EDITORIAL: ArriveCAN ban should be permanent

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A scathing report by federal auditor general Karen Hogan this week slammed the government for failing to follow its own rules on procurement policies.

Hogan reported that generally, in the civil service, millions of dollars of contracts were awarded without the required checks and balances on whether workers had security clearances or even whether the work had been done.

Last year, Hogan published an audit on ArriveCAN, the controversial and now largely unused app that was required for travel to this country during the pandemic. That report found the government didn’t deliver value to taxpayers and three federal departments disregarded federal policies in awarding contracts.

Last week, GCStrategies, the company at the heart of the ArriveCAN boondoggle, was banned from federal contracts for seven years. That seems a ludicrously small penalty given the shocking nature of the findings by the auditor about the company’s role in the ArriveCAN controversy.

Conservatives have called for a lifetime ban on GCStrategies.  That seems a more realistic penalty. We don’t want to get taken to the cleaners again.

“It’s a new Parliament, but we’re dealing with the same old Liberal scandals,” Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis told the House on Thursday.

“They want to hide their scandals from Canadians, but the auditor general report is very clear. This Liberal government ignored the rules and allowed insiders to profit to the tune of $64 million.”

The ArriveCAN app was originally supposed to cost $80,000, but that ballooned to about $60 million.

Sure, it’s a new government and a new cabinet. But we need a strong message from Prime Minister Mark Carney that he didn’t just shuffle cabinet chairs on the Titanic.

Joel Lightbound, the new minister responsible for government procurement, told the House that in addition to the ban, they’ve terminated all GCStrategies’ contracts and taken legal action.

“We referred cases to the RCMP because, Mr. Speaker, we will never tolerate misconduct from our suppliers or their subcontractors.”

That sounds remarkably like shutting the vault doors after the tax dollars have flown. We await the police report with interest.

Canadians are sick of seeing their tax dollars flushed down the toilet while vital services, such as defence, are underfunded.

It’s time to root out waste and mismanagement and start treating our tax dollars with respect.