The federal public works department has revised previously provided information on contracts awarded to U.S. multinational consulting firm McKinsey, bringing the amount to a total of $104.6 million since 2015, and says it’s currently gathering information from other departments who also spent millions on the firm.
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) provided the information in an unsolicited statement on Jan. 26.
PSPC says in its revised statement the information provided was accurate at the time, but a periodic refresh of its contract management system captured a contract recently awarded.
The new contract relates to a call-up against the National Master Standing Offer with McKinsey, which provides access to its service of proprietary benchmarking methodologies meant to allow the measurement of the performance of Canadian departments against foreign entities.
This new contract has a value of 3.2 million and PSPC didn’t indicate which department will receive the service.
The department also said other federal organizations have awarded contracts to McKinsey under their own contracting authorities.
It says non-exhaustive research to date indicates that 10 contracts valued at a total of $12.2 million were given to McKinsey since 2015 by other departments and agencies.
Out of those, four were sole source contracts under $40,000 and six were competitive, says PSPC.
The focus on McKinsey comes after CBC reported an exponential increase in contracts awarded to the firm since the Liberals took power in 2015.
The public broadcaster had initially identified $66 million in contracts found through open records, quite short of the over $100 million revealed by PSPC.
The House of Commons government operations committee voted on Jan. 18 to conduct a study of the contracts and McKinsey’s role in federal affairs.
Ministers and representatives from the firm will be called to testify.
McKinsey has defended its work with the federal government in a previous statement.
“Our government work in Canada is entirely non-partisan in nature and focuses on core management topics, such as digitization and operations improvement. Our firm does not make policy recommendations on immigration or any other topic,” the firm said on Jan. 10.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he told ministers to look into the contracts and that rules would be changed if needed.
