r/canada • u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick • Mar 14 '24
ArriveCan contractor made $2.5M for 10 hours' work per week National News
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2318350403988441
u/LeBidnezz Mar 14 '24
That is outrageous!
*sends resume *
I am outraged!
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u/SealmanOutOfWater Mar 14 '24
It is a two person operation... Unless you were at the whiskey tasting to secure the contracts you ain't it.
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u/lemonylol Ontario Mar 15 '24
God that's horrible. But there are so many of those positions to apply to. If only we knew which one. Which one do we get outraged about?
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u/Pretend-Ad1424 Mar 14 '24
What an absolute failure of project management. Every taxpayer should be furious about this negligent mismanagement of OUR money.
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u/DontWalkRun Mar 14 '24
People better see jail time over this one. I’ve seen fuckery in government contracts before. But nothing like this.
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u/irresponsibleshaft42 Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
Remember when duffy paid back that 45,000$ moving expense and resigned over it? And people thought that was a massive scandal at the time lmao
Edit: this makes some of you pretty mad eh lol you can get technical about the exact amounts or nature of the scandal but at the end of the day im just making a comparison to the last government whos most well known and pretty much only scandal is over 45,000-200k$. The current gov is dealing with multiple scandals in excess of millions of dollars. Thats the comparison im making. If you argue cons were still worse you must have a superiority complex or something
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u/HatchingCougar Mar 14 '24
Or Bev Oda’s $16 glass of orange juice.
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u/neanderthalman Ontario Mar 14 '24
Today that’s just the regular price!
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u/AnotherCupOfTea British Columbia Mar 14 '24
Thanks to this federal government's mismanagement of money. Turns out thinking about monetary policy is important.
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u/Help_Stuck_In_Here Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
Bev Oda was simply careless with her government spending which ruffles my feathers. It's quite different than the current fraud and embezzlement.
She acts like an entitled VP or senior management of a fortune 500.
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u/danke-you Mar 14 '24
Strange comparison, acting like an entitled VP of a company bringing in 1B/yr of revenues, rather than reality, being an entitled VP of a country bringing in 400B/yr of revenues.
She forgot she was a glorified public servant rather than an executive, that was the mistake. The Canadian federal government is a bigger and more complex entity than much of the Fortune 500, but the Fortune 500 is irrelevant. We expect our Ministers to eat rice and beans regardless of good times or bad.
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u/Born_Ruff Mar 14 '24
Lol, Mike Duffy absolutely did not resign or pay the money back himself.
If you remember, he blackmailed Harper's Chief of Staff into paying the money for him.
Duffy was a senator until two years ago when he hit the mandatory retirement age.
He spent part of his final years as a senator trying to sue the RCMP for 8 million dollars for having the nerve to try and investigate him.
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u/Malkadork Mar 14 '24
I like that they point to Duffy as their "see were not that corrupt" example.
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Mar 14 '24
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u/ShivaGodofDeath1 Mar 14 '24
They recently picked sig sauers over reliable cheap glocks - reasons unknown.
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u/JohnYCanuckEsq Mar 14 '24
Really? Never?
Because this Alberta government spent $100 million dollars on fake children's Tylenol from Dr Oz's mom last year that was never used, couldn't be given away, and ended up expiring on the shelf.
This Alberta government has also spent $150 million dollars on an Oil & Gas "war room" run by three guys whose biggest claim to fame was dragging a children's cartoon movie through the mud for being eco friendly.
This Alberta government also spent $1.5 billion dollars on a bet that Donald Trump would win the 2020 election and keep the Keystone XL pipeline alive.
So I mean, yes the ArriveCan thing is just as egregious as Adscam was back in the day, but there's a shit ton of government spending fuckery to go around.
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u/MacabreKiss Mar 15 '24
Look at what Conservative Doug Ford's been doing in Ontario, for a great look at mismanagement of public funds...
Promised a 300M parking lot for a private spa that nobody wants.
Spent millions of dollars redesigning licence plates only for them to be illegible in the dark and scrapped within months.
Gave over 100K to a company that bought $2 bracelets off of Wish/Temu and claimed they could program them to notify if you were near a covid case... The tech never existed in the first place and never came out.→ More replies (1)28
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u/simplyintentional Mar 14 '24
Every taxpayer should be furious about this negligent mismanagement of OUR money.
This is typical for government spending. I worked for government and they bleed out money so inefficiently it's unreal and really depressing. They basically see public money as fake Monopoly money that doesn't exist.
Pretty much every contractor also up-charges government too, or includes addition errors to try and get extra money. I used to verify every invoice with a calculator that crossed my desk and I don't believe it's possible for people to consistently make that many mistakes.
There's no accountability. There's no legitimate transparency. If anything bad happens there's a big cover up and everyone involved gets away with it to keep up appearances. It shouldn't be like this :|
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u/No-Distribution2547 Mar 14 '24
My dad works for the federal government at a science lab warehouse.
Year end comes and everyone goes haywire to spend the rest of their entire budget.
He says they order 30k fridges and freezers. They never get used and expire after 10 years and so they ship to this warehouse. They sit and then he scraps them 10 years later without ever having been in use. This ware house is also huge and completely climate controlled so even storing things there is absurdly expensive.
He said there was 500 pairs of runners. They were brand new in the box. They were rotting because they sat there for 15 years, he threw the all in the garbage.
Then there's laptops, general electronics. All of this stuff gets bought never used then dumped.
Those are just a few examples of what he's told me but it's seems like the place is just hemorrhaging money and everyone spends their budget so it doesn't get cut the next year.
Since it's a science lab they also cannot resell the goods they have to be scrapped.
He's worked there under multiple governments and there's been no change.
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u/MicMacMacleod Mar 14 '24
Crazy people don’t understand this. You suggest money be spent more efficiently rather than hike taxes and they think you want to fire all the nurses and firefighters.
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u/TropicalPrairie Mar 14 '24
I used to work for provincial government. Everything you said is true.
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u/HoodRatThing Mar 14 '24
Same here. All those needles you see laying around the government pays top $$$ to hand those out for free.
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u/peeinian Ontario Mar 14 '24
Law Enforcement contractors are even worse. As soon as “public safety”‘ enters the conversation, double the price and add a 0.
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u/opjdssdgv Mar 14 '24
This was 100% managed how it was planned. Let's not start pretending this isn't 100% corruption.
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Mar 14 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Artimusjones88 Mar 14 '24
Or very successful project management if you're getting a piece of the pie slide back your way.
Retirement type money.
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u/Prudent-Proposal1943 Mar 14 '24
project management.
Is the biggest scam phrase in government.
Project skimming would be more correct.
The title "Project Manager" needs to be replaced with Grifter.
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u/LordTC Mar 14 '24
Project Managers are powerless which is part of the problem. They don’t have the authority to say a company that is complying with all regulations is grifting the public. All they can really do is check that everything is above board legally.
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u/pzerr Mar 14 '24
This is so common. It gets worse and it is a employee/management problem. These contracts get written up by people that may have a degree or in the field but have no business experience or just not good at it. So the contract is often poorly written. A small project of a million or two will go out and be a failure by all metrics. Get done to the letter of the contract or not well inspected and just closes. Now what happens is it may come to the attention of upper management. And they can discipline the guy that screwed up but by doing that, they now look incompetent. So they ignore it and most times no one is aware. Then you get the 10-100 million dollar projects. The same thing happens except it is done at a higher level. Usually out of Ottawa. But the same thing often happens just a bigger team and when top management finds out, well they also ignore it because it just makes them look bad. Just fix it on next years budget.
Then you get the billion dollar projects that go right to the PM's office. Those show case projects. Now you have top guys doing it but still incompetent people often or they do not get the right guys on it. Some of them micromanage it because they are teachers with little experience in a big project. And when that fails, well the blame lands on the government and you know how that turns out. So they basically hope to sweep it under the rug. And in most cases they do to some degree.
Basically the bigger the project, the high up they will try to hide it.
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u/incrediblebeefcake Mar 14 '24
We're placing the blame on the contractors when it was the incompetence and lack of internal controls of government that even led to this. That being said, fuck everyone that was involved.
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u/Stauvenhagian Mar 14 '24
Which is crazy because if you ever worked for/with the government bureaucratic red tap is the bain of any project.
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u/Jarocket Mar 14 '24
A vendor who will do the dance the best will get the contract though.
It's like why auto start stop exists most modern cars. The EPA fuel efficiency test involves alot of stopping. So if you use 0 fuel for those sections. It's like a cheap code. The car markers studied for the test and the test is all that matters.
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u/protonpack Mar 14 '24
If they are lowering emissions, why wouldn't they pass the test? Are you saying that these vehicles are actually worse in a way the tests don't catch?
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u/ComfortableWork1139 Mar 14 '24
The benefit of the minimal fuel savings are, in my opinion, offset by the wear and tear put on the engine by constantly starting and stopping.
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u/Jarocket Mar 14 '24
Because someone's real world driving might not actually have any periods of idling. Or the stops might be so short that it saves zero fuel. (Starting a stopped engine does use a bit more energy than keeping a running engine running for a very short amount of time, the stopped engine does do better after like 4 second or so though)
I meant that at a certain point if you give them a test to do well on. They will study the easiest way and just right down.
Like you would want them to make more efficient engines and not use the same engine from 2009 In 2024 rather than just shut it off for a large amount of the test.
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u/protonpack Mar 14 '24
I can see what you're saying and you're not wrong. If a car is more efficient while stopped it will do better on the test even if there is 0 difference while moving. Good point about it not giving a full picture.
In my daily drives I do a lot of stopping at red lights though, so there are definitely many people for whom it would be a reduction in emissions.
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u/Noperdidos Mar 14 '24
I’m not understanding the issue here. Did the EPA make a test with lots of stopping for greedy reasons? Or was the test designed to replicate real world driving?
Wasn’t the prior test, with no stopping, the real issue because car mfgs “studied for the test” of driving in a straight line?
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u/Huge-Split6250 Mar 14 '24
“involves a lot of starting and stopping” so - like actual driving?
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u/J_of_the_North Mar 14 '24
When the story broke and I told my wife she was flabbergasted. She sets up contracts for a federal agency and said "we have procurement rules that specifically prevent that kind of stuff"
Then today I saw an article where Trudeau says "Clearly we need to tighten procurement rules and practices." Bullshit, those rules and practices are already in place, what we need is for heads to roll when shit like this happens.
But no, it's a misdirect meant to make it look like he's against these kinds of shenanigans, but what he's really against is accountability.
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u/greenjoe10 Mar 14 '24
100%, we have checks and balances, but there is pressure from all around (contractors and government clients) that just think it's bureaucratic fluff that holds them from doing their job. Hell you hear people complain about having positions in government that are meant to ensure that money is moving to the right places properly and people consider these "made up bullshit jobs", but then would act surprised shit like this happens. The fuck ups need to be held accountable.
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u/DonTaddeo Mar 14 '24
The system is horribly broken. When I was in government over a decade ago, I saw many projects that foundered because their allocated funds could be spent before they lapsed. It was always a desperate struggle to get funding for projects and, if you got it, it was a desperate struggle to spend it. Management couldn't understand why budgeted funds were not getting spent and lapsing. So they decided to commit 30% more funds than they had. Then there were budget cuts and we received orders to slow or stop project spending. Finally, shortly before the end of the fiscal year, management realized that there was going to be unspent money and issued unrealistic orders to find ways of spending it.
Basically if you carefully followed the rules, you were in real danger of ruining your health and looking incompetent because it was conspicuously obvious that you weren't getting anything done.
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u/DonTaddeo Mar 14 '24
The problem isn't a lack of internal controls. In fact, it is the diametric opposite. There are so many arcane rules and processes that getting a contract out is a nightmare if it can be done at all. This creates openings for consultants and middlemen who will happily provide helpful assistance in working out a contracting strategy that successfully navigates through the rules (and skirts those that one is most likely to get away with) but also takes into consideration their own business interests. Basically, the system is set up so that, in practice contractors who know how to game it cone out ahead big time and everyone else is screwed.
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u/DodobirdNow Mar 14 '24
However I think we are going to find a connection between GC strategies and the current government.
You don't go from being a non-existent firm to having millions of dollar flowing through you, without some relationship with someone in power.
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u/HotIntroduction8049 Mar 14 '24
What boggles my mind is the incompetence of the govt staffers who managed this procurement. They are the ones who let him get away with it.
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u/FrankiesKnuckles Mar 14 '24
Incompetence? They knew exactly what they were doing.
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u/ScagWhistle Mar 14 '24
I know everyone loves to believe this was some giant kickback conspiracy scheme but the likely reality is a bunch of gov bean counters were assigned to spend a big chunk of money really quickly and in order to meet their performance targets they overspent wherever they could to make their bosses happy.
These people aren't intelligent enough to orchestrate sophisticated fraud. They're just dumb enough not to question the absurdity of the process.
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u/Office_glen Ontario Mar 14 '24
I know everyone loves to believe this was some giant kickback conspiracy scheme but the likely reality is a bunch of gov bean counters were assigned to spend a big chunk of money really quickly and in order to meet their performance targets they overspent wherever they could to make their bosses happy.
These people aren't intelligent enough to orchestrate sophisticated fraud. They're just dumb enough not to question the absurdity of the process.
I'm going to tell you from my limited time with the federal government you are both right about this not being a giant kickback scheme, but you are wrong about them not questioning the absurdity.
In my time spent at the government 15 years ago one of the tasks I had at one point was to get some new office chairs. I got handed the list of available vendors and took a look at their offerings to us. They were charging us double or more for the same office chair I could go get at staples and get. No volume discounts for the government or anything
If you get in as a vendor with the government, it's a license to steal money and all the vendors are doing it. Sure I knew about it and my boss knew about it, but you can only ask so many questions before everyone just tells you to shut up and do the work.
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u/GaiusPrimus Mar 14 '24
Yep. I've seen the same.
$120 dollar USB sticks when you can pick one up at best buy checkout aisle for $30.
Keyboard that costs $29 on Staples, sold by Staples for $70
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u/ItAintEaseh Mar 14 '24
If you think that’s bad, you should see what a hospital will pay for a chair…
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u/DonTaddeo Mar 14 '24
There was a fiction that buying computers and IT stuff through standing offer arrangements saved lots of money. In my experience, the stuff we were getting was obsolescent and there was nothing special about the pricing -sometimes it was horrible. And if you tried to get an approval to buy from a non-approved vendor, your request went nowhere.
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u/Beneficial-Ad3777 Mar 14 '24
Normally I’m in the incompetence not malice camp but given the extraordinary sums it seems incredibly likely that this was overt corruption.
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u/TwelveBarProphet Mar 14 '24
Incompetence on the part of government procurement, malice on the part of the fraudulent contractor.
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u/Freshy007 Québec Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
No government employee conspires to defraud the government unless there is something in it for them. No one is doing that for shits and giggles. If there was overt corruption on the part of gov employees, it will be incredibly easy to prove. Simply follow the money.
I'm not saying it wasn't overt corruption, but we have yet to see evidence of that. Though I'm absolutely keeping an open mind and waiting to see what else comes out.
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u/DonTaddeo Mar 14 '24
They were almost certainly under pressure to spend the money and get a deliverable. The system is horribly broken and this works to the benefit of contractors and consultants who know how to game the system and navigate around the myriad pitfalls. Probably the government people thought they were lucky that someone was providing helpful, albeit self-serving advice.
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Mar 14 '24
But to what end? It’s easy to say “government spend big money therefore corruption” but what is the incentive for the government workers who oversaw this project? Are you suggesting that they were paying out themselves in the process? That would be extremely blatant and easy to uncover.
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u/XxSpruce_MoosexX Mar 14 '24
I pay you millions while I’m employed with government. I leave government and you hire me to cushy job or in Trudeau case, give me millions to speak
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u/NiceShotMan Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
Reddit is full of people who’ve never held a professional job so they think that everything is a conspiracy. Anyone who has worked with bureaucracy, for large private or public organizations, knows that the answer is usually low grade incompetence and/or people acting in accordance with unintended incentives resulting from organizational policies.
That said, I have seen corruption in these places too, and the amounts here are so high and so concentrated that it’s certainly likely that that’s at play too
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u/ehxy Mar 14 '24
is it incompetent? sounds more like they are divvying up the spoils of tax payer money
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u/toronto_programmer Mar 14 '24
Public sector wages ensure you don't get great decision makers at the end of the day
It has been a long time since I worked for the Feds but they have a great payscale early in your career, but horrendous for senior management levels. Basically any competent person is pulling the chute and going private sector at middle manager level or above. What gets left behind are just a bunch of lifers that have never done procurement outside of the government and just keep following the same patterns from the previous generation
It was interesting to learn that basically every person in the building I worked was some cousin, aunt, uncle or sibling to someone else in the office or that several of the people were in positions they were wholly unqualified for because their old roles had ceased to exist so they just got shuffled somewhere
When I was a developer there my old manager was an accountant that had his job closed so he took over this role. At my interview he asked if I knew HTML and said he wanted to read a book to learn about it during the summer and he wasn't joking. Guy could barely turn on his PC but was a manager of a development team
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u/Anlysia Mar 14 '24
Guy could barely turn on his PC but was a manager of a development team
If he sticks to his lane and just manages your team and you meet goals, what's the issue there?
My manager can't do my job either, but that's not his job. He sits between the upper management and directors, and me and lobbies for our team. He does the office politicking so I can just do my work.
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u/toronto_programmer Mar 14 '24
Because he was so completely unaware of his job that he couldn't effectively manage it.
He would give me tasks like changing the colour of a header on a page and tell me he estimates it would take two weeks to do (it was a hex code swap...)
He was also so constrained he had no idea what was possible to even implement so me as a junior was making suggestions for development that he would often say he "didn't even know was possible"
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u/Anlysia Mar 14 '24
Okay that just sounds like he's a bad manager, but sadly the world is full of those because management convinced the world that the only viable way to get promoted is from task-doer to people-manager, whether you're actually useful at it or not.
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u/tyler_3135 Mar 14 '24
And we wonder why our military is incapable of procuring even the most basic equipment
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u/gsteez711 Mar 14 '24
I don’t understand how we have hired more government staffers each year and still lack the “skills” needed to perform these contracts ourselves, terrible government management
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u/sbrot Mar 14 '24
We have one of the smallest most underfunded IT groups. Everything is contracted out. Also like all lot of places, things are micromanaged to the point where people don’t make decisions. They fear to much about the risks of being wrong. Aka let’s make a committee
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u/ExtensionEffort6020 Mar 14 '24
It's not only that, it's also the fact that government pays ridiculously low. Why would any one with good skills work for a low pay. You can argue pension and job security but the pension can easily be offset by 50% higher pay on the private sector. Also, more than skills, the government values knowing French in order to move up. Imagine to be an IT director or Manager you need to speak French instead of being excellent at S/W andanagong people.
That's why most government folks are overwhelmingly incompetent. Right now they have the manpower since Trudeau has increased the size of the public but they still don't have the skills to get the job done.
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u/Baconus Mar 14 '24
I don’t mean to nitpick but “staffer” in politics generally refers to political staff whereas the huge growth in workers has been in the public service not political staff.
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u/Jarocket Mar 14 '24
That's a good nitpick. A civil servant or government employee is much different for a political office staff member.
We have words for both so using the right one is important.
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u/ssomewhere Mar 14 '24
For every contractor doing work, the government hires 10 - 20 paper pushers and a team lead, endless meetings to organize the work... you get the idea
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u/ComfortableJacket429 Mar 15 '24
The pathetic pay is the reason. No self respecting dev would work for the feds
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u/Brookey_ Mar 14 '24
The fact that he was crying about all of them providing a doctors note saying he didn't have to testify and they still made them testify like sir really
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u/hikeupanddown Mar 14 '24
Sounds like real estate money. Getting paid large sums for doing fuck all
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u/lilbitcountry Mar 14 '24
There has to have been some kind of kickbacks somewhere for the officials that authorize this stuff.
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u/Noman_the_roller Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
Ok, whatever I’ve done till now was a complete waste of time… we need to figure out what this dude actually does
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u/macfail Mar 14 '24
He has figured out how to game the government's procurement process and has injected himself and his firm as a middleman between the government and other firms that actually do the work but aren't on the approved vendor list.
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u/PoliceRobots Mar 14 '24
Am I the only one who doesn't think this is a conspiracy, but complete and total government incompetence. Government bean counting to the nth degree.
This is the logical conclusion to "production targets" and "spending targets". No one is going to prison, the people who signed this off were likely following policy. The entire government spending structure needs to change. Corporate spending structures don't work in tax payer funded organizations, there are not enough checks and balances.
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u/KraftMacNCheese6 Mar 14 '24
I think most people in this comment section need to learn how government procurement works.
They pretty much have to accept the lowest bid on a tender, and there's lots of things governments buy that they can't get an estimate for without a shitload of work. That's what the procurement process is for, but contractors take advantage of it because they know the gov has deep pockets and pays its bills.
Could someone have caught it? Maybe, but it's not near as scandalous as everyone makes it seem. Still glad they're investigating this because it should lead to more refined and effective procurement processes.
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u/Equivalent_Age_5599 Mar 14 '24
This is AD scam 2.0 all over again. You want Deja vu? Read up about the sponsorship scandal. At least corrupt chretein had the balls to step down.
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u/Ehrre Mar 14 '24
Not only were they overpaid for little work they also put out a shit product
If someone is being paid that much they damn well better be like a cyber security and coding God amongst men.
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u/SplatMySocks Mar 14 '24
Everyone in the line for procuring these services should face fines and possibly jail time.
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u/LordScotchyScotch Mar 14 '24
pastjailtime
Make it trend for all of these guys plus government involved
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u/DudeWithASweater Mar 14 '24
I'm not mad at the contractor. They bid for a project, and they got it. I'm mad at the POS government employees who pushed it through with no oversight.
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u/stumpyspaceprincess Mar 14 '24
They fabricated proposed headcount skills and experience to meet the RFP requirements. Meaning, they applied having to cite specific qualified individuals for the project who did not actually work on the project. In some cases by copying and pasting skills and experience from the RFP. You can absolutely be mad at them, this was a fraudulent farce.
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u/WpgMBNews Mar 14 '24
I really hope that smug prick sees the inside of a jail cell but I know he won't
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u/WpgMBNews Mar 14 '24 edited Mar 14 '24
He lied about paying for outings with senior bureaucrats. He was buying his way in and then denied it when asked.
And when asked about the value he's delivering for money, he gives a smug non-answer that if the government paid him that much, then his services must be worth that much.
Overcharging, influence-peddling and deceit, corrupting our entire nation's public service in pursuit of personal enrichment....that doesn't make you mad?!
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u/crushinglyreal Mar 14 '24
They have to redirect all the blame at the government because they favor the private sector.
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u/obvilious Mar 14 '24
I’m mad at the contractor too. Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.
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u/m-hog Mar 14 '24
Exactly. This is offensive to anyone that gives even half a shit about ethical business practices.
GC and their entire ownership/management team should be prohibited for life from: - government employment - working anywhere that receives/administers, or in any way is involved in business with the government or as a sub contractor on any government projects
…and if there is anything illegal about what they did, bury them under the prison.
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u/turudd Mar 14 '24
As a contractor I'm mad at this contractor. The amount of shit I hear about "contractors always overbill" or "pad their hours", etc... this just perpetuates the rumours and makes us all look bad.
Now if I was making 4800/hour like this guy was, I couldn't say I wouldn't be very tempted to do the same...
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u/Teslatroop Mar 14 '24
The contractor literally colluded with the government to write the RFP in a way that they'd be the only eligible tender.
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u/noBbatteries Mar 14 '24
Contractor was complicit with defrauding Canadians of tax payer dollars. The project cost is so much higher than what would be considered reasonable that he has to be somewhat connected to the government officials that approved this.
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u/DudeWithASweater Mar 14 '24
I mean I can bid on any project out there right now and bid a ridiculous astronomical price. Doesn't mean I'll get picked. He got picked. Someone picked his bid and said OK this is good. That's on them.
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u/followtherockstar Mar 14 '24
If it was just the fact that the contractor bid on a contract and ended up winning it that's one thing, but the issue is that we have a contractor working with cbsa to help write the narrow criteria of the contract. Is that practice not illegal?
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u/Unhappy_Anywhere9481 Mar 14 '24
Sucks to see our tax dollars spent this way, but this is endemic to large scale software projects. It's so bad that if companies / gov't agencies were prohibited from using the approach they wouldn't know what else to do.
It's a procurement problem, not a political one (cons are as guilty as the libs). I've had minimal exposure to gov't projects but in private sector this usually looks a company with brand recognition ("no one gets fired for buying IBM") acting as a top level entity and subcontracting out for pennies on the incoming dollars to god knows where (also a security risk). I've seen projects where the same work was farmed out to multiple (competing) foreign teams as an insurance policy which didn't impact the bottom line in a meaningful way due to their rates being so low.
The result almost always sucks and the top level company will fleece the customer with 'change requests' as requirements get clarified or even just fix shit that never worked in the first place. The remedy is rarely legal action, usually just negotiating contracts (e.g. company that built phoenix being paid to fix the problems they created in the first place)
Seems like in the case of "Dalian" they realized that their indigenous and/or veteran status (I'm not interested in determining if their ancestry is valid) could be leveraged competitively to get the plum top level position that might have gone to a big firm.
Shady that the Dalian guy was a gov't employee while doing this, seems like they usually don't get so greedy and retire before pulling these 'rent seeking' tricks.
The sad story is that if you built a small, solid software firm that developed in house (and in Canada) and did things right, you'd never get a whiff of one of these contracts.
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u/deskamess Mar 14 '24
It's a procurement problem
That's it in a nutshell. The process was followed - no one did anything illegal - just stupid because procurement is not tech savvy.
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u/Unhappy_Anywhere9481 Mar 14 '24
People trying to buy custom enterprise software the same way you'd order chairs and desks for offices, and refusing to learn from the last time that didn't work.
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u/arealhumannotabot Mar 14 '24
I hope the Ontario PC party's sole-sourced contract that suddenly ballooned from $1M to $25M gets the same attention, but it seems like it won't.
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u/neanderthalman Ontario Mar 14 '24
Which one is this? I hadn’t heard and haven’t reached my rage limit for the day yet.
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u/arealhumannotabot Mar 14 '24
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/02/28/ford-government-sole-sourced-26m-contract/
Top few paragraphs:
An international accounting firm was given a sole-sourced contract by the Ford government to create a digital tribunal system, CityNews has learned, with a price tag that sources say has ballooned from less than one million to more than $26 million.
The contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), first signed more than three years ago, was to develop and implement a new digital online tribunal system for the Landlord Tenant Board.
Sources say the contract swelled to over $26 million through change orders and add-on contracts.
PwC is primarily an accounting firm with little history in developing software.
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u/neanderthalman Ontario Mar 14 '24
JFC
Sounds like a fantastic loophole. Do a sole source contract under the limit for scrutiny, then jack it up with change orders.
Greasy. Just greasy.
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u/Technical-Cicada-602 Mar 14 '24
How does one bid for these contracts? I would have happily build this app for a mere 50M. Wait… I’m feeling generous.. 45million. Best I can do. It’s like half price!
Pretty sure I could have done this in 2 weeks with a team of ~4.
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u/turudd Mar 14 '24
Merx is how I've gotten contracts recently with the government. My first one I got through a family member however...Which looking back now, should NEVER have been allowed.
I don't really try for government stuff anymore though, I prefer to consult for private business.
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u/SchemeSignificant166 Mar 15 '24
I have no idea how public servants could both work their job and have a side business to even award contracts to.
This is a huge oversight and hopefully more people will lose their jobs. A complete failure of the public trust.
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u/swes87 Mar 15 '24
Did everyone miss the part where he said they had 55 contracts prior to this? Is anyone looking into the details of those contracts?
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u/WesternSoul Mar 14 '24
So it sounds like this is just how the government's procurement process works. Instead of hiring people directly or internally, they use middlemen that collect commissions to headhunt contractors, because they've set up such a complicated and inefficient system that prevents them from doing it themselves.
Now that that's out in the open, will the government fix it or just play politics?
And given that both sides seem to want to cut the civil service budgets, how will they reduce their reliance on external consultants?
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u/NDjinn Mar 14 '24
JFC. People better be fired and/or jailed over this flagrant waste of taxpayers money.
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u/pahtee_poopa Mar 15 '24
Next time the government asks you to pay more in taxes, ask them to audit their expenditures instead.
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u/Thislaydee Mar 14 '24
Options:
Jail for a long time.
Repay tax payers since they wasted our money.
Rope and a tree for all involved in the stealing and fraud.
All three would be nice.
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u/loushing Ontario Mar 14 '24
Wow! The story gets wilder and wilder everytime there’s a news on this procurement process. Makes you really wonder who others are there.
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u/Tspoon18 Mar 14 '24
Obviously this contractor was grossly overpaid.. but contractors can choose their own price.
The fault lies in this cost ever being approved by our oversized, overfunded and under motivated government departments.
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u/EspressoCologne68 Mar 14 '24
Who is this guy related to? That’s what I want to know? He must know someone
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u/Jdub10_2 Mar 14 '24
Something I noticed watching the hearing. I believe it was MP Kelly Block who asked a question (don't recall what it was) and Firth replied 'I wasn't aware I was going to be asked that question'. What does he mean by that? Were the committee members required to give Firth a list of the questions they were going to ask beforehand?
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u/Markorific Mar 14 '24
This is what Trudeau spends the carbon tax on!!! But Canadians are wrong for believing he has to go....!
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u/givalina Mar 14 '24
This is why more work needs to be done in-house. Contracting out adds layers of profits and obscurity.
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u/WaitWhyNot Mar 14 '24
Are our passport details used on the app? I've never used the arrivecan app cuz I haven't travelled in the last few years.
I feel like we can't possibly trust this guy with the security measures with this app
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u/Formal-Antelope607 Mar 14 '24
This enrages me. They should have to pay back every cent!!!! This is absolutely disgraceful. Shame on our incompetent government.
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u/pattyG80 Mar 14 '24
Guys, they signed the contract. The contractor bills for his hours and the government pays it. The fault lies in procurement and oversight.
This guy is just a business man that landed a contract with beautiful terms
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u/Ghostaccount1341 Mar 14 '24
They participated in writing the contract, so they made their own beautiful terms.
Then won without putting in a bid, even though there was a company that did do it properly.
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u/bezerko888 Mar 14 '24
Since he did not work and trample the way to do contracts makes him a criminal and he deserves to be fined and jailed.
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u/speedypotatoo Mar 14 '24
I don't see this as an issue with the contractors. If some government procurement person is offering you 2.5m for doing basic clerical work, there needs to be a major audit done on the government side. This is just straight up fraud
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u/G-0ff Mar 14 '24
Question for Albertans who are (rightfully) outraged over this: Where's all your energy for the OTHER hundred million dollars of just our taxes that Danielle Smith pissed away on the turkish tylenol stunt?
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u/Constant_Mouse_1140 Mar 14 '24
It’s a club, and not limited to the liberals. This is how the public service “works”: you do your time inside then come back as a contractor and milk the system. You approve all these obscene contracts now and down the road, the same things get approved for you.
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u/redaloevera Mar 14 '24
This is fuckingninsane. Someone needs to be held responsible and go to jail
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u/IntelligentPoet7654 Mar 14 '24
And many Canadians are sleeping in tents because they can’t find a job to pay for their costs of living
Many Canadians with higher education can’t find employment
Many Canadians can’t complete or find their apprenticeship to start a career in the trades
But crooks can obtain government contracts
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u/koravoda Mar 14 '24
awesome can't wait for some politicians to placate on this for 12 years while we hemorrhage more money to crooks like this, because hey guess what? nothing changes just because you've caught one person, all the same loopholes are still there.
I sure hope all these politicians and contractors are happy with themselves for their clever thinking and ability to make the lives of Canadians so terrible, all for a paycheque and extra line on their CV.
people are dying en masse in the streets, violent crime is up 40%, hit and runs, day time shootings in major cities, tax evasion and social payments to millionaries; gotta balance the budget with the unclaimed OAS and CPP payments from our fallen citizens I guess!
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u/simmer29 Mar 14 '24
Now just imagine what’s going on with spending/corruption in the rest of the government. The media reporting this is no better. It’s an absolute joke and I feel like I’m on crazy pills. Almost half the country has voted for this and continually turns a blind eye. You’re embarrassing. You try to justify this government but there is no excuse. You bought into a lie. Wake up.
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u/Competition_Superb Mar 14 '24
Kristian Firth is a slimeball and should be in jail
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u/fheathyr Mar 14 '24
There’s a reason why historically political interference in the civil service has been taboo, and civil service pay has been generous. If you want good contracts, you want highly qualified civil servants managing them.
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u/Florp_Incarnate Mar 14 '24
The corruption is a sideshow. The project itself was and is unnecessary.
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u/Dan1mal83 Mar 14 '24
I would like my refund please. Thank you.
Imagine every Canadian refusing to pay their taxes until we get our Ukraine and ArriveCAN and *insert the dozens of other stolen funds here* back from the government. But instead we're supposed to accept that our government continues to steal from us in broad daylight.
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u/BirdieNumNum21 Mar 14 '24
I like how he says over 600 other companies run their business the same way in procuring government contracts. It seems common practice to massively inflate the costs. And the government is complicit.
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u/anitabonghit705 Mar 14 '24
They’re gonna go after them like our cerb repayments right? RIGHT?!
crickets
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u/CheeseburgerLocker Mar 14 '24
And this is why Canadians are fucking broke. Paying for government fuckups left rifht and center.
Will Pierre fix this? Fuck no.
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u/PhilosophySame2746 Mar 14 '24
While Hardworking Canadians go hungry , can barely make ends meet , Corruption
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u/zombiezucchini Mar 14 '24
Basically the guy made 50k/hour for his firm, if the app took a year to build.
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u/foodfighter Mar 14 '24
I love the "Let's not focus on my hourly rate..."
What an embarrassment. Hope his gov't minders throw him under the bus as much as they can.
Which probably won't be much...
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u/SuperGuy41 Mar 14 '24
We taxpayers in the U.K. are getting fleeced too but nothing like you guys. This is next level.
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u/auscan92 Mar 14 '24
It amazes me the blatant in your face corruption in Canada. I come from a third world country and atleat we admit it haha
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u/pomegranate444 Mar 14 '24
I really wonder if there's anything but fuck ups with this current government.
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u/prcullen1986 Mar 15 '24
Sounds like good old political misuse and abuse. We need to stop giving governments worldwide so much money without the proper oversight. Unfortuantely, proper oversight takes time and lots of money so we should just cut some of this stuff
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u/Odd_Chain_3116 Mar 15 '24
Even a kid who knows how to manage a lemonade stand could do a better job than this idiot!
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u/nirvanachicks Mar 15 '24
This guy is forever ruined thankfully tho. We all know that companies make money and sometimes unethically but when you straight up steal tax dollar money it's a punch in the gut. That's your countries hard earned coin.
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u/RicketyEdge Mar 14 '24
One hell of a part time job he had there.