House of Commons Hansard #154 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was contracts.

Topics

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, despite the fact that the member for Hamilton Centre decided to use the limited time he had for a question for me on such a frivolous question, I actually think he had a really good point earlier in his speech, and that was when he brought up the issue of why it is not expanded.

I personally do not have a problem with that. I spent a great amount of my time talking about the openness and transparency of government and what our commitment was to that openness and transparency. This motion could have been brought forward in a way that addressed that on a more holistic scale, because I think the member for Hamilton Centre has a good point: Why just limit this to one? Why not make it more open? I do not think that anybody on this side of the House is afraid to hear the answers that come out of that.

Unfortunately, to the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, we are debating this motion, which is very specific in nature, and I think it is a topic for another day. Perhaps the committee responsible for this will open up the scope to address that concern.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Conservative

Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB

Madam Speaker, I have to say to my colleague from Kingston and the Islands that, in all my time in the House of Commons, that is the best speech I have heard him give. Thank you for that. Thank you for supporting the motion we are putting forward here, in getting exposure on these contracts in particular, and thank you for not bending to opening this up so that we are boiling the ocean, as people used to say in consulting work, where we are going to have to look at things that will take us years to look at. This is one specific contract.

I will ask the member if he will actually commit to doing this as efficaciously and quickly as possible, to get this done within the next few weeks so that we can totally expose the amount that McKinsey has taken from this government and what results the government has actually gotten from that $100 million-plus of advice over the last handful of years.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, well, the member said “you” on a number of occasions. You have not indicated how you are going to be voting yet, so I would hate to put that in your mouth, to suggest that you are voting in favour of this.

To answer his question, in terms of how quickly, I can guarantee him one thing. We will vote on this much sooner than the Conservatives let the average piece of government legislation pass through the House.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Conservative

Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON

Madam Speaker, since my colleague is being so transparent, I would like to ask this question. Is it a conflict of interest that McKinsey was receiving millions while Dominic Barton was on the economic advisory council? Could he answer that for me?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, as I indicated in my speech, we have a number of acts that can address that. We have a Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner who oversees order in council appointees, as well as parliamentarians and others. I will leave it up to those professionals, whom we as a collective body have tasked to oversee this to determine whether somebody has acted in a manner that is a conflict of interest.

Despite the rhetoric between the member for Hamilton Centre and I a few minutes ago, the problem is that the Conservatives' only objective with this motion is to try to create a new conspiracy for people to believe in. It is something brand new. I listened to Green and NDP members, and they have reasonable ideas. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives cannot follow suit.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:50 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Madam Speaker, in my remarks, I referenced the cuts under Harper to our public sector. He cut our public sector by 8% up until 2014.

In the spirit of some fairness, I will throw the hon. member a bone. Will he respond to his government's plans to restore capacity within our public sector by paying our public sector's market rate, or will he stand by his defence for contracting out so we continue to pay private sector consultants three times that rate?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, there was a follow-up question to that of the member for Hamilton Centre from a Bloc member. I thought I heard her say that we cut the public service and scaled back on it, which is not true.

To the member for Hamilton Centre, I agree that when we can, we should be utilizing our public service. That is what we pay them for. When we pay them well and treat them well, they will want to stay and work for us. However, I also respect the fact that there are times when contracting something out makes more sense. It might be something extremely specialized. It might be for something we know will mean a short-term increase in workload. We have to be willing to be flexible in our approach, and we have to use all options available.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:50 p.m.

Conservative

Warren Steinley Conservative Regina—Lewvan, SK

Madam Speaker, in the vein of reasonableness, I have a question for my colleague. I will agree with my friend from Calgary Centre that that was probably one of our Liberal colleague's best speeches. However, I do not think we have decreased the size of the public service. I think it has gone up by about 30%. Also, third party contracts have gone up by 30% to 35%.

With the public service being increased and the number of third party contracts being increased for consulting, does he believe Canadians are getting fair value for their dollar? If they are paying more, are they getting better services?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, two Conservatives have now told me this was the best speech I have ever made. However, about three months ago, I made a speech on the environment and on how Conservatives used to be such great champions of the environment. I thought that was a pretty good speech. Actually, Brian Mulroney sent me a letter afterwards congratulating me on that speech, but if they think that was a good speech, I will take it.

To the member's question, we have processes in place to make sure we get the best value for money. I spent a great length of my speech going into the details of how that is done. I trust the processes. I also trust the fact that sometimes the processes might not be properly followed, in which case we have rules and processes in place to correct that behaviour and deal with it appropriately.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:50 p.m.

Carleton Ontario

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre ConservativeLeader of the Opposition

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore.

After eight years, we have had an opportunity to assess the results of the latest grand experiment. We know the experiment we are always told we need to conduct. The experiment is that socialist parties come along and tell voters that life is not fair, that there is too much greed and that the solution to greed is for government to get big and powerful, take the people's money and spread it around in a way that is fair so that everybody gets their rightful due.

The question is who actually gets to carve up the spoils and decide who gets what. The answer, of course, is government itself, and government makes its decision based on politics. Of course, politics is based on, unfortunately, influence and those with influence tend to be those with money. As a result, those with money can convert that money into political power, and that power back into yet more money, and that money back into more political power, and the cycle goes and goes and goes.

The promise was that the government would get grand and powerful and take from the rich to give to the middle class and those working hard to join it. Do members remember those people? We do not hear about them very much anymore, after eight years. In fact, in practice, the game is played very differently.

Let us talk about the very simple question of public finance: from whom to whom. From whom has the money come, and to whom is it going? Let us start with “From whom?” The money is coming from the working-class people of this country, who are under a siege not seen in at least 40 years. Inflation has reached a 40-year high, as the cost of government has bid up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits have increased the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay.

The real human impact of this highly predictable economic phenomenon is that 67% of Canadians now agree that everything feels broken in Canada. We have nine out of 10 young people who do not own homes say that they never will. We have students, according to media reports, living in homeless shelters while they study. We have 1.5 million people eating out of food banks in a single year, some of them asking food bank presidents for help with suicide, with medical assistance in dying, not because they are sick, but because the poverty they experience after eight years of the Prime Minister is so insufferable that they would rather end their misery altogether. The average mortgage payment has doubled from $1,500 to over $3,200. The average rent payment in our 10 biggest metropolitan centres has doubled as well. By the way, food prices are up 12%, and energy prices have, off and on, experienced inflation at times 100% year over year, and these are the commodities that make up a much larger part of the budgets of the low-income and working-class people.

The answer to the question “From whom?” is, of course, Canada's working-class people, the people who get out of bed every day and do the nation's labour. They are the ones who are paying the bills for this experiment.

The second part of the question is “To whom?” Who is getting all this benefit?

When we look around our communities, we do not see a lot of people putting up their hand and saying, “Boy, I sure have received a windfall.” I do not know how many constituents of the members in this chamber here today are getting $1,500-an-hour contracts from this government: zero. We are talking about a very small group of people who are getting benefits.

Who are they? Well, let us start chronologically. Let us go back and start with SNC-Lavalin. This is a perfect example of the experiment of which I speak. They went to a socialist country called Libya. The word “socialist” is actually in the republic's name, so one would think it would want nothing to do with a multinational. Of course, that multinational bought influence and stole over $100 million from the poorest people in Africa.

Now the Prime Minister was not going to let a company like that face criminal charges, so he actually fired his attorney general because she refused to have those charges dropped. We saw the Prime Minister protecting a corporation that had stolen from Africa's poorest people, a corporation of amongst the most privileged people on Planet Earth.

After that we saw the Prime Minister give multi-million dollar grants to Loblaws to pay for fridges and to highly profitable credit card companies to provide them with corporate subsidies.

Recently, his finance minister was confronted about the plan in the budget to fund $2 billion to a company that does not exist. The finance minister, when she heard that allegation, said that was absolutely false, it was not $2 billion, it was $15 billion. We can imagine who is going to benefit from that.

Now, we have McKinsey. The Prime Minister gave a glowing speech about his non-friend friend, the non-friend who likes to hug, Dominic Barton. The Prime Minister said he had hired Mr. Barton for $1 a year. Somehow $1 became $50 million, then it became $100 million and then it was $120 million. As the price tag kept rising I actually asked the Prime Minister, close to a dozen times in the House of Commons, what the total dollar value was of all the contracts paid to this company after eight years. He still cannot answer the question.

We know that the company is making a lot of money. According to the government departments that hired it, in many cases it did no work of any value. The public servants who could have done the job themselves say the company came in with a bunch of fancy charts and graphs, and the latest MBA-isms, and made off with millions, and no one can actually figure out what they did for the money. That is to whom the money is going.

In fact, the government has increased the budget for high-priced consultants by nearly 100% to over $15 billion. For context, we have 15 million families in Canada. That means each family is spending $1,000 in federal taxes for high-priced consultants. That is to whom their money is going. For those sitting at home wondering why their paycheques evaporates in federal taxes and asking where it all goes, that is one answer to the question.

Should we be surprised that these are the people who are getting all the money? This is the circle the government travels in. These are the friends that it hangs out with at Davos. None of my members went to Davos. We are not going to Davos. We stayed in our communities while the meeting in Davos was happening recently. We worked for our people, on the ground, the common people. This is the House of Commons, and the common people deserve to have a voice in the House of Commons.

We learned the lesson here, that just because the state takes over the economy does not mean it transforms human nature. It does not mean that it abolishes greed. It just redirects greed. As Macaulay might say, if I might paraphrase him:

Wherever you throw the carrion, the raven's croak is loud;
Wherever you fling the honey, the buzzing flies will crowd;
Wherever down river garbage floats, the greedy pike you see;
And wheresoever such lord is found, such clients soon will be.

Macaulay referred to the flies chasing the honey. Flies do not make honey; they take honey. Bees make honey. That is the kind of difference we have. When the government runs the economy, people get rich by taking. When there is a free market economy, people get better off by making. Bees make honey, through voluntary exchange, through pollination with plants. A voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment, investment for interest. Millions of these voluntary exchanges are what make people better off.

Instead of a state-controlled crony capitalist economy, we want a free market economy with small government and big citizens that empower individuals to do what they want with their money. That is how we put an end to this kind of crony capitalism, and put people back in charge of their money and their lives.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

February 6th, 2023 / 6 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Madam Speaker, to be clear, all capitalism is crony capitalism. The question is, does the leader of the official opposition have the courage to expand the scope of this study to investigate all the pigs at the trough, including Deloitte, Ernst & Young, the Conservative favourite PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG? Why stop at McKinsey when we can go for all of them? Does the leader of the official opposition have the courage to do that?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Yes, Madam Speaker. Is that clear?

Let us be clear about something. The member believes in capitalism; he just believes that capital should be controlled by bureaucrats and politicians. He believes that if we take the same human being who is a CEO and move him over to make him a top bureaucrat or top politician, suddenly he will become an angel. He believes in allocating capital. He just wants it to be done by force of the state rather than the free enterprise and voluntary exchange of customers, workers and entrepreneurs. He believes in the ultimate control, crony capitalism, which is controlled by the state and directed by people with power. That is what he believes.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Kingston and the Islands Ontario

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)

Madam Speaker, I find that answer very interesting because it begs the question of why the Conservatives did not bring forward a more holistic motion. If the Leader of the Opposition is genuine in saying the opposition motion today is one that opens the books up, as he said, and looks at everything, why would he bring forward a motion that is centred on one specific company? If it were not for anything other than political gain—

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Some hon. members

Oh, oh!

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

NDP

The Assistant Deputy Speaker NDP Carol Hughes

I just want to remind members that the leader of the official opposition is able to answer questions without any help from colleagues, so I would ask members to please hold on to their thoughts.

The hon. parliamentary secretary can finish his question.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Madam Speaker, the member admits that he wants to open this up, yet his motion is specific to one particular company. Was the concurrence motion motivated by a genuine interest in looking into an issue, or was it motivated by political gain whereby the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservatives think they can drum up an issue to exploit the fears and anxieties of people?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Madam Speaker, it was the former. It was a desire to look into the issue, but we also know how to set priorities and we need to.

When we are examining Liberal wrongdoing and corruption, it is like drinking from a firehose. The question we always have is, where do we start? We started with McKinsey because that is where most of the smoke is and that is where we are likely to find the first flame. However, we are prepared to examine all of the $15 billion-plus in massive high-priced contracting out that the government does. I can say that we will cut that waste when I am Prime Minister.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Bloc

Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC

Madam Speaker, if my colleagues had followed the recent work of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, they would have known that a motion was moved to examine all the documents from consultants from 2011 to date. That motion should be voted on next week.

That being said, I know that all segments of the population and all professions are being affected by the aging process. Since the beginning of the study on McKinsey, it is astounding to see how no one saw or heard what happened, how no one was able to talk about it and how no one remembers what happened, or who got contracts and why.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party wants to complete the investigation into McKinsey, but we are quite willing to investigate all massive contracts worth $15 billion or more awarded to all such companies.

We are willing to work with anyone to get to the bottom of all these contracts, because Canadians do not work this hard to send cheques to consultants who charge taxpayers $1,500 an hour.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

Madam Speaker, that was an incredible speech from my incredible leader. It is certainly an honour to serve with the member for Carleton, and it is always very difficult to follow his speeches, but that is what I am going to have to do here today.

The bottom line is that the main reason we have brought forward this concurrence motion today is for one reason and one reason alone, and that is that we do not trust the government to audit itself. I say to call in the auditors. That is what I say.

Why should we have any faith in the government to audit itself after the horrific things that we have seen in the time that the Prime Minister and the government have been in office? We have seen things such as SNC-Lavalin, which was a terrible scandal. We have seen things such as the WE Charity, where millions and millions of dollars were spent without any idea as to where it was going.

As a woman, I find especially offensive all of the women who have been thrown under the bus, such as the former justice minister, for example, or the former health minister. We have seen Celina Caesar-Chavannes, who has now said that she was not treated well by the government or the Prime Minister and, sadly, most recently the former minister of sport, who had to take a leave of absence in an effort to deal with the government. Conservatives do not trust the government to be ethical or to audit itself, so I say to call in the auditors.

Liberals will not admit to how much money they have spent. On January 4, CBC published an article showing the Liberal government has spent over 30 times more in contracts with McKinsey & Company than previous government, but on January 17, The Globe and Mail published an article stating the actual value of the government contracts with McKinsey since 2015 amounted to $101.4 million, much higher than previously reported. However, it did not stop there.

On January 31, The Globe and Mail published another article based on documents in a court case in Puerto Rico. Federal contracts awarded to McKinsey are now estimated to be at least $116.8 million. We have asked the Prime Minister several times in the House to tell us the amount he has spent on McKinsey & Company. The Liberals will not even admit to how much they spent. It is time to call in the auditors.

Major policy decisions are being made by McKinsey & Company and not public servants. We have seen the influence of McKinsey & Company throughout the government, for example, specifically with immigration. We have seen Dominic Barton's influence on the immigration project, along with his new century initiative. This is influencing immigration policy within our country, in addition to other policies.

I just came from the government operations committee, where the current CEO of the Infrastructure Bank admitted to one of our fantastic members, the member of Parliament for Haldimand—Norfolk, that the Canada Infrastructure Bank was actually a product of Dominic Barton and McKinsey. He actually admitted to that, and it is not surprising because if we look at the Order Paper questions that we received, the outline of McKinsey's goal was consulting advice and recommendations on “decision criteria to screen and evaluate potential investments, including objectives, terms and principles [and] benchmarking review of these criteria with other infrastructure banks around the world”, based on its mandate.

It does not stop there. Other projects McKinsey was hired for by the Infrastructure Bank included, “Consulting advice and recommendations on strategy-related matters to advance the CIB's mandate and increase in public impact”. It sounds like it was hired to try to convince the public it was a good thing. It goes on to say, “Facilitating expert adviser workshops and recommendations to advance the CIB's mandate and increase the public mandate.“

Once again, we cannot trust the government because its major policy decisions are being made by McKinsey and not by public servants. We have to call in the auditors. There is a consistent lack of transparency and accountability that we have seen by the government.

When we had Mr. Barton at the government operations committee last week, he tried to create the illusion of no relationship, no friendship, between himself and the Prime Minister. However, good friends embrace when they greet each other. Good friends have friends over for dinner, as we saw Dominic Barton do with the current finance minister. He was over at her house for dinner with other influential people.

In addition to all the other things I previously mentioned, there is a clear lack of transparency and accountability with this government and its relationship with McKinsey & Company. We have also seen it from the former finance minister, Bill Morneau, who actually makes reference to it in his book. We have seen the glowing welcome that the Prime Minister gave Dominic Barton at Davos at the World Economic Forum, and in 2016. There is a clear lack of transparency and accountability, and there is the proximity of the relationship between the government, the Prime Minister and McKinsey & Company. Do members know what we need to do? We need to call in the auditors.

A government should not be doing business with a company with such low ethical standards. I would not even know where to begin there. I could start with the campaign financing in France that we have seen. We could talk about McKinsey's contributions in the opioid crisis with Purdue Pharma. We could talk about the criminal charges for insider trading, which its former employees have been implicated in. We could talk about the consulting work that it did for the U.S. immigration, ICE, and creating terrible conditions for refugees. We could talk about McKinsey's strategizing for Russian missile producers.

We could talk about McKinsey's implication in China. I thought it was public knowledge, but unfortunately the minister for procurement and public services had never heard of this. The company's retreat in China in 2018 took place only seven kilometres from an internment camp holding thousands of ethnic Uighurs. This was just a week after a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop. McKinsey also consulted for China Communications Construction, which has built militarized islands in the South China Sea in violation of international law.

Of course, there are ties with the Russian bank. In August 2018, the VEB bank, which is owned by the Russian state and known to be intertwined with Russian intelligence and under United States sanctions, hired McKinsey to develop its business strategy.

Once again, a government, the Canadian government in particular, where we have such high ethical and moral standards across our country with our citizens, should not be doing business with a consulting firm with such low ethical standards. We need to call in the auditors.

Finally, it is not producing good value for money. It has been reported that McKinsey has, in fact, increased its contracts by up to 193% over market value. With this government alone, we saw that 20 out of 23 contracts were not placed in competitive bid environments. Many of them were sole-sourced, in fact. That is 20 out of 23, which once again makes us question the influence. We have seen the bad use of money, as in the example coming out of the Business Development Bank of Canada, where we saw lavish events and chauffeurs being flown to the other side of the country. We see public servants who are completely demoralized as a result of not being consulted on these projects and all of the authority being handed over to McKinsey.

I think we need to simply look at everything. The evidence shows that we should not trust the government to audit itself. We do not know how much it has spent or how it has made its major policy decisions, with a lack of transparency and accountability, working with a company that has no strong ethical values or moral standards and not producing good value for money. What do we need to do? We need to call in the auditors.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:15 p.m.

Kingston and the Islands Ontario

Liberal

Mark Gerretsen LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)

Madam Speaker, I am not sure if the member is aware, but this side of the House will be voting in favour of the motion. We do not see a particular issue with it.

We have guidelines and policies in place for department heads and various different public servants to follow. We have processes to ensure that this happens. Does she believe that the processes in place are being properly administered by our public service?

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:20 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

Madam Speaker, it is apparent that they are not being followed, because even public servants are coming forward and expressing their discontent with the implication of McKinsey & Company in policy decisions, outcomes, policy directions and execution of policies within the government. They are clearly not being followed.

The fact that the government would propose that it investigate these policies, which it has not itself followed, is really quite ridiculous. That is the reason we are here today with this motion asking to bring in an objective third party, the Auditor General, to do a thorough verification.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:20 p.m.

NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

Madam Speaker, we just came from the OGGO committee, and the Conservatives demonstrated that they are willing to support the NDP in expanding this to look at all of the outsourcing, especially the $100-million-plus procurement club, which includes companies that benefited greatly under their government. In fact, under the Harper government, PricewaterhouseCoopers went from $9.8 million to $44 million a year in outsourcing, a 450% increase.

When the Conservatives initially looked at McKinsey, which is the small player of the $600-million-plus procurement club getting outsourcing contracts that are literally running away from Canadians, why did they not put forward a motion to look at Accenture, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers? I would like to learn why they neglected to look at those companies. Again, I want to commend the member for supporting the NDP's call to expand the scope and probe of these companies.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:20 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

Madam Speaker, as a relatively new member of the government operations committee, I know we have an outsourcing study, which is continuing. I certainly look forward to continuing to evaluate many of the other outside companies that provide consulting to the government.

I think we are here because the Canadian public, and even the media in this country, turned Canadians and the official opposition onto what was going on in the House and with the government in relation to the unique relationship between McKinsey & Company and the government. Certainly, while I think the points made are very important, our leader has said that he looks forward to empowering the public service once again by reducing the use of consultants.

I really think it was the Canadian people who drove us to push on the McKinsey file.

Government Operations and EstimatesCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

6:20 p.m.

Bloc

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

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for her speech.

The Bloc Québécois fully supports complete transparency in federal public spending. As we know, the Senate of France conducted a study on the growing influence of consulting firms' relationships with various governments around the world and released a report containing recommendations. The report recommends more transparency, no secrecy, meaningful openness about all contracts, and accountability. Consulting firms are not accountable at this time.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of those recommendations.