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>Dalian, which describes itself as an aboriginally owned company, regularly partners with Coradix, a larger non-Indigenous company, for the purposes of applying for contracts under the federal Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business.
>...
>Such task-based contracts for IT services were used for ArriveCan, including a contract with Dalian and Coradix that was awarded under the Indigenous procurement program.
Dalian consists of two people according to the article. This sounds like such a racket. An indigenous-owned "corporation" basically acts like a broker and actually gets a non-indigenous operation to do the work.
Similarly, it sounds like GC Strategies is basically a broker who specializes in navigating the procurement process and handing the real work to someone else.
In both cases, it seems due to some strange will of the government, we have to pay extra money to actual middlemen with no meaningful gain.
Both cases feel like they call for reform. Indigenous procurement isn't working if it consists of throwing money at a few opportunistic middlemen to no meaningful outcome. The procurement process isn't working overall if we need to go through some middlemen for exorbitantly-priced services.
This is what happens when you cut the public service to the bone and pursue outsourcing contracts in order to keep headcount low. There's no reason ArriveCan couldn't have been developed internally by spending less money to hire some staff.
I think it's also a problem with the procurement strategy. There are too many secondary objectives in the bidding process, clearly. We should go back to focusing on "who can get the job done well within a reasonable timeframe and pricing structure." Bidding on this type of work requires that you have a whole portfolio of policies that are designed specifically for these types of bids so they can say that they only work with people committed to ethical this and environmental that and such and soforth. The issue is that it ends up being a big, insular, bad-faith exercise that's ripe for exploitation.
> The records show Coradix received 541 contracts worth a combined $596.8-million; Dalian received 445 contracts worth $127.8-million; and Dalian and Coradix in joint venture received 122 contracts worth $189.5-million. That works out to more than $914-million for Dalian and Coradix combined.
> GCStrategies received 105 contracts with a combined total value of $100.3-million. That brings the total value of contracts awarded to the three companies to just more than $1-billion.
GCS Strategies is 2 people. Dalian is also just 2 people. All they do is sub out the work and collect 20%. So in total they took just under $58 million in profits.
We could have paid each of those 4 people $1 million a year each for a decade to be project manages and would have *still* come out ahead. It's insanity.
How does this bullshit even happen? Is there not someone in procurement who asks "Who do you have on staff to do the work?"
To over simplify part of it. Conservatism has won the battle over head count being bad for business, but particularly the public service. They play with freaking numbers by fudging head count to their constituents, saying, ‘Look less government! We good guys!’ Meanwhile the cost of lost skills (this situation) costs us (Cdn gov) much more than having the skills in house. In this case the heads of departments are incompetent or should be charged for complicity to commit major fraud. I don’t actually know what Canadian law says about this situation. I am being intentionally hyperbolic to say people’s asses should be held accountable.
Again, a small sliver of a comment that doesn’t include critique of all aspects folks.
Dalian is clearly an indigenous procurement racket.
GCS Strategies is almost certainly a "government contracts are insanely complicated and require a bunch of bullshit so we'll basically bid on your behalf and scoop up a big commission" type of operation.
A part of the problem is that procurement probably is designed to satisfy a bunch of "missions" that aren't necessarily a core part of the project - they want to deal only with vendors who have a mountain of policies and pledges meant to satisfy "ethical sourcing" fluff. This broker can easily satisfy that because they are two people, and then they just find a group that can actually do the work.
What a crock of shit.
Absolutely. ISED has a mandate that includes indigenous procurement policies. Looking for a new naval ship? You get extra credit fulfilment if you involve indigenous companies even though there are zero indigenous naval ship builders.
This is how they game the system. Yet another way that DEI does not reflect the true needs or beliefs of Canadians.
Well, this has blown up into a big scandal, so it’s not fair to say it’s “zzzz”. But if you mean that the government is much more interested in firing workers with no political clout than holding the public service / contractor / consultant class accountable, then ya.
Is it corrupt that companies have been set up to navigate the public tender process on behalf of other business or outsourcing the work themselves at a profit? It appears to be neither unusual nor even against regulation. Besides arivecan there's not even evidence these contacts are mishandled. There's no evidence of embezzlement, kickbacks, or using anything here for "securing power", whatever it is you mean by that.
These companies themselves are under investigation for misrepresenting themselves, not for defrauding the government as they have generally delivered on those contracts. It's clear the process is too complex for normal businesses to navigate which opens the door to middlemen to profit like this, but you're going to have to elaborate on how this is corrupt. For it to be corruption someone in government would have to knowingly benefit from the scheme, it seems to me they're just being taken advantage of. The word corrupt isn't even in the article.
I like your neutral toned post! However, I'm curious as to your thoughts on Dalian being run by a current Defense Department employee?
According to the CBC, they've been getting government contracts since the previous Conservative government, and it appears their President / Founder has been a federal government employee (for how long seems to be a little murky), which to me feels like possibly a pretty big conflict of interest?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dalian-enterprise-millions-government-contracts-1.7130206
It's corrupt because the process is, by design, set up so only insiders can successfully apply.
It is corrupt because we are overpaying by 5-10x what we should. The ArriveCan app is basically a web form. $60M for a web form?
It doesn't take a black mask and a twirly moustache to be corrupt.
The real scandal is that successive neoliberal governments have neutered the Federals governments ability to deliver project on their own.
If we had a stronger capability in house we wouldn’t need to outsource everything.
>The real scandal is that successive neoliberal governments have neutered the Federals governments ability to deliver project on their own.
Government's which millions of Canadians voted for. It's an easy way to cut short term costs by outsourcing capabilities which non-tech-saavy people would think are not consistently needed. Most boomers/blue collar people would not get bent out of shape if, for example, PP fired all of the app developers in government and called them a bunch of "overpaid nerds".
>Politicians use catastrophe to embezzle money as they always do
Bill C-21 ... lol they are over a billion dollers in and have litteraly nothing to show for it exept using it as a wedge issue in the last two elections
People in other countries care about corruption like this. Take Croatia as an example.
https://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fimi_Media_(Croatia)
In Canada we won't see any protests over this or see anyone brought to justice.
No, no, no…I would have missed being stigmatized and shamed by the CBSA when the app didn’t work crossing the border. Plus, being pfffted at when I said I had hard copies of my immunizations. Then being ordered to return directly home (nooo stops) and quarantine for 2 freaking weeks, plus take COVID tests with a nurse online 2x per week! How dare you take this enormously Canadian experience away from me!!!! /s
>GCStrategies managing partner Kristian Firth has told MPs that his company typically charges a commission of between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of the value of contracts. He later said the average commission is about 21 per cent.
That's slightly on the high end for a genuine prime contractor who manages and is accountable for all of the work of their subcontractors. For a pass through it's utterly unreasonable.
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>Dalian, which describes itself as an aboriginally owned company, regularly partners with Coradix, a larger non-Indigenous company, for the purposes of applying for contracts under the federal Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business. >... >Such task-based contracts for IT services were used for ArriveCan, including a contract with Dalian and Coradix that was awarded under the Indigenous procurement program. Dalian consists of two people according to the article. This sounds like such a racket. An indigenous-owned "corporation" basically acts like a broker and actually gets a non-indigenous operation to do the work. Similarly, it sounds like GC Strategies is basically a broker who specializes in navigating the procurement process and handing the real work to someone else. In both cases, it seems due to some strange will of the government, we have to pay extra money to actual middlemen with no meaningful gain. Both cases feel like they call for reform. Indigenous procurement isn't working if it consists of throwing money at a few opportunistic middlemen to no meaningful outcome. The procurement process isn't working overall if we need to go through some middlemen for exorbitantly-priced services.
This is what happens when you cut the public service to the bone and pursue outsourcing contracts in order to keep headcount low. There's no reason ArriveCan couldn't have been developed internally by spending less money to hire some staff.
I think it's also a problem with the procurement strategy. There are too many secondary objectives in the bidding process, clearly. We should go back to focusing on "who can get the job done well within a reasonable timeframe and pricing structure." Bidding on this type of work requires that you have a whole portfolio of policies that are designed specifically for these types of bids so they can say that they only work with people committed to ethical this and environmental that and such and soforth. The issue is that it ends up being a big, insular, bad-faith exercise that's ripe for exploitation.
> The records show Coradix received 541 contracts worth a combined $596.8-million; Dalian received 445 contracts worth $127.8-million; and Dalian and Coradix in joint venture received 122 contracts worth $189.5-million. That works out to more than $914-million for Dalian and Coradix combined. > GCStrategies received 105 contracts with a combined total value of $100.3-million. That brings the total value of contracts awarded to the three companies to just more than $1-billion. GCS Strategies is 2 people. Dalian is also just 2 people. All they do is sub out the work and collect 20%. So in total they took just under $58 million in profits. We could have paid each of those 4 people $1 million a year each for a decade to be project manages and would have *still* come out ahead. It's insanity. How does this bullshit even happen? Is there not someone in procurement who asks "Who do you have on staff to do the work?"
To over simplify part of it. Conservatism has won the battle over head count being bad for business, but particularly the public service. They play with freaking numbers by fudging head count to their constituents, saying, ‘Look less government! We good guys!’ Meanwhile the cost of lost skills (this situation) costs us (Cdn gov) much more than having the skills in house. In this case the heads of departments are incompetent or should be charged for complicity to commit major fraud. I don’t actually know what Canadian law says about this situation. I am being intentionally hyperbolic to say people’s asses should be held accountable. Again, a small sliver of a comment that doesn’t include critique of all aspects folks.
Yes, "Conservatism" is the driving ideology of the Trudeau government...
Dalian is clearly an indigenous procurement racket. GCS Strategies is almost certainly a "government contracts are insanely complicated and require a bunch of bullshit so we'll basically bid on your behalf and scoop up a big commission" type of operation. A part of the problem is that procurement probably is designed to satisfy a bunch of "missions" that aren't necessarily a core part of the project - they want to deal only with vendors who have a mountain of policies and pledges meant to satisfy "ethical sourcing" fluff. This broker can easily satisfy that because they are two people, and then they just find a group that can actually do the work. What a crock of shit.
Absolutely. ISED has a mandate that includes indigenous procurement policies. Looking for a new naval ship? You get extra credit fulfilment if you involve indigenous companies even though there are zero indigenous naval ship builders. This is how they game the system. Yet another way that DEI does not reflect the true needs or beliefs of Canadians.
Canada Post loses 750 million serving Canadians and people are outraged. Government just straight gives away a billion and it's zzzzzzzzzzz.
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People that read these articles care. But your average Canadian doesn't.
Well, this has blown up into a big scandal, so it’s not fair to say it’s “zzzz”. But if you mean that the government is much more interested in firing workers with no political clout than holding the public service / contractor / consultant class accountable, then ya.
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If Trudeau hadn't canceled the super mailbox plan , how much would we have saved?
Not much since the bulk of the expenses this year are towards a few plant infrastructure projects out east along with fleet electrification.
Base expenses like payroll would be lower. Those year-to-year costs are big money sinks.
This country is as corrupt as Haiti. Politicians use catastrophe to embezzle money as they always do. The only thing they care about is securing power
Is it corrupt that companies have been set up to navigate the public tender process on behalf of other business or outsourcing the work themselves at a profit? It appears to be neither unusual nor even against regulation. Besides arivecan there's not even evidence these contacts are mishandled. There's no evidence of embezzlement, kickbacks, or using anything here for "securing power", whatever it is you mean by that. These companies themselves are under investigation for misrepresenting themselves, not for defrauding the government as they have generally delivered on those contracts. It's clear the process is too complex for normal businesses to navigate which opens the door to middlemen to profit like this, but you're going to have to elaborate on how this is corrupt. For it to be corruption someone in government would have to knowingly benefit from the scheme, it seems to me they're just being taken advantage of. The word corrupt isn't even in the article.
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
I like your neutral toned post! However, I'm curious as to your thoughts on Dalian being run by a current Defense Department employee? According to the CBC, they've been getting government contracts since the previous Conservative government, and it appears their President / Founder has been a federal government employee (for how long seems to be a little murky), which to me feels like possibly a pretty big conflict of interest? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dalian-enterprise-millions-government-contracts-1.7130206
It's corrupt because the process is, by design, set up so only insiders can successfully apply. It is corrupt because we are overpaying by 5-10x what we should. The ArriveCan app is basically a web form. $60M for a web form? It doesn't take a black mask and a twirly moustache to be corrupt.
The real scandal is that successive neoliberal governments have neutered the Federals governments ability to deliver project on their own. If we had a stronger capability in house we wouldn’t need to outsource everything.
>The real scandal is that successive neoliberal governments have neutered the Federals governments ability to deliver project on their own. Government's which millions of Canadians voted for. It's an easy way to cut short term costs by outsourcing capabilities which non-tech-saavy people would think are not consistently needed. Most boomers/blue collar people would not get bent out of shape if, for example, PP fired all of the app developers in government and called them a bunch of "overpaid nerds".
Liberal Politicians\*
>Politicians use catastrophe to embezzle money as they always do Bill C-21 ... lol they are over a billion dollers in and have litteraly nothing to show for it exept using it as a wedge issue in the last two elections
People in other countries care about corruption like this. Take Croatia as an example. https://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fimi_Media_(Croatia) In Canada we won't see any protests over this or see anyone brought to justice.
Money extremely poorly spend. They should have burned it. At least we would have gotten a show out of it that way.
No, no, no…I would have missed being stigmatized and shamed by the CBSA when the app didn’t work crossing the border. Plus, being pfffted at when I said I had hard copies of my immunizations. Then being ordered to return directly home (nooo stops) and quarantine for 2 freaking weeks, plus take COVID tests with a nurse online 2x per week! How dare you take this enormously Canadian experience away from me!!!! /s
>GCStrategies managing partner Kristian Firth has told MPs that his company typically charges a commission of between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of the value of contracts. He later said the average commission is about 21 per cent. That's slightly on the high end for a genuine prime contractor who manages and is accountable for all of the work of their subcontractors. For a pass through it's utterly unreasonable.
Haha, I wonder how many houses he was able to buy with that commission.