Federal Government Paid McKinsey $116 Million for Reports Nobody Read, Including One on How to Save Money on Consultants

OTTAWA – The federal government paid consulting giant McKinsey & Company a staggering $116 million between 2015 and 2024 for reports and advisory services. Among the deliverables was a $2.8 million report titled Optimizing Government Consulting Expenditure, which recommended — according to sources familiar with its contents — that the government should spend less on consultants. The recommendation was not implemented. We have a very productive relationship with McKinsey, said a Treasury Board official. They help us identify problems, and then we pay them more money to help us solve those problems. It is a virtuous cycle of consulting excellence. The $116 million total covers 347 separate contracts, many of which were awarded without competitive bidding. One contract, valued at $9.4 million, was for organizational effectiveness advice that consisted primarily of a 47-slide PowerPoint presentation that one government source described as common sense dressed up in expensive fonts. McKinsey has faced similar scrutiny in other countries for its work with authoritarian governments and opaque billing practices. In Canada, the government says it has tightened procurement rules — a claim that was also made in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

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