Government Operations Committee on June 21st, 2023

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be sharing some of my time with my colleague Mr. Kusmierczyk.

Thank you, witnesses, for waiting patiently for us to get back to our questions here.

At issue is that a significant portion of the documents are being provided with redactions. Can you explain what the redactions are for, Mr. Shea, and whether these redactions impact the documents in such a way as to interfere with this committee's study on McKinsey & Company?

[Matthew Shea]

I have not seen all the documents. I can speak for the Privy Council Office. We have two paragraphs that are redacted for cabinet confidence; they relate to a meeting in which there was a reference to a cabinet confidence. They do not materially impact the documents in any way. We have fully provided translated and unredacted documents as they relate to all McKinsey contracts.

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

McKinsey provided all of their documentation unredacted. Have any attempts been made to reconcile this with your own production of papers?

[Matthew Shea]

I believe what you're asking is why we redacted it and they did not. We are bound by privacy policies and other policies. As I mentioned earlier, we cannot release commercially sensitive information without the permission of the company. We cannot release private information without the consent of the individual. We as a government rely on the trust of companies, of citizens and of individuals to provide us with their private information, and we safeguard that and follow the laws.

In the case of the Privy Council Office, once we learned that McKinsey was willing to have theirs unredacted, we of course unredacted their information with their consent.

As for the other two pieces of personal information we had redacted, we redacted two signatures related to the contract by public servants, but not the names. It was very transparent who had signed the contract, but the actual signature.... You can appreciate, in light of identity theft and other reasons, why someone would want to protect their signature. Nevertheless, we asked those public servants whether they would be willing to allow us to unredact that to be fully transparent to the committee. They, of course, would have had the ability to say no. Both absolutely said yes right away, and we have unredacted those as well.

So we are left with just those two paragraphs, which we do not believe in any way change the interpretation of the documents or the clarity of the documents.

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

I'll go to Mr. Dermarkar with the same questions, and then I'll go to my colleague here.

[Fred Dermarkar]

I'd like to say that AECL's original submissions contained very few redactions to begin with. After the committee's request, we submitted an updated package that removed virtually all the remaining redactions. Only a very small percentage of the documentation is redacted—approximately one page out of more than 150 pages of documents. The small number of remaining redactions protect third party information not originating from McKinsey that is commercially sensitive and that relates to federal-provincial relations.

The other previously redacted information that was subsequently provided includes personal information and banking information. We highlighted this information in yellow so you could see it and we identified that we would want the committee to redact this information should they choose to share it more broadly outside of the committee's membership.

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

Okay.

I have one final question for Mr. Shea. Can we please ask PCO officials to undertake to find the email mentioned by our colleague Mrs. Kusie and to then submit it to the committee?

[Matthew Shea]

It is difficult for me to commit to doing that without knowledge of the information. I don't know the date of the email. I don't have any information that would allow us to find it. We have attempted to find it based on what we heard at a previous meeting. We have found no such email and certainly not in the June time frame, as I mentioned.

Ms. Welbourne did not work at PCO at the time. We would happily work with the committee to try to provide the email if we had more information from the member who has, apparently, this email through an ATIP.

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

Go ahead, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have about a minute and 45 seconds.

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

I was just going to say that we've had 13 meetings now on McKinsey and 45 witnesses. The Conservative colleagues have now led us on what is an expensive fishing expedition, and it's netted not a single minnow of evidence at all that there was anything untoward—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Let us see the documents.

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

—happening here.

Obviously, we've heard about the tremendous costs to organizations like the Public Sector Pension Investment Board in terms of actual money. Ms. Bernier, can you speak, as well, to opportunity cost in terms of resources that have been directed away from the day-to-day work you conduct on behalf of your members?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have about 20 seconds, Ms. Bernier. Please be brief.

[Mélanie Bernier]

I don't have the number of employees specifically who have been on this, but significant resources have been dedicated to complying with the requests of the committee to make sure we also proceed diligently. So, of course, this is time and attention that is taken away from our normal investment activities that are dedicated to achieving our mandate.

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

I have the same question for Mr. Ledwell from Veterans Affairs—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much. That is your time.

You're welcome to respond in writing to the committee if you wish.

Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm surprised by the absurd arguments I'm hearing today, and that's coming from someone who sits on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, where things aren't always rosy either.

The last argument I heard was about the past....

The member opposite who just asked some questions, but who is now looking at his phone, could he just stop and think for two seconds about the amount of resources needed to redact documents rather than submit them as is? Is he taking into account all the time it takes for someone to go through a document and decide which parts should or should not be redacted? It's completely absurd. It's my first time sitting on this committee, and I'm flabbergasted.

Now I'm going to respond to Mr. Housefather's comments.

I agree with you, Mr. Housefather, that our request was certainly more concise. The root of the problem may indeed lie in the sheer number of contracts awarded to firms like McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte. In the interest of being constructive, maybe the committee should just start somewhere. For instance, it could ask the departments to send it the McKinsey documents from a certain year, and it could set a deadline for the other years. Two months later, they could submit the documents from another year, and so on and so on. Maybe that would give the committee and its members a break.

If everyone were acting in good faith, that's probably what would happen immediately. But that's not at all what we're seeing. We're seeing people coming out with absurd arguments about how much time all this is taking, even though they've spent more time debating these motions than actually reading the documents and doing their job.

The committee members should have looked at the documents and tried to answer one fundamental question: Why has spending on consulting firms skyrocketed since 2016? Spending is in the billions of dollars. All governments, including the Conservatives, have hired consulting firms. I think everyone here would agree that it's normal to hire them. However, spending on consulting firms has soared since 2016.

We have to wonder why this committee, which is the committee that should be doing this, still hasn't answered these questions. Why hasn't the committee received the unredacted documents it was requesting? I refuse to believe that it's due to incompetence.

I know that you're competent, so please show your good faith.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Johns, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Let me get this straight. The Conservatives create this policy through open and accountable government. Now, obviously, documents are coming back. A couple of paragraphs are redacted just here today, which we're talking about.

Do you believe they would have known that this would happen—that there would be redactions coming back—given they designed the policy that is creating the redactions in the first place?

[Matthew Shea]

I think it would be well understood in the advice from the Privy Council Office that the reason to have this is to be clear what can be redacted, what cannot be redacted and what must be redacted. The goal, of course, is to minimize redactions to what is absolutely necessary. That is the advice the PCO provides to departments.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You would think that the designers of this policy that has created the redactions would have a full understanding that there would be redactions because they designed the policy that would make sure there are redactions on things you have highlighted here around national security or privacy.

[Matthew Shea]

Yes. I believe those who drafted it and approved it would have not only anticipated it, but expected that those key things, like cabinet confidence and national security, would be protected.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

That we would be right here today, ending up in this very conversation, potentially.... This could be a strategy.

[Matthew Shea]

I won't speak to strategy and how this would play out at a parliamentary committee.