I'm sure you're aware that three out of 23 contracts awarded to McKinsey were subject to the competitive process usually required for such contracts. The remaining 20 contracts were sole-sourced.
For at least 18 of those, a spokesperson for PSPC said that this was necessary, because it was the only way the government could have access to a type of benchmarking methodology that McKinsey has exclusive rights to. PSPC said, “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.”
It sounds like a whole lot of words just to say “comparative analysis” to me. Can you maybe explain why this benchmarking methodology is so unique, and why it has the government convinced with absolute certainty—without any attempt to invite competition—that no other company could possibly provide a similar service?