GC Strategies was awarded 3 other border agency contracts while working on ArriveCan

GC Strategies was hired to work on three other Canada Border Services Agency projects as it was working on the controversial ArriveCan app.

The company has been facing heightened scrutiny ever since the federal auditor general cited excessive reliance on contractors as a major factor contributing to ArriveCan's ballooning costs.

The CBSA has told CBC News that it contracted GC Strategies to work on three other applications between 2020 and 2022. The news was first reported by La Presse.

The projects include an app that is currently being tested to track and report cargo data and an app that helps border agents assess the risks posed by travellers and vehicles.

The third project is an app that allows arrivals subject to the Immigration Act to report to the CBSA. That app has not yet launched.

The total value of these contracts is just over $8.3 million. GC had been paid $19 million for ArriveCan as of last year.

Roch Huppé, Canada's comptroller general, told the House public accounts committee last week that GC Strategies and its predecessor, Coredal, have been awarded 118 contracts totalling $107 million since 2011.

The government suspended all of its current contracts with GC Strategies in November. Last week, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) announced that it had suspended GC Strategies' security status, effectively banning the company from bidding on new contracts with security requirements.

The heads of GC Strategies, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony, will appear separately before the government operations committee on Wednesday and Thursday. It will be the first time the two have made public comments since Auditor General Karen Hogan released her report on ArriveCan last month.

Hogan said she found little