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Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees

Stephanie Kusie

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
  • Conservative
  • Calgary Midnapore
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 66%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $141,419.87

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 154 - Feb/6/23
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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Context: House Hansard - 154 - Feb/6/23
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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