Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The statements that I'm about to make are my observations of the first hour I was here. I left for the second hour to attend one of our colleague's events, which we do jointly. It was with Matt Jeneroux for Father's Day on the Hill. By the way, happy Father's Day to everyone who's a father. Why am I saying that? I'm giving a caveat that I'm speaking about what I heard in the first hour.
As I left, I asked the Auditor General if she had seen this over the last 12 years of her study, over the span of the 12 years. It looks like the process inconsistencies or the process not being followed was true for 12 years in a very consistent way. Some of that 12 years were Conservative and some of them were Liberal. I don't think it has anything to do with whether it started in 2012, because the study started in 2012. If we had started in 2010, we would probably have seen that.
Then we looked at the departments, agencies and also Crown corporations. We saw that, despite the fact that Crown corporation are arm's-length organizations with two different processes and two different systems, the same inconsistency existed.
Then we asked what her conclusion was. One of the conclusions she had was that this is a very complicated process. It's lengthy and it's cumbersome. Also, despite the fact that the delegation of authority had been assigned to the deputy minister, they assign at the lower level and probably the lower level were not trained, especially when you look at the timing of when these contracts were being awarded.
Also, I recall there were instances that the department or the minister of the Crown corporation was waiting for this master service level agreement, which I believe gives them the flexibility to be able to get around some of these complexities.
The next logical question, had I been in the committee and I had a round, would have been that we saw the peak in 2021 and 2022, so what was happening during that time and why do we see an increasing trajectory of expenditure? If you look at it, and I'm not sure whether some of my colleagues pointed it out or not, this government inherited a set of services and a set of back-end technologies, etc., that really needed attention. It had a very progressive and aggressive agenda. For us to be able to do that, we had to make sure about what are the best practices around the world. McKinsey is one of those organizations. It's not the only organization, but one of those organizations.
When you look at the amount of money that's been spent.... And by no means am I trying to defend any management consulting or McKinsey. I just want to be very clear on that. When you look over the span of the $200 million, the amount of money that we spent on McKinsey was about 0.27% of the total money that was spent on all external management consulting.
That's how I perceived what the Auditor General was saying—and I think she alluded to that as well—but this is not really about McKinsey and this is not really about favouritism, etc. It was a combination of processes not being followed, processes being too complicated and people probably.... If you look at some of those performance requirements—and I'm reaching really out there—if your performance and your bonuses depend on getting something done, and then you are handcuffed with a process that is lengthy and complicated, you're going to find creative ways to be able to get your job done.
The whole concept of a master service level agreement could be one of those ways that you get creative around getting services. It could be that you use a master service level agreement, which is an umbrella, and then give people, the decision-makers, that flexibility to be able to put some of the services that they require under that.
Is that really what the master service agreement is designed for? I don't know. That's where we should be focusing.
Why am I building on that? Why am I referring to all of that? It's because I don't think the focus should be on McKinsey. McKinsey was about 0.27%. The focus should be on the processes that are very complicated, the training of individuals and understanding the delegation of authority, then putting in the measures, as the Auditor General suggested, to monitor that. That's where we should be focusing. If the focus on so-called McKinsey is going in that direction....
By the way, we're doing a red tape reduction study. Why can't this go into the red tape reduction study? We could say, “Hey, let's look at the master service agreement. Have there been any cases where the master service agreement has been used as a way to expedite the processing? Why don't we have expedited processing? Why do we have 600 small businesses such as GC Strategies that have somehow mastered the cumbersome process? Someone in a small start-up—one individual firm—is trying to get into developing and helping the government. It has to go to someone like GC Strategies.” Those are the ones you should focus on.
I had an opportunity to quickly look at the list of suggested...that we have. Dominic Barton has already come and gone. He's been here. He made his statement. He was gone from Canada Infrastructure Bank.
By the way, Canada Infrastructure Bank had $1.7 million. I understand if you want to have in, say, Trans Mountain Corporation with $32 million. However, bringing in McKinsey, or bringing in Canada Infrastructure Bank for a $1.7-million contract.... I don't know.
The current global McKinsey partner was here. I specifically asked him. I said, “Why, all of a sudden, is there an interest in the Government of Canada?” He said, “Well, we decided, as part of our strategy, to increase our footprint in Canada.” If you look at their footprint compared with all others, it's not very much.
Okay. Then there is Boyan, the former engagement manager of McKinsey and former director of policy for the Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada. Procurement was one of the departments. We don't need to bring this individual in. President of Treasury Board...estimated date. President of Public Services...estimated date. Department of National Defence and officials.... I mean, what are they going to tell us? They're going to say, “Yeah, well, you know what? We needed to get the job done. We were asked to follow the procedures. We found that the master service agreement was probably the best.”
It's interesting that I didn't see in here the one organization that actually followed the process. I didn't see the only one out of 10 departments. The were very complimentary. I didn't see their name in here. Probably, if you're going to ask anybody to come here, it should be them. The Ministry of Natural Resources followed almost all of the procedures. Well, out of the five, they did four. Why aren't we inviting them? It's because they're going to say, “Well, we followed the procedure.” There was no influence. The issue is that these departments didn't follow the procedure. Why not? It's not that they want to break the rules. It's because the procedure is probably, as the Auditor General said, very complicated. When it's complicated, you try to get creative. If there are opportunities within the framework being presented to you to be creative in order to get your job done, you'll do it.
We had the Public Sector Pension Investment Board. We asked them for documents. Are you going to invite them? They're not going to come and talk about any of these things because they're going to say it's national security.
Trans Mountain Corporation and Canada Infrastructure Bank.... I already talked about those.
As I said, why not ask the Ministry of Natural Resources, which could come here and say, “You know what? We understand this is the procedure. We understand there is a delegation of authority. This is how we document it, etc.” Then we could say, “Well, why wasn't this followed in the others?”
This is what the Auditor General was trying to figure out as well, and this is the responsibility of the ministries, the deputy ministers and the officials.
I think I've made the point of what the focus of the study should be. It's on the process. It's on why it's not being followed, why some tools are being used as a way to get around the complexity and give them the flexibility to be able to do the job they do, and that's where we should focus.
Look, we have a study around red tape reduction. Probably this should be part of that as well.
On that note, Mr. Chair, I move to suspend the meeting.
