Government Operations Committee on Feb. 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that is your time, Mrs. Block. Perhaps you can follow up on the next round.

We have Mr. Housefather for five minutes.

Colleagues, we started a couple of minutes late, but we've gone through very fast, so we're going to have a tiny bit of time left over. After Mr. Housefather, we'll do three minutes for the Conservatives, back to three minutes for the Liberals, one minute for the Bloc and one minute for Mr. Johns to bat cleanup.

Thanks.

Go ahead, Mr. Housefather, please, for five minutes.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Barton, thank you for your patience today. Do you know what a corporate witness is?

[Dominic Barton]

No.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

It would be a witness in a litigation who testifies on behalf of the corporation, and they would be extensively prepared by the corporation's general counsel and outside counsel to come testify on behalf of the corporation. Are you a corporate witness here today?

[Dominic Barton]

I am not. I'm a private citizen.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

You're an individual who no longer is related to this company, who no longer has shares in the company, who no longer works for the company, who doesn't have access to the records of the company, who hasn't been prepared by employees of the company to go back and look at all the different things that might come up. Is that correct?

[Dominic Barton]

That's right.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

You're relying simply on your unaided memory of things that happened years ago.

[Dominic Barton]

Yes.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I think—just to diagnose what's happened—the goal for some was to bring you here and to find out that you were a close personal friend of the Prime Minister and that the two of you had talked about giving contracts from the Government of Canada to McKinsey. When that didn't pan out, then we started turning to attacking you and attacking McKinsey.

Now, it might be that McKinsey does a lot of things that are inappropriate. That's neither here nor there; we'll get to it with the actual witnesses from McKinsey. For example, one of the witnesses I'd like to hear from is the chief compliance officer of McKinsey. Would you agree that would be an appropriate person—

[Dominic Barton]

Yes, absolutely.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

—who would talk to us about whether McKinsey was or was not respecting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other acts across the world that would be of interest to this committee?

[Dominic Barton]

Including maybe the good question asked about the FDA and working with Purdue—ask them.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Exactly. They would also be able to tell us what corrective actions the company has taken in order to prevent that from happening again. They would be the right person. Is that correct?

[Dominic Barton]

Absolutely.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

It's not you?

[Dominic Barton]

No.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Okay.

With respect to a lot of the questions you've been asked, I want to ask, having come from the corporate world myself and having been the general counsel and chief administrative officer of a company that wasn't anywhere near as large as McKinsey—we were probably about one-tenth to one-fifteenth the size—how many overall contracts and how many overall clients did McKinsey have in a $10-billion company?

[Dominic Barton]

I don't think.... Just take the $10 billion and divide.... I mean, it's tens of thousands.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

It would be 10,000 customers.

[Dominic Barton]

Yes, it'd be a minimum of 10,000. I mean, there are 3,000 client engagements going on every day.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Could anybody in the company, no matter who, be aware of all of these different clients and what was happening?

[Dominic Barton]

No. In fact, the way it's organized is that there are practices, as I mentioned before; there are sectors. The pharma practice is accountable and responsible for what it's doing. The banking practice.... No one in the pharma practice knows what's going on in the banking practice; they're not interested. There are sectors that are set up. There are functions. That's how a partnership works. That's where, again, the general counsel, the protocols that are in place to make sure people are following that, is very important.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That would normally fall under the compliance officer and the general counsel, not directly under the managing partner.

[Dominic Barton]

That's right.