Federal bureaucrat cleared over alleged improper deletion of ArriveCan records

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A report by Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard cleared senior public servant and former VP and chief information officer at the CBSA, Minh Doan, of allegations he destroyed records related to the procurement of the ArriveCan app. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

A high-ranking federal bureaucrat who was publicly accused of improperly deleting records related to the procurement of Ottawa’s costly and controversial ArriveCan app has been cleared of wrongdoing in a probe by the Information Commissioner.

Minh Doan, a senior public servant and former vice-president and chief information officer at the Canada Border Services Agency, was accused in an internal CBSA complaint more than two years ago of destroying records related to the app – a COVID-era declaration tool for international travellers that ballooned in cost.

But a report issued on Tuesday by Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard found that Mr. Doan’s files had been unintentionally corrupted – not destroyed.

“While records may have been permanently lost and opportunities missed by the staff,” Ms. Maynard wrote, “I am satisfied that Doan himself made reasonable efforts to recover the corrupted records.” In addition, nothing the commissioner learned during her investigation led her to believe an offence had been committed, she said.

The loss of Mr. Doan’s records became the subject of heated parliamentary testimony in 2024, during which another bureaucrat accused Mr. Doan of lying and making threats. Mr. Doan is now the chief technology officer for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, according to a public government directory.

ArriveCan was built by the federal government and was used by travellers to screen themselves for COVID-19 symptoms. The initial version of the app cost $80,000, according to the CBSA, but software updates led spending to skyrocket to nearly $59.5-million, according to an Auditor-General report from earlier this year, and resulted in inquiries, several watchdog reports and increased scrutiny of government spending.

The document destruction allegations trace back to an internal complaint filed to the CBSA’s professional integrity unit. The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of the complaint and reported on it in early 2024 .

The complainant, an IT worker at CBSA who is otherwise unidentified, alleged Mr. Doan manipulated several records in a way that resulted in their destruction – including documents relevant to an access-to-information request about the agency’s dealings with one of the ArriveCan contractors.

The Information Commissioner found, however, that Mr. Doan had been migrating information to a new computer after experiencing problems with his previous laptop’s battery. During the transfer, a Microsoft Outlook file became corrupted and would no longer open. Ms. Maynard wrote that Mr. Doan repeatedly sought IT’s assistance, and that all records within his corrupted Outlook file that were relevant to the access request were “ultimately found.”

Mr. Doan found himself at the centre of heated parliamentary testimony in 2024 in connection to his role in ArriveCan. During a meeting of the standing committee on government operations and estimates, Cameron MacDonald, one of Mr. Doan’s subordinates, publicly accused Mr. Doan of lying when he told parliamentarians he had not personally selected GCStrategies, an IT contractor, for the ArriveCan project.

“Minh Doan has completely lied to Canadians on multiple fronts,” Mr. MacDonald told MPs. He also said that Mr. Doan had threatened to tell the committee that the decision to give the contract to GCStrategies had been Mr. MacDonald’s.

Mr. Doan denied any wrongdoing in a statement to the committee in June, 2024.

“On the allegation that I moved files around to intentionally delete e-mails to hide evidence, this is false,” he said. He also denied having threatened Mr. MacDonald. “Those are allegations and not facts,” Mr. Doan said.

Chris Spiteri, a lawyer for Mr. MacDonald, said in an e-mailed statement that the Information Commissioner’s report dealt with a “narrow access-to-information issue” about a corrupted file.

“It is not a finding that no e-mails were deleted, that no records were lost, that the missing records were irrelevant, or that Mr. MacDonald’s evidence was wrong,” Mr. Spiteri said. “It leaves important questions unanswered about CBSA’s recordkeeping, the missing records, and the completeness of the record. It closes one narrow issue. It does not answer the larger questions.”

Ms. Maynard’s investigation into Mr. Doan’s corrupted files was published as a special report attached to her annual report. The report shows that her office began investigating the loss of files in February, 2024.

While she did not find that Mr. Doan willfully destroyed records, Ms. Maynard did find that other ArriveCan-related records were lost when the CBSA deleted its Slack workspace in 2023. Slack is a digital collaboration, discussion and meeting tool simila…