Conservative member of Parliament Michael Barrett holds press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill on Feb. 18.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Members of Parliament from all three main opposition parties criticized record federal spending on outsourcing Tuesday, saying it is at odds with repeated pledges by the Liberals to cut back on outside help.
The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday that federal spending on outsourcing reached a record high of $17.8-billion last year, a 13.5-per-cent increase over the previous fiscal year.
The MPs point out that the Liberal government has made several promises to cut back on this specific category of spending as a way of finding billions in internal savings, yet spending in that category continues to rise each year.
The jump covers spending in the broad category of professional and special services – which includes contracts for lawyers, architects, training and maintenance, as well as various types of consultants.
Spending in this category has more than doubled since the Liberals formed government. The spending trends have prompted numerous committee hearings to review issues that are driving the higher spending.
Those hearings have looked at specific projects that were heavily outsourced – including the nearly $60-million spent to build and maintain the ArriveCan app for cross-border travellers – as well as the broader spending trends.
Auditor-General Karen Hogan released a report last year that warned government officials responsible for managing federal contracts aren’t always following basic requirements and good practices.
Conservative MP and ethics critic Michael Barrett pointed out that criminal investigations have been launched in connection to federal contracting in recent years.
“It makes absolutely no sense that they continue to balloon the spending against their own commitments to pare it down,” he said at an unrelated news conference on Parliament Hill.
Mr. Barrett pointed to a 2023 Globe report that one federal department hired KPMG consultants at a cost of $669,650 to find internal savings in response to a request in that year’s budget. The 2023 federal budget said the government would find about $15-billion in savings over five years, in part by “targeting these reductions on professional services, particularly management consulting.”
“Canadians aren’t seeing any improvement in the services that they’re getting or the service delivery from the government,” Mr. Barrett said.
Bloc Québécois MP Julie Vignola, who is vice-chair of the government operations committee that has been investigating federal contract spending, said it is hard to understand why spending on outsourcing continues to grow while the number of public servants is also on the rise.
“The skyrocketing increase in outsourcing by Ottawa is inexplicable and outrageous,” she said in a statement. “It is difficult to understand how the federal government can squander so much public money externally. We repeat: the federal government must wean itself from its dependence on subcontractors and promote internal expertise.”
Figures released last year show the number of workers in Canada’s federal public service grew to 367,772, up from 257,034 in 2015. Those figures do not include members of the Canadian Armed Forces or RCMP regular forces.
NDP MP and finance critic Don Davies also said Ottawa should focus on having more work done by public servants.
“This is a wasteful practice that has cost taxpayers untold billions of dollars. New Democrats have repeatedly identified savings by having work performed by public servants, not outside ‘consultants,’ ” he said in a statement.
The Globe reported in 2023 on an internal briefing note by the department responsible for federal contracting – Public Services and Procurement Canada – that highlighted concerns with the oversight of spending on large IT contracts.
The briefing note authors told the minister that “agile and other modern procurement training has yet to be developed” for IT procurement professionals in the department. It said those officials are currently “relying on lived experience.”
Isabelle Arseneau, a spokesperson for Treasury Board president Ginette Petitpas Taylor, declined to provide additional comment Tuesday on the spending trends. She previously said in a statement that while outsourcing is necessary for large-scale projects, the government is strengthening its oversight of procurement.