Liberal, Bloc, NDP MPs suspend ArriveCan hearings after reading ‘scary’ secret report

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Liberal, Bloc Québécois and NDP MPs suddenly suspended parliamentary hearings related to ArriveCan and contracting misconduct allegations Wednesday after reading what one Liberal described as a “scary” secret preliminary report by a federal investigator.

They say any further hearings could put at risk investigations by the Canada Border Services Agency, which produced the report, and the RCMP.

The three parties voted together to end any further questioning of Michel Lafleur, the federal investigator, and made clear that they expect the committee will focus on other topics at future meetings.

Members of the House of Commons committee on government operations have been reviewing how costs for the ArriveCan app for international travellers ballooned to $54-million and related IT procurement issues for months.

For the most part, the four political parties involved, including the Conservatives, have co-operated on how to proceed throughout the study. That goodwill unravelled Wednesday.

“We’re doing a disservice to justice,” said Liberal MP and committee vice-chair Majid Jowhari. “And I’m being very, very serious about this. Very serious. I’m not a lawyer, okay, but what I read, it’s scary.”

Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie accused the Liberals of wanting to cover up the issue just days before Auditor-General Karen Hogan releases her report Monday into ArriveCan.

Conservative MP Larry Brock also rejected the Liberal concerns, claiming the government does not want to get to the bottom of what occurred.

“These are horrendous, horrendous allegations against the government of Canada. So I can see, Mr. Chair, why the Liberals will do everything in their power to shut this down,” he said. “That’s why we’re here, Mr. Chair, is to get to the bottom of this scam.”

The committee’s latest meeting late Wednesday became heated as MPs debated what to do with a preliminary statement of facts they recently obtained in confidence from the border agency.

The contents of the report have been distributed to all MPs on the committee but have not been made public.

The report is by Mr. Lafleur, the CBSA’s executive director of professional integrity. He was asked in late 2022 to review allegations brought to the agency by Montreal software company Botler. As The Globe and Mail first reported in October, 2023, Botler’s allegations included concerns related to the use of inflated résumés in the contracting process and cozy ties between public servants and private contractors.

Botler did not work on ArriveCan, but the company’s allegations involved some of the same public servants, contractors and contracts that were connected to ArriveCan.

The RCMP has said that it is investigating the allegations brought forward by Botler, which were forwarded to the police by the CBSA. The RCMP has not said it is investigating ArriveCan.

Mr. Lafleur appeared before the same committee on Monday. During that meeting it was revealed that Mr. Brock had a copy of the report but other MPs did not. The committee decided Monday to privately distribute the report to MPs on the committee only, and not to their staff. Mr. Lafleur returned to the committee Wednesday, but MPs ultimately voted to end the meeting without asking him any further questions.

Mr. Jowhari expressed his opinion Wednesday that the months of study related to ArriveCan have shown there was “no ticking time bomb” related to the app, however he said Mr. Lafleur’s preliminary findings related to Botler’s allegations are another matter.

“Now we are seeing, oh my God, based on this [report], this is even going deeper than we expected. So it’s not that we don’t want to do the study or we are trying to hide something,” said Mr. Jowhari. “By no means is our side saying stop [studying] ArriveCan. What we’re suggesting is pause.”

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach said he supports the proposal to suspend committee hearings until the investigations by the CBSA and the RCMP are complete.

He also expressed concern with what he read in Mr. Lafleur’s secret report.

“I don’t think that I would be compromising the investigation to say that what I read, I found deeply troubling. And I think most Canadians, if they read the statement of fact, would be deeply troubled by what seems to have gone on,” he said.

“But I’m concerned that if we were to continue down this line of questioning of Mr. Lafleur, as was occurring at the last meeting when some of the contents of the preliminary statement of fact were disclosed, that we would compromise the investigation.”

The Globe reported last month that the federal government has suspended Health Canada assistant deputy minister Cameron MacDonald and Canada Revenue Agency director-general Antonio Utano without pay in connection with the CBSA’s review of misconduct allegations.

Both Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano previously worked together at the CBSA and were involved with both ArriveCan and the CBSA’s unrelated work with Botler.

During Monday’s hearing, Mr. Brock criticized Mr. Lafleur and said his report was “seriously flawed.” Mr. Brock said the report describes an investigation called “project Helios” that casts unproven allegations as facts.

Chris Spiteri, a lawyer representing Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, said in an e-mail that Mr. Lafleur’s preliminary report is “nothing but a heap of baseless accusations supported by manipulated cherry picked emails and calendar entries.”

After Wednesday’s hearing, Mr. Spiteri repeated his view that his clients are being targeted because they criticized CBSA executives during their public testimony last year.

“What is ‘scary’ is the extent to which some will go to discredit well-respected civil servants just after they honestly testified about senior executives misleading parliament,” he said in an e-mail. “It is troubling that untested accusations are called facts,” he said. “It is very frightening that people can be deprived of their livelihoods based on unproven accusations.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said he was “flabbergasted” by the push to suspend the committee’s study.

“When the Liberals think nothing’s going on, when they say there’s nothing to see here, Mr. Speaker, that tells Conservatives that we need to dig even deeper.”