A Toronto-based technology company said it recreated ArriveCan in less than 48 hours to prove that the federal government overpaid millions for the app. Chital Jaitly, CEO of Toronto-based TribalScale, said building the app would have cost his company less than a million dollars, which is a part of the millions poured into the digital program, adding: "How can the government spend that much money on it?"

ArriveCan was created by the federal government to speed up the immigration process at Canadian international airports during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. On October 1, the app became optional as the government lifted mask mandates and health screening requirements for travelers. Also on Friday night, some of Jaitly’s colleagues at the company’s hackathon gathered with the goal of cloning the app and showing Canadians how fast and inexpensive it was to build, with Jaitly saying: "By midday Saturday, most of it was complete."

Also, the cumulative cost of ArriveCan was challenged, while a report from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said the organization spent a total of 29.5 million dollars on the app, media reports indicated its price was 54 million dollars. However, the government said the figure is "misleading" as it represents more than just money spent on ArriveCan. Anthony Housefather, Member of Parliament for Mount Royal, told CTV News Toronto that the $54 million figure also includes costs such as contact tracing for officers and initial inspection kiosks, saying: "Not all apps are the same, ArriveCan is not a simple data-sharing app but a secure transaction tool using artificial intelligence to verify vaccination proof." Jaitly acknowledged that cloning an app takes less time than building it from scratch, but said it still shows the amount of effort, time, and money it could have taken.