Members of Parliament have threatened to subpoena reluctant ArriveCan witnesses including past and present ministers of public safety, public works and the Treasury Board. The subpoenas would compel witnesses to testify before a committee, the Commons government operations committee said Monday, per Blacklock’s Reporter.Committee subpoenas have the same weight as court orders, enforceable by arrest, but the measure is rarely invoked. The committee “will call every witness and compel every document,” Conservative MP Kelly McCauley, chair of the committee, told the House of Commons. “We will be ordering past and present ministers of public safety, public works and Treasury Board to answer for ArriveCan mismanagement and waste,” McCauley said. “GC Strategies (a government contractor), which we have now learned was paid $20 million, will be issued a summons ordering its appearance,” she said. “The committee will call every witness and compel every document to hold the government to account on ArriveCan.”GC Strategies Incorporated, a two-man consulting firm working from a private home in Woodlawn,ON, received $19.1 million worth of sweetheart contracts, according to audits reviewed by Blacklock’s. The company either received work without bidding or “was involved in setting the requirements of a competitive contract” only it could win, auditors said Monday.However, GC Strategies’ partners declined to volunteer to testify or answer questions before the new committee, to which McCauley said the matter will be taken up again on Tuesday. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc admitted, “we recognize with hindsight things should have clearly been done differently.” When asked about what responsibilities the Trudeau Liberals would take, LeBlanc said “the Trudeau government accepts that taxpayers’ money needs to be treated with the utmost respect.”“In no way are we going to defend this particular contracting process,” he said. “Where there is believed to be wrongdoing the Border Services Agency will obviously refer these matters to the appropriate authorities.”The Agency was responsible for overall management of the $59.5 million ArriveCan program.Conservative MP Larry Brock made public a confidential agency report on February 5 that alleged two former executives (now suspended) committed “fraud and bribery” and destroyed thousands of documents.“I have the information right before me,” Brock told the government operations committee. “It is very clear.”Investigators to date including the Auditor General and Procurement Ombudsman have documented numerous ArriveCan irregularities including a suspicious absence of records explaining how favoured contractors were selected and why. “Next time we will have to do better,” Public Works Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said yesterday.
