Patrick Doyle The Canadian Press Auditor General of Canada Karen Hogan
The Office of the Auditor General of Canada will investigate contracts awarded to the consulting firm McKinsey by the government of Justin Trudeau, he told AFP on Friday.
“The Office of the Auditor General has informed Parliament that the audit will begin,” said his spokesman Vincent Frigon.
The scope of this audit has not yet been determined, he added.< /p>
In recent months, the Conservatives have called for this investigation to shed light on these contracts, which they say have registered a great “multiplication” since 2015, when the Liberal Party of Mr. Trudeau came to power.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis recently decried “the enormous sum of money” paid to the company since that date, which would exceed $100 million.
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Dominic Barton says he had no role in McKinsey contracts
What relationship between Barton and Trudeau?
The conservative opposition also wants to clarify the links between Justin Trudeau and the former boss of McKinsey, Dominic Barton, whom it accuses of being close friends.
Mr. Barton was the head of McKinsey between 2009 and 2018, then served as Canada's ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021.
In particular, he helped defuse the diplomatic crisis between the two countries linked to the Canada's arrest, at the request of the United States, of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in 2018 and negotiated the release of the two Canadians detained in China.
Called to testify recently before a parliamentary committee, Dominic Barton was questioned about the role of McKinsey, accused of having contributed to the opiate crisis in the United States, the contracts made with the Canadian government and his links with Justin Trudeau.< /p>
“I am not a close personal friend of the Prime Minister,” Mr. Barton insisted at the time.
“I have not had the slightest involvement in the awarding of contracts paid to McKinsey by the federal government since I moved to Asia in 1996,” he said.
A study by Carleton University in Ottawa found that the total value of contracts awarded at McKinsey was nevertheless derisory compared to those spent with other companies such as Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC.
In France, searches were carried out at the end of January at the homes of managers and former managers of McKinsey in the context of investigations into suspicions of illegal financing Emmanuel Macron's electoral campaigns in 2017 and 2022.
