Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has admitted it was “illogical” for his government to give millions of dollars to a two-person firm to develop a coronavirus travel app after it emerged the firm subcontracted out the work.
Prime Minister Trudeau was asked about the development of the ArriveCAN app, a mobile app developed during the coronavirus pandemic for travellers entering Canada and about a report noting that the government had given millions to the company GCstrategies that had subcontracted work.
When Trudeau was questioned as to why the government gave money to a two-person firm, rather than just employ the companies subcontracted directly he stated, ” That’s exactly the question that I just asked the public service,” the CBC reports.
“Obviously, this is a practice that seems highly illogical and inefficient and I have made sure that the clerk of the Privy Council is looking into procurement practices to make sure that we are getting value for money and that we are doing things in a smart and logical way,” Trudeau said.
GCstrategies had been given millions by the Trudeau government to develop the app and has subcontracted out around $8.3 million of the $9 million granted by the government.
“Of course, during the pandemic speed was at an essence, helping people quickly was at an essence, but there are principles that we make sure are sound moving forward,” Trudeau said.
The ArriveCAN app, which had been mandatory for all travellers entering Canada until October of last year, has been the subject of controversy after a company claimed to have been able to recreate the app over the span of just a weekend at a fraction of the $54 million costs spent by the Trudeau government.
Co-founder of Lazer Technologies, the company that recreated the app, spoke out last year saying, “Having built over 100 different apps at Lazer for some of the most exciting companies in the world, it was shocking for us to see the total amount of capital that was spent to design, create, launch and maintain the ArriveCan app.”
When the app was made optional the number of people using it also dropped dramatically, with just 320,000 users out of a total of 2.4 million travellers in October.
The app was also found to have incorrectly informed travellers that they had to quarantine, despite some of the travellers being fully vaccinated at the time.