“Hey…woah now…have you considered the positive things they did for the economy?”
Yeah, yeah they made the trains run on time and built the Autobahn...those came with some....lets call them 'morally questionable' elements of their own.
I'm sure not every Nazi was the personification of Evil, there were probably some decent dudes in the filing room? But if you were a Nazi...you were probably at least 'Evil Adjacent.'
__________________ The Beatings Shall Continue Until Morale Improves!
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If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a Fire Exit. - Mitch Hedberg
This Auditor General report on Arrivecan is scathing.
In combination with the committee investigation that the NDP and Libs are trying to shut down, and now the rumbles of a RCMP corruption investigation.
The auditor general slams the Public servants for a glaring disregard for processes and management practices. As well it might be far more then 54 million.
Did Canadians get value for money? was asked "Not with the money spent"
She can't say how much money was spent with certainty because the account was so bad.
At this point the minister that was in charge of the procurement at the time (Anita Anaud I think, but not sure) should be fired.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 02-12-2024 at 09:34 AM.
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The auditor found the government's reliance on sole-sourced external contractors drove up the price of the app, and those costs weren't properly tracked.
Hogan estimated the app cost roughly $59.5 million, but the management of the project was so poor that it's impossible to know the final amount for sure.
The first ArriveCan contract was initially valued at just $2.35 million.
The government failed to document initial discussions with contractors or the reason it didn't use a competitive process, Hogan said in a report released Monday.
She ultimately found most of the problems with the app's development stemmed from the initial decision to rely on non-competitive contracts with external firms.
Quote:
Hogan also found little evidence the app was properly tested, which may have contributed to more than 10,000 people being ordered to quarantine for 14 days in 2022, even though they had provided proof of vaccination.
Quote:
The government had no evidence that the Canada Border Services Agency did any user testing on 25 substantial updates to the app to make sure it actually worked.
Only three updates appeared to have been fully tested and documented.
"Without having the assurance that testing was completed, the agencies were at risk of launching an application that might not work as intended," Hogan's report said.
In linking to the committee investigation the 2 man firm GC Strategies was paid $20 million dollars(this is actually double what was discussed in the committee testimonies), they did very little actual work on this project beyond connecting other contracting firms with the government.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
"We found that financial records were not well-maintained by the Canada Border Services Agency. We were unable to determine a precise cost for the ArriveCan application because of [the agency's] poor documentation and weak controls," the report reads.
Quote:
O'Gorman said the investigation found "a pattern of persistent collaboration between certain officials and GC Strategies. They show efforts to circumvent or ignore established procurement processes and roles and responsibilities."
Pretty damning. "Glaring disregard" as per the auditor general.
Proceedings are still ongoing and listening that there was a heavy conflict of interest with personal relationships between the agency and vendors, and government officials. Good thing that the Liberal-NDP coalition shut down the committee investigation, most transparent government ever. A reminder that the Liberal party also voted down this being reviewed by an auditor general and were trying to cover this up, and continuously are working against Canadian interests.
And they got the initial contract in April 2020 as a sole-source contract.
Quote:
GC Strategies was given a sole-source contract in April 2020 despite a lack of evidence that the firm provided a proposal document for the project, the report says.
And they got the initial contract in April 2020 as a sole-source contract.
Andy Lee who is a nutbar, but she went to visit a bunch of these consulting firms offices and took pictures of empty offices.
This whole GC Strategies and other govt consulting firms are suspect. They don't provide services,they are there to win these contracts.
So with GC Strategies (originally 9 million but ballooned to 20 million). wrote the contract requirements for the government. Then submitted their bid. Once they won it, they hired contractors that directly billed the government. GC Strategies provided no work from a development or IT strategy side of things.
The contractors that were hired and billed the government weren't project managed by GC strategies, that was provided by the government project managers. So we literally paid a consulting firm to create a winning bid and spend a few hours lining up contractors that did a horrible job on this project.
And this is a constant thing with companies like this.
On top of that in the committee GC Strategies talked about going to prominent PS and Liberal homes during the bid process which is really questionable. This is Rolodex contracting where you become a favourite of a senior procurement manager and get sole source contracts.
Honestly the ministers that were in charge during this whole mess, which is Dominic LeBlanc and Anita Anaud need to be pulled in from of the committee to testify under oath.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
On top of that in the committee GC Strategies talked about going to prominent PS and Liberal homes during the bid process which is really questionable. This is Rolodex contracting where you become a favourite of a senior procurement manager and get sole source contracts.
Honestly the ministers that were in charge during this whole mess, which is Dominic LeBlanc and Anita Anaud need to be pulled in from of the committee to testify under oath.
In an ideal world, suspending / pausing committee and referring to police for investigation and potential prosecution is the right thing to do. Investigate with real power, teeth, and punishment. Other than trying to make political gains, I don’t see why anyone would be against this.
I hope the RCMP investigation finds wrongdoing and locks the perps up.
I honestly don't know why the Gov didn't go with companies like Accenture or Avanade, or even Canadian outfits like Insight or CGI for something like this. I mean for that kind of money you could have actually got something from larger, more reputable companies, including managed services. Even if they charge premium pricing it still would have been better than what GC Strategies did.
It drives me up the wall that this kind of crap happens in the public sector. It's not every government, but really disappointing to see it with the feds. Sole-sourcing contracts for anything over $100k is suspect from the get-go IMO.
I know this was discussed a few years back but couldn’t find which thread. Doug Ford lost his first appeal on bill 124 in Ontario. The bill would have unilaterally imposed caps on wage increases for public sector employees.
The law — which capped public sector wages at one per cent per year for three years — was introduced by the Progressive Conservative government in 2019 in a bid to limit public sector spending.
The law impacted over 2,500 public sector collective bargaining units in Ontario and triggered a court challenge by a collection of unions and labour groups. In late 2022, the law was struck down as unconstitutional.
On Monday, the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed with the lower court ruling and upheld the decision that ultimately scrapped the legislation.
In a split decision, a three-judge panel agreed with the original court ruling that said Bill 124 “substantially” interferences with collective bargaining rights.
“The circumstances of this case are distinguishable from other cases where wage restraint legislation was deemed constitutional because, here, there was no meaningful bargaining or consultation before the Act was passed,” Monday’s ruling found.
I honestly don't know why the Gov didn't go with companies like Accenture or Avanade, or even Canadian outfits like Insight or CGI for something like this. I mean for that kind of money you could have actually got something from larger, more reputable companies, including managed services. Even if they charge premium pricing it still would have been better than what GC Strategies did.
It drives me up the wall that this kind of crap happens in the public sector. It's not every government, but really disappointing to see it with the feds. Sole-sourcing contracts for anything over $100k is suspect from the get-go IMO.
When you look at the testimony from one of the owners of GC Strategies. Its rolodex contracting. He was visiting senior officials in their home. They had won lots of contracts before, it was pretty clear that he's on the inside with someone in procurement whether at a minister level or senior bureaucrat level.
There were probably gifts or a kick back involved.
We do know based on the committee that GC Strategies originally was supposed to be paid 10 million, but somehow billed and got paid 20 million. they don't do any actual project work after they get contractors signed up with the government who project manages the project.
There is now an investigation into allegations of bribes being tossed around based on a inside report that was leaked and promptly lead to the NDP and Liberals attempting to shut down the committee.
There are tons of these tiny little firms who's sole existence is to win these contracts and become favoured vendors and actually provide very little work for the money. I mean GC Strategies original address was basically an abandoned cabin.
This really does require a major and open investigation, when the Auditor General is saying that she can't figure out what was spent. That the app was not a workable app, and that the senior IT person in the public sector erased 1700 emails. That's not a smoldering fire, that's a building burning down.
In the last few years this government has doubled the amount that they're spending on "consultants" based on todays release and the committee investigation, this is really really troubling.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Andy Lee who is a nutbar, but she went to visit a bunch of these consulting firms offices and took pictures of empty offices.
Andy Lee seems to have dug up quite a bit of dirt on one such "charity" (I am assuming you are alluding to this one as this is the one that is most viral). This charity got 30.5 million in grants in the past 2 years with empty offices and PO box addresses.
20 million dollars? Imagine my shock to find that "Canadian Institute for Clean Growth and Climate Change" is the previous name for Canadian Climate Institute. That's thus 50.5 million for an organization turned charity that apparently doesn't donate to anything, or do...anything outside of paying salaries to themselves for writing articles that promote and support government policies?
This organization was initially spearheaded by Catherine McKenna. A government created organization turned 'independent' charity received 50.5 million dollars in government grants and is now registered as a lobbyist...to recommend on what the government is looking to implement.
One of many examples :government taking some heat on heating oil carbon tax carve out? Here's a perfectly timed article by the independent charity literally excusing the government's carve out for heating oil, while simultaneously explaining why extending it to natural gas is bad.
"Exempting heating oil has a negligible impact on emissions "
"Taking the carbon price off gas heating would raise emissions "
"Adding natural gas to the carbon price exemption would increase emissions more than if the carve-out were limited to heating oil alone."
Independent indeed. How the heck does this qualify as a charity? I would love for a few of the more astute posters to correct me here and provide something i don't see.
Andy's a bit weird, she investigates a few things too hard, and they become real stretches, but once in a while she trips onto something that gets confirmed later.
This Arrive Can app boondoogle has really arrived at the worst time for the Liberals. Outside of their polling numbers. Having a Liberal insider running a billion dollar green fund and then slipping a 150 million to her own company and then writing herself a bonus check feels like its in lockstep with Arrive Can.
Normally in the real world on either of those two instances the RCMP would be marching into offices and seizing files and computers, I just don't have much faith in the RCMP when it comes to investigating the Federal Government.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
The level of theft and corruption with this Trudeau Liberal government has reached unthinkable levels. It's safe to say, and the balance of probabilities is alluding to this, that this was flat out theft of funds. People are tiptoeing around it cause charges have not been laid but anybody who can process more than 2 things can see this.
When a strong audit of funds can't rule out criminality, that means there is sufficient evidence of it having occurred.
It's baffling to me how anybody with any moral compass can continue to defend Trudeau, his party and his government/management . There have been enough instances of in our face fraud and corruption that it's just mind numbing. It's getting more and more brazen with no consequences for anybody, we just have a large enough economy to cover it up. We have become a joke and we have publicly paid MP's telling us if only more processes were followed, more crossing of i's and t's and some lessons learned, the next App development won't cost more than 1000 times it's original budget.
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The level of theft and corruption with this Trudeau Liberal government has reached unthinkable levels. It's safe to say, and the balance of probabilities is alluding to this, that this was flat out theft of funds. People are tiptoeing around it cause charges have not been laid but anybody who can process more than 2 things can see this.
When a strong audit of funds can't rule out criminality, that means there is sufficient evidence of it having occurred.
It's baffling to me how anybody with any moral compass can continue to defend Trudeau, his party and his government/management . There have been enough instances of in our face fraud and corruption that it's just mind numbing. It's getting more and more brazen with no consequences for anybody, we just have a large enough economy to cover it up. We have become a joke and we have publicly paid MP's telling us if only more processes were followed, more crossing of i's and t's and some lessons learned, the next App development won't cost more than 1000 times it's original budget.
Noted. I'm sure you'll say Harper had a spotless record, and PP will save Canada from all this corruption. How will he differ from the blatant corruption Ford is somehow surviving in Ontario, and the destruction of healthcare and education plus paying off favors to donors and cronies the UCP have been riding since entering office in 2019? Not to mention turning back the clock on Trans/ LGBTQ rights whilst adding more staffers and bureaucrats all in the name of small government/ Freedum etc.
Noted. I'm sure you'll say Harper had a spotless record, and PP will save Canada from all this corruption. How will he differ from the blatant corruption Ford is somehow surviving in Ontario, and the destruction of healthcare and education plus paying off favors to donors and cronies the UCP have been riding since entering office in 2019? Not to mention turning back the clock on Trans/ LGBTQ rights whilst adding more staffers and bureaucrats all in the name of small government/ Freedum etc.
Na, I am not a hyper partisan like that and a firm believer in all pigs have the same noses.
I am actually of the opinion that too many Canadians are way too cavalier about this nonsense garbage. I am VERY comfortable with going after political level of fraud criminally and physically.
Although we aren't a banana republic , there is something to be said when in other countries they raid the homes of politicians and looking for answers.
Nobody here keeps anybody into account which is why it's getting worse. Before this level of corruption was a lot more hidden, now it's just more brazen cause your average Canadian isn't interested in anything like this.
Na, I am not a hyper partisan like that and a firm believer in all pigs have the same noses.
I am actually of the opinion that too many Canadians are way too cavalier about this nonsense garbage. I am VERY comfortable with going after political level of fraud criminally and physically.
Although we aren't a banana republic , there is something to be said when in other countries they raid the homes of politicians and looking for answers.
Nobody here keeps anybody into account which is why it's getting worse. Before this level of corruption was a lot more hidden, now it's just more brazen cause your average Canadian isn't interested in anything like this.
Considered anger management?
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