44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 6, 2023 11:00AM
- Feb/6/23 2:22:33 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight long years under this Prime Minister, taxpayers are coming to the realization that this country is being mismanaged. Across the country, families are suffering because everything is more expensive. Part of the reason everything is more expensive is that this government is spending money like crazy. For example, consulting firm McKinsey got $120 million in government contracts, but nobody—not the Prime Minister, not ministers, not public servants—can tell us what for.
In what universe does a government increase the national debt by spending $120 million on contracts without knowing exactly why?
101 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 2:23:44 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the pandemic.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that $200 billion of the additional $500 billion spent during the two years of the pandemic had nothing to do with the pandemic.
Another expenditure was a $173-million investment in a company called Medicago. On Friday we learned that Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Group was closing Medicago completely. The federal government put in $173 million without first checking whether the vaccines developed by this company could be used.
Why is the Prime Minister spending Canadians' money recklessly, without checking things first?
99 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 3:45:43 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for sharing his time with me.
Today we are debating concurrence in the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. The motion asks that the Auditor General be called upon to conduct, as soon as possible, a performance and value-for-money audit of the contracts awarded to McKinsey & Company since January 1, 2011, by any department, agency or Crown corporation.
How did it come to this? Right now, millions of Canadians are struggling financially. The cost of living has gone up. Everything is expensive. People do not have enough money. Meanwhile, contracts are going to multinational corporations like McKinsey.
Since 2016, McKinsey has been awarded over $120 million worth of contracts for studies and proposals on matters relating to immigration, national defence, the Canada Border Services Agency and public services. It has received millions of dollars to make recommendations. However, we cannot get any information about the real purpose of the studies that were commissioned.
The Prime Minister is not saying a word. We are being told that two ministers, the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, are going to get answers. The members opposite must think we are not very bright.
We all know nobody wants to say it even though everybody knows it. That is the crux of the problem with the McKinsey file right now. There is deep secrecy around what the firm has done for Canada.
Our motion asks for an audit dating back to 2011, when we were in power, because we know that we have nothing to hide. The contracts awarded back then were for consulting services on very specific topics. The value of the contracts was not exorbitant. In 2014 and 2015, no contracts were awarded. All of a sudden, in 2016, the contracts ballooned. It was as though, suddenly, no one in the departments knew what to do. Suddenly, no one knew what to do about national defence, immigration and border services, so contracts worth tens of millions of dollars had to be awarded to McKinsey to get the answers. I will repeat once again that we have not been able to determine what was proposed.
This is the eighth year of a government that has been implicated in a number of conflicts of interest. We went through the SNC-Lavalin affair. On several separate occasions, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner prepared reports on the Prime Minister. Today, we are again in a situation where it is abundantly clear that there is some type of conflict of interest.
Dominic Barton was the global managing director at McKinsey when the Liberal government took power in 2015. He defended himself in committee by saying that he had not done anything, that he was not aware of anything and that he did not know anything.
In one of the questions that I asked him before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, I told him that he was fascinating. In looking at him, I realized that he has a real talent for not answering questions and for pretending that this is not happening and that it is all made up. However, the facts speak for themselves. As soon as the government took power, it started following Mr. Barton's advice. He told the government to hire his firm so that it could give the government the tools it needed to know what to do, because the government did not know what to do.
That is where we are at now. There is even an ethical issue here. That being said, our motion has one main objective. We want the Auditor General, an independent officer of Parliament, to conduct an audit and report to Parliament on what happened with the various contracts that have been awarded to McKinsey since 2011. Taxpayers are the ones footing the bill, so they have the right to know.
As I said, over the past eight years, the government has completely lost control of public finances. Everyone knows that Canada's debt has doubled. We are going to have to pay interest on the debt, which will cost $40 billion a year. We are going to have to take money that was allocated for operating expenditures and use it to pay the interest to the banks because of the $15 billion in contracts awarded to subcontractors, including McKinsey. This raises questions, and that is why the Auditor General must investigate to tell us what we got for $120 million.
Were the contracts awarded properly? Was the information necessary? Were public servants capable of answering these questions?
There are so many unanswered questions.
The Business Development Bank of Canada is another example. The government appointed a new president. The first thing she did was take $4.9 million and give it to McKinsey so they could tell her what the strategic direction of the Bank of Canada is. Internally, people saw a president come in who, instead of consulting them to develop the long-term strategic plan for the Bank of Canada, brought in McKinsey. Why?
These are the kinds of questions that need to be answered. At some point, there is a reason that it is in the news and everyone is asking questions. We know there is something wrong.
One of the problems with McKinsey is the company's history. McKinsey has been involved in a number of activities involving questionable countries, secret contracts, previous involvement with opioids, influencing pharmaceutical companies. On the one hand, McKinsey was telling pharmaceutical companies how to keep selling products and, on the other hand, advising governments to try and solve the problem. That makes no sense. This company certainly raises a lot of ethical issues.
McKinsey is also known to have worked with Chinese state-owned enterprises, including one that builds militarized islands in the South China Sea. It hosted a corporate retreat on the road to a concentration camp in China's Uighur region. It has worked with companies affiliated with the Russian state, long after the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This is public, known information; however, eventually, a decision has to be made. Once the government has that information, what does it do with it? Will contracts continue to be awarded to conduct studies, provide information and tell our public service how to handle various strategic issues, such as defence or immigration? The influence of the McKinsey reports was clear, in relation to the Century Initiative, when the Minister of Immigration announced Canada's new immigration targets before Christmas, in November. The plan is to bring in 500,000 people per year starting in 2025, to increase Canada's population to 100 million by 2100. However, whenever we ask questions, the answers come from elsewhere, because the minister never even bothered to absorb the information himself. People come and give numbers, without considering the francophonie, for example, or our accommodation capacity. We are talking about 12 million people in greater Montreal; I will give the leader of the Bloc Québécois credit for talking about this. As a result, eventually, people start to wonder where this information is coming from and how we got to the point where our own government essentially has no idea what to do and turns to McKinsey for answers. It simply executes the plan only to realize later that it does not work.
Our motion is simple. We hope the government will support it and understand that we need the Auditor General of Canada to get to the bottom of all this so we can find out what really happened, especially considering the tough economic times we are in. Canadian taxpayers want the government to manage their money properly. All we have been seeing for the past eight years is waste.
Once again, we are seeing the government award contracts to its friends for advice about things that should cost a lot less; I could call them something other than contracts, but I will refrain. We need to know what the offer was, the bid, so we can see if it makes sense and move forward. That is the point of consultants. If they have good ideas, we use those ideas. However, when we do not know what the idea is and then the government comes out with some kind of vague policy, obviously there is something fishy going on.
1425 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 3:55:14 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am sure he did. The Conservative government at the time, with former finance minister Jim Flaherty, also worked with Dominic Barton. We have never tried to hide that.
The Liberals can say whatever they want, but we were clear. We know contracts were awarded. We know Mr. Barton talked with Mr. Flaherty, but we also know that, in 2014, McKinsey got no more contracts while the Conservatives were in power. There were also no contracts during the 2015 transition. It started up again in 2016, and we want to know why.
96 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 3:56:45 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Shefford for her question.
That is the crux of the matter. As long as there is secrecy surrounding all the studies commissioned and paid for by a firm that provides strategic plans and advice on how to direct Canada's destiny, I think we have a right to know what is going on.
This is all shrouded in secrecy, but there is still a way to do it right. For example, when, on one hand, the Department of National Defence, a strategic department, receives strategic advice from McKinsey, and, on the other hand, McKinsey gives strategic advice to defence companies, such as Lockheed Martin or others, there is clearly a conflict of interest.
When I asked Mr. Barton about that in committee, he said that McKinsey puts up a wall between the two. The fact is, we are the ones facing that wall. Right now, the department has information and private companies have information, but the only party that knows all of that information is McKinsey. We, as parliamentarians, are in the dark.
181 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 3:58:35 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. That is exactly what I said at the beginning of my speech. These are hard times. People are working hard for their money, and many of them do not have enough to live on because inflation is making everything more expensive.
We have here a government that is freely squandering taxpayers' money. These questions deserve answers. That is why, today, we are asking that the Auditor General of Canada investigate the contracts awarded to McKinsey.
84 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 3:59:50 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.
That is the basis of our commitment. That is the reason why we were elected to the House. When a person runs for federal office, it is to work in the interest of Canadians. Each and every one of us represents about 100,000 people. These people trust us to represent them and to work in their best interests.
However, what we have been seeing for the past eight years, particularly in the file we are talking about today, is a government that does not work in the best interests of citizens. That is why we, the opposition parties, are calling on the government to do its job and be accountable to Canadians.
123 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
