OGGO – Opening Remarks – June 5, 2023

By: Matthew Shea, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Ministerial Services and Corporate Affairs Privy Council Office

To: Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

June 5, 2023

3:30 – 5:30 p.m.

Good afternoon Chair and members of the Committee.

Thank you for inviting departmental officials including the Privy Council Office to provide information about the government’s response to the motion for the production of documents concerning contracts awarded to McKinsey and Company.  

My name is Matthew Shea and I am the Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Ministerial Services and Corporate Affairs, at the Privy Council Office.

Canadians expect and deserve value for contracts signed by the government on their behalf. The public service is committed to ensuring procurements are conducted in a fair, open, and transparent manner and in accordance with Treasury Board policies, regulations, guidelines, trade agreements and procedures.

We are also committed to accountability.

The public service understands and respects the role of Parliament to hold the Government to account and is committed to providing information to parliamentarians in a transparent manner.

Across the public service, we are making best efforts to respond to the committee’s request for the production of documents.

Hundreds of public servants in 20 organizations were mobilized with collecting, reviewing and translating documents, with an estimated total volume of over 220,000 pages. As many of those pages as possible were provided to the committee by February 22.

Completing the remaining translation and providing all documents in both official languages is a priority.

The public service is also committed to transparency.

The longstanding approach over successive governments has been to balance the commitment to transparency with the need to protect information.

We typically take steps to protect third party information that represents a commercial sensitivity. Upon learning that McKinsey provided its material to this committee in an unredacted format, we engaged the company to lift redactions where possible.

The committee has and will continue to receive revised packages with minimal redactions as a result.

My colleagues joining me here today will be pleased to answer questions related to the status of their departmental work.

I will turn now to the records provided by the Privy Council Office.

The Privy Council Office issued one sole-source non-competitive contract to McKinsey in 2017 in the amount of $24,747 during the period for which records were requested.

Of the 280 pages submitted by the Privy council Office, redactions remain in 2 paragraphs that relate to Cabinet Confidence.

Mr. Chair, members of Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with this context. All of us on the panel look forward to answering your questions this evening.