Minh Doan, who was chief information officer at the Canada Border Services Agency during the COVID-19 pandemic, swore to MPs that he only set a technical direction that led the CBSA to hire a tiny staffing firm to help devise the ArriveCan app. He preferred to keep data on government servers and not rely on an outside company for updates and revisions, he said. As for who did hire GC Strategies for the work, Doan said: “I still don’t know.” (The Logic)

Talking point: The border agency’s contracting is under multiple investigations over dealings with GC Strategies. Doan’s former subordinate Cameron MacDonald previously testified that Doan chose GC Strategies and lied to the Commons committee probing the decision. Now the government’s chief technology officer, Doan said repeatedly on Tuesday that he takes responsibility for the decision but in the helter-skelter of the early pandemic wasn’t deeply involved in what began as a short-term, $80,000 job—though it grew into millions.