Debates of Feb. 6th, 2023

Government Operations and Estimates

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is proof that we should vote for this motion. It would allow us to get to the bottom of some of the questions that we have. Is it a contract or is it an arrangement? That is a good reason to vote for this motion.

The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader just illustrated the relevance of such a motion and investigation.

Getting back to his question, if I tell my mechanic that this is not a contract, just an arrangement, he will laugh in my face.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has awarded tens of billions of dollars to consultants, including $100 million to McKinsey. At the same time, the number of public servants has risen sharply. They do not understand why this money is being given to consultants.

What does the Bloc Québécois think of this Liberal waste and pork-barrelling?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it was not me who said that. It was one of our colleagues. I could not agree more. I think it is disrespectful toward public servants, who want to work to the best of their abilities. By hiring external firms, the government is essentially sending public servants the message that they are incapable of doing their jobs. It is very disrespectful.

The Liberals may have used certain firms in the past because the previous Conservative government had made too many cuts to the public service. The Conservatives may have some soul searching to do. Sometimes governments have to be careful about making too many cuts, because they end up losing expertise and demoralizing their departments and the public service.

Quite honestly, I agree with my colleague that this shows a total lack of respect for the public service. These people are capable of doing the work. They just need to be empowered to do it, and we need to ensure there is a modicum of respect for government employees.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Lac‑Saint‑Jean on his excellent speech. It is hard to disagree with what he said.

He started by pointing out that, whenever the Liberals are uncomfortable with a topic or are worried it might make them look bad or lose political points, they say now is not the time to debate it.

Let us remember the last time there was an issue with contracts and the Liberals wanted to dodge the issue: WE Charity. Right in the middle of the pandemic, this same government prorogued Parliament and shut the place down. It wanted to change the channel and start over. Now it is telling us we do not have time to debate the motion, despite the fact that there is a contract whose end date is 2100 and more than $100 million worth of contracts was awarded without ever going to tender. The Liberals say we could be working on passing bills instead.

This government passed just four bills in the previous parliamentary session and cannot even introduce its own bills, yet it says it does not have time to debate this today because it would rather introduce bills instead.

They need to stop treating people like idiots. I am not just talking about parliamentarians, but about all Canadians.

If the Liberal government members do not want to have a debate, what else are they hiding? Will the government decide when we eat and what colour of clothing we will wear today? What will be the next thing they want to impose?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the colour of the clothing would not bother me, because I am colour-blind. I have heard it said that I have trouble dressing sometimes.

Once again, I completely agree with my colleague. The government's refusal to debate is starting to get really worrisome. The last time it refused to debate, it called an unnecessary election and look at the result. That is how the Liberals debate. If it does not suit them, they hide.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is not often that I have a 20-minute runway to unpack a speech, so I will take my time to meander through the most important points of this, which I think we have begun to touch on when it comes to the motion. However, I see the narrowing of the scope of this particular motion to be indicative of the refusal of both Liberals and Conservatives to unpack what is really and truly happening here.

Before I was a member of Parliament, I was a very proud city councillor in Hamilton, and I was amazed at the amount of work in our budgets that would fall under consultation. The scale there, obviously, is not quite the same as this, but names like Deloitte would pop up quite frequently. It became a process, after I was elected, of seeing these names pop up so frequently in our municipal reports and the money spent on outsourcing decision-making and advice to the consultant class.

I had the pleasure of being a member of both the government operations and public accounts committees, and the name Deloitte would continue to pop up. In fact, it became such a prominent feature within many of the studies, that I and a good friend of mine from the Conservative Party would joke and laugh every time the name Deloitte came up. However, when it comes to this particular motion and, in fact, this particular scandal, I have to say that I am amazed at the Conservative's lack of willingness to expand the scope beyond McKinsey. Why is that? I think there are some important questions to be asked.

Of course, like all Canadians, New Democrats are concerned with the significant increase in contracting out to McKinsey over the past several years. In fact, as the only labour party in the House, we are concerned with all contracting out in the public sector. This is a scenario where we have Conservative governments, which tend to be the hatchet when it comes to the public sector, and then we have the Liberal government, which would rather starve the public sector through a death by a thousand cuts. If the Conservatives are wielding a hatchet, the Liberals are holding a scalpel, and year after year, the capacity of our public sector is eroded and replaced with these high-paid consultants.

The rapid increase in the use and the value of McKinsey contracts over the last several years raises serious concerns about just why that is happening. What advice is McKinsey providing to the government?

Canadians go to the polls to elect a member of Parliament and a government, and they follow the platforms of the parties, which present ideas. Members will recall, back in 2015, the Prime Minister and the Liberal government talking about sunshine being the best disinfectant, and they talked about ending the Harper government's habit of contracting out. There has been a lot of talk in the House about who exactly is making decisions at the highest levels of our ministries across the country.

Let us not forget that there is a significant ethical component to this. Not only is it that the government is contracting out to McKinsey in these ways, but it is also McKinsey's reputation that, quite frankly, originally raised the alarms at the outset, and I will get into that. However, prior to doing that, I want to talk about the practice of both the Liberals and Conservatives to contract out and why it is that I think this particular official opposition, under this particular official opposition leader, does not have the courage to extend this conversation beyond the parameters and the scope of McKinsey.

If Canadians were to do just a little research, and if they scratched the surface and went back to 2011, they would find obscene increases on a global scale for the big six, the $100-million club of the wealthy and well-connected insiders of the consultant class in this country, the new Laurentian elites of these lands. There was Deloitte at $680 million. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a big friend of the Conservative government, is at $564,182,221.

Accenture had $283 million-plus. KPMG had$174 million-plus, almost $175 million. Ernst & Young, a fan favourite of the Bay Street elite of the Liberal and Conservative governments, had $127 million. Lastly, McKinsey & Company had $68 million from 2005 to 2022. From 2011 to 2021, under both Conservatives and Liberals, the federal government went from $54,355,132 in 2011 to $418 million-plus in 2021. That is not even accounting for this most recent boondoggle.

When I look at these massive consultancies and their relationships between both parties, I have lots of questions. I would imagine, if we were to do a quick poll even within this House of Commons, we might find, in LinkedIn profiles, people who actually worked at some of these consultancies. Canadians deserve to have answers. There is a deep cynicism in government and the revolving door among the consultant class, senior public servants and partisan parties in Canada needs to end.

When we talk about procurement and the ethics in procurement, it should be noted that what is legal is not always ethical. In fact, New Democrats have tried time and time again to ensure that we have ethical practices within our procurement, yet it is widely known that McKinsey was a key adviser in the Purdue Pharma's opioid crisis. It advised it on how to unleash this drug onto the public.

One only has to visit Hamilton Centre to see just how successful it was. The advice it provided allowed for a drug crisis, an overdose and toxic-supply crisis of the likes that we have not seen in generations. McKinsey was named in a $600-million lawsuit against Purdue. Why we as a country have not also pursued a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and all of the pernicious pharmaceutical companies that were involved in the opioid crisis is for another conversation, but I do think that significant attention must be paid to their role in this manner.

When I talked about the big six, the $100-million club, we also need to know precisely who these consultants are contracted with. How can one provide advice on health care when, within one's client list, is Purdue Pharma? How can one provide consultant advice for the Department of National Defence when one's clients include Lockheed Martin and many others?

On the face of this, just on the first scratch, this is a conflict of interest. It is a conflict of interest to outsource these decisions and decision-making around procurement to a company that has a vendor list that could very well benefit and profit from the very contracts it is advising on. If that is not illegal in this country today, it ought to be. It ought to be a consideration of this study. We should take a deep dive in this study beyond McKinsey to get the contract lists on all of these massive consulting companies.

Deloitte got $680 million. That is a giant. Why are the Conservatives not talking about that?

Why has the scope of this been narrowed so much? I have my thoughts, but perhaps the Leader of the Opposition, when he gives his remarks, will show some courage and that he is willing to take on the broader issue at hand and not just chase another ambulance. I am on the ethics committee. I know what Conservative ambulance chasing looks like.

We need to open the scope of this study. We need to include all of them, and we need to go back to 2011 because it is quite clear that there is a correlation between the cuts to the public sector and contracting out.

Let us review this. Under Harper, who started the vicious cuts to the public sector, by the time his government was through, 37,000 jobs were lost by 2014. That was 8% of the government's workforce. They were squeezing the public sector wages and complaining about their pensions only to turn around and pay these pigs at the trough almost a billion dollars. That is absurd.

We have good people working in the public sector. We should be training and investing in their knowledge. The parliamentary secretary to the House leader, who wants to quibble about a contract and an agreement, refuses to acknowledge that past behaviour often determines future outcomes. For the last 10 years, we have had Liberal and Conservative governments continuing the habit of outsourcing, ramped up by the Liberal government.

Let us be clear. Numbers got really big for consultants under the Prime Minister, under “Prime Minister Sunny Ways”. It has been sunny ways for the consultant class in this country, and it is time for us—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, this is the second time this has happened today. The previous time was from a different member. There seems to be a desire to start calling people names such as “Prime Minister Sunny Ways” or, as we heard from the—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Those are not names. That is not even a point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is my point of order. My point of order is that we are supposed to be referring to members of the House by either their constituency name or their title, not made-up names like that, despite the fact that the member might like it.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I want to thank the member for his intervention. I do not think it is a point of order, but I will remind individuals that we are to recognize each other by our ministries or riding names.

The hon. member for Hamilton Centre.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would concur: That was not a point of order. However, it is good to see the hon. member carrying the extra weight for the Prime Minister who ran on a platform of sunny ways and of ending precisely what his government well outpaced Harper on.

Let us be very clear: The Prime Minister did a job here when he ballooned these payouts from $99 million, or actually in Harper's last year, $75 million, to $418 million in 2021. He would make Harper blush with the work he has done lining the pockets of the ultrawealthy, knowing their record.

Let us be clear: Either the Prime Minister and this cabinet knew who they were dealing with, or they did not. If they knew about McKinsey's atrocious record and procured it anyway, shame on them. If they did not know, it is absolute incompetence. I have a hard time believing the Liberals did not know because not only did they get these contracts under Dominic Barton, but they also made him an ambassador. With regard to national security, where is Dominic Barton now? The last time I checked, he was working with the former chief of staff of the Prime Minister in Eurasia Group. There are incestuous relationships on the Hill within the consultant class and partisan politics, and they need to end. Canadians deserve answers on more than just about McKinsey.

Will my Conservative colleagues in this House have the courage to expand the scope of this to include the other big five pigs at the trough or not? That is the question here today. In doing so, hopefully, we can finally get to the bottom of this. Hopefully, we can find a way to embed ethics into procurement. Hopefully, we can address the conflict of interest, which I believe is real when they have consultants who work for both the purchaser and the vendor. This is particularly true when it comes to the military and given the global uncertainty and obscene profiteering of war that we are seeing right now.

We spend a lot of time in this House talking about the suffering of victims, and quite rightly so. However, I do not think anybody spends enough time talking about the absolute profiteering of war. When people go to war, it is not the rich who go. Working-class people, not private-school kids, are the ones who go to the front lines to die. The people on Bay Street and the ultrawealthy on Wall Street and the likes are the ones who make money, no matter who dies, by funding both sides.

I do not know that I need the other five minutes to recapitulate the points I have already made. I appreciate having 20 minutes to go in on this very important topic. I am interested in hearing what the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has to say about agreements and contracts from the last 10 years. Maybe the Liberals see an opportunity to expand the scope of this to include the other five pigs at the trough so we can get a real sense of just who is making money, who is making the decisions around this country and who is benefiting on the backs of good public sector jobs and taxpayers.

I will concede the rest of my time.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, regarding the last question the member posed, the whole issue of taking a deeper dive into the area of regulations and how tendering contracts are issued would be a wonderful discussion topic. As I referred to a bit earlier, they could actually do a study and an analysis on this. The entire report we have before us today is about one paragraph. I think it is more politically charged than trying to resolve or come up with real solutions or even a real critique. Would the member agree that having that deeper dive into the bigger picture, having the standing committee look into that and then possibly doing a follow-up, would be far more productive?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this does not happen often, so let the Hansard reflect that I rise to agree with the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader on one point. This needs to be expanded. I will also go on the record to agree with the comments that have been made by the opposition sides: I do not necessarily have faith that the government is equipped to run an investigation that is fulsome enough to provide the answers that Canadians need.

This is why it is important to acknowledge that, in this House, we cannot direct the Auditor General. Let us be clear that their role is independent, and we can ask them to undertake an audit. That audit needs to happen, and it needs to be expanded to include the five other pigs at the trough.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the questions and comments he has made in a very scintillating speech.

However, because he is asking the opposition this question rather than the government, I really want to ask him something. When the member asks about expanding this to include the other consulting firms that are involved here, I think the answer from the opposition side is that the Canadian government has spent so much since the Liberal government has been in power, we would look at the expansion of how much it has spent on consulting and where the money went. Especially, we would look at where money has been spent egregiously by the government with no result.

That would be an entertaining study, but it would take years. Right now we have one consulting firm, and the government spent 50 times more on it than it did in the entire term of the last government. We need to say that is an egregious expansion to one firm with well-connected friends. Could we drill into this and get it checked out very quickly? Would the member agree with that?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is scintillating indeed, but again, it appears to me that members are a little gun-shy on the Conservative side to include consultancies like Deloitte. Deloitte would make McKinsey look insignificant in comparison, when we look at how Deloitte went from $17 million, in 2015, to $173 million. Let us look at where that waste goes. Let us expand to allow the Auditor General to do this.

I am not here to be entertained at committee. I often work closely with members of the opposition side. I would remind the member that I remain firmly as an opposition member. I work very closely with opposition members at every committee I am on, including Conservative members and Bloc members, to hold the government accountable. However, I would challenge them to stand up and name the five other pigs at the trough. I would challenge them to go back to 2011, where they are also culpable, where their cuts to the public sector and squeezing of public sector wages resulted in these gross taxpayer expenditures on private sector outsourcing.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am listening to this debate and there is so much I could say.

Actually, I am listening to the other parties speak. On one side, we have a Liberal government that does not seem to understand that voters gave it a minority mandate. During the first scandal involving the WE Charity, it prorogued Parliament and sent us into a federal election with the same outcome. Then, it signed contracts with private companies to replace public servants. It was influenced by a private firm. Ultimately, these policies allowed the government to do business with the private sector and not respect its own public service.

On the other, we now have the Century Initiative scandal, which apparently started under Brian Mulroney. If the public service ended up being slashed, it is because the Conservatives pursued an austerity policy.

Then, there is the NDP, which often proposes major expenditures. I am trying to find a balance here. If greater care is not taken, expenditures will go up, and, at some point, similar cuts will be made. In the meantime, there will be countless debates on public finances through countless democratic cycles.

Finally, on the question of the importance of respecting the public purse to avoid going through the austerity and cuts we saw under a Conservative government, as well as the importance of seeking clarity in this debate, we need to know whether the Century Initiative that began with Brian Mulroney continued under Mr. Harper.

We can see that there are still a lot of loose ends in this whole scandal. What does my colleague think?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the Bloc for paying me perhaps the highest compliment I could be paid in this House by referring to me as the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, for whom I have a great amount of respect. I will take that as it was intended.

I want to appreciate that the hon. member brought up a very important word, which is “austerity”. It is important for us not only to recognize exactly who is making decisions but also to ask what ideologies they hold. How are McKinsey, Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture and these others advising the government on pathways toward austerity and cutbacks, as well as cuts to the public sector and programming?

It is true that, as New Democrats, we encourage the government to provide social spending on behalf of Canadians and Quebeckers across the country. However, this ought not to come at the cost of almost a billion dollars in outsourcing to consultants. We have some of the best talent in the country working in our public sector. We believe that we should pay competitive wages to public sector talent and allow those with the bureaucratic knowledge and memory to present sound decision-making advice to the government. Ultimately, what has been lost in all of this is that governments are elected to make decisions.

When the government outsources its decision-making to unelected, unaccountable, nameless, faceless supranational corporations, which have insidious ties to unsavoury characters around the world and to corruption, campaign financing violations and narcotics dealing, we absolutely need to hold it to account.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, based on his comments, the member would have one believe no government should be doing any outsourcing, which I find very difficult to fathom. In my time even at the municipal level, I knew for a fact that outsourcing for various projects was not only a necessity but a benefit to municipalities. I know this member actually happened to serve on the Hamilton City Council. When the member was on city council, did he object to every proposal to have an outside firm do work on the assumption that all the work could be done by public servants?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for standing up to exemplify what is called the “ratchet effect”, wherein Liberal ideology takes Conservative cuts and amplifies them and always holds them in place. This is the beautiful symbiotic relationship of having Coke and Pepsi in this House, where they will always rail against Conservatives for making cuts to the public sector, for austerity and for everything else. However, when it comes time for them to govern, they hold firm on the neo-liberal ideologies of austerity and cuts to public sector services.

I thank him for exemplifying that and let him rise on another false point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Hamilton Centre for that brief lecture. It would have been preferable if he had just answered my question. I am sure that on a number of occasions he has voted in favour, including on Hamilton budgets that would have included spending money on employing outside firms, despite the fact that he will grandstand in the House and suggest that no such thing should ever happen. In any event, I will move on.

I would just like to take a moment before I get into my speech to recognize somebody from my community, Marie Louise Benson, who just turned 100 years old yesterday. Marie Louise was actually born in the Netherlands and was 17 years old when the Germans invaded Holland. She later moved to Canada after she married the former member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands, Edgar Benson, who also served in the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau as the finance minister for four years.

I congratulate Mrs. Benson on 100 years. Yesterday she said, “I'm 100 on the dot, and starting a new year tomorrow”. If we all could have such a great outlook on life, I think this would be such a tremendous place to live in.

It is an honour for me to stand in this place today and speak to the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, entitled “Federal Government Consulting Contracts Awarded to McKinsey & Company”. At the outset, I would like to thank the committee for undertaking this very important issue.

Contracting for goods and services is a regular part of how the government operates to deliver programs and services to Canadians. The use of professional services complements the work of Canada's public professional service. For example, professional services might be needed to acquire special expertise or to meet the unexpected fluctuations in the workload. Time-limited projects, shortages in certain employment groups and shortages in certain geographic locations may also require the use of professional services. Consultants can also provide independent verification of decisions, offer another viewpoint or establish a set of options for consideration.

I will share some examples of why professional services are needed. We can take, for instance, the firefighters who were brought to help quell the forest fires in British Columbia. Another example is the services needed to operate and maintain our assets and facilities, like cleaning our buildings or repairing our vehicles. The reality is that sometimes the use of external services is necessary. Fortunately, we have robust systems and mechanisms in place to ensure that contracts are awarded in a manner that is fair, open and transparent.

With that in mind, I would like to outline the policies and processes in place for government contracting. As my hon. colleagues will know, the Treasury Board sets the administrative policy for federal procurement, guided by the principles of fairness, openness, transparency, competition and integrity, all while ensuring the best value. The directive of management of procurement sets the expectations and requirements that departments and agencies must follow so that their procurements are managed in a way that supports the delivery of programs and services to Canadians, demonstrates best value and is consistent with the government's and Canada's socio-economic and environmental objectives.

This directive was updated in the last two years, and there is now an explicit requirement that every department have an appointed senior official responsible for procurement. This official is responsible for establishing, implementing and maintaining a departmental procurement framework that consists of processes, systems and controls for procurement. The framework supports the management of procurement so that it is fair, open and transparent.

There are also clearly defined responsibilities for government departments when conducting procurements, including those for services.

First and foremost, government departments and agencies are expected to maintain the integrity of the procurement process and protect government spending from fraud and unethical business practices. This is done through internal processes and controls, such as the standard contract clauses, and by effective mechanisms for disclosure of any wrongdoing.

Second, government departments and agencies are responsible for clearly defining the intended outcomes of a procurement, including operational requirements, expected benefits and how those outcomes align with the government's strategic direction and total costs over the life cycle.

Third, departments are responsible for ensuring that government gets the best value. In that regard, it should be noted that the lowest price is not always the best value. Best value can be defined in policy as a balance between pricing and outcomes, so it includes concepts like socio-economic and environmental considerations.

In addition to these controls, the Treasury Board also sets contracting limits, dollar thresholds that determine which contracts will require Treasury Board authority to allow entry into the contract and which ones are fully delegated to a minister. Under these thresholds, individual departments may enter into contracts by themselves. Public servants at Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada, as common service providers, can be the contracting authority for other departments and can provide additional due diligence to the department. These departments have higher contracting limits than other departments, so they will typically handle large-scale procurements.

Transparency and accountability are core throughout all of these processes. For instance, government opportunities are posted publicly online at CanadaBuys. Perhaps more importantly, departments are accountable to Parliament and to Canadians through the disclosure of contracting activity, which is reported quarterly. This is in addition to the annual departmental results report, which provides detailed accounts of departments' activities to parliamentarians and to Canadians.

The fact is that every government has an obligation to be transparent and responsible with taxpayer money, and it is an obligation we take extremely seriously. Unethical business behaviour by suppliers has numerous consequences. It undermines fair competition. It threatens the integrity of markets. It is a barrier to economic growth. It increases the cost and risk of doing business. It undermines public confidence in government institutions.

Departments have a responsibility for protecting government spending from fraud, corruption, unethical business practices and collusive behaviour. That is exactly what Public Services and Procurement Canada's integrity regime aims to address. The integrity regime sets out guidelines that help Canada avoid entering into contracts with suppliers that have been convicted of certain offences, like fraud, bribery and bid rigging.

Another critical tool is the Conflict of Interest Act. As hon. colleagues know, the act establishes conflict of interest and postemployment roles for public office holders, which include ministers, ministerial staff and Governor in Council appointees, such as deputy heads. It plays an important role in maintaining public confidence in the integrity of public office holders in government decision-making.

The Conflict of Interest Act has strict guidelines to minimize the possibility of conflicts between private interests and the duties of public officer holders, including when it comes to external contracts. The act also provides a stringent vetting process, with critical safeguards in place to address potential or actual conflicts of interest. They are standard contract clauses, a requirement for proposals to be reviewed through a conflict of interest lens, and the need for evaluators to recuse themselves in the event of real or possible conflicts. In addition, all contracts can be subject to review by internal audits and the Auditor General of Canada.

I would like to also mention the “Open and Accountable Government” document, which sets out core principles regarding the roles and responsibilities of ministers and ministerial exempt staff. For example, exempt staff may ask departmental officials for information, relay instructions from the minister or be informed of decisions in order to address communications and strategic issues.

Let me be very clear on this issue. Exempt staff do not have a role in departmental operations. In fact, they are prohibited by law from exercising the delegated authority of a minister. Furthermore, they are prohibited from giving direction to departmental officials on the discharge of their responsibilities or on issues relating to the management of departmental resources or operational matters.

As public office holders, exempt staff members are exempt and are expected to act with honesty and uphold the highest ethical standards. That means complying with the ethical guidelines outlined in the “Open and Accountable Government” document, as well as conflict of interest and postemployment obligations under the Conflict of Interest Act and the Lobbying Act.

They may also “not knowingly or intentionally encourage or induce other governmental officials, including parliamentarians, Ministers, public servants and other exempt staff members, to act in manner contrary to the law”.

Exempt staff are required to “make themselves aware of ethical standards, expectations, and obligations of public servants set out in the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector and departmental codes of conduct”.

This means that they must not “engage public servants in any activity that is inconsistent with their ethical and legal obligations”.

For public servants, the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector outlines the values and expected behaviours that guide them in the activities related to their professional duties. The code is wide ranging but, importantly, it provides a platform for employees to report any wrongdoing that they witness. Taken together, these measures play a critical role in ensuring accountability. They are part of a larger system in place to ensure that the government is open and transparent to both parliamentarians and Canadians.

In our parliamentary system, the government provides Parliament with detailed financial information throughout the year. The estimates document, the departmental plans, the public accounts and departmental results report play a critical role by presenting parliamentarians and Canadians with details on the government's activities and spending.

All of the latest financial information, including planned spending authorities and estimated expenditures, is publicly available on the Government of Canada InfoBase and Open Government. This wide range of financial reports supports Parliament's scrutiny of public funds. That said, there is always room for improvement, which is why the government committed to taking steps to strengthen our procurement policy by integrating human rights, environment, social and corporate governance, and supply chain transparency principles into government procurements.

There is no denying that we have a world-class public service. Whether from a formal work site or a home office, public servants across the country continue to provide Canadians with the services they rely on. Like all of us in this place, they are dedicated to serving Canadians. Providing the services Canadians rely on sometimes requires additional support. That said, we know a strong federal public service is the best way to deliver for Canadians. The government is developing a long-term government-wide public service skills strategy, including increasing the number of public servants with modern, digital skills and improving external recruitment.

As we modernize legacy systems and further digitize operations and services, increased investment in IT is essential. Where it makes sense we use internal resources, and where we need to we supplement those with external resources. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is developing government-wide digital talent and digital skills strategies designed to identify and fill critical digital skills gaps while advancing learning and recruitment.

The TBS is also developing new guidance for departments on digital talent sourcing to help plan for its digital talent needs, increase the volume of ready-to-hire talent in pools and ensure recruitment is aligned to priority areas. It is intended to reduce dependency on contracting and to fill digital talent gaps. These efforts are expected to result in improved business intelligence, interdepartmental collaboration and access to digital talent.

Clearly, Canada has robust policies and tools in place to ensure that contracting is done in a professional and non-partisan manner. As an extra level of assurance, the Prime Minister has asked the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and the President of the Treasury Board to undertake a review of all procurements by government departments with McKinsey & Company. The intent of the review will be to verify if these procurements were conducted in accordance with Treasury Board policies and directives.

The government takes its responsibility as the steward of public funds very seriously, and it is committed to ensuring that government spending stands up to the highest levels of scrutiny. To that end, the government welcomes a performance and value-for-money audit, by the Auditor General, of the contracts awarded to McKinsey & Company since January 1, 2011, by any department, agency or Crown corporation.

It will, therefore, be my pleasure to vote in support of this motion.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. However, we have questions about McKinsey.

We know full well that we are talking about deliverables and contracts, even if my colleague says the contrary. Are they verifiable and quantifiable? This firm has a history of non-verifiable and non-quantifiable deliverables, which enables it to do whatever it wants without any accountability to parliamentarians and journalists.

Can my colleague respond to that?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member started off by saying that she has questions about the contracts, and what this motion does is specifically ask for those questions to be answered. I do not have the answers to those specific questions. I told the member how I would be voting on this, and I think that if we let due course occur, she will get the answers to those questions. I hope the manner in which they are presented to her satisfies the questions that she has.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the hon. parliamentary secretary spends quite an amount of time in the House on all debates but, particular to this one, I just have one question for him. It is a simple one. He just spoke at length. Did McKinsey prepare his speech today?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the answer is no.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to know that the government will be voting for this motion. I will as well.

Does the hon. parliamentary secretary agree that, really, McKinsey is the tip of the iceberg, as the hon. member for Hamilton Centre said moments ago? We had $17 million this year for McKinsey, and a total of about $100 million since 2015. That is a lot of money. In this year alone, it is $22 billion. If we do some quick math, it takes 1,000 million to make a billion. In that context, should we not be looking more broadly at the IBMs, the Deloittes, the defence contractors and all the outsourcing that occurs to foreign corporations in this country?