Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Michael Duheme will appear before the House Public Accounts Committee on June 18 as MPs push to hear more about the police force’s probe into the ArriveCan application.

The upcoming testimony stems from a May 21 motion moved at the House Public Accounts Committee by Bloc Québécois MP and vice-chair Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, Que.). Despite Liberal MPs opposing the motion, it “firmly” urged the RCMP officials to appear for testimony after they previously declined invitations, citing concerns about jeopardizing the ongoing investigation.

“I think it is important for Canadians and Québécois to know what’s going on with the investigation,” Sinclair-Desgagné told The Hill Times in a June 7 interview, adding that MPs completely respect the RCMP’s position as an independent agency.

Sinclair-Desgagné said the MPs would like to know general details about how an RCMP investigation works, how long the process takes, and how many people work on cases similar to this one.

The MPs will offer the commissioner the option to testify in camera, according to the Bloc Québécois MP, if Duheme chooses to share some information not intended for public disclosure.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed in March 2024 that it is investigating the allegations of misconduct surrounding the ArriveCan application. Duheme told MPs that the police force is “investigating the totality, not ArriveCan itself,” during his Feb. 27 appearance at the House Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics Committee. He confirmed to CTV a month later, on March 27, that an investigation looking into the application is underway. 

The RCMP told The Hill Times it had nothing to add about Duheme’s appearance.

“The RCMP has been invited and will appear. We have no further comments at this time,” said Marie-Eve Breton, RCMP media relations officer, in a June 7 statement.

The only public update about the RCMP’s investigation into the matter was confirmation that the police force’s sensitive and international investigations unit executed a search warrant on April 16 at a location, which, according to government records, is the mailing address for Kristian Firth, managing partner of GC Strategies.

“This search warrant was not related to the ArriveCan investigation. We will not be providing the name or business to protect the privacy of the persons at the residence,” the RCMP said in a statement to The Hill Times at the time, adding that no charges had been laid.

Police conducted the search one day before Firth was admonished in the House of Commons on April 17.

Firth confirmed during this historic appearance that the search warrant he received was to obtain electronic devices related to separate allegations made by Botler AI, a firm his company previously worked with. Firth testified that he was not present during the search, and that he did not know if any documents were taken. Firth also testified that he has not been contacted by the RCMP regarding its investigation of the ArriveCan app.

The ArriveCan application was launched in April 2020 for international travellers to submit their COVID-19-related information electronically at border crossings. The emergency procurement of the app has been under scrutiny since the fall of 2022 due its soaring price tag, which Canada’s auditor general estimated cost $59.5-million. The allegations of misconduct involving some of the contractors and public servants who worked on the app’s procurement further intensified scrutiny. 

GC Strategies was the primary contractor for the application, and received an estimated $19.1-million for its work, which did not involve the app’s actual development or maintenance. While the company’s co-founders deny any wrongdoing, their two-person IT staffing firm has been at the centre of a dozen independent probes. A scathing auditor general report found that the Ottawa-based firm was involved in creating “restrictive and narrow” criteria for a $25-million competitive contract that eventually was awarded to the firm itself.

Procurement Ombud Alexander Jeglic’s Jan 29 review into the application also concluded that some of the interactions between the company and public servants involved in the ArriveCan contract threatened the transparency and integrity of the government’s procurement process, and “favoured” GC Strategies.

Some of those probes are still underway including those led by the Information Commissioner and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, as well as an internal audit by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), which was the procuring agency for the app.

The RCMP has also been investigating allegations of procurement misconduct referred to the force by the CBSA regarding allegations raised by Botler AI. The Montreal-based firm’s co-founders accused GC Strategies of fraud after they worked with Firth on a pilot project on workplace misconduct for the CBSA. Botler’s allegations laid the groundwork for investigations concerning the ArriveCan app as the same public servants and contractors were involved in both cases.

Firth had previously testified before the House Government Operations and Estimates Committee that he used the “wrong versions” of one resumé belonging to Ritika Dutt, one of the co-founders of Botler AI, to secure a government contract. He said this was a “mistake” on his part, as opposed to a fraudulent move.

ikoca@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

 

Irem Koca is a Turkish-Canadian journalist who joined The Hill Times in late 2023. She got her start in Canadian media in the Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau, covering federal politics and national stories under the paper's year-long fellowship. With a background in broadcast journalism, she spent several years as a world news reporter at CNN Turkey. Her freelance work on Turkish politics has been featured in The New York Times and Reuters. She is fluent in English and Turkish. See all stories BY IREM KOCA