Auditor General's office fires 2 staff members for earning money from government contracts

The Auditor General has fired two employees and is investigating a third after it emerged the employees were earning money from Government of Canada contracts on the side.

"The employees did not disclose this information to their managers. None of the employees involved were au‐ ditors," said a statement from the Office of the Audi‐ tor General (OAG).

"In two cases, an investi‐ gation was conducted, and the employees no longer work for the OAG."

As first reported by the National Post, the investiga‐ tions led the OAG to revoke the employees' security clearance and then terminate their employment.

Both cases were first re‐ ferred to the RCMP in early January 2024, but on the ad‐ vice of the Mounties, the OAG then referred them to the Ottawa Police Service the following month.

The OAG said it will not comment further on the third case because it remains under investigation.

The OAG said the nowformer employees did not have any outside contracts with the OAG, and that it will not be disclosing the names of the companies they were involved with.

In light of the discovery, the OAS said it will be rolling out additional ethics training for employees in the coming months and will ensure that going forward, additional controls are "implemented to verify outside employment or contracts."

ArriveCan and Dalian Enterprise

In February, Auditor Gen‐ eral Karen Hogan delivered a highly critical report on the costs of developing the Ar‐ riveCan app, saying spending on the app increased dra‐ matically because of the gov‐ ernment's over-reliance on outside contractors.

That report revealed that one of the contractors, Dali‐ an Enterprise, received $7.9 million for its work on the app as of last March.

It later emerged that Dalian's president and founder, David Yeo, is also an employee of the Department of National Defence (DND). The company says Yeo only became a public servant af‐ ter the project was com‐ pleted.

The company has re‐ ceived more than $200 mil‐ lion in government contracts since 2015, according to a CBC News analysis of docu‐ ments tabled in the House of Commons in January.

The documents were filed in response to an order pa‐ per question from Conserva‐ tive MP Dan Muys. They list the contracts awarded to Dalian from each govern‐ ment department between November 2015 and Novem‐ ber 2023.