Minister Duclos, the ArriveCAN app has been a fiasco from the start, and the more we learn about it, the worse it gets. Your government used ArriveCAN to divide and punish Canadians needlessly. It caused chaos at the borders. The cost to taxpayers spiralled from $80,000 to at least $54 million, minister. The RCMP is now investigating the shady contracts behind ArriveCAN. The Trudeau government hid this fact from the Auditor General and from all Canadians. The only reason we know about the police involvement is because of a whistle-blower to The Globe and Mail.

Why was the RCMP investigation hidden, minister? What is the total amount that this app has cost Canadians? How much, minister?

Madam Chair, I would like to begin by congratulating you on your new role as Speaker of the Senate, as a Franco-Manitoban. We are proud that you are the Speaker of the Senate, and we look forward to collaborating with you over the coming months to ensure the Senate’s full cooperation and ability to work in service of Canadians.

Regarding the question that you asked, let me expand the scope a bit. Let us remember the importance of having fought so hard for the health and safety of Canadians during a time in which we were facing the largest public health emergency of over a century, as well as the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. We had to invest significant resources in order to, in part, make sure that Canadians and other people who needed to come into Canada for essential reasons — in many cases, to deliver food, medicine and the types of goods that Canadians depended on — could travel safely and conveniently through the border. We did that mindful of the fact that tens of thousands of lives had been saved because of the efforts of the Canadian government — and, more importantly, because of the efforts and the commitment of Canadians.

Eight years of Justin Trudeau — not worth the cost. “How much?” was my question, minister. Last week, just as the Auditor General was beginning her testimony before a House of Commons committee regarding ArriveCAN, Liberal and NDP coalition MPs voted to shut it down. Minister, who gave the order to shut down the meeting? Was it you? Were you or your office involved in this direction? What is your government so desperate to hide, minister? What are you hiding?

I appreciate and value the question very much. I welcome some of the key words that you mentioned: the cost and the opportunity. The cost in lives — if not having fought for Canadians — would have been hundreds of thousands more people dying from the pandemic.

The economic cost would have been billions of dollars, with hundreds of thousands of additional jobs lost because of inaction. It’s true — as you’re suggesting — that, had we been governed at that time by a Conservative government, things would have been very different. Hundreds of thousands more people would have died, as I just said, with billions more in economic costs, but that was not the situation. We invested in Canadians, supported them and had full confidence in their ability to be vaccinated and follow public health advice.

I take objection with the word “failure.” I think most Canadians listening to us today wouldn’t consider their work and efforts, and the efforts of the federal government, to have been a failure. The estimates from experts suggest that had we not done anything, 700,000 people would have died of COVID-19; instead, the actual death toll is 70,000. Estimates suggest that had we not achieved the highest vaccination rate of all comparable countries — and done so the fastest — we would have lost a billion dollars to economic costs every day from additional delay.

I’m not going to insist on that because these are figures that Canadians understand well. When we speak about failures, I think we have to be honest and modest at the same time. Honest about the tremendous challenges that Canadians face and modest in the sense that, yes, the efforts of the Canadian government made a big difference; but more importantly, it was the faith, support and hard work of all Canadians that made the biggest difference in these terrible times.

You’re absolutely right about how important confidence is, and that’s why the skilled and experienced public servants at the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, are currently reviewing that contract. It was a complex contract. It includes several dozen contracts and it was complex for all kinds of reasons. Many of those contracts had nothing to do with developing the software; they were for providing advice to public servants or Canadians. We know that 125,000 Canadians had to cross the border every day, and many of them were people who had to bring prescription drugs, food and essential goods into the country. The CBSA’s experts are currently reviewing many components of that contract, and we have confidence in them.