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Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)

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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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Feb/6/23 6:04:56 p.m.
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Yes, Madam Speaker. Is that clear? Let us be clear about something. The member believes in capitalism; he just believes that capital should be controlled by bureaucrats and politicians. He believes that if we take the same human being who is a CEO and move him over to make him a top bureaucrat or top politician, suddenly he will become an angel. He believes in allocating capital. He just wants it to be done by force of the state rather than the free enterprise and voluntary exchange of customers, workers and entrepreneurs. He believes in the ultimate control, crony capitalism, which is controlled by the state and directed by people with power. That is what he believes.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Feb/6/23 6:05:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find that answer very interesting because it begs the question of why the Conservatives did not bring forward a more holistic motion. If the Leader of the Opposition is genuine in saying the opposition motion today is one that opens the books up, as he said, and looks at everything, why would he bring forward a motion that is centred on one specific company? If it were not for anything other than political gain— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Feb/6/23 6:06:16 p.m.
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I just want to remind members that the leader of the official opposition is able to answer questions without any help from colleagues, so I would ask members to please hold on to their thoughts. The hon. parliamentary secretary can finish his question.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Feb/6/23 6:06:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member admits that he wants to open this up, yet his motion is specific to one particular company. Was the concurrence motion motivated by a genuine interest in looking into an issue, or was it motivated by political gain whereby the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservatives think they can drum up an issue to exploit the fears and anxieties of people?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Feb/6/23 6:07:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was the former. It was a desire to look into the issue, but we also know how to set priorities and we need to. When we are examining Liberal wrongdoing and corruption, it is like drinking from a firehose. The question we always have is, where do we start? We started with McKinsey because that is where most of the smoke is and that is where we are likely to find the first flame. However, we are prepared to examine all of the $15 billion-plus in massive high-priced contracting out that the government does. I can say that we will cut that waste when I am Prime Minister.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Feb/6/23 6:07:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if my colleagues had followed the recent work of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, they would have known that a motion was moved to examine all the documents from consultants from 2011 to date. That motion should be voted on next week. That being said, I know that all segments of the population and all professions are being affected by the aging process. Since the beginning of the study on McKinsey, it is astounding to see how no one saw or heard what happened, how no one was able to talk about it and how no one remembers what happened, or who got contracts and why. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Feb/6/23 6:08:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party wants to complete the investigation into McKinsey, but we are quite willing to investigate all massive contracts worth $15 billion or more awarded to all such companies. We are willing to work with anyone to get to the bottom of all these contracts, because Canadians do not work this hard to send cheques to consultants who charge taxpayers $1,500 an hour.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

Feb/6/23 6:09:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that was an incredible speech from my incredible leader. It is certainly an honour to serve with the member for Carleton, and it is always very difficult to follow his speeches, but that is what I am going to have to do here today. The bottom line is that the main reason we have brought forward this concurrence motion today is for one reason and one reason alone, and that is that we do not trust the government to audit itself. I say to call in the auditors. That is what I say. Why should we have any faith in the government to audit itself after the horrific things that we have seen in the time that the Prime Minister and the government have been in office? We have seen things such as SNC-Lavalin, which was a terrible scandal. We have seen things such as the WE Charity, where millions and millions of dollars were spent without any idea as to where it was going. As a woman, I find especially offensive all of the women who have been thrown under the bus, such as the former justice minister, for example, or the former health minister. We have seen Celina Caesar-Chavannes, who has now said that she was not treated well by the government or the Prime Minister and, sadly, most recently the former minister of sport, who had to take a leave of absence in an effort to deal with the government. Conservatives do not trust the government to be ethical or to audit itself, so I say to call in the auditors. Liberals will not admit to how much money they have spent. On January 4, CBC published an article showing the Liberal government has spent over 30 times more in contracts with McKinsey & Company than previous government, but on January 17, The Globe and Mail published an article stating the actual value of the government contracts with McKinsey since 2015 amounted to $101.4 million, much higher than previously reported. However, it did not stop there. On January 31, The Globe and Mail published another article based on documents in a court case in Puerto Rico. Federal contracts awarded to McKinsey are now estimated to be at least $116.8 million. We have asked the Prime Minister several times in the House to tell us the amount he has spent on McKinsey & Company. The Liberals will not even admit to how much they spent. It is time to call in the auditors. Major policy decisions are being made by McKinsey & Company and not public servants. We have seen the influence of McKinsey & Company throughout the government, for example, specifically with immigration. We have seen Dominic Barton's influence on the immigration project, along with his new century initiative. This is influencing immigration policy within our country, in addition to other policies. I just came from the government operations committee, where the current CEO of the Infrastructure Bank admitted to one of our fantastic members, the member of Parliament for Haldimand—Norfolk, that the Canada Infrastructure Bank was actually a product of Dominic Barton and McKinsey. He actually admitted to that, and it is not surprising because if we look at the Order Paper questions that we received, the outline of McKinsey's goal was consulting advice and recommendations on “decision criteria to screen and evaluate potential investments, including objectives, terms and principles [and] benchmarking review of these criteria with other infrastructure banks around the world”, based on its mandate. It does not stop there. Other projects McKinsey was hired for by the Infrastructure Bank included, “Consulting advice and recommendations on strategy-related matters to advance the CIB's mandate and increase in public impact”. It sounds like it was hired to try to convince the public it was a good thing. It goes on to say, “Facilitating expert adviser workshops and recommendations to advance the CIB's mandate and increase the public mandate.“ Once again, we cannot trust the government because its major policy decisions are being made by McKinsey and not by public servants. We have to call in the auditors. There is a consistent lack of transparency and accountability that we have seen by the government. When we had Mr. Barton at the government operations committee last week, he tried to create the illusion of no relationship, no friendship, between himself and the Prime Minister. However, good friends embrace when they greet each other. Good friends have friends over for dinner, as we saw Dominic Barton do with the current finance minister. He was over at her house for dinner with other influential people. In addition to all the other things I previously mentioned, there is a clear lack of transparency and accountability with this government and its relationship with McKinsey & Company. We have also seen it from the former finance minister, Bill Morneau, who actually makes reference to it in his book. We have seen the glowing welcome that the Prime Minister gave Dominic Barton at Davos at the World Economic Forum, and in 2016. There is a clear lack of transparency and accountability, and there is the proximity of the relationship between the government, the Prime Minister and McKinsey & Company. Do members know what we need to do? We need to call in the auditors. A government should not be doing business with a company with such low ethical standards. I would not even know where to begin there. I could start with the campaign financing in France that we have seen. We could talk about McKinsey's contributions in the opioid crisis with Purdue Pharma. We could talk about the criminal charges for insider trading, which its former employees have been implicated in. We could talk about the consulting work that it did for the U.S. immigration, ICE, and creating terrible conditions for refugees. We could talk about McKinsey's strategizing for Russian missile producers. We could talk about McKinsey's implication in China. I thought it was public knowledge, but unfortunately the minister for procurement and public services had never heard of this. The company's retreat in China in 2018 took place only seven kilometres from an internment camp holding thousands of ethnic Uighurs. This was just a week after a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop. McKinsey also consulted for China Communications Construction, which has built militarized islands in the South China Sea in violation of international law. Of course, there are ties with the Russian bank. In August 2018, the VEB bank, which is owned by the Russian state and known to be intertwined with Russian intelligence and under United States sanctions, hired McKinsey to develop its business strategy. Once again, a government, the Canadian government in particular, where we have such high ethical and moral standards across our country with our citizens, should not be doing business with a consulting firm with such low ethical standards. We need to call in the auditors. Finally, it is not producing good value for money. It has been reported that McKinsey has, in fact, increased its contracts by up to 193% over market value. With this government alone, we saw that 20 out of 23 contracts were not placed in competitive bid environments. Many of them were sole-sourced, in fact. That is 20 out of 23, which once again makes us question the influence. We have seen the bad use of money, as in the example coming out of the Business Development Bank of Canada, where we saw lavish events and chauffeurs being flown to the other side of the country. We see public servants who are completely demoralized as a result of not being consulted on these projects and all of the authority being handed over to McKinsey. I think we need to simply look at everything. The evidence shows that we should not trust the government to audit itself. We do not know how much it has spent or how it has made its major policy decisions, with a lack of transparency and accountability, working with a company that has no strong ethical values or moral standards and not producing good value for money. What do we need to do? We need to call in the auditors.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Feb/6/23 6:19:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure if the member is aware, but this side of the House will be voting in favour of the motion. We do not see a particular issue with it. We have guidelines and policies in place for department heads and various different public servants to follow. We have processes to ensure that this happens. Does she believe that the processes in place are being properly administered by our public service?

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Feb/6/23 6:20:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is apparent that they are not being followed, because even public servants are coming forward and expressing their discontent with the implication of McKinsey & Company in policy decisions, outcomes, policy directions and execution of policies within the government. They are clearly not being followed. The fact that the government would propose that it investigate these policies, which it has not itself followed, is really quite ridiculous. That is the reason we are here today with this motion asking to bring in an objective third party, the Auditor General, to do a thorough verification.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

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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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Feb/6/23 6:22:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a relatively new member of the government operations committee, I know we have an outsourcing study, which is continuing. I certainly look forward to continuing to evaluate many of the other outside companies that provide consulting to the government. I think we are here because the Canadian public, and even the media in this country, turned Canadians and the official opposition onto what was going on in the House and with the government in relation to the unique relationship between McKinsey & Company and the government. Certainly, while I think the points made are very important, our leader has said that he looks forward to empowering the public service once again by reducing the use of consultants. I really think it was the Canadian people who drove us to push on the McKinsey file.

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Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas (Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ)

Feb/6/23 6:23:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for her speech. The Bloc Québécois fully supports complete transparency in federal public spending. As we know, the Senate of France conducted a study on the growing influence of consulting firms' relationships with various governments around the world and released a report containing recommendations. The report recommends more transparency, no secrecy, meaningful openness about all contracts, and accountability. Consulting firms are not accountable at this time. I would like to know what my colleague thinks of those recommendations.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie

Feb/6/23 6:24:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. He raises a good point. McKinsey's involvement in government decisions is part of this motion. It is not about just one, two or three departments. It is about several departments. We want to know how the government has worked with McKinsey. I am willing to look at the government's relationship with McKinsey for all departments involved.

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Mr. Frank Caputo (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, CPC)

Feb/6/23 6:25:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. Before I begin, I do want to recognize a life well lived, the life of Mr. Rex Renkema, of Kamloops. He passed away over the holidays. Mr. Renkema was a mentor to me. He was a pioneer in the legal field, in my view. He was well respected by his colleagues, both at the bar and in the community. He had an incredible impact on my career and the careers of others. I obviously wish his family all the best in this difficult time. May perpetual light shine on Rex Renkema. With that, I have just a few minutes to speak on this topic. One of the first places I want to start is when it comes to money. As the Leader of the Opposition just eloquently pointed out, when we break down the amount of money that went to consultants, it would equal, if I understand the math correctly, about $1,000 per family. This is a Liberal government that frequently does cartwheels over the fact that we are giving $500 to people to help them with a mortgage or we are giving $600 for this or a few hundred dollars for that. The Liberals frequently accuse Conservatives of really not caring about the middle class, and yet here they are giving the equivalent of $1,000 per family to outside consultants. That, to me, is something that deserves a measure of inquiry, and a significant measure of inquiry at that. However, let us go one step further. The reality is that the public service has growth by approximately 30% under the Liberal government. Not only do we have a ballooning public service, we have a government intent on spending as much as it can, as quickly as it can, on whatever it can. Part of that spending, wherever it can spend, is on these consultants. Consultants should really be a mechanism of last resort. We should not be calling external people in on contract, and generally contracts are paid at a much higher level than a salary, when we have people who could do the job already. I am mindful of the fact that on occasion there needs to be an external contract. There might be somebody with a significant area of expertise that the government needs to retain. The problem is this, when we are literally spending billions of dollars on contracts, in this case $120 million on one firm, one has to ask why we are not going through our public service. Why is it that with a public service that has expanded by 30% in the last few years, we in Canada cannot take care of these things? These are fundamental questions that we need to ask. After all, if every Canadian family were to open their wallet, $1,000 of that money would be going not to the salaries just of the public service but, above and beyond that, directly to pay external contractors. In my view, this requires an independent inquiry by somebody like the Auditor General, not the government itself. As has been raised before, the government has done whatever it can to shirk responsibility. Jody Wilson-Raybould was prepared to blow the whistle on the government, to say things were not right and were not fair. As the attorney general, in my view an independent minister of justice, that was her job. She stood up to the Prime Minister. She was supposed to be this country's highest lawyer. What happened? She was not in the job very long afterwards. SNC-Lavalin shows us that we need a measure of independence here when we consider where this money went and how it got there.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Feb/6/23 6:30:07 p.m.
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It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House. The question is on the motion. If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

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Division

Mr. Garnett Genuis

Feb/6/23 6:30:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we would like to request a recorded division.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Feb/6/23 6:30:52 p.m.
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Pursuant to order made Thursday, June 23, 2022, the recorded division stands deferred until Tuesday, February 7, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Mrs. Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton—Melville, CPC)

Feb/6/23 6:31:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have three petitions to present this evening. The first is from citizens and residents of Canada who wish to draw the attention of the House of Commons to the following: The Liberal government promised, in its 2021 platform, to deny the charitable status of organizations that have convictions about abortions, which the Liberal Party views as dishonest. This may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations that do not agree with the Liberal Party on this matter for reasons of conscience. Many Canadians depend upon and benefit from the charitable work done by such organizations. The government has previously used a values test to discriminate against worthy applicants to the Canada summer jobs program, denying funding to any organization that was not willing to check a box endorsing political positions of the governing party. Charities and other non-profit organizations should not be discriminated against on the basis of their political views or religious values and should not be subject to politicized values tests. All Canadians have a right, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to freedom of expression without discrimination. Therefore, the petitioners call upon the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without the imposition of another values test, and affirm the rights of Canadians to freedom of expression.

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