- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Hamilton Centre
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,250.15
- Government Page
- Feb/6/23 6:04:13 p.m.
- Watch
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?
74 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:50:21 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, in my remarks, I referenced the cuts under Harper to our public sector. He cut our public sector by 8% up until 2014.
In the spirit of some fairness, I will throw the hon. member a bone. Will he respond to his government's plans to restore capacity within our public sector by paying our public sector's market rate, or will he stand by his defence for contracting out so we continue to pay private sector consultants three times that rate?
84 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:45:02 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the hon. parliamentary secretary spends quite an amount of time in the House on all debates but, particular to this one, I just have one question for him. It is a simple one. He just spoke at length. Did McKinsey prepare his speech today?
49 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:28:00 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for standing up to exemplify what is called the “ratchet effect”, wherein Liberal ideology takes Conservative cuts and amplifies them and always holds them in place. This is the beautiful symbiotic relationship of having Coke and Pepsi in this House, where they will always rail against Conservatives for making cuts to the public sector, for austerity and for everything else. However, when it comes time for them to govern, they hold firm on the neo-liberal ideologies of austerity and cuts to public sector services.
I thank him for exemplifying that and let him rise on another false point of order.
110 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:25:06 p.m.
- Watch
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.
266 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:21:44 p.m.
- Watch
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.
180 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:19:44 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, this does not happen often, so let the Hansard reflect that I rise to agree with the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader on one point. This needs to be expanded. I will also go on the record to agree with the comments that have been made by the opposition sides: I do not necessarily have faith that the government is equipped to run an investigation that is fulsome enough to provide the answers that Canadians need.
This is why it is important to acknowledge that, in this House, we cannot direct the Auditor General. Let us be clear that their role is independent, and we can ask them to undertake an audit. That audit needs to happen, and it needs to be expanded to include the five other pigs at the trough.
137 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:14:34 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would concur: That was not a point of order. However, it is good to see the hon. member carrying the extra weight for the Prime Minister who ran on a platform of sunny ways and of ending precisely what his government well outpaced Harper on.
Let us be very clear: The Prime Minister did a job here when he ballooned these payouts from $99 million, or actually in Harper's last year, $75 million, to $418 million in 2021. He would make Harper blush with the work he has done lining the pockets of the ultrawealthy, knowing their record.
Let us be clear: Either the Prime Minister and this cabinet knew who they were dealing with, or they did not. If they knew about McKinsey's atrocious record and procured it anyway, shame on them. If they did not know, it is absolute incompetence. I have a hard time believing the Liberals did not know because not only did they get these contracts under Dominic Barton, but they also made him an ambassador. With regard to national security, where is Dominic Barton now? The last time I checked, he was working with the former chief of staff of the Prime Minister in Eurasia Group. There are incestuous relationships on the Hill within the consultant class and partisan politics, and they need to end. Canadians deserve answers on more than just about McKinsey.
Will my Conservative colleagues in this House have the courage to expand the scope of this to include the other big five pigs at the trough or not? That is the question here today. In doing so, hopefully, we can finally get to the bottom of this. Hopefully, we can find a way to embed ethics into procurement. Hopefully, we can address the conflict of interest, which I believe is real when they have consultants who work for both the purchaser and the vendor. This is particularly true when it comes to the military and given the global uncertainty and obscene profiteering of war that we are seeing right now.
We spend a lot of time in this House talking about the suffering of victims, and quite rightly so. However, I do not think anybody spends enough time talking about the absolute profiteering of war. When people go to war, it is not the rich who go. Working-class people, not private-school kids, are the ones who go to the front lines to die. The people on Bay Street and the ultrawealthy on Wall Street and the likes are the ones who make money, no matter who dies, by funding both sides.
I do not know that I need the other five minutes to recapitulate the points I have already made. I appreciate having 20 minutes to go in on this very important topic. I am interested in hearing what the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has to say about agreements and contracts from the last 10 years. Maybe the Liberals see an opportunity to expand the scope of this to include the other five pigs at the trough so we can get a real sense of just who is making money, who is making the decisions around this country and who is benefiting on the backs of good public sector jobs and taxpayers.
I will concede the rest of my time.
560 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/6/23 5:01:27 p.m.
- Watch
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—
1484 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jan/31/23 2:49:59 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is not just the Conservatives who have questions. The New Democrats have questions too, and it is not just about McKinsey. While the Liberals have awarded $160 million to McKinsey with this 100-year deal, companies such as McKinsey and Deloitte, which has ten times the amount of money, along with KPMG, are raking in billions of taxpayer dollars without accountability or transparency.
Canadians deserve to know exactly who is making decisions for the government, how much they are getting paid and to whom in the Liberal government they are connected. Will the government commit to extending the review to include all of its outsourcing contracts?
109 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/29/22 2:51:14 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, while Telus has celebrated its highest ever second-quarter profits, shareholders are getting richer at the expense of Canadian workers by outsourcing 11,000 of its jobs overseas, and this is grotesque. Canadian workers are fed up. USW Local 1944 has reached a 97% strike mandate, and the current government is giving Telus millions of dollars in federal procurement contracts.
Will the current Liberal government stand up for workers by ending lucrative contracts with companies like Telus that use taxpayer dollars to ship our Canadian jobs overseas?
89 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 11:55:17 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the member is doing a fantastic job on government operations, looking for accountability and holding the government accountable.
What reflections does the member have on the importance of having a whistle-blower regime? With that, when public sector employees find waste or any kind of malfeasance, they would have the ability to step forward and be protected so that they would not have reprisals in their workplace.
69 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 11:40:00 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has a long history in civic leadership, including in procurement.
I am wondering what reflections the member might offer on the importance of restoring public accountability and trust with the government through having a procurement process that brings to light all the different steps along the way, including when a project such as this goes from $80,000 to $54 million. At what point should there be off-ramps and at what point should the red flags have been raised for the government as this project went out of control?
102 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 11:08:51 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Trois-Rivières, as he always provides a really high level of nuance in these very important discussions.
The hon. member referenced the need for transparency and trust. Having worked alongside him at the ethics committee, I know he will likely have a comprehensive answer to this.
At the heart of this, we have staffers, people within the public sector, who sometimes witness malfeasance or things that might be in conflict with the law. What suggestions does the hon. member have for enhancing whistle-blowing to allow public sector workers who see government malfeasance to step forward with adequate protections and supports to ensure that Canadians have access to information on what is happening in the back rooms of government?
129 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/1/22 10:20:15 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, despite the 2006 legislation brought forward by the now Conservative leader that he claimed would protect whistle-blowers, Canada's whistle-blower regime has been cited as being among the worst in the world.
Can the member explain why the Conservative government was not able to adequately protect whistle-blowers who raised questions about initiatives like ArriveCAN?
59 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/23/21 5:53:18 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to be here representing my constituents of Hamilton Centre who have imbued me with this very serious duty of coming to the House of Commons to exercise our parliamentary privileges: ones that have been outlined by the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil as perhaps being in question or under attack. A lot has been said on many of these points of privilege here today.
I want to congratulate you on your preferment, and I would share that when we elected you yesterday, Mr. Speaker, we did so knowing that we were trying to set a direction for the course of this 44th Parliament that would respect the rights and privileges of every member present in the House.
In trying to learn more about these privileges, I have turned to the jurisprudence, much in the same way my colleagues have, referencing Derek Lee's The Power of Parliamentary Houses to Send for Persons, Papers and Records: A Sourcebook on the Law of Precedent of Parliamentary Subpoena Powers for Canadian and other Houses. I am sure it is on the Speaker's shelf, along with a long list of other jurisprudence that goes back to the 1600s and protects our rights and assures that in this Westminster parliamentary system, we have a balance of power on both sides of the House.
I rise as a New Democrat and think this is an important consideration for your priority, Mr. Speaker, when setting the tone for this 44th Parliament because the Liberal government did have a penchant for circumventing the rules and, in many cases, violating the parliamentary privileges of members of the House of Commons. That has been outlined seven times in this particular point of privilege, three times previously in other points, and multiple times in the last session of Parliament, when you had to intervene in legal proceedings, which was unprecedented.
With this particular case, as committees are being struck it is going to be especially important for you, Mr. Speaker, to provide a clear ruling to show the government and the opposition how seriously we are going to take the jurisprudence on our parliamentary privilege. Because we had a government that chose to run out the clock on the last session, to prorogue it and use procedures to frustrate the basic application of our parliamentary privileges, I believe we would be better off if this was prioritized in a ruling brought forward that clearly defends, with proper evidence, the right for us to use our subpoenas, and to send for documents and records as has been accorded through the historical practices and usages of the House.
Without getting into details or arguing the points and principles of this particular case, I would suggest that this case ought to be used as a precedent for future potential circumventions of our privilege.
I will state in closing that a precedent will be set either way, because a non-decision in this case is also a precedent. It will actually reward, in some instances, the government side's behaviour of circumventing what is, I think, a very clear and well-laid-out long-standing tradition of respecting our parliamentary privileges.
With that, I rise as a member of the New Democratic Party in support of the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil. I ask that you put express priority particularly on the matter of principle and privilege that has been raised today, because it will send a message to the government about what it is able to get away with in the months to come. I look forward to the Speaker's very learned decision on the matter.
615 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
