Procurement · ArriveCAN Active investigation Primary sources

$93 Million for a COVID Questionnaire.

A web form with 10 fields and a QR code. Estimated at $80,000. Final cost: $93 million (Auditor General). Two-person contractor. Zero lines of code written. 76% of subcontractors did no work. 10,000 wrongful quarantines. Every Liberal MP voted against recovering the money. This file freezes the public record — open the AG reports linked below.

Investigations hub DND procurement Contract waste pattern Evidence Method

Scale · official figures

The numbers on the record.

$93MAG cost classAuditor General reporting class

$80KOriginal estimate classEarly estimate vs final cost

76%Subs zero workAG-documented class

10,000+Wrongful quarantine classReported impacts · open primary

Evidence table · FACT only

What is established.

Fact	Source class
ArriveCAN was a CBSA digital entry tool for COVID border measures; costs ballooned far beyond early estimates.	Primary Auditor General reports
GCStrategies was a two-person firm that received prime contractor roles on related work under standing-offer paths reviewed by AG/committees.	Primary AG · OGGO/PACP evidence
AG reporting documented large shares of subcontractors that performed no work in reviewed samples.	Primary Auditor General
Parliamentary votes on recovery / bans are on Hansard — outcomes differ from motions as introduced.	Primary Hansard · House votes

Analysis · labeled inference

How to read this page.

On the record: AG cost findings, contractor structure, committee evidence, House votes.

Inference (labeled): ArriveCAN is the signature federal IT procurement failure of the COVID era. Criminal charges against individuals are a separate track — open RCMP/court materials if/when they exist; do not invent them from cost overruns alone.

How to read this page

This page summarises multiple primary sources linked inline. The reader is looking at a documented record of the ArriveCAN procurement process, financial overruns, and technical findings.

$93MTotal Cost (AG 2025)

$80KOriginal Estimate

116,150%Cost Overrun

177Documented Bugs

10,000+Wrongful Quarantines

76%Subcontractors Did Zero Work

172 – 165

Parliament voted to recover $64 million from GCStrategies. Every single Liberal MP voted against returning the money to taxpayers.

Conservative motion, June 2025. Opposition voted for lifetime ban — Liberals blocked it and imposed a 7-year ban instead. No funds have been recovered.

Second AG Report (June 2025): Found 106 GCStrategies contracts across 31 departments. Total value: $92.7 million ($64.5M paid). GCStrategies helped write the requirements for a $25M contract it then won.

Auditor General of Canada, June 2025 + OGGO/PACP Committee findings

The government is suing GCStrategies for $198,000 of a $93 million scandal. That is 0.2% recovery. GCStrategies received a 7-year procurement ban — not the lifetime ban Parliament voted for.

Government lawsuit filed September 2025. RCMP raided Firth's property April 2024 — criminal charges still pending as of April 2026.

GCStrategies is a two-person firm that never wrote a single line of code. They billed $19.7 million as a middleman in a four-layer subcontracting chain. 76% of the subcontractors they hired performed zero work on ArriveCAN.

Auditor General of Canada, Spring 2024 + 2025 Reports

The Contract Chain

The Auditor General's 2024 Spring Report documented a procurement chain that broke every rule in the book. Here's how $80,000 became $59.5 million:

Entity	Role	Amount
CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency)	Client — ordered the app	$59.5M total
GCStrategies	Prime contractor — 2 employees	$19.1M+
Dalian Enterprises	Subcontractor Layer 2	Undisclosed
Coradix Technology Consulting	Subcontractor Layer 3	Undisclosed
Various IT firms	Layer 4 — actual developers (some)	Undisclosed

Auditor General Finding

"We found that CBSA did not adequately document why it awarded the contract to GCStrategies instead of others. CBSA did not document a clear rationale for the sole-source contracts. 76% of the subcontractors billed through GCStrategies performed no work on ArriveCAN."

Source: Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 2024 Spring Report — ArriveCAN Application, Paragraphs 1.35–1.52

177 Bugs, 10,000+ Wrongful Quarantines

ArriveCAN was supposed to streamline border processing. Instead, it wrongfully quarantined an estimated 10,000+ travellers — sending them home for 14 days based on app errors, not health data. The app contained 177 documented bugs, including:

Vaccination status not properly recorded — fully vaccinated travellers flagged as unvaccinated
Random quarantine assignments generated by software errors
Data not syncing between ArriveCAN and CBSA officer systems
QR codes failing to scan at border — requiring manual processing anyway
App crashing on older devices — disproportionately affecting elderly travellers
French language errors making the app unusable for francophones

Impact

10,000+ Canadians were wrongfully told to quarantine for 14 days based on app glitches. They missed work. They missed family events. They were confined to their homes — not because of health data, but because of a $59.5M app that didn't work. Nobody at CBSA, PHAC, or GCStrategies was held accountable for the wrongful quarantines.

Source: CBSA internal records; CBC News investigation (2022); AG 2024 Spring Report; House of Commons Government Operations Committee testimony

Key Players

Kristian Firth

Co-owner, GCStrategies

One of two employees at GCStrategies — the company that received $19.1M+ as prime contractor for ArriveCAN. Appeared before the House committee. Found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to answer questions. Charged by RCMP in 2023 with fraud and breach of trust.

Darren Anthony

Co-owner, GCStrategies

The other employee at GCStrategies. The two-person company won contracts through a standing offer arrangement. Charged by RCMP alongside Firth.

Minh Doan

Former CBSA VP, IT

CBSA's Vice-President of Information Technology during ArriveCAN development. The AG found that CBSA's IT division did not adequately document procurement decisions or contractor deliverables. Suspended during investigation.

Cameron MacDonald

Former CBSA VP

Former Vice-President at CBSA who signed off on ArriveCAN contracts. Testified before the House committee that he relied on subordinates for procurement decisions.

Timeline

March 2020

COVID-19 emergency — CBSA needs a border screening tool

Estimated cost: $80,000. Reasonable for a web form collecting vaccination status, test results, and travel history. CBSA fast-tracks procurement under COVID emergency provisions.

April 2020

GCStrategies awarded contract via standing offer

Two-person IT consulting firm wins prime contract. No competitive bid. CBSA uses existing standing offer arrangement to bypass normal procurement. AG later finds "no documented rationale" for choosing GCStrategies.

April 2020 – 2022

Costs escalate from $80K through 40+ contract amendments

Over 40 contract amendments expand scope and cost. Subcontracting layers multiply. 76% of subcontractors eventually found to have performed no work on ArriveCAN. Costs reach $54 million, then $59.5 million with related contracts.

2022

10,000+ wrongful quarantines reported

Media reports and parliamentary questions reveal thousands of Canadians wrongfully quarantined due to ArriveCAN bugs. CBSA initially denies the scale. Internal documents later confirm ~10,000 cases.

October 2022

ArriveCAN requirement dropped

Government removes the ArriveCAN requirement for border crossings. The app that cost $59.5M is no longer needed. Total operational lifespan: approximately 2.5 years.

February 2024

Auditor General releases devastating report

AG Karen Hogan's report documents the full procurement failure: no documentation, no competitive process, no deliverable tracking, 76% of subcontractors doing zero work. AG "could not determine the exact cost" because records were so poor.

2023–2024

RCMP investigation + contempt of Parliament

RCMP raids Firth’s property (April 2024). Investigation scope expanded beyond original Botler AI allegations. Charges remain pending as of April 2026. House of Commons finds Firth in contempt of Parliament for refusing to answer committee questions.

The Real Question

ArriveCAN is not a technology story. It's a procurement story. The app itself was simple — a web form with approximately 10 input fields and a QR code generator. Any competent developer could build it in 3–5 days. Shopify processes billions of dollars in transactions. Tim Hortons pays 15 employees on time for $30/month. A CS student could build ArriveCAN as a weekend project.

The question is not "how did the app fail?" — it's "how did 40+ contract amendments get approved without anyone asking why a $80K project costs $59.5 million?" The answer: emergency COVID procurement rules bypassed normal oversight, and nobody in the chain — CBSA management, Treasury Board, or the Minister's office — asked questions until the Auditor General did.

This is the same procurement system that produced Phoenix ($7.5B), the Long Gun Registry ($629M vs $2M budget), and Shared Services Canada (constant outages). ArriveCAN is not an outlier. It's the system working exactly as designed — for the contractors.

Sources