Hello, Roy here. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to The Roy Green Show ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. I have to say that I am deeply concerned by what this audit didn't find. We didn't find records to accurately show how much was spent on what, who did the work, or how and why contracting decisions were made.
And that paper trail should have existed. The Auditor General for Canada is speaking in those terms about a government initiative. They don't know where the money's gone. They don't even know how much money is gone.
The money's gone. And that's the Arrive Canap story. Significant questions continue to be raised in the wake of the Auditor General's investigation. And we're going to speak again with Conservative Member of Parliament, Larry Brock.
He's a former prosecutor. And he posted to X yesterday, GC Strategies, Arrive Scam, middlemen will receive $20 million for doing no work, still receiving taxpayer funds from active contracts with the Trudeau government. Unbelievable. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc also was quizzed at the Parliamentary Committee hearing about the privacy of Canadians having been violated by federal government agencies.
Larry Brock joins us on The Roy Green Show. Mr. Brock, how are you? Thank you very much.
I'm quite well. Thank you for inviting me back on your show. Yeah, it's good to talk to you. This is a hugely important issue.
And it could be the proverbial tip for the iceberg, isn't it? Oh, I truly believe so. This, in my view, is an explosive indictment on the Justin Trudeau government. And the opening quote that you shared with the listenership from the Auditor General raises another key issue.
And the issue is not only were the documentation not there, it should have been there. She also, in her report, says, I can't confirm what was destroyed. And that is a key phrase from my perspective, with my background, because through the course of several weeks, several months, myself and other team members really prosecuting this to the fullest extent, there have been numerous examples, numerous examples of criminality. And I think I raised a little bit of this last week on your show.
I have identified four key charges that the RCMP should be investigating, being forgery, fraud, obstruction of justice, and breach of trust by public officer, all of which can be prosecuted by indictment. And upon conviction, individuals could receive prison sentences in excess of two years. That is why our leader, Pierre Polyev, on the 13th of this month, wrote specifically to the commissioner, identifying those key areas, identifying the concerns raised by the Auditor General, and inviting them to broaden the scope of their investigation. Currently, right now, they're only investigating a portion of some allegations related to the Canada border.
Why? Why are they only investigating a portion of it? Because the complaint that's how this all started, Roy, was back in fall of 2022. A two-person software company out of Montreal by the name of Butler AI contracted with the CBSA to develop an app to assist the organization with employees reporting harassment.
They were instructed to work with GC Strategies, the infamous two-person firm that works out of their basement. They had some significant concerns that instead of dealing directly with the government, they were now dealing with this consulting company. So they started to record conversations, and something did not seem right to them. Ultimately, they weren't paid for the work that they were doing, and they laid a formal complaint, delivered a formal complaint to the president of CBSA.
Upon receiving that complaint, the president then turned the matters over to the RCMP because there was examples of criminality, and the RCMP then commenced an investigation. So that part is true to the extent now that it should be widened. We haven't received confirmation as of yet. It's been February the 17th whether the RCMP will take up the invitation to expand the scope.
How cooperative and believable is the liberal government being when they speak to this with you? Well, the proof is in the pudding, Roy. I go back to January of 2023 when the news first broke that the Arrive Can app had substantially increased in costs from the original $80,000 budgeted expense to tens of millions of dollars. That was almost 14, 13 months ago.
At that time in the House, the Prime Minister essentially said as follows, the Arrive Can contracting process appears illogical and inefficient, and he promised to look into it. Well, in fact, not only did he not look into it, his ministers did not look into it, and literally to this day, February 17, 2024, GC Strategies is still under contract with the government of Canada. Not with some millions, but still receiving work from the government of Canada. I was on their website yesterday, Mr.
Brad. Mr. Brock, rather. I was on their website yesterday.
They're still in business. Yes. They're still doing work with the government. Clearly, they say they are.
That's quite revealing to me. I thought, well, this is... It caught me by surprise, actually, because it's a very professional-looking website. But I thought, so this is still ongoing.
So you don't... I was going to ask you, what's your confidence level in the various investigations that are going on now? But you're not sure how many, if I understand you correctly, you're not sure how many are going on, or how many may be started, or how many have just been abandoned. I don't know.
So you're like the other general. You don't know either. You don't know. And I think what it is, is it's really emblematic of the concerns that every Canadian should have regarding the management practices, the contracts, and the policies across the whole spectrum of all federal departments.
If it's this bad at the CBSA, one cannot assume that this is an isolated incident. But it's emblematic of a culture of incompetence, and not being cognizant and aware and respectful. So the focus is really, then, on the Canada Border Services Agency, yes? Yes.
The Canada Border Service Agency, as well as the Public Health Agency of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, all three are under the microscope right now. If you're not a member of Parliament, then you're a prosecutor, and this comes onto your desk. And they say, Larry, get at this. Where do you start?
Well, before I answer that question, I'm hoping that the investigator, whoever that is from that particular police service, would have sufficient evidence to raise this to a concern that they have reasonable and probable grounds to charge someone for a criminal offense. As a prosecutor, once we have a package of material with evidence and witness statements and the like, we have to ask ourselves two key questions. And this would apply, Roy, to a charge of mischief, to a charge of shot busting, all the way to homicide. You ask yourself two key questions.
Number one, is there a public interest to continue the prosecution? And number two, is there a reasonable prospect of a conviction? Clearly, both questions in relation to the evidence that I have seen so far, not looking at specific individuals, per se, but looking at the evidence to support the charges that I identified, raises concerns that the RCMP should seriously be looking at, if not already looking at. I know they have reviewed the Auditor General's report.
I know that they had a discussion with the Auditor General, and she has invited the RCMP to even seek production orders to further their investigation. So I think that is going to be in the works, Roy, but I think the bigger and broader question that needs to be asked is, where is the ministerial responsibility for this boondoggle? Are we led to believe that for the two and a half years, that 177 different versions of the Arrive Can app, with out-of-control spending, no management, no oversight, improper invoices, is doling out cash, millions after millions after millions, unknown to the minister? Are they completely asleep at the wheel?
Were they not asking for deliverables? Were they not asking for updates from their deputy ministers, the presidents of the organizations I've identified? I think so far, this entire week has been a very, very poor week for Justin Trudeau and his government. And so far, they're putting up the firewall by suggesting to Canadians, inappropriately in my view, nothing to see here.
This is a problem with public service. We're going to address it, but it's not our fault. Yeah, I've heard that. So let me just try to encapsulate some of what you said in the last 10 minutes.
So the federal government farmed out the development of Arrive Can. And Mr. Trudeau hired 98,000 new federal public servants since 2015. So that's a lot of new public servants.
And you'd think within that number, or the pre-existing number of public servants, it would include individuals skilled in producing the Arrive Can app in-house. Yet instead, money flowed to individuals and questionable firms with spending records barely, if at all, kept. So the question becomes, how does that work? Because on a very personal level, I'm not hiring a contractor who won't tell me exactly what the money I'm paying will be spent on.
Absolutely. You've got to remember as well, Roy, back in 2015, when Justin Trudeau won the election, he promised Canadians that he was going to cut back spending on external consultants. He did anything else. Yeah, I remember that.
He has raised the spending on external consultants over the last eight and a half years by 88%. Last year alone, he spent $15.7 billion while still raising the federal public service by 40%. Two days ago, I'm part of the ethics committee on Parliament Hill. We heard from presidents and vice presidents of the various unions that represent the federal public service, and they laid into the government in terms of how disrespectful, how angry they are with the government in terms of its use of external consultants.
And I heard specifically from one president who represents IT professionals that the government has hired. Well, okay, so let me ask you this. What is happening at the committee level in Parliament as you investigate Arrive Can? Because I know the committee was shut down a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, when the liberals, the Black and the NDP, I think they used the word scary, which is rather infantile given who you are and what you guys are doing and what you guys are doing.
So what's happening at the committee level? Well, Roy, that's an excellent question. Over the course of probably about a month and a half, we have seen a trend that when anything becomes controversial for the government, when anything seems to be gaining legs in terms of a lack of transparency and accountability, the liberals with their NDP coalition partners routinely will shut down debate, will adjourn committee meetings. In fact, completely related to this particular scandal, scandal, I like to call it, when the Auditor General appeared last fall, early last fall, at a particular committee that I was invited to attend, just to give committee members an update as to where her investigation stood.
She informed us that she only found out that the RCMP were investigating the CBSA and some of its employees, not from the CBA itself, not from Justin Trudeau or the government itself, but rather reading the news article in the Globe and Mail. So the Auditor General agreed to appear for two hours after that embarrassing news that came out that she wasn't informed by anyone until she read the paper. Quickly, the liberals shut down the committee. So literally after 10 minutes of a two-hour meeting, they shut it down.
They adjourned it. They had the numbers, of course, with the NDP support, just to shut it down. And this really has been a pattern, a pattern of whenever they feel things are uncomfortable or potentially embarrassing or more questions would be put to them, they routinely shut it down again with their NDP partners. In my case, I point to your comment about last week, a week and a half ago, when a liberal member deemed the information that we were about to receive from the investigator of the CBSA that it was too scary to continue.
Too scary. It's childish. It's too scary for the federal government. It's not too scary for the country.
Mr. Brock, it's childish to use the word scary. When you're talking about a really significant national issue involving the federal government, you know, it's scary. That's Halloween talk.
Maybe I'm being too picky, but anyway, I'm just going to say, because you and I were talking, you were talking about consultants all over the place. They need to put consultants in the parliamentary ethics office. Yes. That's where they need them.
Yes. Do you have an idea? Do you have any timeline idea on how long this is going to take? Are they going to try to submerge this, make it go away, get to have Canadians experience at Arrive Can fatigue?
I wish, Roy, I could provide you and your listenership with some guidelines as to what we can expect. I think at this point, we've got three committees already, possibly a fourth that's examining various layers of this Arrive scam. I think witnesses will be probably called until at least June, if not beyond the next city. As far as the RCMP is concerned, again, I can't opine on that.
They take whatever time is necessary to complete an investigation. But if I could draw another parallel, the SNC-Lavalin scandal from several years ago, apparently is still being investigated by the RCMP. And I'm looking forward to hearing about the status of that investigation when the commissioner appears at the end of this month. So I wish I could provide a finite timeline, Roy, but there's so many layers to this scam and the scandal.
We're simply scratching at the surface. So the Auditor General doesn't know how much money is involved. And this is what that department does. They track money.
They know how to do it. They're the experts at it. So she doesn't know how much money was involved. $59.5 million.
Do you have a dollar figure that's sort of front and center with you that you think it might be? No, I don't because the government is not being honest with Canadians. Originally budgeted at $80,000. After a couple of versions, it jumped to $2.5 million.
Then we heard possibly $24 million now, at least is the operative term, at least $59.5 and we round up to $60 million, of which $12 million wasn't even on the Arrive Cam app. So again, mismanagement. The numbers are not accurate. That also doesn't include, Roy, the millions, tens of millions of dollars of the work that the public service did on this particular app.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find ourselves well into the $80 or $90 million range after all is said and done. Another big takeaway as well, this two-person GC company, a company that works out of this basement. Originally, so many people, including government officials, including the operator of GC Strategies, confirmed that they only received $11 million of taxpayer funds for the so-called work that they did on this Arrive Scam. But the Auditor General has found that that was inaccurate.
It was actually $20 million for doing nothing other than connecting the government of Canada with IT professionals. If that's not the definition of hitting the taxpayer lottery, I don't know why. Well, you know, you can confuse $11 million with $20 million. I do it all the time.
Let me just ask you this question. I want to veer away from the Arrive Cam for a moment. Let's just ask you to wear your prosecutor's hat for a moment. Street to the Global News Story.
The RCMP announced Friday they're laying two additional charges against a young person the force arrested in late December on terror-related charges for allegedly plotting an attack on the Jewish community. They have also charged a second young person as an alleged co-conspirator, the force said in the statement. In the statement, RCMP Federal Policing Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET, said the first person has remained in custody. After an ongoing investigation, the youth received two additional charges on Pair 15 for allegedly conspiring and agreeing to commit murder at the direction or in association with a terrorist group and knowingly facilitating terrorism.
This is all deeply concerning, and I won't ask you to go on the record here, but the RCMP also warned me yesterday of a, quote, growing trend of violent extremism, end quote, and youth involvement. As someone who lived in the courts and prosecuted, how worried does this make you feel? I think, well, I'm personally worried. I think everyone in this country should be worried at the alarming trends of violent extremism.
There's just so many examples. You just cited one example of thousands of examples that I've been hearing about literally over the last two years. And it's not just confined to this country. This is happening all over North America and many parts of Europe.
So I think I'll leave that to the RCMP to fully investigate, and I hope that the Department of Justice lawyers certainly have the tools necessary to bring people to justice and hold them accountable. Okay, well, they have the people. We know that. We have 98,000 new employees, not just the Department of Justice, but the federal government since 2015.
So, Mr. Brock, thank you so much for the time. Thanks for the additional time. And this is an issue that I don't think Canadians will let go of.
I think we're going to see people across this country demanding answers. Because what we're getting now is just too weird to even begin to believe. If you want to hear more, subscribe to The Roy Green Show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorites. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review and tell a friend.
I'm Roy Green. Have a great weekend.