Even after finding the government guilty of repeatedly violating the rules to award contracts to McKinsey&Company, the Auditor General of Canada in no way accuses the consulting firm of having influenced the Trudeau government’s immigration policies.
“ [Il s’agit de] contracts for comparative analyses, to support a transformation. Sometimes it’s professional advice,” Karen Hogan detailed about the contracts awarded to McKinsey by the federal government, the subject of a devastating audit published Tuesday.
“Often, contracts [examinés], it is to help the government to change, to transform itself. Often, external opinions are essential,” continued the Auditor General, before elected officials gathered in Ottawa on Monday by the standing committee on government operations. Her office itself seeks external help to improve, she illustrates.
Karen Hogan cut short questions from a Conservative MP who claimed that the former boss of McKinsey, Dominic Barton, was behind the federal government’s immigration policy. A former McKinsey executive and later ambassador to China, Mr. Barton took part in 2016 on a committee that recommended accelerating immigration to swell the Canadian population to 100 million people by 2100.
“It’s clear that the liberals used McKinsey as a shadow government to control official policies,” accused conservative Stephanie Kusie on X (formerly Twitter), when sharing M’s video.me Hogan who says he knows nothing about this.
Expert advice
Questioned directly by The duty on whether the international consulting giant may have been able to influence the Trudeau government’s immigration policies, Karen Hogan was more categorical.
“We saw some contracts that were [accordés par] Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada [IRCC]but we did not really see that they were involved more than the expert advice they offered through these contracts,” she clarified when revealing the results of her investigation which took place over more than a year.
The report unveiled by the Auditor General last week rather deplored the fact that the Government of Canada had made a habit since 2011 of not documenting anything about contracts awarded without a call for tenders to McKinsey, in disregard of basic standards of good management. Public Services and Procurement Canada is also blamed for allowing these rule violations to pass.
“This is not unique to McKinsey&Company. We would expect to see the same behavior towards other professional services firms,” said Karen Hogan on Monday. She found no trace of undue involvement of a minister in the awarding of the 93 contracts examined, nor of criminal or malicious intentions in the federal machine.
The Standing Committee on Government Operations and Budget Estimates (OGGO), then the Auditor General of Canada, undertook an investigation into the contracts awarded to this consulting firm at the beginning of 2023, after revelations from Radio-Canada according to which the number contracts exploded under the Trudeau government.
Policy influence
The original article also argues that McKinsey was able to play a central role in Canada’s immigration policies. This detail was central in the reaction of the opposition parties in Ottawa, at a time when the Trudeau government is proposing to welcome half a million immigrants per year.
The Bloc Québécois had thus directly linked the immigration target to a desire of the firm McKinsey, arguing that it was consistent with the plan developed seven years earlier by the working group of which its ex-boss, Dominic Barton, was part. The latter had already thought about this project by writing “the initiative of the century” (or “Century Initiative”) with business people.
” That idea [d’augmenter ainsi l’immigration] comes from a working group, mandated in 2016 by the Trudeau government and chaired by Dominic Barton, then senior manager of the firm McKinsey… And co-founder of the Century Initiative,” declared Bloc MP Mario Simard in May 2023.
The main person concerned had the opportunity to categorically reject allegations about his influence in federal immigration policies last year, suggesting that parliamentarians misunderstood the role of a consulting firm. “McKinsey never proposes public policies to governments! », replied Mr. Barton.
The firm McKinsey&Company is embroiled in various scandals in several countries around the world, and has notably made headlines in Quebec for its services offered to the Legault government for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last February, a majority of federal elected officials adopted a motion from the Bloc Québécois calling for a review of the immigration target, set by the Trudeau government at 500,000 new permanent residents per year, until 2025.