Thousands of apps intended to make our lives easier and more efficient are created every year. Then there’s the ArriveCan app that the Trudeau government created. Costs so far have totalled an estimated $60 million for an app that was budgeted to cost a mere $80,000.

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Diane Francis: Only the Trudeau Liberals could botch an app so badly Back to video

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“It takes a special kind of incompetence to turn an $80,000 project into a $60-million boondoggle,” concluded Michael Harris, writing in the Hill Times in February.

A recent auditor general’s report describes the disaster: exorbitant cost overruns, incompetent management and questionable procurement practices. The ArriveCan affair is now being investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“Overall, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCan application,” reads the report.

“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. Using the information that was available, we estimated the cost at approximately $59.5 million.”

Taxpayers were gouged because expensive consultants were hired instead of using government IT expertise, according to the auditor general. “We estimated that the average per diem cost for the ArriveCan external resources was $1,090, whereas the average daily cost for equivalent IT positions in the Government of Canada was $675.”

At the centre of the scandal is an Ottawa company called GC Strategies. A Radio-Canada investigation estimated that GC had been awarded 129 government contracts since 2015 that added up to over $239 million, including $158 million from the Canada Border Services Agency.

One GC partner, Kristian Firth, said in a parliamentary hearing that he and a business partner made $2.5 million over two years, which works out to about $2,600 per hour.

Last month, CTV News reported that David Yeo, the CEO of Dalian Enterprises, another company involved in the development of ArriveCan, was simultaneously employed by the Department of National Defence, which had also provided contracts to his company. This raised questions about a potential conflict of interest and Yeo was suspended from his job.

Questions have also been raised about how Yeo managed to get contracts under a program designed to support Indigenous businesses, which the Liberals have mandated must be awarded five per cent of all government contracts.

Yeo told the House government operations committee in October that Dalian Enterprises and another company, Coradix, were a “joint venture under the procurement strategy for Indigenous business.” He said he is the great-grandson of a First Nations chief in Ontario and that his company therefore qualifies as “Indigenous.”

Conservatives have asked the auditor general to open an investigation into every government contract involving GC Strategies. “GC Strategies was taking public servants out for whisky tasting and luxurious evenings, so what rules were not followed is an important question that the auditor general we know will uncover,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett.

Radio-Canada said at least 28 of GC’s contracts transgressed procurement rules because they were awarded in noncompetitive bids. La Presse reported that one of GC’s business addresses was a bungalow in Ottawa. “Most people would find it incomprehensible” that a company working out of a bungalow would have received $239 million in federal contracts, said Barrett.

Auditor General Karen Hogan concluded that the ArriveCan irregularities that were “among the worst I have seen.” And this is the worst government Canadians have seen.