Government Operations Committee on Feb. 8th, 2023

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

President, as I'm sure you're well aware, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada received a $24.8-million contract to manage and execute the IRCC service transformation strategy. This contract concluded in December 2021, yet in January 2023 we still have a backlog of 1.2 million immigration applications.

How do you explain that Treasury Board keeps getting bad value for money, and we're getting outcomes such as this based upon such a significant investment to McKinsey & Company? How can you justify the terrible outcomes that your organization is receiving for this massive amount of money?

[Mona Fortier]

First, I want to come back to the fact that the department identified needs to continue the work on the immigration—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

You released the money.

[Mona Fortier]

There is a policy on the management of procurement. The officials identified the needs to make sure that they could deliver on the ambitious agenda that there is for immigration. Therefore, the department went through the procurement process. That's the requirement definition that I identified. Then they did the planning and the tendering. Evaluation and contract management is being done by the department.

I would encourage you to ask that question of Minister Fraser and his department on the delivery of the mandate.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I appreciate that.

I would also certainly be interested in asking Minister Fraser what he thought about the outburst that we saw in the House of Commons earlier today from that distraught individual who's clearly beside himself about his family in Afghanistan as a result of the failure of your government.

President, the work being provided by McKinsey for federal departments has been described as “generic”, “vapid” and “not realistic” by sources reported in the media.

What role has your organization played in ensuring that these contracts add value to the public service?

[Mona Fortier]

I might ask my official to complement the answer I'll give.

We do have a very rigorous procurement process. The policy and directive that Treasury Board determines gives the departments the opportunity to go through that process. Therefore, we have a strong directive. We will, of course, with the review, see if there's a way to strengthen it.

I'll ask my official if he wants to add anything to complement my answer.

[Roch Huppé]

Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, we have a decentralized model, and there is different accountabilities.

The business owners, the owners of the contracts, have the accountability to manage the contracts, to make sure that the services they are receiving are actually in line with and of the quality that is outlined in the contracts. For example, before any payment could go out, the responsible manager for the contract needs to validate that information, and the financial officers releasing the money in those departments have controls in place to ensure that what we call “section 34” being done by the manager is actually being done with due diligence.

There are processes to validate that. If there are performance issues, they need to be documented. We have processes to deal with that, because we run into situations where there will be performance issues with some vendors. There are also processes that are utilized to address these performance issues.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I do recall section 34 and signing for that in my time in the public service. You are taking me back here.

President, the contract with McKinsey to transform IRCC cost taxpayers over $27,000 per day.

In your opinion, how is this work more affordable than expending the capacity of the public service to do this work?

[Mona Fortier]

I would ask that you send that question to the officials from the department who contracted McKinsey to do the work. I understand there are many public servants working in the department. It complements the work they need to do to deliver the programs and services. It would be best to ask the department as it contracted with McKinsey.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

However, it's up to the Treasury Board to determine when outside consulting services are used, so how have you been ensuring that none of the over $100 million awarded to McKinsey could not have been conducted internally?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Please give a very brief answer.

[Mona Fortier]

Again, there's a procurement process, and each department has a threshold. There's a threshold that is identified for them to work with. In this case, IRCC and the officials went through that procurement process.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Bains, we'll go over to you, please, for five minutes.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister and your staff, for joining us today.

When it comes to consulting contracts, what measures are in place to prevent a conflict of interest?

[Mona Fortier]

Thank you. It's nice to see you online.

As you probably know, and we've shared a couple of times already, there are multiple layers of policies and controls in place to really ensure that conflicts of interest do not occur within the public service. It ranges from the values and ethics code to the directive on conflict of interest.

As you know, ministers, parliamentary secretaries, political staff and other reporting public office holders, are governed under the Conflict of Interest Act to ensure that conflicts do not occur in procurement or other policy-making areas. Therefore, this is how we have those measures in place.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Do you have reason to believe, from a procurement process perspective, that anything was done incorrectly by awarding those contracts?

[Mona Fortier]

We currently have no reason to believe anything was done incorrectly by the awarding of these contracts from the perspective of our current procurement processes, which I've shared with you this afternoon. They are rigorously followed by public servants. Minister Jaczek and I are currently conducting a review to ensure that all policies are followed adequately and what, if any, changes need to be made to strengthen the procurement framework.

I welcome the committee to share its recommendations, so we can continue to strengthen that framework.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay.

With respect to McKinsey, when the government contracts with McKinsey, what measures are in place to ensure that government information is not shared with other organizations that contract with McKinsey?

[Mona Fortier]

I will ask the official to answer your question specifically.

Roch.

[Roch Huppé]

Basically, the information the suppliers have access to is based on a need to know, and there are usually clauses in the contract that define the use of the information that would be permitted. Again, that information is protected. There's also a different set of rules under the Access to Information Act that would come into play.

There are mechanisms that are used to ensure that the information is protected.

[Catherine Luelo]

I would just add comments to complement Roch's answer.

We do complete privacy impact assessments for programs that occur within government. That is an overarching.... Anybody who has their hands or fingers on a specific program would be part of that review. That is typically done at the front end of a program.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay.

Just to stay with the secretariat officials here, who defines the bid requirements for proposals that are published by the government?

[Roch Huppé]

The business owner will define the requirements that are needed. When they decide they need external assistance for the reasons that they do, the managers themselves will decide exactly what they're looking for from a service. They will define the actual bid requirements, usually.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Then what safeguards are in place to ensure that these requirements are created in a fair, open and transparent fashion?