Can I be blunt?
It is far past time for a thorough, independent and aggressive investigation into whether government contracts amount to payoffs to political cronies.
I have no proof that is happening but bear with me.
The Globe and Mail first reported that the cost – so far – of the ArriveCAN app, the COVID-19 tool the government used to keep track of cross-border travellers up until very recently, cost $54 million dollars. That is double what the government said it cost.
But outraged tech professionals have been quoted saying they can’t see it costing more than a million.
Who got the other $53 million?
Doesn’t every taxpayer in this country have the absolute right to know where the dollars went?
The little shop that got the contract has fewer than five employees, saying they used 75 subcontractors to do the job.
The Globe and Mail tells us, “However, the company and the government say the identities of subcontractors cannot be revealed because of confidentiality provisions in federal procurement rules.”
Well, there is your problem.
What right does anyone have to happily spend tens of millions of our dollars on the down low? “Just trust us” doesn’t cut it.
There is no reason to treat contracts like this one as if it is a missile defence system. It is an app.
Sure, they had to worry about security, but so does any app that trades in commerce.
You know who has my credit card? Amazon. TD Bank. Uber. Pizza Hut. At least Pizza Hut delivers. I wonder if any of those companies were one of the 75 subcontractors, because they seem to know what they are doing.
There is a concept popular with too few politicians called “every dime every time.”
It means that the government’s books are online, open to everyone. All the time. We should be able to watch the data entry in real time like it was a Google doc.
Obviously, the police aren’t expected to tell us who the under-cover officers are, but we need to know the budget.
I want to know who all those 75 subcontractors are, what they were paid, and what they delivered. It is just an app. A $53-million dollar, over-budget app.
Are they all cronies of the current government? Is it another WE scandal? If not, why the secrecy?
The other possibility is that our government is so incompetent and careless that they allowed themselves to be taken for a ride on our dime. If that is the case, the company, GC Strategies, owes us answers.
Perhaps they can supply satisfactory answers. Perhaps the government could.
But neither seems willing to do so and that leaves us with no recourse but to believe something is rotten in Ottawa.
Of course, this sort of thing is not unique. Ontario has sunk well over a billion dollars into an app that does nothing more sophisticated than allow us onto public transit. Off the shelf systems were available from a number of cities around the world, but the Ontario Liberals threw a busload of money at it, and have never shown us who got the money, and why.
Honest people have no problem opening the books. Honest people and businesses welcome scrutiny, to the satisfaction of all.
Transparency is vital.
Who got the extra $53 million?
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