Opposition Parties Push to Summon Witnesses Over McKinsey and Canada Infrastructure Bank Links

Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis rises during Question Period in Ottawa on Sept. 27, 2022. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

Opposition MPs on a committee pressed May 2 to summon witnesses to appear at their study of consulting firm McKinsey’s role in the creation of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, but a fiery exchange and a long debate prevented any resolution or even hearing the witnesses set to testify.

Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell said the Tories are inventing scandals and only looking for clickbait in raising a fuss about witnesses not appearing to testify.

“Another day, another conspiracy theory by the conservatives,” said O’Connell.

Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis interrupted O’Connell, saying “You came here deliberately to cause conflict.”

“Get out of here!” O’Connell fired back.

Lewis opened the meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities (TRAN) by discussing her motion to summon witnesses to appear. The previous committee meeting was cancelled due to witnesses not responding to invitations.

Lewis raised the issue in the House of Commons on April 27, saying she was putting the witnesses on notice. “They can come the easy way or they can come the hard way, but they will come to committee and they will answer to taxpayers,” she said. The Conservatives tabled the motion the following day.

The committee is conducting a study on the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), which was established in 2017 to fund revenue-generating infrastructure projects with $35 billion in taxpayer money and to attract private investments.

The CIB was recommended by the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, a body created by the Trudeau government which was chaired by then McKinsey boss Dominic Barton.

The CIB went on to award $1.43 million in contracts to McKinsey and hired several former McKinsey employees, with former partner Ehren Cory now serving as its current CEO.

Cory had appeared before the Commons government operations committee on Feb. 6 to testify in the context of that committee’s study on McKinsey contracts, and was also scheduled to testify on May 2.

An hour and a half into the meeting, Cory and other witnesses set to testify were dismissed without having addressed the committee.

While these witnesses were present, Lewis decried that multiple individuals had not responded to the committee’s invitation, including Minister of Infrastructure Dominic Leblanc and Minister of Innovation François-Philippe Champagne.

Other opposition parties also sided with the Conservatives. “I’m certainly not a conspiracy theorist,” said Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval addressing O’Connell’s comment made at the start of the meeting.

“I also sent a list of witnesses to the clerk and I also saw that the witnesses I requested basically all declined to appear, with one exception.”

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach threw his support behind the Conservatives’ motion, saying it makes a “decent point.”

“These witnesses were recalcitrant until this motion landed, and all of a sudden they’ve expressed a desire to accommodate the committee,” he said, adding that if they’re not summoned they could back away again.

Lewis said Canadians have an issue with the CIB because of the “lack of transparency of this bank on contracts, on hiring, on salaries, on its project agreements, on its financing arrangements, and on providing accurate information to Parliament on the status of current projects.”

“All of these things are an affront to transparency,” she said.

O’Connell responded that “Conservatives have not lost their ability to invent scandals where one doesn’t exist and to call this an affront to transparency, I would suggest it’s an affront to reality.”

The government operations committee has been studying the contracts awarded to McKinsey over the last few months and no major controversy has been unearthed.

As for the TRAN committee, this is not its first crack at the CIB, having issued a single recommendation with regard to the bank in May last year. The committee recommended that it be abolished, citing issues such as lack of efficiency.

The study was based on research conducted during the previous Parliament, and supporters of the CIB say the bank has since made great strides.

Cory told the government operations committee in February that 27 projects have reached financial closure, with 19 of those being currently in construction.