I’m not a close friend of the PM, repeated Mr Barton, who ran McKinsey from 2009 to 2018, while being questioned by members of the House Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. I don’t have his phone number and I’ve never been in a room alone with him.
I am shocked by what I am reading in the newspapers and by this [Justin Trudeau] must also be quite shocked because it isn’t true, he claimed, referring to the various media outlets labeling him as close to Justin Trudeau.
However, his statement somewhat contradicts the portrait Chrystia Freeland, now Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, painted during a speech in 2019 when Justin Trudeau appointed Mr Barton as Canada’s ambassador to China. She had described a great closeness between the two men.
Mr Barton finally left his post as ambassador in 2021 after leading negotiations for the repatriation of the two Michaels who had been imprisoned in China for almost three years.
Dominic Barton and Justin Trudeau at a reception in 2017
Photo: The Canadian Press/Christopher Katsarov
Beyond the personal relationship that may or may not link Justin Trudeau and Dominic Barton, the latter’s testimony is key, particularly given his role, at the request of former Treasury Secretary Bill Morneau in 2016, as honorary chair of the Economic Growth Advisory Board.
If a minister or prime minister asks you to do something, do it. And it was an honor. I worked hard and it had nothing to do with McKinsey contracts, Mr. Barton reasoned Wednesday.
At the time, this committee recommended that the federal government increase the number of immigrants admitted to Canada annually to 450,000 by 2021, a goal that also aligned with the goals of the advocacy group The Century Initiative, or Initiative of the Century. .established in 2011 by Mr. Barton.
Liberal Immigration Secretary John McCallum described the committee’s proposed target as huge. However, the Trudeau government eventually followed the recommendation – as evidenced by its current immigration target.
In August 2018, just days after Dominic Barton left McKinsey as a director, the consulting firm began its first contract with the Department of Immigration to review many aspects of its management. Contracts of this type have multiplied as a result, according to a Radio-Canada survey.
“Since I moved to Asia in 1996, I have not been involved with the federal government placing paid contracts with McKinsey.”
— A quote from Dominic Barton, former global director of McKinsey
I know it might sound like a good story, but there was no connection between my work [de directeur] and those of McKinsey [avec les clients], added the firm’s former global director. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain since I began my testimony.
Just to put things in perspective, McKinsey is a very large company. The work that is done in Canada is a tiny fraction of what is being done. And it was not my intention to interfere in this work.
McKinsey is a consulting firm based in New York but employs 30,000 consultants worldwide in 130 offices in 65 countries (new window).
Dominic Barton ran consulting firm McKinsey from 2009 to 2018 and then served as Canada’s Ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021.
Photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
Growing and disruptive influence
Since Justin Trudeau took office in 2015, Justin Trudeau’s administration has awarded McKinsey more than $116 million in contracts. That’s about 45 times the total value of contracts awarded by Stephen Harper’s previous Conservative government, which was in power for nine years from 2006 to 2015.
Faced with this massive government use of a private consultancy, the Parliamentary Committee on Government Business and Budget Estimates, in which the Liberals are in the minority, decided to launch an inquiry.
Opposition parties are, of course, concerned about the costs generated by these contracts, but also about the lack of transparency, subcontracting that undermines public service expertise, and the influence of a foreign company on government policy.
But NDP MP Gord Johns, who sits on the committee, tabled a motion to expand his mandate to include other consultancies that have won lucrative business from Ottawa, including Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture, KPMG and Ernst & Young. The application will be discussed at the next committee meeting.
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On Monday, researcher Amanda Clarke, an associate professor in Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration, testified before the committee. In particular, she said that the importance given to McKinsey in this investigation is just a distraction.
In her opinion, consideration should be given to outsourcing more public service work to this type of private consultancy, as suggested by MP Gord Johns.