UPDATED: Egregious Incompetence Or Egregious Indifference?

I realize that progressives are largely loathe to criticize the Trudeau government. Given the simplistic, either-or, black-and-white thinking of much of the electorate, such criticism is fraught with peril. For that significant segment of shallow voters, the reasoning seems to be that if the current government is found wanting, the only alternative is to support PP and his Conservatives. Why the NDP is almost never considered as an alternative is a bit beyond me.

Nonetheless, we do no one any service if we ignore or minimize the egregious shortcomings of our current government. Two recent reports highlight what is either federal incompetence or massive indifference. The first pertains to the almost unbelievable cost of $60 million (from an original estimated cost of $80,000) to develop the botched ArriveCan app, which earned a scathing rebuke from Canada's Auditor-General, Karen Hogan.

Overall, Hogan found that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and Public Services and Procurement Canada "repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application."

"This is probably the first example that I've seen such a glaring disregard for some of the most basic and fundamental policies and rules," Hogan told the House public accounts committee on Monday.

The Star's Rosie Di Manno had this to say:

It was supposed to cost $80,000. Maybe your tech savant kid could have done it for 80 bucks.

Serial incompetence which caused the Canada Border Services Agency to release 177 versions of the digital software between April 2020 and October 2022 — driving travellers nuts — and at one point falsely informed 10,200 users that they needed to pandemic quarantine for two weeks. While outsourcing companies — from which the contracted firms raked in hefty commissions of 15- to 30-per-cent — actually did no work on the project at all, CBSA officials were wined and dined at various restaurants and breweries (one off-site virtual meeting was dubbed “ArriveCan Whisky Tasting’’), and five of eight federal health bureaucrats racked up $342,929 in bonuses over those two years.

It is almost as if the government had a giant Kick Me sign attached to its metaphorical rear end.

Everything about rolling out the ArriveCan app was reckless and negligent at every stage, crucially in sole-source contracts with GC Strategies, in reality a two-person outfit that hired subcontractors to do the actual IT work, 76 per cent of which did not work at all, according to Hogan’s findings.

“The Canada Border Services Agency’s documentation, financial records and controls were so poor that we were unable to determine the precise cost of the ArriveCan application,’’ wrote Hogan. At a news conference afterwards, she continued to flog just about everyone involved. “Overall, this audit shows a glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices throughout ArriveCan’s development and implementation.’’ Adding: “This is probably some of the worst financial record keeping that I’ve seen.’’ 

And this taxpayer contempt is not the worst of the government's crimes. No, that distinction has to go to  the feds' inability to rouse themselves from their torpor to fill a growing list of judicial vacancies, vacancies that are having some real-world consequences. In a case filed by a human rights lawyer, Federal Judge Henry Brown issued a rebuke to the Trudeau government:

Brown says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Justice Minister Arif Virani failed to do what Wagner asked and are failing Canadians who rely on the justice system.

There were 85 vacancies when Wagner wrote his letter in May, 79 when the case was filed in June and 75 on Feb. 1.

Things have reached a crisis level. Given the Supreme Court ruling that trials must be conducted within 30 months of charges, a number of prominent cases have recently been tossed for violating that stipulation, including ones for human trafficking and sexual assault.  Such transparent injustices can only cause the further erosion of faith in the justice system and, by extension, democracy itself.

This post has attempted to describe what happens when a government grows jaded, tired, and contemptuous of the people it was elected to serve. This happens all the time, but what surprises me is the speed with which the federal Liberals resurrected their arrogance after being in the penalty box for so long.

Clearly, they have done so at their electoral peril.

UPDATE: Theo Moudakis offers this succinct assessment: