Roundup: The mounting spending on McKinsey consultants

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There is a report out from Radio-Canada about the current government’s increasing reliance on consulting reports from McKinsey, with an explosion of contract spending on them. And it’s not good—it’s expensive, it’s corrosive to the capabilities of the civil service, and it undermines the ability for there to be transparency in these kinds of consultations. There is an attitude that anything coming from outside government is better, and the civil service (rightly) feels put out by it without also recognising that some of their own dysfunction has contributed to these attitudes.

I would note, however, that the story does leave out some of the context around the increasing use of external consultants and the history, particularly under the previous government. While the focus of this story was on McKinsey and how this government seems to be relying on them more, we have to also remember that a lot of this outsourcing of work that should be done by the civil service sharply increased under the previous government, particularly as they cut capacity and capability in the civil service, and then found it from external sources, where it was easier to be told what they wanted to hear. (That, and it was a tactic in their outright war on the civil service). This isn’t to say that the civil service is still a bastion of telling truth to power, because it hasn’t been for a while now, and the dysfunction of the relationship between government and the professional civil-service is a real problem that has no easy solutions. But it’s getting worse and not better, even under this government that promised to restore that relationship (though interviews I’ve done for other stories suggests that they didn’t have any idea about how bad things were in the civil service when they made that promise). It would be great if ministers could actually listen to their departments rather than hiring these outside consultants, but it’s not like this government is a fount of political courage in doing things all that differently when it comes down to it.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 316:

As Russian missiles have struck civilian targets in Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Russia is planning a new mobilization in order to delay their inevitable defeat. Meanwhile, Canadian-made LAVs are now reaching the battlefield in Ukraine.

Good reads:

  • Here is a look at the potential problems when it comes to the planned modernization of NORAD monitoring stations in Canada’s north.
  • Here is a look at the political dimension of the possible Rogers-Shaw deal, and how the minister can still block it.
  • Michaëlle Jean says that wealthy nations need to admit mistakes they made in Haiti, and pressure that country’s elite to find a path out of their ongoing crisis.
  • Here is an attempt to compare Canada’s Speaker to that in the US, but misses the fact that the American Speaker is more akin to a prime minister.
  • The Conservatives and NDP members of the Commons’ transport committee want the minister to face questions at committee (for failing to use a magic wand?)
  • Heather Scoffield peruses some of the economic forecasts for the year ahead.
  • Paul Wells offers some trenchant observations about that report on the government’s increasing use of outside consultants.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1610647560435413000

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