The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 19, 2024


Uncovering ArriveCan (Yet Again)

Topics
ArriveScam ARRIVE app rollout incompetence
Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Christian Firth Darren Anthony Duclos Justin Trudeau Pierre Poilievre Larry Brock Shifty Eyes Jamie Schmael Alex Brock
Canadians are living in fear for their safety. The current government has done an absolute disservice to the safety and wellbeing of everyday citizens.

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

152.37

Word count

2,564

Sentence count

223

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm
00:00:11.540 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps with Alex Barak with
00:00:14.800 new content for you every single Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Please like, comment,
00:00:20.100 share and subscribe to this program. There are eyes that need to see the show, ears that
00:00:24.720 need to hear the message. This is the Conservative Vueprints that helps get Pierre Polyev elected
00:00:28.940 as Prime Minister of Canada. Don't forget, you can tell your friends to download this
00:00:32.560 program on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. On today's show, I should
00:00:37.660 actually rename the program. It's the Brock Print Today. Gives you a hint of who we have
00:00:41.840 on. Of course, the prosecutor, the Broconator, Larry Brock, Member of Parliament for Brantford
00:00:46.100 Brandt. Thanks for coming on the show to talk about Arrive Scam.
00:00:48.780 Always a pleasure, my friend. Always a pleasure.
00:00:50.760 Beautiful app on your phone when you were traveling. You had to check in and tell the government
00:00:55.380 what you were up to. That performed so well. Yeah, that put 10,000
00:00:59.000 people roughly and wrongly into quarantine. Yes, created the hours of delays at the border
00:01:05.720 crossings, the chaos, the confusion at the airports. A true masterclass of government success.
00:01:12.000 Absolutely. And made two people very wealthy, a company very profitable for only a few months
00:01:17.500 in existence. That's pretty incredible. GC Strategies. We're going to get into some of what's going on to bring
00:01:24.160 people up to speed on the committee meeting that was meeting during the break week, the constituency
00:01:29.780 week. We had two of those. Parliament's back in session this week. What does GC stand for anyway?
00:01:36.000 GC Strategies. It's a new company, two people in their basement. What's their name? Darren Anthony
00:01:40.540 and Christian Firth. What does GC stand for? You know, there have been pundits bantering around
00:01:46.420 for weeks now as to what the GC stood for in the name GC Strategies. I heard reference to
00:01:52.960 get cash when it was revealed that this two-person basement firm was literally receiving millions,
00:02:02.320 tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money for doing absolutely nothing. But it was revealed last
00:02:09.040 last Wednesday when one of the business partners of GC Strategies confirmed when a question was put
00:02:15.580 to him. What does GC stand for? And lo and behold, it stands for the Government of Canada. Wow.
00:02:24.120 Strategies. Interesting. Very interesting. So somebody looking to do business with the government
00:02:30.360 already named Government of Canada Strategies. So that's an interesting development. Probably explains
00:02:35.880 the nice cozy relationship that this two-person has with a number of deputy ministers, a number of senior
00:02:43.220 bureaucrats over a course of a number of ministries. So we have a $54 million app. Is that what the
00:02:49.980 number we're on now? Actually, approximately $59 million. $59 million for an app? Approximately.
00:02:55.820 Okay. So an app that two companies, aside from GC Strategies, made just as for a bit of a joke to see
00:03:03.220 how much they can do it. Do it for under $100,000 each, I believe. Took them a weekend. GC Strategies makes
00:03:11.100 an app costs roughly $59 million. They didn't actually do any work. They just farmed it out. Yes.
00:03:17.860 Because apparently, notwithstanding the increase of our federal public service by 40% since Justin
00:03:24.540 Trudeau took government in 2015, apparently there is no one qualified in our professional public service
00:03:31.680 from actually doing a Google search and determining which engineers and which IT professionals actually
00:03:38.980 exist in Canada to perform this work. We had to outsource that to a consulting company to find
00:03:45.740 the professionals. That's at the heart of this controversy. We have a professional public, and I've
00:03:52.220 heard at committee, we've heard from union presidents representing our federal public service that they
00:03:58.900 had qualified individuals who could have easily performed the roles of GC, Government of Canada
00:04:05.660 strategies. Absolutely. So we finally did figure out, we don't have the clip, we should have got it, but
00:04:12.060 one of the so-called partners, we just found out it's a partnership, Mr. Shifty Eyes, as I like to call
00:04:17.900 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,
00:04:23.900 how is the company structured? But he wasn't exactly sure how the company was actually structured,
00:04:30.660 despite being there for 15 years. And that's the ironic part behind all of this. Despite the fact
00:04:37.420 that he's been in a relationship, a business relationship with his partner for, I guess, eight and a half years
00:04:44.660 now since 2015, and knew him for up to 10 years prior to that and worked with him in a different company,
00:04:51.660 he was unable to quickly tell me whether this was a business partnership or a business corporation.
00:04:58.660 He had to ask for a pause so that he could speak with his lawyer to clarify that.
00:05:03.660 Notwithstanding receiving millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, he had no idea how he was organized.
00:05:09.660 I'm pretty sure if I received millions of dollars to my company, I'd probably have a good idea how it was structured.
00:05:18.660 He did know for a fact that their business relationship is one of sharing 50-50 in profits.
00:05:25.660 He does some consulting work on his own, he shares 50-50 with his partner, and likewise Christian Firth does the same.
00:05:35.660 But it would appear, and the evidence that was led, is that this is really an unequal partnership.
00:05:40.660 It would appear that most of the larger contracts, the multi-million dollar contracts, the ArriveCan contract,
00:05:47.660 which cost taxpayers upwards to 19 million dollars, was solely sourced by Christian Firth.
00:05:55.660 Now, that 19 million didn't go directly to both of them, they take a percentage of that.
00:06:01.660 Of course, it's hard work.
00:06:03.660 Yeah, of course.
00:06:04.660 It's hard work picking up the phone and doing a Google search, right?
00:06:06.660 Absolutely, it's very hard work.
00:06:07.660 They've got a lobby.
00:06:08.660 Right, so it's anywhere from 15 to 30 percent.
00:06:11.660 I quickly did the math.
00:06:13.660 That means they either shared, between the two of them, 4.4 million dollars for doing nothing, or 8.8 million dollars.
00:06:23.660 I brought that up to him, because in his opening statement, he wanted to secure a little bit of sympathy,
00:06:31.660 and wanted to have some empathy shown his way, because all of the financial hardships that he's going through now,
00:06:38.660 as a result of all of this controversy.
00:06:40.660 I can imagine.
00:06:41.660 Well, food bank usage in the country is through the roof.
00:06:44.660 Precisely.
00:06:45.660 Alright, let's queue up cut one.
00:06:46.660 It's about a minute 15 long, but it is totally worth it, so you've got to listen to this.
00:06:50.660 Blake, cut one.
00:06:51.660 We heard yesterday from Christian Firth that, not only yesterday, but in previous testimony,
00:06:57.660 that he's quite proud of the ARRIVE CAN scam.
00:07:01.660 Are you equally proud?
00:07:07.660 Yes, I'm proud of the work that we were able to deliver.
00:07:11.660 Are you proud of the end result?
00:07:18.660 Which end result are you referring to?
00:07:20.660 The end result that resulted in extremely long delays at the borders, chaos and confusion at airports,
00:07:30.660 the faulty, glitchy part of the app that resulted in the illegal detention of 10,000 Canadians.
00:07:38.660 Are you proud of those facts, Mr. Anthony?
00:07:41.660 Yes or no?
00:07:48.660 I have no knowledge of that.
00:07:51.660 Come on, Mr. Anthony.
00:07:53.660 You read papers.
00:07:54.660 You watch the news.
00:07:56.660 Were you living under a rock for the last three years?
00:08:00.660 That's the prosecutor, the brockinator. 0.90
00:08:04.660 He wasn't exactly sure.
00:08:06.660 How could, okay, I know there's another clip, I believe it was you, basically outlining how unprepared these two were.
00:08:13.660 It was like all this was news to them.
00:08:15.660 They woke up one day and they're being questioned about this app that had all these problems.
00:08:20.660 That's a classic example how this company has zero credibility.
00:08:26.660 This particular individual went on to say that he stands by everything that his partner had said the day prior.
00:08:36.660 The day prior, his partner Christian Firth criticized the Auditor General's report and said that her conclusions were wrong.
00:08:46.660 These two individuals are not auditors.
00:08:49.660 The Auditor General has decades worth of auditing experience.
00:08:54.660 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.
00:09:11.660 But to Mr. Anthony's part, he didn't even take the time to read a 20-page report from the Auditor General.
00:09:20.660 Didn't read her report, didn't read the procurement report, and when pressed on it, which was, we were complete amazement.
00:09:28.660 Every person at the committee were in complete amazement that how would you even prepare for a meeting such as this,
00:09:37.660 knowing full well we'd be asking you questions based on the conclusions reached by the Auditor General,
00:09:43.660 you couldn't find 20 minutes in terms of your prep work to actually read the report?
00:09:49.660 It's astonishing.
00:09:50.660 They just don't care. They don't care.
00:09:52.660 Let's queue up cut number two. We have the other individual, not Mr. Shifty Eyes, that's Darren Anthony.
00:09:58.660 We have Christian Firth with a fun little clip of his own. Play cut two.
00:10:03.660 I think our work was done very well, and I feel like the application was a success.
00:10:10.660 Hold on.
00:10:12.660 I believe the application was a success. We had, I think, 260 million times the app was open.
00:10:20.660 A success. You're saying that your application was a success. You're serious now, right?
00:10:26.660 I think it did exactly what it was supposed to. It was a success for them. Firth and Anthony.
00:10:35.660 I'm pretty successful for them, I think.
00:10:37.660 Precisely.
00:10:38.660 Canadians who were told to quarantine for two weeks?
00:10:40.660 Yeah.
00:10:41.660 Not so much a success.
00:10:42.660 No.
00:10:43.660 And we heard from the union president who represents all the border agents, and he was very, very
00:10:50.660 upset that the government, and particularly the CBSA, chose for whatever reason not to
00:10:57.660 consult with the agents. The frontline individuals who would be processing the information contained
00:11:04.660 on the app as visitors returned to this country. You would think they would be consulted for some
00:11:11.660 degree of input. They were completely bypassed, and they relied upon these types of individuals.
00:11:18.660 Absolute waste of money. Where do we go from here?
00:11:21.660 Well, we continue to expose this corruption within this government and the incompetence by the CBSA
00:11:29.660 and the handling of the ARRIVE scam. And it's not just the CBSA, it's the Procurement Ministry.
00:11:36.660 It's also Public Health Ministry. All three individuals, all three ministers and ministries were involved
00:11:42.660 in the rollout of this failed, disastrous app. We continue to show Canadians that they did not receive value 0.66
00:11:52.660 for money. And as you know, today is the deadline for the government to give us a roadmap as to
00:11:58.660 how we are going to get some of the money back that was delivered to individuals and companies that
00:12:04.660 actually did no work at all. Now, I guess an argument could be made GC did something because
00:12:10.660 they connected the government with professionals. But as the procurement, not the procurement, sorry,
00:12:17.660 the procurement ombudsman, yes, the procurement ombudsman confirmed in his report that there were
00:12:21.660 a number of subcontractors called ghost contractors that received money that did absolutely no work
00:12:27.660 whatsoever. So we do want to hear from the government as to what the plan is.
00:12:31.660 But somebody signed up on this. Somebody had to sign up on this.
00:12:33.660 Well, of course. And that brings up the question in terms of how are we going to bridge this particular
00:12:38.660 controversy, this scam, this scandal with government officials. Because it's one thing for the government to stand up.
00:12:46.660 We've heard the prime minister. We've heard various ministers saying people will be held accountable.
00:12:52.660 This is completely unacceptable. Things that we would expect to hear from the government.
00:12:57.660 But at this point, no one has been fired. No one has been suspended other than two individuals who used to work
00:13:05.660 at the CBSA who spoke truth to power and actually got suspended without pay for naming names and indicating
00:13:14.660 to committee members that the presidents and some other individuals who testified were actually lying at committee.
00:13:20.660 So no one is taking responsibility. No one is being held accountable.
00:13:24.660 Which in my view, it harkens back to who is responsible?
00:13:28.660 Exactly.
00:13:29.660 Who ultimately bears the cost of this?
00:13:32.660 Who signed up? Whose name was on this picture?
00:13:33.660 This is the prime minister's problem. These are the ministers' problems.
00:13:37.660 Are they completely inept? Were they completely asleep at the wheel that they had no idea what was going on? 0.99
00:13:44.660 Case in point, Minister Duclos. Minister Duclos became the Minister of Procurement Services this past summer.
00:13:52.660 Now this past summer, we already knew that there was a complaint that was being investigated by the RCMP,
00:14:00.660 that was received by the CBSA.
00:14:03.660 And we heard evidence that the president of the CBSA did not see fit to inform incoming Minister Duclos
00:14:14.660 about a complaint that's now being investigated by the RCMP.
00:14:19.660 Why did she withhold that piece of crucial evidence?
00:14:22.660 She's to blame for that.
00:14:23.660 But more importantly, why wasn't Minister Duclos simply asking for all the information on his portfolio?
00:14:31.660 I would think as a responsible minister, responsible for a serious portfolio,
00:14:37.660 you would want to know about what's happening, what's occurring in your department,
00:14:43.660 trouble spots in your department, crises that are happening in your department,
00:14:48.660 issues that might cause embarrassment, not only to the minister and to the government.
00:14:53.660 So why wasn't Minister Duclos asking the president as he started his new portfolio
00:15:00.660 about trouble issues that would cause some grief to the government? He did not.
00:15:05.660 He did not.
00:15:06.660 He did not. The only thing I can come up with, the less you know, the more you can deny.
00:15:10.660 Well, it's plausible deniability, but that does not hold any weight in a parliamentary democracy
00:15:18.660 because ultimately you are responsible.
00:15:21.660 Whether you asked or not, the buck stops with you and ultimately to the prime minister.
00:15:26.660 I agree. Brockinator, we're out of time. Sadly, so much more to talk about.
00:15:31.660 As you know, the guests get the final word. It's up to you.
00:15:34.660 We will continue to discover the truth behind this disastrous procurement process.
00:15:42.660 We want to hold people accountable. We will continue to shed truth to this particular issue.
00:15:48.660 But more importantly, our job is to restore trust in our public institutions.
00:15:54.660 And right now, the Justin Trudeau government is completely absent on the transparency, accountability and trust issue.
00:16:02.660 A new majority government headed up by our new prime minister, Pierre Polyev, will reinstate all those important principles.
00:16:10.660 That's why you're the prosecutor. Larry Brock, thank you very much for your time.
00:16:13.660 Thank you for yours. Again, he's the member of parliament for Brantford.
00:16:17.660 Brant, he's doing a great job in covering this liberal corruption.
00:16:20.660 If you like what you heard, the show you saw, please like, comment, subscribe and share, share, share this program.
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00:16:33.660 Until next week, we have new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time.
00:16:38.660 It's low taxes, it's less government, equals more freedom.
00:16:42.660 And that is the blueprints.