Debates of Feb. 6th, 2023

Government Operations and Estimates

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very intently to my colleague, and I have to say that as a taxpayer and as a shareholder of this country, I think it is our responsibility to explain to taxpayers why and when this money was spent, and how it was spent. After all, there is only one taxpayer in this country. We deserve to give taxpayers that answer. That is why we were sent to this House: to be honest and loyal.

I would like a comment from my colleague on how we can encourage the Liberals to provide us with that information.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

That is the basis of our commitment. That is the reason why we were elected to the House. When a person runs for federal office, it is to work in the interest of Canadians. Each and every one of us represents about 100,000 people. These people trust us to represent them and to work in their best interests.

However, what we have been seeing for the past eight years, particularly in the file we are talking about today, is a government that does not work in the best interests of citizens. That is why we, the opposition parties, are calling on the government to do its job and be accountable to Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting process that we are going through today. I plan to speak on the issue, but we need to have a sense of why we are debating it today.

I would say I am surprised, but I am not. It is more a sense of disappointment. One would think that the Conservative Party, at some point, would recognize that what Canadians are looking for is leadership. Today is an amplification of what the Conservative agenda is all about. It is not to talk about its own plans or policy ideas, with cryptocurrency being the exception. At the end of the day, Conservatives are more focused on character assassination.

This is the reason I posed the questions earlier to the opposition, both members. The image they try to portray is one of corruption, yet in the answers they gave one would then have to try to make the connection to Stephen Harper. After all, Stephen Harper and his government were probably closer to the company and individual in question. I would say there is a very good chance, just based on the answers that were provided.

The Conservatives are very good at stating something inside and even outside the chamber that is factually incorrect. I suspect what we are seeing today is another attempt by the Conservative Party to look under all the different rocks to try to find something with which they can attack individuals on the government side, to give a false impression that the government is corrupt. That is the type of thing we have witnessed for eight years from the Conservative Party.

Today we are supposed to be talking about Bill C-34. Bill C-34 is about investing in Canada and protecting Canadians from a security point of view. Tomorrow is an opposition day. Why is that important? I believe that the Conservatives are once again discussing a motion that was passed in a committee.

I would like to look at how the motion passed in committee. I was not even in the committee, so I will have to speculate. I had to look at the report. It is not a very complicated report. I would summarize it by saying a majority of individuals on the committee got together and passed the motion so that the Conservative Party could debate a concurrence motion in the House. Conservatives across the way heckled, “Hear, hear.” That is what took place, as confirmed by the Conservative opposition.

In essence, they are hijacking another day of debate, when we are supposed to be talking about Bill C-34, so they can talk about this issue. They will say they should be able to talk about this issue. The rules do allow for that. We have opposition days. We have an opposition day tomorrow. One would think the Conservatives, if they were genuine in wanting to deal with this, would not need to coerce the Bloc, the New Democrats and I am not too sure about the Greens in bringing forward this detailed report. I say detailed report, but I could read it in a minute. That is how detailed the entire report is.

I have sat on standing committees, not too many, and they do some fantastic work. However, at times they get a little too political. When one does not even have any sort of background, details or real explanation and when all one has is a statement, which is the report, I need to question what the actual motivation was.

I believe the Conservatives have conned the other opposition parties. They have come up with a way that they can get a bonus opposition day. The ironic thing is they are going to be criticizing the government in the future for not calling Bill C-34. They are going to cry and say that they want more debate time on Bill C-34 or other government legislation and will ask why the government will not allow for it, yet they are wasting government time on this end.

It is truly amazing how the Conservative Party is so focused on the issue of corruption and does not care about the average Canadian and what Canadians are going through.

Let me read the report. This is the entire report:

That the Auditor General be called upon to conduct, as soon as possible, a performance and value for money audit of the contracts awarded to McKinsey & Company since January 1, 2011, by any department, agency or Crown corporation.

That is the entire report. I figure the 2011 was probably a compromise. The Bloc probably said that they needed to go beyond just the Liberal years to include some of the Conservative years. Maybe they had to compromise a little in order to get the agreement to ultimately get it to pass so the Conservative Party could have another bonus opposition day at the expense of debating government legislation. That is what I suspect.

[Randy Hoback]

We are not nervous.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the way says they are not nervous. He did not hear the answers from his colleagues.

We know the current Prime Minister does not have a relationship with Dominic Barton. Dominic Barton has said that.

The previous Conservative member who just spoke gave me an answer that Dominic had a relationship with Jim Flaherty. Who was Jim Flaherty? He was the minister of finance under Stephen Harper. I thought this was all about Liberal friends. Mr. Flaherty was not a Liberal.

[Randy Hoback]

Oh, that is true.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is true, and Dominic and Flaherty met, but that does not fit the agenda the Conservatives have.

I asked if there were contracts under Stephen Harper, and the answer was yes. There were contracts with the company and the Stephen Harper government knew Dominic, yet they are saying it was a friendly, Liberal company and we gave it all these contracts. I would suggest it is a gross exaggeration to give the impression that this company received contracts from the government because of a friendship or a political affiliation. The Conservative Party knows that, but it does not matter. The fact is that the Conservatives want to focus their attention on character assassination. That is really what it is all about.

At the end of the day, we need to recognize that at times there is a need for outside contracts. This is not the only government that has outside contracts. Whether it is provincial, municipal or indigenous governments, or whether it is the private sector or one of the many different corporations or non-profit groups, at times they all go outside in order to get contracts, as Stephen Harper did with the same company they are asking the public accounts to look at.

They talk about how there has been growth. No kidding, there has been growth. Have they not been around for the last three years? Do they not realize that we have been going through a pandemic? Do they not understand that there has been a great deal of pressure on Canada's civil servants in our public sector?

We developed programs virtually from ground zero. The CERB program is a good example. I do not know offhand what contracts were awarded to McKinsey & Company, but I can say that many of the programs we established did not exist prior to the pandemic. Of course, we are going to be doing some work outside of the civil service when we have those types of demands.

I would hazard a guess that not only did Canada do that, but also the United States and European countries did likewise. I suspect people will find that over the last three years there has been an increase in contracting out for consulting and so forth. I would challenge the Conservative brain trust to clearly demonstrate that I am wrong with that assertion, but I do not believe they will be able to. I am not talking about the brain trust. I am talking about the examples.

At the end of the day, I believe that governments around the world were put in a position over the last few years, because of the worldwide pandemic, to reach out. Different times dictate different actions.

I am not too sure why the debate today on Bill C-34 had to be sidetracked. It seems that a majority of the House was in favour of it. I would like to have seen that bill considered for passage or have more time for debate.

It will be interesting to get feedback from the official opposition, in particular, as to how many hours they feel that piece of legislation should be debated. The issue we are talking about now would have been a better discussion to have at the committee stage and have an actual report that provides more details.

I can honestly say when I posed the questions earlier, like asking about Stephen Harper, I did not know what the answer was. I went to the table to ask if I could get a copy of the report, because I was told earlier that it is a very short report. I thought there might have been some thinking that went into the process of having the motion brought forward based on a discussion or some sort of explanation other than an instruction.

There are a lot of relevant issues that could have been talked about, like the issue of the procurement process and what we have to go through in order to be able to procure and get the many types of contracts we acquire.

How does that differ from previous years? If we do a comparison between 2008 and 2016 or 2021, I would anticipate that because of the pandemic there would have been an increase compared to the years prior.

Everything depends on what is on the agenda and what is taking place, not only here in Ottawa but also around the country and around the world. Having some of that background information would be far more fruitful than a simple motion that appears in the report.

As I indicated, I was not sitting at the committee. However, based on the fact that, I suspect, it was not a unanimous motion that was brought forward, and I am sure the members across the way will tell me if I am wrong on this, and that it was done in such a fashion that it did not allow for a proper study in the standing committee, I would question the rationale behind that.

We have had very clear indication from the Prime Minister that the issue is being looked at by two ministers, the Minister of Procurement and the President of the Treasury Board. They will be looking into the matter and ultimately reporting back. There is a high level of accountability on contracts that are issued, and that will continue.

However, to what degree did the standing committee actually ask the questions that needed to be asked and provide some background information for the report before it came to the committee, as opposed to making one demand and one demand only? I do not quite understand the rationale behind it. That is something I would have expected to hear about when the mover of the motion brought it forward.

If members review concurrence motions, they will find that the mover of this motion is not new to this. He has likely moved more motions for concurrence than anyone else. He is a mischievous little guy, I would suggest. At the end of the day, I really do think it is a legitimate question to ask of the committee: Why was there not any opportunity to get some sort of background analysis in terms of justifying the position that the committee has taken?

I would hope that members, in addressing this motion, will see it for what it is. This is not a genuine attempt for more transparency and accountability. That is what it is not. What it is is an ongoing attempt by the official opposition, in particular, to engage in personal attacks and character assassination. Anything that can be perceived as making the government look corrupt, the Conservatives will bring it up and they will hammer it because they do not want to talk about policy.

If we were not debating this, we would be debating investments into Canada, the type of investments that create thousands and thousands of jobs. We would be talking about the many good things that are happening and providing constructive criticism, no doubt, in terms of where or how we can change public policy. However, I do not believe the Conservative Party is interested in public policy at all. I believe it is only interested in one thing, and I have made reference to that and I find it unfortunate.

I would leave it at the point of saying to the opposition members that when time allocation happens to come in on some piece of legislation, I hope each and every one of them will reflect on the way they chose today, as opposed to debating government bills, to stay the course of character assassination and to usurp government business and take it as another opposition opportunity for debate, as opposed to debating government legislation.

Bill C-34 is ultimately a good piece of legislation, and it would have been nice to continue that debate and have those additional three hours of debate. Through that, 15 or 20 MPs have lost the opportunity to contribute to that debate, but we will have to wait and see.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the questions my friend across the way asked was why we insist on talking about Liberal corruption. Why do the Conservatives think that Liberal corruption is an important issue to debate in this House?

I want to give two principal reasons. Number one, it speaks to the character of the government. The Prime Minister has, on multiple occasions, been found to have violated ethics laws. That matters in terms of our evaluation of who is running the country and the implications it has for whose side he is on.

Also, let us talk about the waste associated with Liberal corruption. Canadians are struggling. Canadians are paying higher taxes. Canadians are struggling with inflation that is being driven by government spending, so when they see this ballooning of spending on McKinsey, but also on consultants in general, when they see that, on the one hand, the public service is growing, but on the other hand there is more work being taken out of the public service with compounding increases in spending, that is very frustrating to Canadians who are struggling, who wonder why they are paying so much in taxes when the government is essentially duplicating these functions by having a bigger public service and by contracting work out.

The member asked why this motion is important. It is important because the adoption of this motion by the House asks the independent Auditor General to conduct this investigation. That is the issue. The member opposite clearly does not want the Auditor General doing this work. He does not want the Auditor General getting to the bottom of this, but I think the majority of this House wants to hear from the Auditor General about Liberal corruption. That is why we think this motion is important, to bring in the Auditor General to get to the bottom of this.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a time-sensitive motion. The member could have brought forward this motion tomorrow, in an opposition day, but the opposition members decided they do not want to talk about policy ideas. The only policy idea they have had was that stupid cryptocurrency thing, where the Conservative leader said cryptocurrency is the way to go to fight inflation. That is their only policy idea that I have detected. They do not want to talk about policy. They have nothing about the environment.

Their focus has been strictly on character assassination since day one. The moment the leader of the Liberal Party became the leader of the Liberal Party, they were after him. We can just take a look at the S.0. 31 statements before 2015. That has been their priority. It is sad.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary always gets very worked up when he speaks. It is interesting, but we do not fully agree with him. He always says that we should talk about the relevant issues. There are several relevant issues that are being raised in the House.

There are still some troubling things involving the McKinsey firm. At the time the contracts were awarded, the firm was already the subject of major ethical concerns around the world. The firm was associated with the opioid crisis and the immigration issue, as was discussed. It is relevant to bring this up in the House and discuss it. That is what democracy is all about.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do believe that, as the member said, these are important issues. That is the reason why, I would suggest, it does not need to be done in a concurrence motion. There are many different reports that we would have concurrence motions on. There would never ever be a day of government business for the rest of the year if we just did concurrence motions on reports.

There is an opposition day tomorrow, when the opposition members could have had this same debate. Instead of using an opposition day, they want to double down. Doubling down means there is less time for government bills. We have seen that the Conservatives do not like to sit late into the evening either to have debate on government bills. We have seen that. We have asked for more debate. The Conservative Party cannot have it both ways.

I agree that we can have a good, healthy debate on the types of issues and concerns that the member from the Bloc has raised, but there is a time and place. I would suggest that now is not necessarily the time and place, when there are alternatives.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I arrived here today ready to debate the matter at hand. The feedback I got from my constituents was about where the $100 million-plus went that the government has wasted on one consultancy over a handful of years. This is something Canadians are seeing right now.

I hope the hon. member across the way will see that addressing the way the government is spending or wasting taxpayers' funds is part of our job in the opposition here. It has risen to the level where the public is very concerned about where the government is spending all the taxpayers' money.

Will the member across the way address how high this number has to go before he thinks it should be of concern to Canadian taxpayers?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would not say a dollar figure. Let me give the member an example. Stephen Harper flies to India. He wants to have his own personal car. He spends a million Canadian tax dollars to fly a car from Canada to India, so that he would have a car to drive in.

I would argue that this was an absolute, total waste of tax dollars. I raised the issue, but I did not think of going to committee and passing a report saying, let us investigate why he spent a million dollars to have a car flown from Canada to India.

The point is that there is no doubt that when one spends billions of tax dollars, there are always going to be questionable dollars that are spent. There are many opportunities for us to look at ways in which we can investigate and make sure that the taxpayer's dollar is, as much as possible, not being wasted.

However, I do not think this is necessarily what this issue is about. For the Conservatives, the issue is more about character assassination than it is about how much money has gone out. After all, they had given contracts to the very same company. The relationship with Jim Flaherty was a whole lot stronger than what it was with this government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I find myself in sympathy with the parliamentary secretary, up to a point. Although the hon. parliamentary secretary did say that, somehow, the Conservatives had conned the opposition parties into letting them do this, we did not have a choice. This is what happens when, on a concurrence debate, our debate for the day is hijacked.

However, this is an important issue. This is what I want to raise. Again, we do not need to just pick on McKinsey & Company. As we dig into this, it appears to me that contracting out to numerous large, global multinationals like IBM and others is a big chunk of our taxpayers' dollars that should be getting done within the civil service.

I point to a very useful comment from the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, our high-level union within the Government of Canada, that contracting fees and outsourcing have doubled since 2011. I have been in this place that long and the doubling of outsourcing to large private corporations bothers me. It bothers me that, as Kevin Page, our former parliamentary budget officer, described it, it is basically a discussion we should have right here in Parliament on where taxpayers' dollars get spent, on consumption or investment. The government should not be out consuming a lot of private contractors at high levels. It creates waste.

The Government of Canada, internally, should be able to do most of the work. Sometimes there will be an emergency or a workplace shortage, I understand that, but in general, when I last worked as a member of a minister's staff, which was back in the 1980s, we did not rely on McKinsey & Company, nor did we rely on IBM. We had top-notch civil servants who could do all the work that the Government of Canada needed done.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I respect what the member is saying. The only thing I would add would be that, today, if we take a look at the IT industry, as an example, and the amount of expertise that is required in order to be able to advance IT, computer systems, data banks and all that kind of stuff, I cannot imagine any government in the world actually having it all insourced. There has to be outsourcing that goes in that, in terms of contracts.

When I think in terms of the pandemic, the amount of outsourcing for contracts might have increased. That is why I will be much more interested in the percentage for 2015-16. I suspect that the amount of outsourcing might actually go down over the next year or two, possibly. I do not know. I do not have the background analysis because there was no background analysis done on this report. All it was was just a very simple statement.

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

Order.

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, Labour; the hon. member for Calgary Centre, Carbon Pricing; the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, Health.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lac‑Saint‑Jean.

Today's debate is a passionate one. People clearly feel strongly about this issue. I will start off with a quote from a French author I really like: “'Bad' people are not the ones who do the most evil in this world. Rather, it is the incompetent, the negligent and the gullible. 'Bad' people would be powerless without so many 'good' people.”

My question is, who are the good people, and who are the bad? Philosophically, I think only fools judge without knowing, but there are times when it is important not to appear foolish. The McKinsey saga has been quite the roller coaster ride, with surprises around every corner: contracts that were never tendered, a contract with a 2100 end date and no registry of lobbyists entry.

There is so much here that arouses suspicion. Like it or not, even in good faith, there are reasons for mistrust, yet the government's actions should inspire confidence. In this case, this much doubt adds up to mistrust.

It is not unusual to do business with a consultant. I myself was a consultant for 25 years. There are even valid reasons for doing so. I will outline three, or actually four, if incompetence is involved.

First, when there is an immediate lack of expertise and no time to develop it in-house, one must seek that expertise externally. That transfer of expertise is valuable.

Second, when facing a unique situation that will not be repeated, one might look for a band-aid, a temporary solution. That is valid.

Third, when a certain level of expertise is lacking, a consultant can provide it for a limited time. That is valid.

These three reasons are valid. There are no other reasons to use a consultant, except for incompetence, the fourth reason I mentioned earlier.

The example of the Business Development Bank of Canada was mentioned earlier. That astounds me. A new president and CEO was appointed on August 10. She was not just anyone. She was a former Canadian ambassador to France and Monaco, who had previously worked at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and at Sun Life. She had quite a resumé. She did what all political appointees do. She asked McKinsey what she should do.

Honestly, I thought that the expertise came with the appointment. I thought that was part of the package. It turns out that it is not. I think the requirement for being president of the Business Development Bank of Canada is to be able to contact McKinsey. At least that is what it seems like. It seems that contacting McKinsey is a natural reflex for this government.

However, no one elected McKinsey. We are talking about private sector people from a bona fide company who are developing public policy for the government. If McKinsey is involved it is a done deal. McKinsey has earned a reputation over the years with an admittedly excellent research system. This research system was often built on pro bono assignments on the backs of other people, which is a special kind of hoodwinkery.

I wonder: What is McKinsey doing? This firm cannot know more than everyone else about everything, at all times, everywhere in the world. That would be astonishing. The only other explanation is that McKinsey is God or the Holy Spirit, pick one.

One thing is certain, McKinsey has made itself indispensable to many. The opioid crisis in the United States was mentioned earlier, but I will not go there.

Last fall I met with leaders of the French Senate when I was staying in Paris. They presented me their report, which I could show you, were it not so astoundingly thick. The French Senate showed that McKinsey was setting up shop with weak leaders.

They work pro bono. They do not register with the lobbyist registry. In fact, they found the loophole in the rules that allows them to circumvent the spirit of the code. Then they take charge of creating public policies that advance a vision of the world, the vision of McKinsey, an unelected organization.

It is ironic because, by subcontracting certain responsibilities, the government has somewhat privatized Privy Council. That is problematic because McKinsey is not accountable to Canadians, and that is not ideal. The Senate of France spent dozens of meetings questioning people. All they discovered was that automatically resorting to that organization was not a sound practice.

Of course, over the years, the obsession with balancing the budget resulted in the public service losing certain strengths. That said, the three reasons mentioned earlier remain valid. However, they still came to the conclusion that there had to be transparency around contracting and that information should be published about the list of suppliers, the nature of the contracts and their cost as well as accountability regarding what happened, what they did and the outcome. That was one of the recommendations. They also recommended that there be better oversight of the use of consulting companies and that their code of ethics be enhanced.

If I may say so, the ethical rules of consulting firms can sometimes be scary. In fact, a consultant's first commandment is to make sure that the contract is profitable for the consultant. The second commandment is to make sure that the contract is renewed. As for the third commandment, see number one.

I will say it again: Hiring a consultant is not the issue. However, it is extremely unethical to contract out public policies to unelected officials who suggest the terms—terms which, if we are to believe what we have learned, no one was able to challenge. Whole swaths of public policy have been subcontracted to McKinsey without any accountability, for McKinsey or the government.

In my mind, McKinsey is not the enemy. In some ways, I am more concerned about government management. Public enterprise fulfilled a request. However, what concerns us in the reports is the lack of transparency. Why was this done without tenders, for example? There may be good reason. We need to find out.

This feels a bit like subcontracting the nation-state, and that scares me. It scares me because McKinsey, which does business all over the world with all kinds of countries, with China as with the United States, with Russia as with Ukraine, becomes, in a sense, a supranational government. Basically, McKinsey has more data than most governments on both sides, but McKinsey was not elected. We need to be very clear about that.

When a government cannot even develop its own policies, there is a name for that. It is called incompetence. I think the government before us today is a tired government that cannot even be bothered to govern anymore.

The Liberal government wanted a majority, but it does not have one. Personally, I would have liked to be an artist, but I am not. Maybe I should ask McKinsey what it takes to be an artist. They could help me. The Liberals need to try to rise above partisanship and act like a government.

I will close by telling the House about an adage that, as an ethicist, I have lived by all these years, and it has to do with light and darkness. It goes something like this: Any action that needs darkness to succeed is probably more unethical than an action that can stand the light. In the case of McKinsey, I have realized that darkness is at play.

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

Mr. Speaker, procurement has regulations, and there is a process when we have to let out contracts. There are wonderful opportunities there that could fairly easily be provided, especially from a parliamentarian's point of view. We have standing committees that could take a deep dive into the issue and look at ways to improve how contracts are let out and when it is good to sole-source a contract, in what situations. In emergency situations, for example, this could potentially be used in a rather quick fashion.

Would the member not agree that to look at the types of issues he is raising, there would be a great deal of benefit in taking a deep dive at a standing committee to review how contracts are put together and issued out, making sure that our regulations are keeping up with the times?

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the committee is already working on this. Let the committee do its job.

However, I have to admit that everything we are learning worries me. I believe that it is beyond the scope of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which is going to examine the actual contracts.

Today, I want to speak to my concerns about the very integrity of the government. Perhaps other committees will do other work, but this is a concern that I do want to present to the House because, for me, it goes beyond the issue of procurement. Procurement is one thing. There are rules. Were they followed? We shall see, but contracting out a public policy to an unelected organization concerns me.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague points out a difference: For procurement there is a certain something being received, but the McKinsey situation is about advice. We have some of the best public service members in the world, and when they were questioned about this, they said they could not even find what was offered to the Canadian population by these contracts.

I am wondering if the member could comment on the issue of accountability, because obviously the government gave out these contracts. What does he think we can do to help improve confidence in this situation? I am really worried that Canadians are losing trust in our institutions with each scandal that comes from the Liberal government. What can we do to regain that trust in our institutions?

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague hit the nail on the head. This goes beyond procurement. This is about confidence in government, in the government's integrity. That is a problem. I would actually take this one step further than my colleague.

Many consulting firms do business with the Government of Canada. People have mentioned Deloitte and KPMG. These two firms sell advice. McKinsey sells influence. That is not the same thing. There should be stricter rules governing influence.

I think it is currently an open bar kind of situation. Nothing is being done to find out what McKinsey does, what it has contributed, how much it cost and why it could not have been done some other way. There is zero accountability at the moment. The point is that they are selling influence, not advice.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the points he raised in the House.

As I mentioned, back home, ordinary people are having a tough time because of the cost of living and inflation. We see that taxpayers money, Quebeckers' and Canadians' money, is being used by the Liberals to help their friends, their contacts, those who have power or hidden power.

Could my colleague share his thoughts on what an injustice this scandal is to Canadians?

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is touching on something interesting. When I walk around Trois-Rivières on the weekend people stop me in the street. They are aware of my experience as an ethicist and they ask me how is it that there is such a group of.... I will let my colleagues fill in the blanks.

People are very worried about what is going on because of inflation and everything else. They do not know what to do and they are begging us to do something.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was not planning to start my speech like this, but the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons leaves me no choice. I listened to his speech. He spent most of his time saying that we should not be debating the Conservative motion, that this was not the right place. He even said that this could have been done on an opposition day.

I would like to point out that every time the Liberals do not want to talk about something that scares them, they say we should be debating something else. For example, during one of the last Bloc opposition days, we brought up the topic of the monarchy. All day, from the beginning of the debate to the end, the Liberal members told us that we should be talking about something else and that we were not in the House to talk about the monarchy. They listed all the topics that they felt we should be talking about. Every time a debate inconveniences or embarrasses them, instead of debating the motion, they provide us with the same response. They say that we should not be debating the motion here, that we should go somewhere else.

As I said, the parliamentary secretary proposed that we address this issue on an opposition day. However, when we bring up a subject that the Liberals do not like on an opposition day, they spend the whole day saying that the subject should have been discussed elsewhere.

The Liberals are telling us what we can say and what subjects we can bring up on opposition days, but on top of that, when we manage to get an opposition motion adopted, the government does not respect the vote of the House of Commons and does not implement the motion. I am thinking, for example, of the Bloc Québécois motion to increase special EI sickness benefits to 50 weeks.

My lead-in to this speech is important because it shows how little respect the Liberals have for the House. They have a particular view of democracy. If they have as little respect for the House and Canadian democracy as they do for the taxpayers whose money they are spending, then this Conservative motion is extremely relevant. Rather than saying that we should debate it elsewhere, they need to show some backbone, face reality, and debate this issue for real.

I will now start the real debate. I hope that we can continue to debate the actual subject rather than the relevance of the debate. That would be a good start. After all, that is what democracy is.

The Globe and Mail is the one that revealed that contracts awarded to McKinsey skyrocketed under the Prime Minister's watch, going from $2.2 million under Prime Minister Harper to over $100 million under the current Prime Minister. I am therefore rising today to talk about the Conservative motion that seeks to call upon the Auditor General of Canada to open an investigation into the federal government's connections to the McKinsey consulting firm.

To clarify for those watching at home, the Conservative motion asks that the committee report to the House that it is calling on the Auditor General to conduct a performance and value-for-money audit of the work done by McKinsey & Company for the federal government and Crown corporations since January 2011. That includes the Business Development Bank of Canada, or BDC. The committee also wants to examine the effectiveness of BDC's spending in general since 2021.

The Bloc Québécois has asked the federal government to make public all of the required information and all of the contracts so that we can find out the nature and amounts of the contracts.

For far too long now, McKinsey has held sway over Canada, over the federal government and its departments, including Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. This does not strike me as an ideal arrangement. Just look at what is happening at Roxham Road, at the files being assigned to public servants who are no longer employed there, and at the unacceptable delays. It is perfectly reasonable to wonder how McKinsey's so-called advice is helping IRCC. This is a complete fiasco. The government asks McKinsey for advice, but let us look at the results. Leaving aside the lack of transparency around the contracts, the fact that the contracts run until 2100, and the secrecy surrounding the cost, based on the current results, perhaps the government should have gone with another firm or, at the very least, asked the actual public service for help.

I see this as a failure on the Liberals' part. I will refrain from using more colourful language. I will let the auditor do her job, and I hope everyone else does too. The Bloc Québécois is satisfied with this motion, because it is time to investigate McKinsey's involvement in Canadian affairs.

I am not going to launch into a speech about interference in Canadian politics. As a Bloc Québécois member, I might have too much to say, and I do not have much time remaining. However, I will surely come back to this subject once or twice during our debates.

In the scrum held earlier today, one of my Conservative colleagues, the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, stated: “The Auditor General has the powers and tools to get the answers to Canadians' questions”. Personally, I would really like to ask some questions. I could even put some to the Conservative Party, while I am at it.

Members have spoken about Dominic Barton, the former McKinsey executive who was one of the people behind the Century Initiative, which seeks to triple Canada's population in the next 75 years. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is one of the strongest supporters of the Century Initiative, except for the Liberals, of course. I am wondering if the Conservative Party shares this vision of following the Century Initiative's plan for 75 years. That is a valid question, and I am pleased that the Conservative motion allows us to ask this type of question.

When the Conservative government was awarding contracts to McKinsey, was the firm registered as a lobbyist? These are questions that we will be able to ask and might even get answered. Let us not misunderstand each other. I am not defending the Liberals. It is just that I have other questions for my Conservative friends. After all, they have been in government too.

I just want to demonstrate that Canada has a long-standing friendship with McKinsey. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates opened an inquiry into the many contracts awarded to McKinsey since 2015, with a cumulative value of more than $100 million. The actual value is likely far higher. When an 81-year contract is awarded for $0, I have to think that it must worth a little more than that.

We recently found out about that contract, which is valid until January 31, 2100. No one here will be around to see the end of that contract. I wish I could, but I have to be honest with myself.

We do not know all the details of this contract right now, but the idea of having an 81-year contract does not seem to be on the up-and-up. I would not give an 81-year contract to a snow removal company, even if it were owned by my best friend. The answer is obvious. There is not a business owner in the world who would give 100-year contracts to a sub-contractor. However, that is what the government is doing with taxpayers' money. That is something else.

Was the record any better when it came to managing the pandemic? Can we find out what McKinsey did and how much it cost? As I said, when the government spends taxpayers' money, it is only fair that we know whether we got value for our money. However, when a $0, 81-year contract is awarded, it is difficult to find out the truth.

A surprising fact revealed this morning is that McKinsey is not on the Registry of Lobbyists. All the other major consulting firms, such as KPMG Canada, Deloitte Canada and Accenture, are on the various lobbyist registries. However, McKinsey is not, as it claims to have no lobbying activities.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister says his friend, Dominic Barton, has a surprising list of contacts. I suppose that is why McKinsey does not need lobbyists. Dominic Barton has way too many contacts, according to this Prime Minister.

The Bloc Québécois is not asking for much. We just want to see all the unredacted contracts and all the documents produced for each department. We also want a public inquiry. Everyone knows that, to some degree, McKinsey was involved in several recent scandals here and abroad. Someone mentioned the opioid crisis earlier.

According to what the parliamentary secretary said earlier, the government is allowed to do what it did, and the same thing was happening in the United States and in European countries, such as France. Yes, it was, and now there are inquiries being carried out in the United States and France. If I understand the parliamentary secretary correctly, if someone hires a firm and an inquiry is launched into issues with contracts awarded to that firm, the same thing should happen here. They did it over there, so let us have inquiries here too. It only makes sense.

That is the way the Liberal Government of Canada thinks. This government is led by people who are clearly afraid of a public inquiry. Their reaction right now is one of fear. All I am seeing from the other side of the House is fear. If the Liberals have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is no fear.

The member made reference to an 80-year contract, and that has been made reference to before. This is not a contract; it is a supply arrangement. There is a difference. It does not guarantee any monetary agreement, but rather a preselection of supply from hundreds of suppliers that have this arrangement. It is a long-standing practice that saves time and money. I ask if the member would at least acknowledge that.

People still try to give the false impression that we have this 80-year contract that is going to cost millions of dollars every year. There is a big difference, but that feeds into the Conservative spin. When a member of the Bloc stands up and says that there is an 80-year contract, he is reinforcing something very misleading.