In addition to the transparency and accountability issues that we've been raising here at committee, the government's increasing reliance on outsourcing raises concerns around equity issues that warrant conversations, discussion and research.
In 2018 actually, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights discussed privatization as a cause of poverty even while privatization costs governments more. We've seen it here—the subbing out of contracts. As one example, we looked to GC Strategies during the ArriveCAN app study, which was charging between 15% and 30%, which I guess is the industry standard. They don't know anything about tech. They just know whom to contract to. You have these big, highly paid consultant companies, six of which are over $100 million, that are doing business with Canada—the big six. A lot of their work is subbing out.
Have you looked at how much money is going just to the commissions for subbing out, because that seems to be a huge economic leakage right now in our country, money that could otherwise provide services from pharmacare to expanding dental care and making sure that everybody's got a safe, secure place to live in our country. It seems absolutely ludicrous the skyrocketing highly paid consultants trend that we're seeing and these commissions that are going out in the range of 15% to 30%. I imagine they're all near 30%, because every time I ask if it's 15% or 30%, they answer, “It's the industry standard.” They would tell us it's 15% if it were 15%, so it's more than likely that it's 30% in most cases.