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It was made during COVID to make re-entry into the country easier. Included things like quarantine instructions, etc. etc. etc.

Now it's being used as a pre-entry customs and declaration tool to fill out information before you arrive to Canada, and allows you to take an "express line" through customs - I have a few Canadian friends that go down south every winter and they have mentioned it really doesn't speed things up as there's still a bottleneck that each passenger getting off the plane needs to complete - although maybe things have changed recently.

For 10,200 people it also had the nice feature of erroneously telling them they had to quarantine or risk fines up to $5000 per day. Oops.

It generates money for the contractor.

ArriveCAN was used for sorting out your COVID vaccine requirements before traveling to Canada.

Folks had to provide proof of vaccination, travel plans (like where are you going and what's your quarantine plan), etc.