The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - January 17, 2023


The Blueprint： Millions extra in the McKinsey scandal


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

166.89952

Word Count

4,181

Sentence Count

200

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

In this episode, Conservative MP Stephanie Cusey joins us to talk about the latest scandal involving McKinsey & Co. and the Liberal government's contract with the global consulting firm, McKinsey. We discuss the scope of McKinsey's involvement with the Liberal Government, and how it may have reached into other areas of the government.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your
00:00:12.700 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, with new content for you
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00:00:40.380 Spotify, you name it, it is out there for your listening and doing pleasure. We have a great
00:00:45.780 show lined up for you today. I know we say that every single week, but there's been a lot of
00:00:49.640 developments going on with liberal ethics violations. Specifically, this just kind of broke last week,
00:00:55.660 and I know it's not really in the news cycle because the House of Commons isn't sitting right
00:00:59.580 now, but this contractor, this contracting firm, McKinsey, awarded more than $100 million,
00:01:06.840 $100 million since 2015. Half of that $100 million was sole source, meaning they didn't have to go up
00:01:14.520 for competition or even compete with other firms. They got a contract, and that is significant because
00:01:20.680 that is a massive growth in the use of private sector consultants, even compared to the Harper
00:01:27.440 government. So to come on and talk to us about that, we brought on Stephanie Cusey, the Member of
00:01:32.480 Parliament for Calgary Mindeport. She's also the Treasury Board critic. There she is. She's been on
00:01:36.480 the show before. Appreciate her coming back. It's been too long since we've had you on the show.
00:01:42.860 Sadly, we have to bring you on and talk about this absolute mess that's going on. Well,
00:01:47.580 we have a whole bunch of mess, but this latest one. No, you're right, Jamie. Well, first of all,
00:01:52.680 it's a pleasure to be here on the Blueprint. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you very much
00:01:57.560 for providing this forum, not only for our caucus, but for conservatives from coast to coast to coast.
00:02:03.520 It's always a pleasure and always a pleasure to see you. Unfortunately, whenever I am here,
00:02:09.300 it seems we are talking about something that the Liberal government has done again, and you're
00:02:14.820 absolutely correct. We find ourselves here on the brink of what is yet another scandal after scandal
00:02:22.340 after scandal after scandal. I'm starting to wonder, Jamie, if Shane is dead. Yet here we are on the brink
00:02:27.860 of another scandal with McKinsey & Co., and it's a very exciting week for us because we have indeed
00:02:35.160 called a meeting, a 1064, an emergency meeting that is taking place tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18th,
00:02:43.440 where we will hopefully pass a motion in an effort to really study and evaluate the extent of McKinsey's
00:02:53.020 involvement in this Liberal government. Jamie, I think this is going to be huge. I think we're going
00:02:58.540 to see this reach into a lot of different departments. It's wrong on so many levels that
00:03:04.800 we can unpack here, their involvement, and I just think it's really great that you are at the front
00:03:11.320 of this recognizing how significant this is for the Liberal government, because as I said, I really
00:03:17.600 think we will see that the tentacles of McKinsey really have reached into a number of departments,
00:03:23.580 and again, that this is wrong on so many levels. So let's talk about why this happened. So McKinsey,
00:03:30.900 one of their former heads at one time was Dominic Parton, a good friend of the Liberals. He then became
00:03:36.700 Canada's ambassador to China. He was there in that position for about two years, let go because some
00:03:42.320 have said he got too cozy with the Chinese government. Now you have headlines in the National
00:03:48.320 Post out yesterday talking about whether or not McKinsey is a shadow government that's
00:03:53.340 secretly runs Canada, and they have operations in 60 countries. There are 30,000 employees,
00:04:00.240 give or take, all over the world, but they've also had their problems. I'll just go through a few,
00:04:05.020 Stephanie, and we can elaborate on that. So McKinsey is currently the subject of a criminal
00:04:10.140 probe in France on charges. They allegedly violated French campaign laws. In September,
00:04:15.300 they were hit with criminal charges in South Africa for a corruption scandal. They got into trouble
00:04:22.120 in Saudi Arabia because they developed a report that was used in the targeting and arrest of
00:04:27.620 dissidents. But this one, this next one, there's many, but this one kind of caught my eye too.
00:04:32.180 In February, 2021, McKinsey & Co. inked a $600 million settlement with U.S. authorities over charges
00:04:38.580 that the firm helped design an aggressive marketing strategy for Oxycontin. Now, of course,
00:04:43.720 we all know that's a drug whose over-prescription spawned the current opioid crisis. And it says
00:04:50.740 here in this article here in the Globe and Mail that I'm quoting now, they were part of a machine
00:04:54.440 that disrupted and in fact destroyed the lives and families in America. This is basically technocrats
00:05:01.860 running the show.
00:05:04.080 And that's exactly it. And you've really touched on a lot of the levels of wrong that I was talking
00:05:10.360 about. You're right. The activities of this company have, their scruples are really questionable
00:05:17.220 to say the least on so many levels. And this is something I hope that we will get into the
00:05:22.140 Government Operations Committee as well, is testimony from where they have been found in conflicts in
00:05:31.400 other countries. You mentioned France, you mentioned the United States, just to name a couple.
00:05:36.060 So this is something that is not immune only to Canada, that it is, as you said, reaches across
00:05:43.780 the globe. And you gave a lot of good examples of where they have done things which are not only
00:05:49.500 questionably ethically, but in fact, potentially, and even found criminal. So, you know, that's
00:05:56.080 certainly the first thing. And you laid out the second other major concern as well, which is that
00:06:00.200 do we have a government, which was supposedly elected by the people, actually running things?
00:06:06.960 Or is this being run by an outside consulting firm with their own interests, with their own private
00:06:13.540 interests that are only there as a result of their relationships with the highest levels of government
00:06:20.680 in this country? And that's really what I think we hope to show within the study, is that this
00:06:27.820 relationship exists at the very top level. And I think we've seen that the prime minister and his
00:06:33.700 cabinet are not immune from poor ethics, that they have consistently been found guilty by the ethics
00:06:42.460 commissioner. They think that they can say they're sorry and move on with things, but they really have
00:06:47.780 no sense of accountability and what the absence of ethical actions means not only for their positions,
00:06:55.420 but for Canadians as well. So we want to show that this relationship exists right at the top,
00:07:02.300 and it has poisoned every corner of government, Jamie. So we're going to start it at the government
00:07:09.240 operations committee. But I think that we have seen implications of departments such as immigration,
00:07:15.300 we saw Dominique Barton was specifically involved in that john McCallum, the former immigration minister was
00:07:23.380 involved with this Dominique, I'm sure you know, went on to go and run the century organization,
00:07:29.060 which is responsible for getting 100 Canada's population to 100 million within a specific time
00:07:36.020 frame through immigration. So again, that shows you that outsiders are setting policy for this government,
00:07:42.580 we're going to see it go to defense, we see that McKinsey was brought into the Department of Defense in an
00:07:49.300 effort to sort of help guide the policies at the most executive levels training at the executive
00:07:55.700 levels. I mean, that's, that's their fingers in there as well, Jamie, we're seeing it also in health,
00:08:01.380 which you mentioned, and I'm very interested to see where this goes, because our leader has had a
00:08:07.940 narrative, which has been challenged by mainstream media, which has been challenged by I would go so far to
00:08:15.620 say as the left. And I really think that the findings within the United States really helps to build our
00:08:22.580 leaders position regarding the opioid crisis. So we essentially have a shadow government and we've seen
00:08:29.300 this as well as we've seen numbers ballooning in the public service. But then also this this incredible
00:08:35.540 amount of money that's been spent on consulting firms, you know, now we know who who's running the show,
00:08:41.300 and we really hope to show that in government operations. So it's wrong from the ethical
00:08:45.940 standpoint of McKinsey working in tandem with the Trudeau government. And it's also wrong in that
00:08:52.260 the government isn't doing what it was elected to do, which is essentially determine policy based
00:08:57.620 upon their platform for Canadians, they're having a third party enter and set their policy based upon
00:09:05.060 their own private interests, which are scrupulous, or which are, are very, are not great.
00:09:11.460 So part of this deal, when you have consultants, especially a company like this, a massive corporation
00:09:18.500 like this, with its tentacles everywhere, trying to affect government policy, trying to basically take
00:09:24.660 their will and impose it upon the people. This is this is what happens big government gets bigger,
00:09:31.300 it starts to use those well lobbied and well lawyered up to make policy and get those lucrative
00:09:37.060 government contracts. At the same time, then you stifle competition. So the little person trying to
00:09:42.500 start their business is facing all kinds of barriers to competition, it makes that harder to get into the
00:09:49.860 competitive market. And in terms of the government of those big corporations, well, you just now have to
00:09:55.540 picture make your pitch to government, right? It's it's so much easier when you have all these super smart
00:10:00.740 people with no real experience in the field, such as this consulting firm based on what I've been
00:10:06.500 reading about. They're trying to basically pin the it's like, it's like the like the people of Canada
00:10:12.660 are just pieces on the chessboard, right? These technocrats can move people around and tell them
00:10:17.860 what to do. And, you know, keep working, pay your taxes, don't ask questions, just shut up and keep going.
00:10:23.300 And we'll just take it from here. But as we can see, they're breaking laws, they're breaking
00:10:29.140 ethical boundaries, and costing taxpayers at the same time.
00:10:33.540 Yeah, and that's a really good point you make about the waste. Because, you know, we're seeing
00:10:39.380 this with the Phoenix pay system. We've seen this in a number of areas where the government, and you
00:10:47.540 know, you talk about the little companies, but I'd also like to take a moment, Jamie, and talk about
00:10:52.900 the public service, even they feel like they have no agency, even they feel like they have these
00:10:58.740 consulting firms coming in and telling them what to do, they feel completely demoralized, they feel
00:11:06.580 without direction, because direction is based on an external third party. But yes, like, you're
00:11:14.340 absolutely correct that Canadians are pieces on a chessboard. And as I said, this is what we really
00:11:21.940 hope to accomplish in this study is just show how high up this rot is, and how throughout the entire
00:11:31.700 government, this rot is, and it all starts tomorrow. And I think it will be very interesting
00:11:37.860 to see how it unfolds, to see what we find, and to see the extent that they, that they are implicated.
00:11:45.540 Because I am sure that it is at the highest levels, and the results have significant impacts on
00:11:53.620 Canadians. Significant, there is just, there's no doubt about it. Because if we look at something like, like,
00:12:01.700 immigration, these targets that the Liberal government has, has set for themselves, well,
00:12:08.020 that's it, have they set them for themselves? Or do they have this external company that came in and
00:12:13.700 decided that, that these were the targets based upon even perhaps other external factors? We don't know.
00:12:21.460 But the result is, public servants have to, without agency, make an attempt to implement
00:12:28.900 that without really having any, any power themselves. They feel, we see that even this
00:12:34.660 week with the return to work mandate, they feel misguided, they feel as though the directive wasn't
00:12:40.740 clear. This is a common theme in the Treasury Board amongst public service employees, that they,
00:12:46.420 they just feel as though they were not sure what their objectives are, the directives are, their,
00:12:52.260 their organizational structures don't reflect the work that has to be done, their workspaces don't
00:12:58.020 reflect the work that has to be done. And, and that a lot of that could possibly be, because again,
00:13:04.980 it's not really the government that's in charge, not, not the, the bureaucrats, and not even the ministers.
00:13:12.900 It's a few people at the highest level of this country in the prime minister's office with,
00:13:18.740 with evil partnerships that are making deals and implementing those deals throughout all of
00:13:25.540 government with horrific consequences for Canadians, for public servants, but as you've indicated with
00:13:32.980 those anecdotes at the beginning of the hour throughout, throughout the world. And why hasn't our,
00:13:38.900 our government or why hasn't our government learned from these examples from throughout the world or
00:13:44.340 held the, the prime minister to account in his relationships? But as I said, we're going to find
00:13:49.860 out a lot here. And I think it's, we are not even at the tip of the iceberg and it all starts tomorrow,
00:13:54.580 Jamie. Let's unpack a bit about what you said. I think that holds true. The liberal party right now has,
00:14:01.300 what do they have 130 some odd MPs, probably a little bit more, maybe 140. You have thousands,
00:14:09.300 tens of thousands of bureaucrats within the public service. And that has been growing every single
00:14:13.940 year since 2015, when the Trudeau liberals took power. And now you have the outside use of consulting
00:14:20.180 firms, but you're right. It's not exactly the MPs themselves. It's not exactly the, the, the words of the
00:14:28.500 citizens, the Canadians that are dealing with a whole bunch of issues. It is a small group of people
00:14:33.460 within the prime minister's office, making all these decisions. It, that is really scary when you think
00:14:39.300 about it. Just a very tiny group of centralized power hungry people. I can't, they're not bureaucrats. They're just
00:14:48.660 political staffers making these decisions for the lives of countless of Canadians who are dealing with
00:14:54.020 high inflation, a housing crisis, healthcare is a mess. The list goes on and on and on. And, and, and
00:15:02.980 these consultants just come in and have the grand plan. Well, it's the central planning, right? We,
00:15:08.260 once the planners plan, they just ask for more time when the plans fail, right? They, they keep more
00:15:13.620 time, more patients, more money. We'll figure it out. You just sit back and I don't care if you're
00:15:17.860 freezing, you're starving, doesn't matter. We'll figure it out in time, but it never gets figured out.
00:15:22.020 It never gets figured out. And, and that's another thing that we have heard is that they're brought
00:15:29.540 in, but they never come to any resolution. And again, the Phoenix pay system is a perfect example
00:15:36.020 of that. And we've also had the prime minister come out and say, oh, you know, his, his ministers
00:15:41.460 are on it. So I really hope his ministers are willing to come and testify as committee, because that's
00:15:47.300 certainly one of the places that we'll be starting both, uh, minister Fortier and minister,
00:15:52.100 um, Dracic. Now, mind you, these problems date back to way before then, but I mean,
00:15:57.860 we have to start somewhere. So I don't even know, uh, what they're going to come with,
00:16:02.340 but we have to start somewhere. And the other thing I'm worried about, Jamie is seeing another,
00:16:08.260 um, I'm trying to even think of like a acceptable word. I can say on the air task force or study,
00:16:15.460 right? I mean, look at what happened when, uh, Ogo did the study of the, um, whistleblower
00:16:23.540 legislation seven years ago, the Trudeau government never implemented it. So a private members bill
00:16:30.260 comes forward, uh, suggesting that this, some of the recommendations from the Ogo study on whistleblower
00:16:36.420 legislation is implemented. Oh, lo and behold, the liberals and Mona Fortier decide that they're
00:16:43.460 putting together a task force to evaluate a whistleblower legislation and what has to be done.
00:16:50.420 And this is what the liberals do is they put together a task force where we see nothing come
00:16:56.180 out of it. We, we see a study put together where even if the study has conclusions, none of the
00:17:01.460 conclusions are, uh, are, are implemented. So that's the other thing I'm really worried about,
00:17:07.460 Jamie, is that, um, we're going to see, uh, Minister Fortier administer jazz it come, come out of nowhere.
00:17:13.140 The first week that we go back to the house and say, Oh, good news. There's no need for government
00:17:18.260 operations to investigate this. We've put together a task force. Um, and that's not going to fly.
00:17:24.420 That's not going to fly with me. And that's not going to fly with our NDP and block counterparts.
00:17:29.380 And I'll, I'll, I think that's a really important thing to add here, Jamie, is that this isn't just
00:17:34.660 us, the conservative party of Canada and the conservative caucus that sees the rot and the
00:17:40.500 spread and the, um, the, the, the, the horrific ethics of this company. It's the other opposition,
00:17:47.380 uh, parties as well. So we are unified in wanting to see this addressed because all of us recognize
00:17:56.340 that one, it is rotten and two, it is throughout, uh, government, but I'm telling you, Jamie,
00:18:03.380 um, even between the time that we decided to call the 1064 and the time that the letter was delivered
00:18:09.780 to the clerk, I was sitting there holding my breath, waiting for the announcement of a study,
00:18:14.580 uh, or, or a task force. So, you know, my point is they will do everything they can in an effort to,
00:18:22.020 uh, cover this up another cover up. How many cover ups have we seen? They will do everything
00:18:26.580 they can in an effort to, uh, deflect this. And we've seen this, um, continuously through,
00:18:32.500 throughout the, the government's time in government, but even in the fall with, uh, IRGC, once again,
00:18:39.540 uh, with the arrive can up, just cover up, cover up marrying again, she's still there, uh, as a minister,
00:18:45.780 as I said, I can't help but what her shame is dead. Um, but, uh, my point is that we are not
00:18:51.780 going to let them get away with this because there have to be answers for Canadians as to
00:18:59.380 not only where their tax dollars are going in this time of high inflation, in this time of cost of
00:19:05.060 living increases, where food is at a 40%, uh, increase. Um, but also because who is pulling
00:19:12.980 the strings, who's pulling the strings, Jamie, we want to get to the bottom of it.
00:19:16.660 Well, let's get to the bottom of it. Let's just turn the channel a bit. Let's pretend that
00:19:21.540 it was the conservative government that did this. And then we will have the media lighting
00:19:26.660 their hair on fire. We will having the, the liberals having panic attacks on the floor.
00:19:31.460 Like let's, let's just have that same amount of enthusiasm from, from these outside players
00:19:37.860 just to get to the bottom of it, because I think this goes pretty deep in the fact that
00:19:42.180 we have potentially outside groups and we we've suspected that all along and let's not get,
00:19:47.460 let's not forget that there has been many examples of outside organizations,
00:19:52.260 steering governments, not just in Canada, but across the world. And in here we're having
00:19:56.820 almost outright proof that this is happening.
00:20:00.260 No, you're absolutely correct. And I will say, I'm sure you're aware there's been a lot,
00:20:05.380 and I mean, a lot of media interest and I'll add not only in McKinsey and Co's involvement in
00:20:12.500 government. Um, but consultancy across government, we saw that Paul Wells, um, article. I mean, but
00:20:19.060 my goodness, when you have journalists who are established within the Canadian media, like Fife
00:20:25.300 coming out and saying like, um, this group is evil. These two, the prime minister and this company are,
00:20:31.860 aren't bent together. Like it's time for the media to listen. Um, it is time like Canadians
00:20:39.060 cannot deny this and the liberals, they will try, but they will have a very hard time spinning this.
00:20:46.260 So you raise another good point. Uh, as I said, up to this point, we're seeing, I'm seeing one,
00:20:51.540 two stories generated a day from all of the major outlets, both French and English, uh, media,
00:20:58.900 but we'll see where they go with this. Cause I think that they are, um, very interested to sort of see
00:21:05.700 how this unfolds. And I think how this unfolds will, uh, have a lot to do with, um, the block
00:21:14.740 and the NDP and, and us sort of being on the same page, working towards what should be the common
00:21:21.780 objective of transparency for Canadians, uh, with their government. Um, but then also how well the
00:21:29.380 liberals are, are able to deflect cause you know, the prime minister is called the Teflon prime minister
00:21:35.620 for a good reason. I mean, we think of how many scandals is he's at three violations from the
00:21:42.580 ethics commissioner. Now he's still there. How many ministers yet are our colleague Brad
00:21:47.460 Vist just did a fantastic, um, video on, on all the violations. And then it's, they're still there.
00:21:54.820 They don't, they don't go anywhere coming, coming out of the emergencies act review. Mendicino is still
00:22:00.660 there. Bill Blair is still there. Like I said, I really, I wonder if Shane is dead because, um,
00:22:07.300 what, what this government has done, if we would have attempted to pull in the years that we were in
00:22:13.780 power there, there would not be the same tolerance or measure, not from, uh, I think the media, uh, not from
00:22:23.300 that I, I, I'm not even sure what the Canadian public, uh, isn't aware of, or, um, doesn't have
00:22:32.020 time to the information that they don't have to see that, uh, that, that this is wrong, but, uh, it
00:22:38.980 doesn't mean that we're going to give up and it doesn't mean that we're not going to keep trying to
00:22:43.780 get, um, to the bottom of this because, you know, as I said at the beginning of the hour, sadly, this is
00:22:49.220 just another example of, of yet another scandal and another place where the government had the
00:22:57.540 option to act ethically, where the prime minister had the option, um, to not go with his good buddies,
00:23:05.380 but he just, he can't stop himself, Jamie. He can't stop himself. And he went and built these relation,
00:23:12.420 not only built these relationships, acted on these relationships and worse than that,
00:23:17.860 forced his top people to permeate them throughout government.
00:23:22.020 All right. We're sadly out of time. So many more questions. You have your emergency meeting tomorrow.
00:23:27.620 We'll see what comes out of that. Hopefully we, we get some momentum here in terms of getting to the
00:23:32.980 bottom of things and perhaps follow up on next week's show as to what exactly happened and kind of
00:23:37.780 update people, uh, kind of, uh, you know, the play by play of it all. Um, Stephanie, as you know,
00:23:43.300 the guests got the last word, feel free to, free to take it from here. Thank you, Jamie. I just,
00:23:50.260 I want to really, uh, I want Canadians to know just, um, McKinsey and co do your homework on them. Look into
00:23:59.220 some of the anecdotes that, uh, Jamie mentioned at the top of the hour and keep an eye on this
00:24:07.540 because as I said, the rock is at the top and it has spread throughout Denmark.
00:24:14.100 All right. Stephanie Cusey, member of parliament, Calgary,
00:24:16.260 vendor portal to the treasury board. Thank you very much. Good luck in your meeting
00:24:20.100 to you and your team, pushing this forward and getting to the bottom of how deep these
00:24:24.340 tentacles of McKinsey and co seem to run in our Canadian governments. And we appreciate your time
00:24:29.860 as well. Thank you very much for, for joining us today. As mentioned off the top, we have new content
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