Federal worker claims senior staff pressured ‘false testimony’ on Arrivescam

Diane Daly, a senior administrator with the Department of Public Works, blames her managers and political employees for ‘pitting federal workers against each other’ for the purpose of diverting investigations into ArriveCAN.

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  • August 08, 2024
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Federal worker claims senior staff pressured ‘false testimony’ on Arrivescam
The Canadian Press / Adrian Wyld
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A federal manager named a key figure Wednesday in the Arrivescam scandal while denying any involvement in sweetheart contracting. The lead supplier, GC Strategies, is currently under RCMP investigation for fraudulent billing.

"I was just a low-level employee," testified Diane Daly, a $108,000-a-year senior administrator with the Department of Public Works. She admitted to holding no technical knowledge and simply processed procurements, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.

"You are a soldier, you are to do as you’re told," Daly testified at the Commons public accounts committee. "I am a unionized member. For doing my job, if I had seen anything, I would have reported it."

Kristian Firth, one of two owners of GC Strategies, named Daly before the committee as the person who worked with him to design that contract. 

"Why was the finger pointed at you?" asked Conservative MP Garnett Genuis. "Very good question," replied Daly. "I do not know."

"Any and all decisions were not mine to make. I had no access or no right to make decisions," she said.

The Procurement Ombudsman in a January 29 report, Procurement Practice Review Of ArriveCan, said an unidentified manager in 2022 wrote terms of a $25.3 million contract to benefit GC Strategies Inc. The firm subcontracted all IT work on the pandemic application.

Police raided Firth’s offices on April 17, the same day he named Daly as the manager responsible for the contract.

Auditor General Karen Hogan tabled a subsequent report condemning the $59.5 million contract as poorly documented with little justification for being sole-sourced. 

Daly said the firm was a government-approved contractor, which limited her ability to challenge the contract.

Daly told MPs Wednesday she is unaware of who pushed for the contractor to receive the contract. "I wasn’t in the C-suite, so I don’t know," she said.

However, some of her superiors at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) allegedly pressured Daly to give false testimony to an internal investigator months ago.

The federal worker blames senior management and political employees for "pitting federal government workers against each other to create false allegations and divert investigations."

She attributes her administrative leave to not blaming Cameron MacDonald, an assistant deputy minister at Health Canada, for the Arrivescam boondoggle.

"My job is under threat [because of] what I saw, not what I did," she said.

MacDonald earlier testified "it wasn’t mine" when asked who contracted GC Strategies for the app. 

Last November 7, he pointed the finger at Minh Doan, his former superior at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). They reportedly had heated conversations on the app in October 2022.

Doan, now chief technology officer for the federal government, reportedly told MacDonald that then public safety minister Marco Mendicino wanted “somebody's head on a platter” over negative press on Arrivescam.

MacDonald was ultimately suspended without pay following an undisclosed CBSA review. The deputy minister refutes it, claiming he was unfairly blamed.

"I have nobody to protect," Doan previously told the Commons government operations committee. 

"Everyone knew it was his decision to make," MacDonald said. "It wasn’t mine." Daly concurred to never seeing him do "anything nefarious."

"I believe this is because CBSA and public works did not get the negative narrative expected about two former bosses at CBSA."

Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné expressed unease with Daly’s testimony. "You were insistent in your emails that the contract should be given to GC Strategies," said the MP.

"We received documents and emails that show you participated actively in processing contracts that had to do with GC Strategies," said MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné. "We have emails that you sent."

"Did you do this by your own will or were you told to do this, and if so by who?" she asked. "The request came down from the senior management," replied Daly.

"Who exactly?" asked MP Sinclair-Desgagné.  "It was communicated to me through my executive director that he was being instructed to go with GC Strategies," replied Daly. "We didn’t know who GC Strategies was."

An RCMP investigation is underway into the contract over fraud allegations. GC Strategies is currently barred from receiving federal contracts.

Daly has since asked for the same consideration as Allan Cutler, a whistleblower who raised the alarm about the sponsorship scandal in the early 1990s.

"I’m here to tell the truth, but I’m very concerned that if I tell the truth here, I’m going to lose my job," she said.

A Conservative motion to compel testimony from Daly’s managers, as well as senior CBSA officials, was unanimously approved Wednesday.

"We want to get accurate information to get to the bottom of what happened in the Arrivescam affair and we have clearly different members or factions within the senior public service who are criticizing each other, accusing each other of lying, of covering up information, of trying to cover people at the political level," MP Genuis said.

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