The Commons government operations committee learned Tuesday that key emails from the manager of the $59.5 million ArriveCan program have mysteriously vanished. The missing correspondence involved Minh Doan, former Chief Information Officer for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Conservative MPs have pushed for access to thousands of records and text messages tied to Doan, who played a significant role in overseeing the ArriveCan app, the flawed health-travel surveillance app which pushed thousands of Canadians erroneously into mandatory covid quarantine under threat of thousands of dollars in fines. 

The app built in a sole-sourced contract to GC Strategies, a two-man shop run by Kristian Firth, and was replicated for just tens of thousands by computer techs with a point to prove about how bad the mandatory app was. 

Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore) was quick to call out the suspicious timing of the records' disappearance, stating bluntly, “So convenient. Something is rotten.”

“The email account used by the ArriveCan manager was ‘deleted following his departure from the Canada Border Services Agency,’” Kusie declared during a heated session, reading from an official CBSA letter confirming the erased records. The letter warned that "evidence may no longer be available."

“Are Canadians to believe you can conduct shady business, action which may not be favourable to the people of Canada, leave your job, and just have none of your actions follow you? You can commit wrongdoing in your position as a public servant in Canada, leave your position, and the trail behind you is deleted.

The lost emails are reportedly tied to over 1,700 communications regarding sole-sourced contracts that raised eyebrows after making millionaires of select suppliers. The RCMP is currently investigating the suspicious contracts, adding another layer of controversy to an already murky situation.

When grilled by the committee on June 5, Doan admitted to losing the emails, claiming the loss was due to technical failures during a laptop transition. “I needed to change my laptop because the battery in my current one is failing,” Doan testified. “When transferring files from my old computer to my new one, files were corrupted and emails were lost. I personally reported this.”

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