Roundup: The hypocrisy around McKinsey concerns

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It was a little weird yesterday, that with Justin Trudeau off in Mexico City, that a number of MPs from all opposition parties descended on the Hill to hold press conferences and send out a raft of releases, as though they all just got back to work after the holidays. (I know, they were working in their ridings, but it was just an interesting turn of events). One of the things that all of the opposition parties demanded was a parliamentary inquiry into the use of McKinsey contracts by the government. Which is fine, if a week after the raft of stories on them, and the minister of procurement says she’d be happy to turn over documents if the right committee requests them, which they haven’t, but then Pierre Poilievre, who deigned to show up in front of microphones, wondered why civil servants weren’t being allowed to do their jobs.

Ahem.

Poilievre was a former minister in the Harper government, which imposed cuts on the civil service and a lot of their capabilities, while their use of outside consultants exploded. This story from 2013 shows the rapidly increasing use of those consultants, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. This study from 2011 documents the ballooning use of these consultants to create the “shadow public service” that is being decried currently. And there can be legitimate uses for outside consultants, but the fact that Poilievre is calling on the government to let the civil service to the work is the height of hypocrisy. The utter lack of shame in his saying that is…frankly unsurprising and telling, but it’s also completely galling at the same time.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612937741523881984

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1612938363685806080

Meanwhile, Poilievre wouldn’t answer questions about his MP who refused to aid asylum seekers in his riding, but instead derided them as “illegal refugees.” Instead, he went on a rant about how the government hasn’t fixed the problems of irregular crossings, or that they haven’t renegotiated the Safe Third Country agreement with the Americans, and demanded that the government close Roxham Road, as though that wouldn’t force these asylum seekers to other, more dangerous crossing points where they wouldn’t be processed upon arrival.

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 322:

Wagner Group mercenaries hired by Russia claim that they are now in control of the salt mining town of Soledar near Bakhmut, but Ukraine says their forces continue to hold out. Russians want to control the underground tunnels around Soledar. A vocational school in Kramatorsk says that no, the Russian strike against them didn’t kill “hundreds of Ukrainian troops” as the Russians are claiming. Here’s a bigger-picture look at the fighting around Bakhmut, which is now described as a “meat grinder.”

Good reads:

  • From the Three Amigos summit, we learned Biden will visit in March, we are purchasing air defences for Ukraine from the US, and we got a NEXUS workaround.
  • Marco Mendicino says he’s open to amendments to the cybersecurity bill after concerns from civil society groups.
  • Mark Miller has appointed a special representative tasked with creating a new ombudsman role around MMIW recommendations.
  • Here’s some more background information on the F-35 fighter deal.
  • The CBC has obtained some of the background on the corruption allegations at the Assembly of First Nations, which the national chief wants to have audited.
  • Order of Canada appointments are not representative of the diversity of the country—but the system depends on nominations from the public.
  • VIA Rail is apologising and offering refunds for their holiday travel failures; air passenger advocates want airlines to be forced to automatically compensate.
  • Opposition MPs are calling for the government to extend the deadline for compensation for military members who drank contaminated water at Valcartier.
  • Danielle Smith had a rambling press conference to carry on her faux war against “just transition,” and to downplay any plans around her “Sovereignty Act.”
  • Philippe Lagassé provides needed context into the procurement process for the F-35 fighters, and why haste makes waste in these matters.
  • Andrew Coyne disputes that we are seeing more polarization, but rather extremism, and calling it polarization imports a false equivalence into it.
  • Susan Delacourt remarks on the plans for Biden’s visit to Canada, and how Trudeau’s relationship with him has largely played out in private for two years.
  • My column looks at the clown show that was the US Speaker election, and wonders if something similar could happen under our system and our rules.

Odds and ends:

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7 thoughts on “Roundup: The hypocrisy around McKinsey concerns”

  2. Well, Mary Wright, I believe you are correct! Main media need to play gotcha stories because that form of “journalism sells ads or promotes a special interest. Truths and facts just don’t sell and idiots like Poilievre and Singh exploit this and the inherent ignorance of Canadian voters of jurisdictions. Dale is constantly discussing this. Thanks for commenting!

  3. Thanks for this clarification! I had totally forgotten how much these consultants were used and their cost.

    • A serious problem with the overuse of consultants is that the Canadian Gov’t loses the internal expertise to even adequately evaluate the work of these consultants. So, we do not know what we are buying or if we are getting our money’s worth.

  4. Dale, why do you devote all your time to slamming the Official Opposition and not the actual government in power?

    • I do call out the government if you bothered to read.
      And if you think the Official Opposition should get away with lying all the time because they’re not the government, that’s your problem.

  5. The focus on McKinsey in particular seems designed to make it look like some sort of kickback scheme. While I have no great love for them, or indeed any other consulting firm, it is worth noting that a considerable share of outside consulting contracts go to McKinsey, KPMG, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young (and Poilievre didn’t say boo about the other three). The reality is that the bigger you are, the more experience you have in writing successful bids, and saying what the contracting manager (and the PSPC go-between) wants to hear, when it comes to deciding who to award the contact to. The bigger companies tend to win, and winning trains them to be more skilled AT winning.

    What doesn’t seem to be mentioned in all the pontificating by Pope Pierre is anything about which departments are doing all this contracting. All this stuff goes through PSPC. It’s not the PMO dictating that all these contracts MUST be with McKinsey, although that’s the impression Poilievre is trying to create.

    There are often cogent reasons for contracting out. Sometimes, you can’t have criticism coming from inside, and other times you can’t have praise coming from inside either. What I worry about, however, is that, if one plans on landing future contracts, perhaps the contractor won’t be as critical as they might be.

    That said, I’ve had to effectively hold the hand of outside consultants during my PS years, because they had little insight into the organization or the quirks of the data they would be working with. The companies may have bigshot track records, but I’ve never been all that impressed with them.

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