In the wake of the ArriveCAN scandal | Conservatives want to punish cases of perjury

(Ottawa) Tired of facing uncooperative witnesses in the ArriveCAN case, the Conservatives want to impose a prison sentence of six months to 14 years for cases of perjury before one of the two houses of Parliament. At the same time, they are demanding, like the Bloc Québécois, an end to abuses of the procurement strategy intended for Indigenous businesses.

MP Michael Barrett introduced Bill C-405 on Friday to crack down on contempt of Parliament by amending the Criminal Code and the Parliament Act. “People must respect the Parliament of Canada, our laws and our institutions,” he said in a statement. In addition to a prison sentence, offenders would also face a fine of up to $50,000.

The ArriveCAN scandal gave rise to a series of testimonies in parliamentary committee where elected officials had difficulty obtaining answers to their questions. The most egregious case is that of Kristian Firth, one of two GC Strategies partners who was forced to testify in the House of Commons in April, a rare procedure that had not been used since 1913.

“I admit to having made mistakes in the other committees,” he finally admitted.

His firm obtained around 20 million in contracts for the development of the ArriveCAN application. She then subcontracted the work, taking a commission in the process that could vary between 15% and 30%. During his third testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, he refused to name the civil servants with whom he had developed the criteria for one of these contracts subsequently obtained without a call for tenders. .

Last week, the Conservatives also suggested the use of this exceptional procedure in the face of the evasive responses of Minh Doan, a former official of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in the ArriveCAN file. Their motion did not obtain the support of the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party.

This scandal revealed certain abuses in the Aboriginal Business Procurement Strategy (PSAB). The federal government must put an end to these abuses, demand the Conservatives and the Bloc. La Presse revealed Friday that Advanced Chippewa Technologies, another company in the information technology sector, obtained millions of dollars in federal contracts thanks to its status as an indigenous company by acting as an intermediary.

“The federal government basically created these companies,” responded Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné in an interview. She believes that the supply system, which has become too complex, must be fundamentally reformed.

The firm, also known as ACT, bills itself as a “procurement vehicle” to help other companies secure federal government contracts. It resells computer hardware and software to departments on behalf of multinationals such as Apple, IBM and Microsoft.

“The particular problem here with this procurement strategy is that there are cases where a small Indigenous business is being used as a vehicle for non-Indigenous businesses,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis noted in an interview.

“As with many other issues, the Liberals absolutely do not care about the concrete impacts [of this policy]. »

In 2021, the Trudeau government has set a goal of annually awarding at least 5% of the total value of all public contracts to Indigenous businesses, the equivalent of the proportion of the country’s Indigenous population. That’s about $1 billion a year in contracts.

Since 2004, the firm has secured 432 contracts worth $134.4 million, according to the Ministry of Public Services and Procurement. The company, which has just four employees and lists an Ottawa residence as its headquarters, also won $1 million in contracts in the ArriveCAN deal.

The deputy leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Alexandre Boulerice, believes that “taxpayers are paying too much” under the current procurement system and that the government must “reinvest in the public service.”

Neither the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Jean-Yves Duclos, nor the Minister of Indigenous Services, Patty Hajdu, were able to answer questions from La Presse on Friday.