Anyone who had any experience of ArriveCan knew what a disaster it was: In the interests of declared efficiency it harassed and beleaguered practically everyone who entered the country.

The proportions of the financial scandal that accompanied this brainwave of the Trudeau government were at first unsuspected. It came to light last month after a lengthy comedy of conflicting government and media reports that the federal comptroller general, Roch Huppé, had ordered an examination of all contracts concerned with ArriveCan’s principal contractor, GC Strategies, and its precedent company Coredal. Mr. Huppé revealed that those companies received 118 contracts worth over $107 million in 12 years.

The parliamentary and media questions and this review were apparently prompted by the report of the auditor general, Karen Hogan, that revealed that the cost of the application used by ArriveCan had skyrocketed from an initial estimate of $80,000 to apparently more than $60 million. The auditor general concluded that there was a “glaring disregard (for) basic” principles of government procurement. She calculated that GC Strategies received nearly $20 million out of that $60 million.

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