Government Operations Committee on Feb. 15th, 2023

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

So you're confirming that McKinsey & Company weren't involved whatsoever in the development and strategic analysis of the federal government's immigration targets.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I am not aware of any involvement McKinsey may have had in informing the immigration levels plan. I have not reviewed anything they have produced as part of my exercise in developing the immigration levels plan.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

If we were to poke around in the desk drawers at IRCC, could we find a report you may not have seen yet?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Please give a very brief answer.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I feel I've been fairly clear. If my deputy minister wants to take a kick at the can, I'd be happy for her to give a summary of whatever other work she may be aware of.

[Christiane Fox, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, I can confirm that we have no reports indicating that McKinsey worked in any capacity on the three-year immigration plan, which covers 2022, 2023 and 2024.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry. That was past our time.

Mr. Kusmierczyk may give you an opportunity to expand on your response.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister.

My Conservative colleague again referenced Mr. Dominic Barton, almost as if on cue.

I'd like to read, into the record, an op-ed piece that appeared in the Toronto Star this afternoon, which was penned by the Honourable John Reynolds. He is a former Conservative MP and a former Conservative leader. He is assessing the performance of my colleagues around the table, when it comes to this issue. He writes:

The attacks levied against [Mr. Barton] by the Conservative party I once led are baseless. Barton is not friends with Trudeau. He did not leverage a non-existent friendship for economic benefit to himself or McKinsey. In fact, in the roles noted above, he accepted far less remuneration than he might otherwise have to help our country and our government.

He continues on:

These repeated accusations are not only disingenuous but speak to a more worrisome attack—an attack on infusing more talent into our government and the public sector. If this is the treatment that high-profile business leaders can expect after lending their talents to the public sector, most will simply take a pass. And it's a shame.

I'll continue here, as well:

...the Conservative Party of Canada needs to ditch the cheap politics and bring forward its own ideas about how to improve our country. Until its MPs can take these steps, I question that they will be taken seriously enough by Canadians.... And if Canadians do give them a mandate to govern, who will want to help them?

Minister, you mentioned a very serious subject: the challenge of labour shortages in this country. Can you please speak to that challenge, the urgency of it and why it's an “all hands on deck” approach in terms of the necessity for Canadians to meet that challenge?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

The best immigration policy will be informed by the economic context in which we're currently living. In the jobs report that came out recently, 150,000 jobs were added to the Canadian economy in January. We're now dealing with 126% of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic. These have now been recovered. GDP is well in advance of prepandemic levels. The rate of unemployment is near the all-time low in Canada's recorded history.

At the same time, there are more than 800,000 jobs vacant in the Canadian economy. We need to be investing in training to have the domestic workforce grow. We can't meet the short-term needs of the labour force or the long-term skills gap without recruiting workers from other parts of the world.

We are also dealing with a demographic situation that should alarm all of us. Fifty years ago, there were seven workers for every retiree. There are closer to three today. In my part of the country, it's closer to two. If we don't welcome working-age families into our communities, the conversation we're going to have, a generation from now, won't be about labour shortages. It will be about whether we can afford schools and hospitals. This is a reality I'm dealing with in my own community, as a result of depopulation a few years ago. Thankfully, that trend has reversed and restored some vitality to the community I call home.

We need to continue to increase immigration levels and expand our temporary programs if we're going to meet the needs of the economy and serve the interests of Canadians.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

You've made it clear that the contracts are about service delivery. They're not about policy development.

Can you speak to how companies like McKinsey, Deloitte or other external consultants bring value in terms of the transformation we're trying to undergo to bring more workers to this country? How do they help?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This is really important. There is the potential for governments to outsource the work of the public service where they don't need to. That's not what this is, in my view. The contracts that have been issued in this specific instance were designed to help us implement a new digital approach to processing applications to expand the capacity of the department, but also to help the department grow its capacity so it could implement the system in the long term on the back end of its design.

We're starting to see new features already roll out, like the digital application process for citizenship and now permanent residency. Case trackers are coming where people can get an update on the status of their case for certain immigration streams on their phones rather than having to call IRCC. We've digitized so many records during the pandemic as a result of the centre we've opened in Cape Breton to help bring paper-based applications into the system. This will eventually allow us, in an office that is having a slow day, to pick up the slack and process files that are somewhere else in the global network.

This is common-sense stuff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Minister.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This is the path forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Garon you have two and half minutes please.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'd first like to rise on a point of order.

The interpreters were unable to hear the answer to my previous question, so we didn't get the answer.

Before starting my turn to speak, would you allow me to ask my question again and to hear the minister's answer, in full respect of official languages?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sure everyone is in agreement with that.

Go ahead.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I'll be quick.

At McKinsey, it's common practice not to use their own logo on the documents they produce for their clients. The firm uses their clients' logos instead.

In this particular case, there would probably be documents produced by McKinsey bearing the Government of Canada's logo or that of a government department, whether it's a PowerPoint presentation or any other type of document.

Did McKinsey & Company at any moment use the Government of Canada's or your own department's logo on the documents they produced for internal use?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm not personally aware of them. Perhaps I can ask the deputy minister to offer commentary.

[Christiane Fox]

I'll offer the same response.

I have no knowledge of a document produced by McKinsey bearing the Government of Canada's logo, but we can certainly go through all the files to confirm that that's the case.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

My time's starting now, Mr. Chair.

Deputy minister, I imagine you'd be able to table a sampling of PowerPoint presentations McKinsey produced for your department, bearing their own logo, all identified, so that committee members may peruse them.

[Christiane Fox]

We can absolutely supply the committee with any and all documents produced by McKinsey & Company. I think it's already in the works. We're working on the template.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Chair, please consider that the request was made and then accepted by the department.

Minister, when he appeared before the committee, Dominic Barton very clearly stated that the issue of immigrants' integration and linguistic integration into Quebec society was never part of his considerations on the various committees tasked with setting immigration targets.

Unsurprisingly, in a stunning coincidence, your targets happen to be the same as Dominic Barton's. I, for one, don't believe in coincidence, but you certainly seem to.

We'd asked, through a question on the Order Paper, whether you'd commissioned any studies into the effects of your new targets on the French language in Quebec.

You refused to produce any study into the effects of your immigration targets on the French language. Why is that?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

That's not true.

The situation with the province of Quebec is quite different. We have the Canada‑Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens. This accord sets out the terms and grants Quebec the power to select its economic immigrants.

In my opinion, if my goal is to continue to increase immigration levels across the country and protect the demographic weight of francophones outside Quebec, it is essential—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I really like your answer, Minister, but I want to be clear nonetheless that we obtained information in response to Question No. 979 on the Order Paper. It showed that your department didn't produce any studies on the impact of those targets.

You seem like a reasonable and very thoughtful person. Why didn't you try to think about that?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's because Quebec has the power to set its immigration cap for the province of Quebec.

Under the Canada‑Quebec accord, Quebec has the power to set its immigration cap based on its demographic weight in Canada, plus 5%.

The Quebec government can increase that cap. I can't increase that cap for Quebec.