00:00:00.000It is good news that a House of Commons committee is going to be probing the question of McKinsey and Company's growing contracts with the federal government.
00:00:09.860Now what's at issue here are concerns about reports that McKinsey and Company's contract value has vastly increased in recent years under the Trudeau Liberal government,
00:00:19.640now mounting for about $100 million worth of contracts since Trudeau got into office. It was much smaller before he got into office.
00:00:27.080So parliamentarians have a lot of questions. It's a good thing they're holding this inquiry.
00:00:32.200Here are just a couple of the questions that I think Canadians need answered.
00:00:36.340One of them is, what were these contracts actually for? What was being done for $100 million?
00:00:43.320Now often you can go onto government websites and you can see RFPs, Request for Proposals, where they tell you exactly what's going on, what they want.
00:00:51.900Often it'll involve some material good. We need you to supply office equipment for this department.
00:00:57.420And it's pretty clear what's going on there. And then you can measure whether or not you are getting good value for that money that you spend.
00:01:04.760What is the measurable impact of what McKinsey and Company was doing for the federal government?
00:01:12.300Now, another important question is, what is the extent of McKinsey's involvement in general with the government?
00:01:18.600One Quebec politician likened what was going on with all of these contracts to McKinsey effectively running a shadow government within the public service.
00:01:27.580Basically meaning they were almost calling the shots in government departments.
00:01:31.980They had that much influence and power. And that's what these contracts basically allowed.
00:01:36.720Is that accurate? That interpretation?
00:01:39.340These questions should be probed. We have to look into those angles.
00:01:42.440And very importantly, and this is really immaterial of McKinsey, this question would apply regardless of who the consultancy was and how many contracts there were.
00:01:52.720What's the federal public service doing on these files?
00:01:56.820When you bring in an outside consultant for something that is not a tangible thing, not like supplying office equipment,
00:02:02.700but you're bringing them in to offer general consulting services, why couldn't the public service do that themselves?
00:02:09.560Why did you even need to outsource that service?
00:02:13.080We pay a whole lot of people, many thousands of people working in Ottawa to be federal bureaucrats.