Thank you, Chair.
Here's what I think is going on.
McKinsey's sales process is selling without selling. That's well known. That's been in various books written about McKinsey's process. McKinsey's analysts past and present have talked about about selling without selling.
This means that McKinsey does not advertise in the crude sense of it. They pitch themselves as experts in certain areas. They meet with clients to talk about their expertise and their ability to perform certain tasks. The goal of those engagements is of course to be able to gather business. That is the sales process. In many contexts, there's nothing wrong with that sales process.
The problem is that, on the government side, this has amounted to lobbying without lobbying. McKinsey self-identifying experts meet with government to share their expertise with the goal of doing business with the government and very successfully getting over $100 million in contracts from the government.
The sort of doublespeak of selling without selling or lobbying without lobbying masks the fact that this so-called pro bono work that is done through the growth council and other vehicles has been the effective equivalent of selling. It has given preferential access as a result of that engagement, and it has resulted, in fact, in contracts that, according to the government's own press release, did not follow the rules in every case. We have an ATIP showing the process of effective pitching without pitching.
I want to zero in on this question of whether this activity constitutes lobbying.
Mr. Pickersgill, were any of the people from McKinsey who met with the government in these various engagements registered to lobby?