(Ottawa) Federal ministers and the senior management of the consulting firm McKinsey will have to come and explain themselves to the elected members of the standing committee on government operations and budget estimates, which will be studying the tens of millions of dollars in contracts awarded by Ottawa to the multinational since 2011.
The Conservative motion that was adopted on Wednesday specifies that parliamentarians will examine the effectiveness, management and operation of contracts.
Seven ministers will appear for an opening statement and three rounds of questioning, the committee decided. A member of McKinsey’s senior management in Canada as well as the firm’s former boss, Dominic Barton, will also be summoned.
In introducing her motion, Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie described McKinsey as a “shadow government”. According to her, the current situation “demoralizes” civil servants and leads to “incredible waste”. Ultimately, the member asked, “who really runs Canada”?
Bloc Québécois critic for public services, procurement and government operations, Julie Vignola, went on to question whether the government has the expertise in-house and, if so, why it is not used.
“There is nothing more demotivating for an employee than to feel that their work is not recognized,” she said. And for the tax payer, that means he pays in two places: he pays for the consultant and he pays for the employee who is misused. »
This is nothing new, summed up New Democratic Party (NDP) ethics critic Matthew Green, denouncing “a class of consultants” by referring to other firms that golden deals with the government, notably Deloitte.
Mr Green said he hoped the exercise would change practices so that it would be difficult for future governments to get to a situation where they have “close personal ties with senior management, and some of these consultants under- contractors”.
No objection from the Liberals
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Anthony Housefather, said the McKinsey study is an important part of the committee’s “watchdog role”.
He did, however, introduce an amendment, which was passed, to have the study cover the Conservatives’ last term in office dating back to 2011 rather than starting when the Liberals came to power in November 2015.
Questioned earlier in the day by journalists shortly before the start of parliamentary work on this file, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he “welcomes very positively the work that the government committee will begin today to to ensure that indeed Canadians got value for their investments.
“Most of these contracts were selected by open competition,” he mentioned in a scrum in the wake of his time in Shawinigan.
PHOTO NICOLE OSBORNE, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Justin Trudeau
He recalled that he asked two of his ministers – that of Procurement, Helena Jaczek, and the President of the Treasury Board, Mona Fortier – to assess the circumstances of the awarding of contracts.
“We have very strict rules regarding contracts that would be awarded to different firms to improve services and modernize what the public service can offer Canadians. We will ensure that these rules have been followed,” added Mr. Trudeau.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who was also visiting Mauricie, took the leap during a press briefing to denounce “waste, including contracts for boyfriends”.
“We saw (for) McKinsey: 100 million for this company linked to Justin Trudeau whose director is a personal friend of Justin Trudeau,” he added, in reference to Dominic Barton.
Impressive list of witnesses and documents
The ministers called to the committee are the President of the Treasury Board, Mona Fortier, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Helena Jaczek, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, the Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
The committee also “recommends” to the Auditor General to carry out, as soon as possible, “an audit of the performance and value for money of the contracts awarded to McKinsey & Company” since 1er January 2011 by any government department, agency or corporation.
Each department, agency or Crown corporation that has entered into a contract with McKinsey will have to provide the committee within five weeks with a host of documents in French and English. The list mentions copies of the invitations to tender related to the contracts awarded to the firm; offers, tenders, contracts concluded; all correspondence and electronic communications; statements of work carried out for each contract; all work provided; the invoices provided; records of all payments and hourly and/or daily rates charged for each employee.
The committee also orders McKinsey to provide copies of all documents requested from the government within three weeks, without necessarily having them translated. To this, the committee also requires that the firm provide the description of the work carried out for each government contract, the time sheets, the rates invoiced, the name of the persons in charge of each project, all the documents relating to subcontracting in connection with a contract, all communications that affect them and the complete list of its clients since 2011.
The study will begin when work resumes on Monday, January 30.
Tens of millions in contracts
Over the past few weeks, Ottawa’s heavy spending on contracts awarded to consulting firm McKinsey has been in the news.
As reported by The Canadian Press, the Department of National Defense is one of the federal agencies that has often used the services of this multinational company based mainly in New York.
From March 2021 until last autumn, more than 15 million went to seven contracts, according to a list compiled by the ministry in response to a written question from a Tory MP, Tako Van Popta.
Over the same period, at least $62 million has been spent by various federal agencies, and several times contracts have been awarded without competitive bidding.
According to Radio-Canada, “various financial and contractual reports” lead to the conclusion that Ottawa has disbursed more than 100 million in contracts to McKinsey since 2015, the year Justin Trudeau’s government came to power.
The public broadcaster also reported that the Liberals spent 30 times more in this area than the previous government of Stephen Harper.
With information from Émilie Bergeron