disastrous app. We continue to show Canadians that they did not receive value
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for money. And as you know, today is the deadline for the government to give us a roadmap as to
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how we are going to get some of the money back that was delivered to individuals and companies that
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actually did no work at all. Now, I guess an argument could be made GC did something because
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they connected the government with professionals. But as the procurement, not the procurement, sorry,
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the procurement ombudsman, yes, the procurement ombudsman confirmed in his report that there were
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a number of subcontractors called ghost contractors that received money that did absolutely no work
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whatsoever. So we do want to hear from the government as to what the plan is.
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But somebody signed up on this. Somebody had to sign up on this.
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Well, of course. And that brings up the question in terms of how are we going to bridge this particular
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controversy, this scam, this scandal with government officials. Because it's one thing for the government to stand up.
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We've heard the prime minister. We've heard various ministers saying people will be held accountable.
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This is completely unacceptable. Things that we would expect to hear from the government.
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But at this point, no one has been fired. No one has been suspended other than two individuals who used to work
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at the CBSA who spoke truth to power and actually got suspended without pay for naming names and indicating
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to committee members that the presidents and some other individuals who testified were actually lying at committee.
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So no one is taking responsibility. No one is being held accountable.
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Which in my view, it harkens back to who is responsible?
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This is the prime minister's problem. These are the ministers' problems.
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Are they completely inept? Were they completely asleep at the wheel that they had no idea what was going on?
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Case in point, Minister Duclos. Minister Duclos became the Minister of Procurement Services this past summer.
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Now this past summer, we already knew that there was a complaint that was being investigated by the RCMP,
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And we heard evidence that the president of the CBSA did not see fit to inform incoming Minister Duclos
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about a complaint that's now being investigated by the RCMP.
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Why did she withhold that piece of crucial evidence?
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But more importantly, why wasn't Minister Duclos simply asking for all the information on his portfolio?
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I would think as a responsible minister, responsible for a serious portfolio,
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you would want to know about what's happening, what's occurring in your department,
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trouble spots in your department, crises that are happening in your department,
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issues that might cause embarrassment, not only to the minister and to the government.
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So why wasn't Minister Duclos asking the president as he started his new portfolio
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about trouble issues that would cause some grief to the government? He did not.
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He did not. The only thing I can come up with, the less you know, the more you can deny.
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Well, it's plausible deniability, but that does not hold any weight in a parliamentary democracy
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Whether you asked or not, the buck stops with you and ultimately to the prime minister.
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I agree. Brockinator, we're out of time. Sadly, so much more to talk about.
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As you know, the guests get the final word. It's up to you.
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We will continue to discover the truth behind this disastrous procurement process.
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We want to hold people accountable. We will continue to shed truth to this particular issue.
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But more importantly, our job is to restore trust in our public institutions.
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And right now, the Justin Trudeau government is completely absent on the transparency, accountability and trust issue.
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A new majority government headed up by our new prime minister, Pierre Polyev, will reinstate all those important principles.
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That's why you're the prosecutor. Larry Brock, thank you very much for your time.
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Thank you for yours. Again, he's the member of parliament for Brantford.
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Brant, he's doing a great job in covering this liberal corruption.
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