- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Feb/6/24 8:00:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the midst of this gross corruption scandal, we continue to get bureaucratic non-answers from the NDP-Liberal government.
I had a very simple question that was not answered, so I will ask that simple question again. Why were two senior public servants suspended without pay in the middle of an investigation only after they had offered testimony critical of more senior public servants and the government? Why were they suspended after their testimony?
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- Feb/6/24 7:54:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates has been gripped by the arrive scam scandal: the way the government spent $54 million on a glitchy app that did not work and the fact that it chose GC Strategies, a two-person company that did no actual IT work and simply subcontracted all the work.
How did this happen? Who was responsible? Who had the relationships with GC Strategies? Who created the procurement system that allowed a two-person company that does no IT work to get this contract and, essentially, to simply be able to receive and subcontract the work? This is the work the government operations committee has been trying to get to the bottom of.
The government is now intimidating witnesses who spoke out at committee. Here is what happened. Supposedly there was an ongoing internal investigation within the government into what happened in the context of the ArriveCAN procurement. The investigator in this case is not independent; this is an internal investigation. The so-called investigator reports through the existing chain of command within CBSA. He effectively reports to people who could be under a cloud of suspicion in the context of the investigation.
On November 7, 2023, two witnesses, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, came before the government operations committee. In response to questions, in particular from Conservatives, they gave devastating testimony. They identified people inside the government who, they said, were lying and were covering up information. They identified conversations that happened between the minister's office and the senior public servants that were filtered to them. While other public servants were very reserved and limited in their responses to questions, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano gave very direct and very forthright responses that were critical of actions taken by others, especially more senior people within the chain of command.
Surprisingly, almost immediately after that, on November 27, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano received a letter saying that they were the subject of internal investigation. They had not been notified of this before. Coincidentally, apparently, they were told they were under investigation immediately after they offered critical testimony at committee. Then the government went further and suspended these senior public servants from their jobs without pay, even though the internal investigation has not been completed. There is an ongoing internal investigation not complete, yet two people have been suspended without pay.
This is very suspicious. The government is under a cloud of suspicion over this procurement, so it has an internal investigator; however, the internal investigator has not even completed the investigation but has submitted interim findings that apparently point the finger at people who have been critical of the same senior public servants to whom this investigator in fact is subject, and they have been suspended without pay.
This very clearly, given the timeline, looks like retaliation against public servants who have spoken out about the arrive scam scandal. There is a big problem here. There is the underlying issue of corruption in the arrive scam contracting, $54 million to a company that did no actual work but just subcontracted all of the work, but then there are people who have provided testimony about it, not the testimony the government wanted to hear, apparently, who are suddenly suspended without pay.
How does the government justify retaliating against witnesses who criticize it?
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- Jan/29/24 8:29:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot I could say in response to that comment, just about the disastrous economic management of the government, about the pain Canadians are experiencing, about the higher costs we are seeing, about the challenges in terms of job growth and opportunity and about the lack of homes being built, but the core point here is that the question was not answered.
The question was about whether the public could actually see the contracts. The parliamentary secretary says they are doing great work; it is incredible. He says they got a great deal here; everything is standard procedure and everything is sunlight and roses. Let them show us their work, then. If the member is so confident in what the government has done, then the contracts should be made public.
The fact is that the Liberals were filibustering at committee to try to hide the contracts from the public. The NDP leader joined in and betrayed workers who want to see what is in the contracts, and the coalition stood together to try to bury the contracts. What is the government trying to hide?
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- Jan/29/24 8:21:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP and the NDP leader have consistently betrayed workers. They came in here promising to stand up for Canadian workers and sold them down the river simply to please their Liberal coalition partners.
I am rising today to follow up on a question I asked about the disclosure of details on massive government subsidies relating to electric car battery subsidies. The government is spending $40 billion on these subsidies. We are talking about roughly $3,000 per Canadian family. Every single Canadian family is on the hook for thousands of dollars for these subsidies.
We have found out that a series of subsidies that were promised as creating opportunities for Canadian workers will actually be subsidizing foreign replacement workers. Foreign replacement workers will be brought in to work on these subsidized projects. Therefore, the $40 billion in subsidies from Canadian taxpayers, roughly $3,000 from every single Canadian family, to create jobs for Canadians are actually going to subsidize corporations paying foreign replacement workers.
After this information came to light, Conservatives had a modest proposal, which is that Canadians deserve to see the contracts that the NDP-Liberal government signed when offering these subsidies. Did it seek to include in those contracts protections for Canadian workers? Did it seek to guarantee a certain number of Canadian jobs? Did it seek to prevent foreign replacement workers from being brought in as part of these projects or did the contracts it negotiated allow for this kind of foreign replacement worker activity on these projects?
Whether one is for or against these subsidies, or for or against allowing foreign replacement workers, it seems reasonable to me that the people who actually paid for these projects, the taxpayers, should be able to see the contracts and know whether the government did an effective or ineffective job in negotiating for workers. We have an indication that it did not do an effective job because we know foreign replacement workers are being brought in as part of these heavily subsidized projects. Either way, Canadians should be able to see what is in these contracts.
We brought this issue to committee. Initially, the New Democrats said they sided with us. In fact, I think the leader of the NDP asked a question in the House requesting the release of these contracts. Then, after a mere two or three meetings of Liberal MP filibustering, the New Democrats flipped. They folded. They buckled under the Liberal pressure to continue a long line of situations of the NDP facilitating Liberal cover-ups. We would expect in a minority Parliament that we would be able to get the information we need, yet that has not happened. The NDP bailed on workers and chose its corrupt coalition cousins instead.
My question for the Liberals is this: What did they offer the NDP leader to get the NDP to betray workers once again and instead vote to hide these contracts? What did the Liberals offer the NDP, and why are they choosing secrecy over the protection of workers?
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- Jan/29/24 3:06:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, senior public servants have spoken out about lies and abuse of process in the arrive scam scandal. We have now learned that shortly after their critical whistle-blowing testimony, these senior public servants were put on leave without pay. They were told they were under investigation less than three weeks after their testimony and they were suspended before the investigation had even concluded.
The NDP-Liberal government is punishing public servants for their ArriveCAN testimony.
What are these Liberals trying to hide with this retaliation and intimidation of witnesses?
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- Nov/9/23 3:04:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has been in power for eight years, and there is a profound dissonance between those alleged expectations and what they have been delivering and doing these eight long years.
Arrive scam hearings have been explosive. This week, senior government officials accused each other of lying because the Liberal minister wanted someone else's head on a plate.
This government is destroying trust in our public servants, and the Prime Minister is clearly not worth the cost. Instead of trying to blame others, why will the Prime Minister not take responsibility for his arrive scam disaster and commit to co-operating with the RCMP investigation?
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- May/18/23 6:46:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for speaking from the heart tonight. However, in all seriousness, the words he read had nothing whatsoever to do with the question I asked, which is not entirely unusual from the current government but is particularly obvious in the case of what has just transpired. These things used to annoy me. Now, I think we just have to laugh at the absurdity of the exercise. I will give the member another chance, I suppose.
My question was this: Does he believe that McKinsey is an ethical company? If it is not ethical, should the integrity regime be reformed to ensure that companies that are responsible for fuelling the opioid crisis and that are being sued, finally, by the government for that, should not also be accessing massive amounts of government procurement? Is it an ethical company? Should the integrity regime be reformed?
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- May/18/23 6:38:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am following up on a simple question that I asked the government earlier, which was whether it believes that McKinsey is an ethical company. We have not gotten a direct answer from the government on that, and I do not think it is a difficult question at all for reasons that I will explain later.
Does the government think McKinsey is an ethical company? I ask the Government of Canada whether it thinks this private company is ethical because the number of contracts to McKinsey have gone up dramatically under the tenure of the government. McKinsey has received over $100 million in contracts from the government during the time the Prime Minister was in office, and this has happened in the context of various close relationships that existed: Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey, advising the Prime Minister's growth council and recommending the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank; many McKinsey people going to work for the Infrastructure Bank; and McKinsey analysts doing so-called pro bono work for the growth council that therefore allowed McKinsey to infiltrate government and then get all these contracts.
There is a long-running close relationship between the government and McKinsey that led to McKinsey getting over $100 million in contracts, and the government has since revealed that not all rules were consistently followed, in fact, in the awarding of contracts to McKinsey. There was a failure to follow the rules, there were clearly strategic efforts by McKinsey to integrate itself into the operations of government and there were people from McKinsey who were given prominent positions within government, like Dominic Barton, head of the Prime Minister's growth council and, subsequently, ambassador to China. While he was ambassador to China, although he no longer worked for McKinsey, McKinsey was involved in facilitating a meeting with the Infrastructure Bank that he attended. There were all of these suspicious interactions or integrations between the government and McKinsey.
It is important to then ask this question: What is this company that has exercised such outsized influence over the direction of our country?
I am asking this question today in the context where we just had an opposition day motion debated on the opioid crisis. We have this horrific opioid crisis in this country, and part of the reason we have an opioid crisis is that Purdue Pharma, working with McKinsey, fuelled that crisis. McKinsey gave Purdue Pharma advice on how to supercharge opioid sales, recommending things like paying bonuses to pharmacists in cases where there were overdoses and having online pharmacies that would circumvent the checks on addiction that traditional pharmacies put in place. These were the kinds of things that McKinsey recommended, and McKinsey has had to pay out significantly for it. It reached a settlement of over half a billion dollars in the United States.
In the United States, McKinsey is being held accountable and being forced to pay compensation to victims of the opioid crisis. In fact, Republicans and Democrats, in equal measure across various states, have pursued McKinsey for this. However, in Canada, the Liberal government has a close relationship with McKinsey and has given it over $100 million in contracts.
We have found out lately that the government is joining British Columbia's class action lawsuit against McKinsey over its role in the opioid crisis. In response to significant opposition pressure from members saying that these bad actors need to be held accountable, the government is finally saying it is going to take a step in that direction and join this lawsuit. However, it still has not been willing to say it is going to reform the integrity regime so that McKinsey does not get contracts in the future. What sense does it make for the government to continue to pour out largesse on McKinsey, hiring it for contracts of dubious value and spending over $100 million of taxpayers' money in the process, but it will not answer the simple question of whether it thinks McKinsey is ethical?
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- May/10/23 6:36:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, respectfully, that was quite a rambling answer to a direct question.
The question is about McKinsey's involvement in fuelling the opioid crisis. This is not a conspiracy. McKinsey did not pay $600 million in compensation to victims of the opioid crisis because somebody was saying things about it on Reddit. McKinsey paid that massive amount of compensation because the facts were clear and its complicity was clear. Moreover, there have been multiple stories in The New York Times detailing the way in which McKinsey fuelled the opioid crisis.
While these stories were being written, Dominic Barton, who was managing partner of McKinsey, claimed he was unaware. He said that he only found out about what happened with McKinsey and Purdue after the fact. That just does not hold water.
A direct question I have for the parliamentary secretary is this: Can the government confirm, as was said to me in a written response to a petition, that it is suing McKinsey for its role in the opioid crisis? What is its response in terms of the relationship that is there?
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- May/10/23 6:27:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising tonight to follow up on a question I earlier asked the Prime Minister with respect to the Liberal-McKinsey scandal. In particular, at the time I was asking about the role McKinsey played in the opioid crisis and what the government is doing in response to that, recognizing that the government gave over $100 million in contracts to McKinsey, recognizing by now that the Treasury Board has acknowledged that all rules were not followed in the awarding of those contracts, recognizing that at the time this was going on McKinsey had a relationship with a company called Purdue Pharma.
McKinsey was led by Dominic Barton up until midpoint in the government's mandate. During that time and previous to that, under the leadership of Dominic Barton, McKinsey was working for Purdue Pharma, giving Purdue Pharma advice on how to supercharge opioid sales, something that drove the opioid crisis. Incredibly, McKinsey's advice to Purdue Pharma included things like paying bonuses to pharmacists in instances where there were overdoses and developing a system for circumventing traditional pharmacies in order to circumvent the checks that were in place in order to prevent people who struggle with substance abuse challenges from being able to access those kinds of opioids. McKinsey was advising Purdue Pharma on how to sell more opioids, how to circumvent checks in the system and, incredibly, giving advice on how to give bonuses to pharmacists in instances where there were overdoses.
McKinsey and Purdue Pharma have been the subject of much criticism here in Canada, as well as the United States and elsewhere. McKinsey has had to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation in the United States. In the United States, there are Democrats and Republicans in various jurisdictions suing McKinsey and Purdue for their role in the opioid crisis and using the money from that to support treatment and recovery. This is precisely the policy that has been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition, which is, as part of a suite of measures, to combat the horrific ongoing opioid crisis, to hold accountable those bad corporate actors that are responsible for it, to sue them directly federally as well as to join provincial class action lawsuits, to sue them for the full range of damages and to put those resources into treatment and recovery, recognizing that McKinsey was a critical player, and that is why it had to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation in the United States.
The contrast is quite stark because in the United States there are people across the political spectrum who have stood up to McKinsey and Purdue and others to try to hold them accountable. In Canada, the government gave McKinsey over $100 million in contracts. I find this striking.
More recently, it was revealed in a response to a petition I received that the government said it is actually going to now join British Columbia's litigation against McKinsey. I have asked various figures in the government if they are prepared to confirm that and I wonder if the parliamentary secretary is prepared to confirm that tonight or not. If this is the case, this is quite a stark shift. I think the government has to account for the fact that, on the one hand, it was giving massive levels of government procurement to McKinsey, not following the proper rules in the process, while McKinsey was fuelling the opioid crisis and, on the other hand, now it is effectively acknowledging McKinsey is complicit in the opioid by saying it is going to join B.C.'s class action lawsuit.
I want the government to clarify whether it is planning to sue McKinsey. Is it planning on following the policy recommendation that Conservatives have been putting forward for months? Will it try to hold McKinsey accountable for the full range of damages, not just joining this lawsuit but other damages as well? Why did it have such a close—
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- Apr/18/23 6:53:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, here are the facts. The government broke the rules in the awarding of contracts to McKinsey. It admitted it broke the rules. It put it in a Treasury Board press release that it put out on the Friday of President Biden's visit. It admitted it broke the rules, albeit in a way that was specifically designed to avoid public notice. That is why we need to have the ministers back to committee to question them about exactly why the rules were not followed.
We hear bluster from the member across the way, saying, “These opposition politicians, they're always criticizing us. They're always engaging in personal attacks. Why are those members of the opposition criticizing the government?” This is a case where his own government admitted it flagrantly disregarded the rules that were in place, so of course it is the job of the opposition to criticize the government in cases where it especially has admitted breaking the rules. Why—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/18/23 6:45:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, members will be familiar with the over $100 million in contracts the government gave to its friends at McKinsey. The government said, though, not to worry, as all the rules were followed. It just so happened, it said, that as it followed all the rules, those contracts ended up getting awarded to McKinsey.
We see massive increases in spending on the public service, as well as massive increases in spending on contracting out of public services. In other words, we have more public servants and we are contracting more work out of the public service at the same time. When Dominic Barton, a friend of the Prime Minister, was leading McKinsey, we started to see this increase, and the increase has continued. It is a significant increase in contracting out, specifically contracting out to McKinsey.
What was the government's response? It said those were independent decisions, the rules were followed and Dominic Barton is not really the Prime Minister's friend anyway. Actually, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have spoken previously about the significant close access they had to Dominic Barton and about that being a key factor in their decision to appoint him as ambassador to China. In their dealings with this shady company, they said all the rules were followed, until they said the rules were not followed. This is new.
Members might not have heard that, because they quietly released a press release on the day President Biden was here. Everyone was talking about President Biden's visit and they thought it was a great opportunity to release a press release quietly on a Friday in the middle of Biden's visit. They said they were actually misleading the public the whole time and that, actually, the Treasury Board rules were not followed. I will quote the press release. It says, “However, there are indications that certain administrative requirements and procedures were not consistently followed.”
In other words, in response to my question and various other questions, the government House leader had been saying that the rules were followed in the awarding of these contracts and that we can rest assured that more than $100 million was given in contracts to McKinsey in accordance with Treasury Board rules. Now the government has revealed that the rules were not followed.
We are left with this question: Why is it that the government gave over $100 million in contracts to its friends at McKinsey, a company that has been implicated in causing the opioid crisis and had to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation for causing the opioid crisis in the United States, a company that did a report for the Saudi government, which enabled it to identify and target dissidents who were active on social media, and a company that has been involved with corrupt officials all over the world and has worked closely with sanctioned entities in Russia and with state-owned and affiliated entities in China?.
Why did the government give over $100 million in contracts, and why did it break the rules in the awarding of these contracts in the process? Why were its clear administrative requirements and procedures not consistently followed?
Will the government apologize? Will it apologize for having misled the House for weeks about whether the Treasury Board rules were followed, and will it come clean about why it broke the rules in awarding these contracts to this company with a terrible global reputation?
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- Mar/21/23 6:58:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on the all-important question of whether the Prime Minister and Dominic Barton ever worked out together, I think this is a bit of an exercise in absurdity.
What we know, factually, is that Dominic Barton has basically told the committee, “This Prime Minister guy, we are not friends. We barely know each other. I did not recognize him in an elevator once.” The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have said precisely the opposite over and over again.
In fact, there are various clips I have shared, and others have shared, where the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have spoken very specifically about how accessible Dominic Barton is and about how they have a connection. In fact, to the issue of who has whose phone number, the Deputy Prime Minister said, at the time that Dominic Barton was appointed ambassador, that we need an ambassador who can call the Prime Minister at any time on the phone. This is a connection that Dominic Barton has with the Prime Minister that has been built up over time.
Who is telling the truth, the government or Dominic Barton? It is clear that there is a cushy relationship, that McKinsey has, through “pro bono” work, sought to integrate itself into government and use that integration to push its business forward. That is the problem. Over $100 million of contracts have come out of this close integration of relationships and it needs to be scrutinized.
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- Mar/21/23 6:50:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to the government's relationship with McKinsey in a follow-up to a question I had asked. This has been an important issue for me and an important issue for the opposition.
Why is it important? Well, there are a number of reasons. First, the government has spent over $100 million on contracts for McKinsey, work that public servants have told the media that, in many cases, could have been done inside the public service.
More broadly, we are seeing a significant increase in spending on outside consultants by the government at the same time as we are seeing growth in the public service. The government is spending more inside the public service, and it is spending more to contract out activities as well, so there is a basic fiscal probity question at play here, but there are also some other issues that I think are very important as we look at the government's relationship with McKinsey.
One is that Dominic Barton, the managing partner of McKinsey, was leading the Prime Minister's growth council, having special access through that growth council to ministers and the government at the same time that McKinsey was pitching services for sale to the government. We know from emails that a Mr. Pickersgill, who was working for McKinsey, was supplying analysts for the growth council at the same time as he was sending emails to the government requesting work. We have seen those emails, so, very clearly, there are questions of conflict of interest.
There are other issues of conflict of interest. The fact that the Minister of Defence, yesterday, at the operations committee, was asked if it is acceptable for McKinsey to do work for the Canadian Department of Defence at the same time as it is potentially working for other departments of defence for hostile actors around the world and learning things from our Department of Defence that it may be using in those other interactions.
The Minister of National Defence did not know, or was not willing or able to tell the committee, which other departments of defence around the world McKinsey was working for, but we were told by the deputy minister not to worry because the information and the issues that McKinsey are working on are not that secret. Really, they are just talking about operational structural details, which it is not getting access to national security. They are just operational aspects of the work of government and so forth.
On the other hand, the minister was unwilling to provide basic information about these contracts to the committee unredacted. What we heard from the Minister of National Defence and her department was effectively that the information is not so secret that we need to worry about what McKinsey may be learning and using in its engagements with other hostile powers, but at the same time, the information is so secret that it could not even be shared with members of a parliamentary committee, despite the order to produce that content.
A final issue I will raise tonight is the fact that McKinsey worked for Purdue Pharma and gave them advice specifically on how to supercharge opioid sales. That is not an issue of something happening beyond our borders. The opioid crisis has affected so many Canadians. I think that every family has, in some way, been touched by the opioid crisis.
McKinsey specifically advised Purdue Pharma on how to turbocharge its sales engine. That advice included, for instance, how to circumvent traditional pharmacies by operating mail-in pharmacies to circumvent the controls that were being put in place in traditional pharmacies. That advice included paying bonuses for overdoses that occurred. This was advice that McKinsey provided to Purdue Pharma at the same time that McKinsey was working for the Government of Canada, and at the same time that Dominic Barton was leading McKinsey and leading the Prime Minister's growth council.
Why is the government willing to do business with McKinsey? Why is it comfortable with the risks this poses in fundamental ethics, the opioid crisis issues, as well as the conflict of interest issues?
We have repeatedly raised the broader question of all the money that is being spent on these outside consultants. The government's relation with McKinsey stinks, and it needs to be addressed.
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- Feb/14/23 3:01:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, hiring more people at McKinsey is not a jobs plan.
The House leader should listen to his Prime Minister because the Prime Minister said of Dominic Barton, “we recruited him”. Now, Dominic Barton admitted in testimony that Andrew Pickersgill, the head of McKinsey's Canadian operations, supplied analysts to the Prime Minister's growth council. McKinsey then used that access to set up sales meetings. The Prime Minister recruited McKinsey's leaders and gave them privileged access to government that allowed them to get over $100 million in contracts.
Will the House leader stop this charade and admit what the Prime Minister has already admitted, which is that it was these Liberal politicians who brought in McKinsey?
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- Feb/14/23 3:00:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, government services are broken. Liberals have significantly grown the size of the public service while still giving billions of dollars to outside consultants, yet nothing seems to work.
The Prime Minister has admitted that he personally recruited Dominic Barton and provided him with preferential access, access that his company, McKinsey, used to do over $100 million in business with the government.
How can the Liberals explain the fact that the public service is larger, and the services that Canadians receive are declining, yet Liberals are still able to find so much money for their well-connected friends?
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- Feb/13/23 2:56:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, Canadians are struggling, but their Liberal friends at McKinsey have never had it so good.
McKinsey worked for ICE in the United States, where it advised the Trump administration to cut food and medical supplies for immigrant detainees. These are the same people that the Liberals then turned to for advice on immigration, even when the public service said that it could do the work itself.
Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for bringing McKinsey into our immigration system, or will he step aside so we can fix what he broke?
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- Feb/9/23 3:02:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister across the way would have us believe that this gross largesse for McKinsey is somehow about helping families. Let me assure the member opposite that there will be austerity for McKinsey when the Conservatives take office, and there will be support available for Canadians.
Yesterday, the President of the Treasury Board could not answer my question about whether or not McKinsey is an ethical company. This should not be a difficult question given the record. Can any minister in the government answer this simple question: Does the government believe that McKinsey is an ethical company, yes or no?
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- Feb/7/23 6:11:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to speak more about the over $100 million in contracts that the government gave to McKinsey & Company. However, my question tonight is specifically on behalf of the families that have been devastated as a result of the opioid crisis and is about the role McKinsey played.
The member wants us to believe that it is a tinfoil hat conspiracy to suggest that McKinsey played a role in fuelling the opioid crisis. McKinsey had to pay a settlement of over half a billion dollars because of its role in supercharging the opioid crisis. The member surely cannot be so fundamentally ignorant about the history of that crisis or about the massive settlement the company has had to pay in the United States to spread that nonsense here in the House of Commons.
The reality is that McKinsey provided detailed advice to Purdue Pharma on how to supercharge the opioid crisis. It did so at the same time that Dominic Barton, who was leading McKinsey, was advising the Prime Minister's growth council.
This is a very simple question that the Liberals have refused to answer, so I will ask it again. Were there conversations about opioid policy between the Government of Canada through the Prime Minister and those working at McKinsey, yes or no?
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- Feb/7/23 6:03:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am speaking tonight about the opioid crisis and the organizations responsible for causing the opioid crisis.
It is now a matter of public record that Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company, developed oxycontin, mislabelled it, misbranded it and actively promoted it in such a way that fuelled and, I think, in many respects, caused the opioid crisis that has killed so many people and devastated so many families here in Canada and around the world. In response to these actions by Purdue Pharma there have been various lawsuits, especially in the United States, that have sought to hold Purdue accountable.
Notably, in the timeline of Purdue's actions and subsequent measures to hold it accountable, Purdue was found guilty of criminal misbranding their product in a way that downplayed risks and contributed to the opioid crisis. It was found guilty in 2007.
The company, McKinsey & Company, that we have been speaking about in this House, did work for Purdue Pharma for a period of about 15 years and that spanned from 2004 until about 2019. In other words, most of the work done by McKinsey & Company for Purdue Pharma happened after Purdue had already been found guilty of criminal misbranding.
When McKinsey was brought on, part of its mandate was to figure out how to address, in the face of escalating criticism over Purdue's actions, concerns about the tapering off of opioid sales. McKinsey approached this is in a totally amoral way, coming back with recommendations that showed no regard for those suffering from addiction, no regard for the impact on communities and families, but instead looked exclusively at how to increase, or in their words, turbocharge, the sale of opioids.
Some of the recommendations that McKinsey brought to Purdue Pharma on how to do that are truly horrifying in their disregard for human life and well-being. McKinsey had proposed, for example, that bonuses could be paid out to pharmacists in instances where there were overdoses. McKinsey also proposed that, in order to get around checks that were being put in place in traditional pharmacies to try to control over-prescription and address addiction issues, Purdue could try to circumvent those controls by having a mail-in system whereby people could access opioids through the mail. Those were the kinds of proposals that McKinsey was bringing to Purdue Pharma.
For about two-thirds of that 15-year period that McKinsey was working for Purdue Pharma, Dominic Barton was the managing director. He claimed at committee to have absolutely no knowledge of what was going on during this time. The fact of the matter is that he was the managing director of this company that for 15 years was doing work for Purdue Pharma, advising them on how to turbocharge opioid sales, showing no concern, no regard whatsoever for the impact that this was having on human life and on families and communities throughout North America and around the world.
As a result of the advice provided by McKinsey, McKinsey had to pay a settlement in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States. Meanwhile, the government has a clear, close relationship with McKinsey and Dominic Barton.
I asked the government this question that I would like to ask again tonight. Did the Prime Minister or members of his cabinet ever discuss opioid policy with Dominic Barton or the senior leadership of McKinsey?
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