Today, the Auditor General of Canada released a damning report into the taxpayer-funded contracts that Justin Trudeau awarded his well-connected friends at McKinsey.
Over the past few years, the Auditor General discovered that McKinsey had been awarded $209 million in contracts. 90 percent of the contracts that the Trudeau Government awarded McKinsey were given without following the appropriate guidelines. In many cases, it was unclear what the purpose of the contract was, or if the desired outcome was achieved.
In one case, the Canada Border Services Agency saw that McKinsey did not qualify for a contract, so they revised the statement of work so McKinsey could qualify. Often, the Trudeau Government sole-sourced these contracts directly to McKinsey, and never even attempted to explain why a non-competitive process was justified.
This is especially concerning as 70 percent of all contracts awarded to McKinsey were non-competitive. Worse still, in 13 out of 17 contracts given to McKinsey where security clearances should have been necessary, the Trudeau Government allowed McKinsey to operate without them.
It’s not a surprise that Trudeau gave McKinsey hundreds of millions of dollars. At the time, McKinsey was led by Dominic Barton, a close friend and advisor of Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland. He was the key figure in the Liberals’ Advisory Council on Economic Growth and their Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee.
It was Barton’s idea to create the failed, scandal-plagued Canada Infrastructure Bank, and it was Barton and McKinsey who had to pay nearly $600 million in damages for helping create the opioid crisis. Despite this, Trudeau made Barton Canada’s ambassador to China anyway.
Common Sense Conservatives will end the corruption and fix the budget by firing the high-priced consultants.