Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis accused the Liberals of failing to follow federal contracting rules during Question Period on Thursday.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The Conservatives have put forward a motion calling on the government to impose a lifetime ban on contracts for GCStrategies after the Auditor-General’s report that Ottawa paid the company millions of dollars, often without ensuring work was actually done.
Members of Parliament debated the motion about the ArriveCan contractor throughout Thursday, and it will be put to a vote in the House of Commons Monday. The Liberal government announced last week that GCStrategies is banned from federal contracting for seven years, but a lifetime ban would extend that indefinitely.
Auditor-General Karen Hogan reported Tuesday that her team found wide-ranging examples of federal public servants awarding millions of dollars in contracts to GCStrategies, an IT staffing company, without performing basic checks, such as ensuring the requested work was done, time sheets were reviewed or contractors had proper security clearances.
“It’s a new Parliament, but we’re dealing with the same old Liberal scandals,” said Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis, who led off Thursday’s Question Period.
“They want to hide their scandals from Canadians, but the Auditor-General report is very, very clear. This Liberal government ignored the rules and allowed insiders to profit to the tune of $64-million.”
In response to the Conservatives' motion, Liberal MP Joël Lightbound said the government is already taking action against GCStrategies.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Joël Lightbound, the Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement, responded by saying the Liberals are taking action, including implementing Ms. Hogan’s previous policy recommendations related to contracting.
“We have terminated all contracts with GCStrategies. We’ve barred GCStrategies from future contracts with the government of Canada. We’ve taken legal action against GCStrategies,” Mr. Lightbound said. “We referred cases to the RCMP because, Mr. Speaker, we will never tolerate misconduct from our suppliers or their subcontractors.”
Ms. Hogan released an audit report last year that found major problems with federal contract work awarded to GCStrategies related to the government’s ArriveCan app for cross-border travellers. Thursday’s report went further by looking at a sample of all federal contracts awarded to the company.
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GCStrategies is a two-person IT staffing company founded in 2015 by Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony. Mr. Firth, the company’s managing partner, has told MPs that neither he nor his partner perform any IT work. Rather they secure federal contracts and then subcontract the work to other IT consultants, while retaining a fee worth between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of the contract value for their services.
Mr. Lightbound’s reference to legal action against GCStrategies is in connection to a case where Ottawa is seeking $1.6-million from an Ottawa-area IT subcontractor and companies that hired him. The government alleges in a lawsuit that he submitted time sheets that add up to more than 24 hours of work in a single day.
The legal action names the subcontractor as Ripu Rishi and GCStrategies as one of the companies that hired him to deliver on a federal contract.
Neither Mr. Rishi nor GCStrategies have responded to the allegations.
During debate on Thursday’s motion, Liberal MP Jacques Ramsay suggested the Conservative motion calling for a lifetime ban on GCStrategies is premature.
He said that if the company is found in court to have committed fraud against the Crown, that could lead to an indefinite suspension from federal contracting.