House committee meeting to vote on launching study into McKinsey contracts

The House of Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee is set to meet today to discuss launching a study into the federal government’s contracts with the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.

This comes after reports emerged there was a surge in McKinsey’s federal contract earnings under the Liberals compared to under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

This week, the government confirmed that since 2015, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) has awarded McKinsey 23 contracts for a total of $101.4 million, up from the $2.2 million spent under Harper.

Today’s meeting was requested by opposition committee members, with the Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, and New Democrats all saying they want to see the committee study McKinsey’s federal government contracts.

Following calls from the opposition to study McKinsey’s relationship with the federal government — plus questions about the consulting company’s influence on government policies, and criticisms the government is wasting federal funds by contracting out what could be accomplished by the public service — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last week he’s asked two ministers to “look into” the contracts.

According to a statement from Procurement Minister Helena Jaczek’s office, of the contracts granted by the Liberals, three of them, valued at $55.8 million, were “awarded through open, competitive solicitations,” versus 18 contracts, valued at $45.6 million, were “call-ups against a National Master Standing Offer designed to provide access to proprietary benchmarking methodologies offered by the private sector.”

“These services consist of functional tools, databases, and expert support to measure their performance against similar Canadian and international organizations in order to identify deficiencies and opportunities for improvement,” the statement reads. “Such services may be used to support complex programs, including digital modernization and other large transformation initiatives.”

The statement adds PSPC is committed to “open, fair, and transparent procurement process” as the federal government’s main purchasing agent.

McKinsey said in a statement last week the company follows procurement laws and its work with the Canadian government is “entirely non-partisan in nature and focuses on core management topics, such as digitization and operations improvement.”

The statement added the company “does not make policy recommendations” on any topic, and that it “welcomes” the opportunity to work with committee on this issue.

If the committee votes to launch this study, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said last week he hopes such a probe would seek all written records related to the consulting firm, including emails and text messages.

“It’s time for Canadians to get answers,” Poilievre said at the time. “We need to know what this money was for, what influence McKinsey has had in our government, and it is time for Canadian taxpayers to have answers to these questions.”

NDP MP and ethics critic Matthew Green said in a statement on Tuesday that his party will “dig for answers” at the committee meeting, especially after the PSPC revealed it had paid McKinsey much more than it was originally reported it had granted them.

“We now know that the Trudeau government has handed McKinsey so much public money, it’s equivalent to turning McKinsey into Government of Canada ministry,” Green said.