44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 6, 2023 11:00AM
- Feb/6/23 5:01:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not often that I have a 20-minute runway to unpack a speech, so I will take my time to meander through the most important points of this, which I think we have begun to touch on when it comes to the motion. However, I see the narrowing of the scope of this particular motion to be indicative of the refusal of both Liberals and Conservatives to unpack what is really and truly happening here.
Before I was a member of Parliament, I was a very proud city councillor in Hamilton, and I was amazed at the amount of work in our budgets that would fall under consultation. The scale there, obviously, is not quite the same as this, but names like Deloitte would pop up quite frequently. It became a process, after I was elected, of seeing these names pop up so frequently in our municipal reports and the money spent on outsourcing decision-making and advice to the consultant class.
I had the pleasure of being a member of both the government operations and public accounts committees, and the name Deloitte would continue to pop up. In fact, it became such a prominent feature within many of the studies, that I and a good friend of mine from the Conservative Party would joke and laugh every time the name Deloitte came up. However, when it comes to this particular motion and, in fact, this particular scandal, I have to say that I am amazed at the Conservative's lack of willingness to expand the scope beyond McKinsey. Why is that? I think there are some important questions to be asked.
Of course, like all Canadians, New Democrats are concerned with the significant increase in contracting out to McKinsey over the past several years. In fact, as the only labour party in the House, we are concerned with all contracting out in the public sector. This is a scenario where we have Conservative governments, which tend to be the hatchet when it comes to the public sector, and then we have the Liberal government, which would rather starve the public sector through a death by a thousand cuts. If the Conservatives are wielding a hatchet, the Liberals are holding a scalpel, and year after year, the capacity of our public sector is eroded and replaced with these high-paid consultants.
The rapid increase in the use and the value of McKinsey contracts over the last several years raises serious concerns about just why that is happening. What advice is McKinsey providing to the government?
Canadians go to the polls to elect a member of Parliament and a government, and they follow the platforms of the parties, which present ideas. Members will recall, back in 2015, the Prime Minister and the Liberal government talking about sunshine being the best disinfectant, and they talked about ending the Harper government's habit of contracting out. There has been a lot of talk in the House about who exactly is making decisions at the highest levels of our ministries across the country.
Let us not forget that there is a significant ethical component to this. Not only is it that the government is contracting out to McKinsey in these ways, but it is also McKinsey's reputation that, quite frankly, originally raised the alarms at the outset, and I will get into that. However, prior to doing that, I want to talk about the practice of both the Liberals and Conservatives to contract out and why it is that I think this particular official opposition, under this particular official opposition leader, does not have the courage to extend this conversation beyond the parameters and the scope of McKinsey.
If Canadians were to do just a little research, and if they scratched the surface and went back to 2011, they would find obscene increases on a global scale for the big six, the $100-million club of the wealthy and well-connected insiders of the consultant class in this country, the new Laurentian elites of these lands. There was Deloitte at $680 million. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a big friend of the Conservative government, is at $564,182,221.
Accenture had $283 million-plus. KPMG had$174 million-plus, almost $175 million. Ernst & Young, a fan favourite of the Bay Street elite of the Liberal and Conservative governments, had $127 million. Lastly, McKinsey & Company had $68 million from 2005 to 2022. From 2011 to 2021, under both Conservatives and Liberals, the federal government went from $54,355,132 in 2011 to $418 million-plus in 2021. That is not even accounting for this most recent boondoggle.
When I look at these massive consultancies and their relationships between both parties, I have lots of questions. I would imagine, if we were to do a quick poll even within this House of Commons, we might find, in LinkedIn profiles, people who actually worked at some of these consultancies. Canadians deserve to have answers. There is a deep cynicism in government and the revolving door among the consultant class, senior public servants and partisan parties in Canada needs to end.
When we talk about procurement and the ethics in procurement, it should be noted that what is legal is not always ethical. In fact, New Democrats have tried time and time again to ensure that we have ethical practices within our procurement, yet it is widely known that McKinsey was a key adviser in the Purdue Pharma's opioid crisis. It advised it on how to unleash this drug onto the public.
One only has to visit Hamilton Centre to see just how successful it was. The advice it provided allowed for a drug crisis, an overdose and toxic-supply crisis of the likes that we have not seen in generations. McKinsey was named in a $600-million lawsuit against Purdue. Why we as a country have not also pursued a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and all of the pernicious pharmaceutical companies that were involved in the opioid crisis is for another conversation, but I do think that significant attention must be paid to their role in this manner.
When I talked about the big six, the $100-million club, we also need to know precisely who these consultants are contracted with. How can one provide advice on health care when, within one's client list, is Purdue Pharma? How can one provide consultant advice for the Department of National Defence when one's clients include Lockheed Martin and many others?
On the face of this, just on the first scratch, this is a conflict of interest. It is a conflict of interest to outsource these decisions and decision-making around procurement to a company that has a vendor list that could very well benefit and profit from the very contracts it is advising on. If that is not illegal in this country today, it ought to be. It ought to be a consideration of this study. We should take a deep dive in this study beyond McKinsey to get the contract lists on all of these massive consulting companies.
Deloitte got $680 million. That is a giant. Why are the Conservatives not talking about that?
Why has the scope of this been narrowed so much? I have my thoughts, but perhaps the Leader of the Opposition, when he gives his remarks, will show some courage and that he is willing to take on the broader issue at hand and not just chase another ambulance. I am on the ethics committee. I know what Conservative ambulance chasing looks like.
We need to open the scope of this study. We need to include all of them, and we need to go back to 2011 because it is quite clear that there is a correlation between the cuts to the public sector and contracting out.
Let us review this. Under Harper, who started the vicious cuts to the public sector, by the time his government was through, 37,000 jobs were lost by 2014. That was 8% of the government's workforce. They were squeezing the public sector wages and complaining about their pensions only to turn around and pay these pigs at the trough almost a billion dollars. That is absurd.
We have good people working in the public sector. We should be training and investing in their knowledge. The parliamentary secretary to the House leader, who wants to quibble about a contract and an agreement, refuses to acknowledge that past behaviour often determines future outcomes. For the last 10 years, we have had Liberal and Conservative governments continuing the habit of outsourcing, ramped up by the Liberal government.
Let us be clear. Numbers got really big for consultants under the Prime Minister, under “Prime Minister Sunny Ways”. It has been sunny ways for the consultant class in this country, and it is time for us—
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- Feb/6/23 5:21:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is scintillating indeed, but again, it appears to me that members are a little gun-shy on the Conservative side to include consultancies like Deloitte. Deloitte would make McKinsey look insignificant in comparison, when we look at how Deloitte went from $17 million, in 2015, to $173 million. Let us look at where that waste goes. Let us expand to allow the Auditor General to do this.
I am not here to be entertained at committee. I often work closely with members of the opposition side. I would remind the member that I remain firmly as an opposition member. I work very closely with opposition members at every committee I am on, including Conservative members and Bloc members, to hold the government accountable. However, I would challenge them to stand up and name the five other pigs at the trough. I would challenge them to go back to 2011, where they are also culpable, where their cuts to the public sector and squeezing of public sector wages resulted in these gross taxpayer expenditures on private sector outsourcing.
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- Feb/6/23 5:25:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the Bloc for paying me perhaps the highest compliment I could be paid in this House by referring to me as the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, for whom I have a great amount of respect. I will take that as it was intended.
I want to appreciate that the hon. member brought up a very important word, which is “austerity”. It is important for us not only to recognize exactly who is making decisions but also to ask what ideologies they hold. How are McKinsey, Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture and these others advising the government on pathways toward austerity and cutbacks, as well as cuts to the public sector and programming?
It is true that, as New Democrats, we encourage the government to provide social spending on behalf of Canadians and Quebeckers across the country. However, this ought not to come at the cost of almost a billion dollars in outsourcing to consultants. We have some of the best talent in the country working in our public sector. We believe that we should pay competitive wages to public sector talent and allow those with the bureaucratic knowledge and memory to present sound decision-making advice to the government. Ultimately, what has been lost in all of this is that governments are elected to make decisions.
When the government outsources its decision-making to unelected, unaccountable, nameless, faceless supranational corporations, which have insidious ties to unsavoury characters around the world and to corruption, campaign financing violations and narcotics dealing, we absolutely need to hold it to account.
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- Feb/6/23 6:04:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to be clear, all capitalism is crony capitalism. The question is, does the leader of the official opposition have the courage to expand the scope of this study to investigate all the pigs at the trough, including Deloitte, Ernst & Young, the Conservative favourite PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG? Why stop at McKinsey when we can go for all of them? Does the leader of the official opposition have the courage to do that?
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- Feb/6/23 6:21:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we just came from the OGGO committee, and the Conservatives demonstrated that they are willing to support the NDP in expanding this to look at all of the outsourcing, especially the $100-million-plus procurement club, which includes companies that benefited greatly under their government. In fact, under the Harper government, PricewaterhouseCoopers went from $9.8 million to $44 million a year in outsourcing, a 450% increase.
When the Conservatives initially looked at McKinsey, which is the small player of the $600-million-plus procurement club getting outsourcing contracts that are literally running away from Canadians, why did they not put forward a motion to look at Accenture, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers? I would like to learn why they neglected to look at those companies. Again, I want to commend the member for supporting the NDP's call to expand the scope and probe of these companies.
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