Evidence of meeting #62 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was service.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Okay.
We know that McKinsey has done work for China Communications Construction, which has militarized islands in the South China Sea, as well as Rostec, which has produced missiles for Russia. How does McKinsey ensure that information gained from these contracts with the Department of National Defence is not shared with other departments or agencies? Could you give us some insight into that process, please?
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
First and foremost, I should just emphasize the fact that my work was solely focused on working with the public sector here in Canada. Second, we would absolutely 100% abide by the policies, the rules, the guard-rails that are imposed by us in our contractual agreements with the Government of Canada.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
At the time of your departure, were there conversations with the government as to the potential for further contracts with McKinsey and the current government?
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Yes, that's right. In addition to the contracts you worked on, were there conversations about other potential contracts?
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
McKinsey was serving the Government of Canada before and after I left, so I am not aware of specific conversations, but I would assume that perhaps there was some work under way that was being fairly competed again.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
In your experience, is it normal for McKinsey staff to have high-level conversations with political staff?
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
During my time at McKinsey, no. I never had conversations directly with ministers or political staff. It is my knowledge that, for the work that I was involved in, those conversations did not occur.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Who would give you the direction as to the scope of the projects that you were working on? Who were your liaisons within government?
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
We responded to open, transparent, competitive processes, as all other management consulting firms would and then—
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Who was it specifically? It's not clear to me who you were reporting to in the government.
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
For the competitive process, as this committee knows, there are postings and then we see—
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
During the project itself, who was your touchpoint in the government?
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
Oh, sorry about that. My apologies. There would always be a lead who was responsible—
Conservative
Managing Director and Partner, As an Individual
Well, it depends on the project.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Can you give me an example of people you talked to as the lead?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for your next round.
Mr. Housefather, go ahead for six minutes, please.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Wernick, I'm going to turn to you first, if that's okay.
Given that we've been diverted from what was, I think, a very important study on outsourcing and where we could limit outsourcing to better make use of our public service to a study about McKinsey and allegations of political interference, which continue to be debunked, since you were the Clerk of the Privy Council at the time that the contracts with McKinsey increased, I'd like to ask you this, sir. In the 2017, 2018 and 2019 period, did you ever get political instruction to increase the amount of contracts with McKinsey?
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I left government four years ago. In my position as clerk, I had no line of sight to contracting other than contracting that was done by the Privy Council Office, which I had to sign off on from time to time. We had some technology contracts to improve business processes and IT at Privy Council Office.
Contracts are let by any of the 300 federal organizations and the day-to-day supervision of them is usually done by middle managers like directors general, directors and assistant deputy ministers.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
As the person on the top of the organization, you would have some oversight responsibilities.
Did you ever receive any political instruction to divert contracts to McKinsey or to favour one company over another in any type of contract?
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Management oversight in the public service comes from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, so that would have been the line of sight into contracting policy and those sorts of areas.
No, I received no direction or discussion regarding contracting in my time as clerk or indeed as deputy minister.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Do you have any reason to believe that any of the contracts that were issued to McKinsey or to other consulting firms such as Deloitte were done improperly in any way? Whether or not we think that the amounts are too high is a different question, but do you have any belief that there was anything improper in the process?
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I have no reason to comment on anything that happened after April 2019.
Liberal