Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) announced it has detected several fraudulent billing schemes undertaken by subcontractors working on federal contracts. “These individuals submitted timesheets and billed multiple departments under separate contracts,” said PSPC in a Wednesday statement. “This was detected as a result of the department’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its approach to detecting fraudulent activities and other types of wrongdoing.”As part of the announcement, PSPC said investigations have found three information technology subcontractors fraudulently billed on contract work across a number of federal departments, agencies, and Crown corporations between 2018 and 2022. It estimated these totals are about $5 million. This announcement is the first wave of fraudulent billing cases it identified, with more expected to happen in the coming months. To be consistent with the Budget 2018 commitment to strengthen its approach to addressing corporate wrongdoing, these cases are the result of departmental investigatory efforts supported by data analytics. Because of the investigations, it said it has taken action to revoke or suspend the security status of the subcontractors in question. It added it referred the cases to the RCMP. The RCMP has initiated an investigation. As such, PSPC cannot release the names of the people or the list of suppliers, as a subset of them could be subject to an investigation. At the moment, it said it was moving forward to recover these illegitimate payments on behalf of the Canadian government. It encouraged people who suspect illegal, illicit, or unethical activities in federal contracting to report these activities to its Special Investigations and Internal Disclosure Directorate at spac.dgsdivulgationinterne-dobinternaldisclosure.pspc@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca or to the Federal Contracting Fraud Tip Line.PSPC concluded by saying it “has effective methods to detect and respond to instances of fraudulent activity as today’s announcement demonstrates.”“We will continue to refine and expand the use of our tools, including data analytics, to better detect and address wrongdoing and to ensure that individuals or entities engaging in fraud or other illegal activities are held accountable for their misconduct while seeking restitution to the Crown,” it said. ArriveCan’s most significant contractor GC Strategies had its security status suspended in the wake of the ongoing investigation into it on March 6. READ MORE: GC Strategies’ security status suspended in wake of ArriveCan investigationSecurity status is a key requirement when bidding on most federal contracts — an item GC Strategies did not have to obtain for its sweetheart deal with the Canadian government. PSPC announced the suspension “precludes GC Strategies Inc. from participating in all federal procurements with security requirements.”
