Ottawa, ON – Michael Barrett, Conservative Shadow Minister for Ethics and Accountable Government, released the following statement on the Liberals’ filibuster to protect an ArriveScam contractor from having to testify in Parliament:

“Today, Liberal MPs on the Government Operations Committee hit a new low. They filibustered to block a Conservative motion to compel the owners of GC Strategies, the company at the centre of the ArriveScam debacle, to appear at the committee or to face arrest by the Sergeant-at-Arms. 

“GC Strategies, a company that has received $20 million in taxpayer money for doing no IT work on the ArriveCan app, has defied multiple summons issued by the committee. With the allegations laid out in the Procurement Ombudsman’s report and the Auditor-General’s report, it is growing increasingly clear that contracts received by GC Strategies, particularly those granted to create Justin Trudeau’s useless ArriveScam app, were corrupt.

“While Justin Trudeau and his ministers feign outrage in public and promise that they will get to the bottom of this, Liberals are filibustering to prevent Canadians from hearing from the two men in the middle of this scandal.

“They have no desire to unveil the corrupt nature of the Liberal government’s agreements with Justin Trudeau’s favourite two-person IT firm. That’s why they voted against asking the Auditor-General to investigate ArriveScam, that’s why they shut down the committee after seeing CBSA’s internal preliminary statement of facts, and that’s why they filibustered to prevent Conservatives from using the full powers of Parliament to compel Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony to appear before the committee.

“This reeks of the same kind of corruption Canadians are all too used to from Liberal governments. Canadians deserve answers as to why Justin Trudeau’s useless ArriveScam app went from costing $80 thousand to wasting at least $60 million, 750 times the original price. The Liberals are desperate to cover this up, but Conservatives will fight to ensure every taxpayer dollar is accounted for.”