OTTAWA, Feb 12 (Reuters) – The Canadian government mishandled a COVID-time application for travelers at each stage, neglected to keep records and ineffectively used funds, the country’s top watchdog said in a profoundly critical report on Monday.
The Canada Line Services Agency (CBSA), working with the wellbeing and public services ministries, launched the ArriveCAN application in April 2020 to collect wellbeing information from travelers and assist with quarantine measures.
The government “repeatedly neglected to follow great administration practices in the contracting, improvement, and implementation of the ArriveCAN application”, Auditor General Karen Hogan said in an official report presented in parliament.
The application was updated 177 times, frequently with practically zero documentation of testing, and at one point some 10,000 travelers were wrongly instructed to quarantine, she said.
“CBSA’s documentation, financial records and controls were so unfortunate that we couldn’t decide the precise cost of the ArriveCAN application,” Hogan said, estimating the last price tag to be C$59.5 million ($44.3 million).
“As a result of the many gaps and weaknesses we tracked down in the project’s design, oversight, and accountability, it didn’t convey the best incentive for citizen dollars spent.”
The report comes at when State leader Justin Trudeau’s decision Liberals are gravely following the official opposition Conservative Party in front of an election that must be held by October one year from now.
“He took 60 million of your dollars and put it into this show up scam – consider that,” Conservative pioneer Pierre Poilievre told journalist.
In response, the CBSA said in a statement that the review had distinguished “unacceptable gaps”, adding that it was redoing the manner in which it dealt with contracts.
Canada lifted all pandemic-period travel restrictions, testing and quarantine rules on Oct. 1, 2022.
The report adds to another review of the government’s COVID policies that discovered some C$4.6 billion of help funds wound up in ineligible hands because of verification lapses.
($1 = 1.3438 Canadian dollars)