(Ottawa) The federal government continues to do business with McKinsey, despite its role in the opioid crisis. Pressed with questions by the Conservatives in a parliamentary committee on Wednesday evening, the President of the Treasury Board, Mona Fortier, refrained from commenting on the integrity of the consulting firm.
“We have an integrity regime that has existed since 2015, which was established by the former government and we follow this integrity regime,” Minister Fortier replied to Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus, who asked her why. the government continued to award contracts to McKinsey knowing that the firm had played a role in the opioid crisis.
McKinsey also paid nearly $600 million to 47 US states for helping pharmaceutical companies boost the sale of opioids.
The minister clarified that the firm is not considered an ineligible supplier under this integrity regime because it has not been convicted of an offence.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis repeatedly asked her if she considered McKinsey an ethical company, but the minister refused to give any assessment of the consultancy and relied on the integrity policy to which it is subject when doing business with the federal government.
Elected officials are trying to shed light on the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts awarded to the consulting firm since the election of Justin Trudeau’s government in 2015. The government has launched a major review of these contracts. Minister Fortier indicated that the report would be ready on June 30, during her testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
In all, 34 contracts with a total value of 116.8 million were awarded to the firm by various ministries and agencies. The Ministry of Public Services and Supply awarded 24 for a total value of 104.6 million. The rest was donated by other departments or agencies.
The Business Development Bank of Canada is one of them. It gave a first contract of 2.8 million in 2021, followed by an extension of 2.1 million for strategic planning.
Its president and CEO, Isabelle Hudon, who implemented the exercise, said they wanted to “project themselves into the future” and see how they could better help small and medium-sized businesses affected by the pandemic.
“Knowing that we were coming out of a pandemic and that the environment had completely changed, we wanted and we wanted and we still want today to be this high-performance development bank,” she said.
She did not explain an expense of $8,000 to have her driver accompany her to British Columbia, except to say that this decision was made at the time “for a specific reason” and that she hoped that a such a decision would not have to be made again and that other options would be found.
“I repeat to you that it was measures for exceptional measures for exceptional circumstances,” she said in a press scrum without offering more details.