ArriveCan an appalling waste of money

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2024 (612 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cast your mind back to the beginning of the COVID lockdowns, and the speed at which the Canadian government was scrambling to deal with the fallout of basically shutting down much of the Canadian economy.

Things happened very fast, and in a far from orderly manner: programs like the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) were rolled out quickly to support individuals who had lost their jobs, and businesses that had lost their customers.

The argument at the time? Get money into the hands of people who desperately needed it, and, if money ended up going to people who weren’t eligible, clean up the mistakes later.

But moving quickly doesn’t mean all the rules should just be thrown out the window.

There’s a difference between a clear need for speed and just plain malfeasance.

And when it comes to the creation of the ArriveCan app, it’s pretty clear that plenty of basic rules of governance were just plain ignored.

The ArriveCan app for international travellers entering Canada originally cost $80,000, and was meant to be an electronic version of the single rectangular sheet of yes and no questions that people entering the country used to be required to fill out and hand to customs and immigration. Things like the value of goods you’re bringing back into the country, the amount of time you’ve been away, whether you visited a farm before heading back to Canada… fill the information out online, and supposedly you’d move through the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) process 30 per cent more quickly.

During COVID, things got more complicated, especially when the app was modified to track vaccination status and whether or not travellers would be required to undergo a COVID quarantine before being allowed to head home.

But not just more complicated — it became vastly more expensive as well.

By the time it was all said and done, the $80,000 original cost of the app was just 0.134453 per cent of the project’s total cost. In other words, the original price tag could have been a more-than-acceptable rounding error in the approximately $59.5 million that was finally spent on the app.

The total bill is approximate because the federal Auditor-General, Karen Hogan, says accounting for the project was so sloppy, the amount spent the app is really only a best guess.

“Overall, this audit shows a clear disregard for basic management and contracting practices throughout ArriveCan’s development and implementation,” Hogan told a news conference on Feb. 11. “I will tell you that this is probably some of the worst financial record keeping I’ve seen.”

Invoices were paid that didn’t clearly state what work was being paid for. The IT firm that won the contract for the app helped to write the terms of bid it later won — as the only bidder. There was no documentation to explain how the original contract was awarded. During 2022, the app sent inaccurate quarantine orders to 10,000 Canadians and threatened them with fines — an error that Canada’s Privacy Commissioner says violated the Privacy Act. CBSA officials accepted hospitality from the contractors on the project and didn’t declare it to their superiors, as required by CBSA rules. And the list goes on and on and on.

Now, the RCMP are involved.

As they should be.

To finish up, here’s your very own ArriveCan form.

It’s a very short one.

Should this $59.5-million boondoggle continue to be investigated to the fullest extent possible, and should those responsible be brought to account?

You can check “yes” or “no.”

Actually, just check “yes.”