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The Auditor General recently found at least 10,000 people were wrongfully forced to quarantine because of the flawed mandatory COVID-19 travel surveillance app, ArriveCan.

"As this matter is the subject of ongoing litigation, the CBSA will refrain from commenting on it," read the reply from Public Safety to an inquiry of ministry posed by Conservative MP Gerald Soroka.

ArriveCan, the federally mandated mobile app which tracked returning Canadian travellers during COVID-19, is now the focus of parliamentary hearings into the bloated contracts, many with no work for pay, with app developers.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis has called on the Trudeau government to explain how the firm GS Strategies, which built the scandal-plagued ArriveCAN app, received numerous federal contracts after only being founded in 2015 - the same year the Trudeau Liberal government took… pic.twitter.com/HKx1O8fMzC

— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) April 10, 2024

In June 2022, the Trudeau government was forced to admit that a "glitch" in the scandal-plagued app erroneously sent up to 10,000 fully vaccinated Canadians into mandatory quarantine.

Execs @KPMG_Canada testify they were told by feds to funnel contracts thru disgraced #ArriveCan supplier. "Lawyer up," replied @LarryBrockMP. https://t.co/0piqonCJTy #cdnpoli @MikeBarrettON pic.twitter.com/ixkE3CyPzO

— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) April 5, 2024

According to a Privacy Commissioner complaint on the problem, Apple devices were affected over three weeks beginning June 28, 2022, resulting in thousands being wrongly required to quarantine under threat of fines of up to $5,500 per person.

Soroka's order paper question also asked, "Which minister has taken responsibility for this mistake?"

BREAKING

The Procurement Ombudsman is launching an investigation into the practice of “bait and switch” in federal contracts.

He found that 76% of subcontractors named in the ArriveCAN contracts did no work.

How much has Trudeau given to these bait and switch fraudsters? pic.twitter.com/O6fgGd1grX

— Kelly Block MP (@KellyBlockmp) April 8, 2024

The answer, so far, is none. "As this matter is the subject of ongoing litigation, the CBSA will refrain from commenting on it," the organization said. The full costs of the largely useless ArriveCan spy app may never be uncovered.

A recent 2024 Auditor General report noted that:

The Canada Border Services Agency's documentation, financial records, and controls were so poor that we were unable to determine the precise cost of the ArriveCAN application. Using the information that was available, we estimated the cost at approximately $59.5 million.

A class-action lawsuit was filed in February 2024 against the Attorney General by travellers sent to quarantine due to the ArriveCan error.

ArriveCan, introduced in April 2020, was made mandatory in November 2020 and optional in October 2022.

A bootleg version of ArriveCan was made in less than two days by two Canadian tech companies, Lazer Technologies and Tribe Scale, to prove the federal government overpaid for its development.