McKinsey doesn't meet criteria for banning company from federal contracts: bureaucrat
The deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada says the federal government's ethics rules do not disqualify consulting firm McKinsey & Company from doing business with the federal government despite scrutiny of the firm's global track record.
Paul Thompson answered questions about the firm's government contracts at a House of Commons committee Monday.
He said a Canadian company would be barred from federal contracts if one of its affiliates has been convicted of a crime, which is not the case for McKinsey.
The company has faced scrutiny for its work around the world, including its alleged involvement in the opioid crisis in the U.S. and its work with authoritarian governments.
The House of Commons government operations committee is digging into contracts awarded to McKinsey since 2011 following media reports showing a rapid increase in the company's federal contracts under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.
The government says McKinsey has received at least $116.8 million in federal contracts since 2015.
At a news conference Monday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said the federal government shouldn't be contracting with McKinsey. "We cannot work with a company that's behaving in the way McKinsey has."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2023.
IN DEPTH
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Opinion
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Bombshell revelations that suggest Chinese agents actively, fraudulently and successfully manipulated Canada's electoral integrity in the last two federal elections cannot be dismissed with the standard Justin Trudeau nothing-to-see-here shrug, Don Martin writes in his exclusive opinion column for CTVNews.ca.
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The chances Trudeau's health-care summit with the premiers will end with the blueprint to realistic long-term improvements are only marginally better than believing China’s balloon was simply collecting atmospheric temperatures, Don Martin writes in an exclusive column for CTVNews.ca, 'But it’s clearly time the 50-year-old dream of medicare as a Canadian birthright stopped being such a nightmare for so many patients.'
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