Government Operations committee  That's not always a simple question to answer. In this case, in paragraph 5.28, we listed elements that we were searching for to demonstrate value for money. I would have told you that value for money during the pandemic might have been evaluated in a slightly different way than it should be evaluated in the normal course of business.

Government Operations committee  It is very rare that we would refer something to the RCMP or to law enforcement before our work is made public, but we're always happy to talk to the RCMP once it's out there. We have not made a referral in this case.

Government Operations committee  I think you raised other possibilities for why the behaviour we're seeing might be happening. I think that's why the public service needs to take a step back and figure out what it is about procurement rules that are driving the behaviours we're seeing. Regarding changes brought about after the audit period, I have not had an opportunity to look at those.

Government Operations committee  I look back at what a national master standing offer is meant for. It's meant to provide a group of services that are commonly purchased in a certain format. I guess I would call it almost a vending machine. There are certain things you can get, and you decide how often you want an item or how many you want.

Government Operations committee  Typically I would not expect ministers to be involved at all in procurement decisions that are made by departments. When we looked at these 97 contracts, we did not see ministerial involvement except for one where it was required by the rules. I would expect that PSPC would do a better challenge function in some of these contracts, and, in other areas that we saw, they did do a good challenge function.

Government Operations committee  For sure; I think that PSPC should have done a better job at challenging some of the procurements that were brought to them for them to be able to issue contracts, but I would expect that that challenge function also exists in every department and agency, because not all contracts go through PSPC in order to be issued.

Government Operations committee  To me it reveals that, at the start, everyone should be taking a step back before they enter into a procurement process. You need to figure out if you are trying to fill a skills gap that doesn't exist in the public service, whether you need additional resources, or if you're just trying to get plurality of thought in trying to get something outside the public service to compare to.

Government Operations committee  This is correct in the case where a contract has been awarded individually by another department.

Government Operations committee  Many private sector companies specialize in benchmarking. I would expect the public service to have information. After all, Statistics Canada has been accumulating data for years. That said, we often want to look outside the public service for information to find out what the private sector is doing and compare that with what's happening in the public sector.

Government Operations committee  We did find in this audit that they could have done a better job at challenging many of the organizations, especially when multiple contracts appeared to be issued for similar work in a really short period of time, but there are things that they're not aware of. As I mentioned earlier, if a contract is issued below a dollar value threshold, only the department that issued that contract would be aware of it.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure I can say that we saw that in these 97 contracts. I think I would call into question the national master standing offers. They existed with other organizations as well for benchmarking services, so there were other companies at the disposal of departments. I would have expected that they would have documented why McKinsey over the other national master standing offer companies.

Government Operations committee  I just want to be clear that this is a word that we used to describe it. We didn't know a better way to describe what we were seeing. It isn't a term that's commonly used. For me, it shows that if you issue the first contract in a competitive way and then issue subsequent contracts in a non-competitive way, you're limiting competition.

Government Operations committee  No, we did not see political interference in the contracts that we looked at. We did see that a minister was involved in one procurement because it was a non-competitive procurement above the threshold that the public service is allowed to issue on its own. In accordance with the rules, they went to the minister, the minister authorized it and then the government issued the contract as it normally would have through its regular processes.

Government Operations committee  We did not see that there was a push from a political aspect to direct any contracts to McKinsey.

Government Operations committee  That's correct. The decisions that we saw were made by public servants. Even in the six contracts that appeared to be designed to suit McKinsey & Company, it was the public service that made those decisions.