Ottawa Paid Nearly $670,000 for KPMG's Advice on Cutting Consultant Costs (theglobeandmail.com) 46
The Canadian federal government hired KPMG consultants at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars for advice on how to save money on consultants, documents show. From a report: New spending details tabled in Parliament show the department of Natural Resources, led by minister Jonathan Wilkinson, approved $669,650 for KPMG, a global professional services company, to provide managing consulting advice. The department said this work involved developing "recommendations that could be considered as options to ensure that Canadians' tax dollars are being used efficiently and being invested in the priorities that matter most to them."
Treasury Board President Anita Anand is currently leading a federal effort to save about $15-billion over five years from existing spending plans. She has promised to release the first wave of details this month. The Natural Resources contract work was part of that department's contribution to the spending reduction effort. The Globe and Mail has reported that federal spending on outsourcing has grown sharply from when the Liberals promised in 2015 to cut back on the use of external consultants. The government has since singled out spending on outsourcing and consultants as an area of focus to find cuts. All federal departments were given a target of Oct. 2 to submit their proposed cuts to Ms. Anand's department for review.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand is currently leading a federal effort to save about $15-billion over five years from existing spending plans. She has promised to release the first wave of details this month. The Natural Resources contract work was part of that department's contribution to the spending reduction effort. The Globe and Mail has reported that federal spending on outsourcing has grown sharply from when the Liberals promised in 2015 to cut back on the use of external consultants. The government has since singled out spending on outsourcing and consultants as an area of focus to find cuts. All federal departments were given a target of Oct. 2 to submit their proposed cuts to Ms. Anand's department for review.
This can't be (Score:3)
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Has to be a joke no?
"Doctor! Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
"...Don't do that."
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"Doctor! Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
"...Don't do that."
Well, the really ironic thing is that the answer and the way to achieve "Don't do that" is "spend more on the government". The reason we (talking most "Western" countries) end up spending lots of money on consultants is that we cut back on the government and it doesn't have the expertise needed. You have a massive fire, earth quake or drugs epidemic, Russian invasion of Argentina or something else that just needs government intervention because it's beyond the scale that private people can deal with. Sudden
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Is that funny or sad because he is PM.
Re:This can't be (Score:5, Interesting)
It's laughable, but it's not a joke. It's one of many ways the political establishment funnels money to private interests, which then launder it as contributions to politicians.
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TBH, the fee is tiny compared to the envisioned cuts. It's .5 million against 15 billion. So that's a factor 30000, or 0.0033% .
The true situation will be more clear once this lady releases her report with statements on how much this KPMG advice will save on consultency.
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KPMG has a conflict of interest in this mission though.
That's quite probably the more interesting question to ask. Their track record, AFAIK, is spotted in this and various other roles.
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I mean I get it, this *could* have a good ROI. However, the optics are weird. KPMG has a conflict of interest in this mission though. Wonder how they told the government they would mitigate it.
There used to be a bunch of staff in all the civil services who were responsible for benchmarking services, understanding what the service was buying and then making sure that they paid the best reasonable price for this. In the "old days" they'd even be clever and not go for the lowest price bid unless they were sure that the company could keep that price going in future without going bankrupt.
Every time you hear about "putting more officers on the beat and cutting red tape", what that means is that they a
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No. Clearly I am in the wrong business.
If you can't solve the problem (Score:3)
There's money to be made in continuing studies of the problem....
My Outrage Catalyst Is Broken (Score:3)
On a semi-related note, after working as a contractor (although not consultant) for the U.S. federal government, I'm thoroughly convinced that contracting out work doesn't produce better results. And if it does produce better results, it's most certainly not worth the burden of the extra costs it places on the taxpayers. I've seen almost every complaint levied against government incompetence and inefficiency occur directly within the private companies that hire the contractors. At this point, it would make far more sense to hire those contractors directly into the government and get rid of the middlemen skimming billions in profits. And I'm not even going to charge the government $670,000 for that advice.
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I know I'm supposed to be outraged and consider this action stupid and hypocritical, but if the result ends up being even a $300,000 per year reduction in the government budget, then after only three years that action would save the Canadian government money.
Agreed, there's a lot of ridiculous stuff Trudeau's government has done, but this strikes me as a decent idea.
One thing contractors are good for is one-time specialized services, this batch of consulting could very easily pay off.
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The first, I was working at a large police department in the '90s. We needed a payroll pre-processing system developed in SQL Server that had a VERY complex rules system and didn't have the in-house experience. We found some people to do it, and they did a fantastic job for us. What it did was process leave and overtime slips for three or four different union contracts into a standardized form for ingestion by the city payroll system, which allowed
It's easy! (Score:2)
Step 1: don't pay KPMG $670,000
Step 2: ???
Step 3: there is no step 2
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You missed:
Step 4: pay $3Billion a year forever because you didn't the summary so you didn't pay someone else to get rid of the outsourcers in Step 2.
Step 5: the $3Billion increases by 66% and becomes $5Billion because once the outsourcers are really in they can really squeeze for money
Step 6: repeat the increases of step 5 forever until you go bankrupt and become a failed country like the places the Neo-Cons got to try their politics, like Iraq.
Building back is harder than tearing down (Score:5, Interesting)
The Conservative Party government of Stephen Harper went through the federal bureaucracy with a chain saw. The crippling loss of experience and capacity left the Liberals, when they took over, with whole ministries that were incapable of fulfilling their mandates. So contractors were hired to keep things going, and they're cheaper in the short term. The Liberals figured they had lots of time to fix things, and wasted a lot of it. Then COVID came along and truly screwed things up. Now Canada is staring down the barrel of another Conservative government, and the Liberals haven't done nearly enough to rebuild what was lost. This time, it seems likely the Tories will wreak havoc on the scale of the UK, leaving a country limping toward catastrophic failure.
This, of course, is standard operating procedure for conservatives: destroy infrastructure, then claim "big government doesn't work" and farm out the work to their friends using long-term, ironclad contracts.
Canada has always been able to recover somewhat after a round of Tory "cost saving". Diefenbaker killed the aerospace industry, Mulroney brought in NAFTA, which has gutted both US and Canadian manufacturing, and Harper tore apart what was left with a special focus on his hatred of anything that might get in the way of more fossil fuel money for Alberta. When he took over the federal government, the Canadian dollar stood at 87 cents US, when he left, it was down to 77 cents. The National Debt went from $490 billion to $620 billion, and would have been far higher if he'd had a majority government in his second term and been able to deregulate the banks. Household debt went from 127% of disposable income to 163%, GDP growth went from +1.1% to -.1%. On top of that, he delivered the worst job creation numbers since the Great Depression.
If KPMG can point to areas where consultant costs can be cut, it will be money well spent. Unfortunately, I doubt Trudeau has enough time left to turn things around. The Tories are very, very well funded, and they've been conducting a stealth election campaign for months now. All kinds of astroturf organizations are springing up, and they all trash Trudeau without saying what they'd do better. Frankly, I think we're truly screwed this time.
Re: Building back is harder than tearing down (Score:2)
He's more of a centrist leaning towards international liberalism than a left wing socialist. Also a hypocrit and a member of the do as a I say not as I do party. But that is common in politics.
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All kinds of astroturf organizations are springing up, they all trash Trudeau without saying what they'd do better.
Paranoid conspiracy theories like these would normally get downvoted, however very few people know or care about Canadian politics, so it seems you're getting the benefit of the doubt from the moderators who know even less than you.
Speak of the devil!
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Trudeau's eyebrows really freak me out, man!
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I normally don't bother responding to obvious trolls, but I'll make this one exception because, as you point out, most people here don't know Canadian politics. With luck, decent people will read these comments. You obviously aren't one of them, but responding right under your troll seems like a good idea.
The well-funded Tory astroturfers I mentioned above include, but are not limited to, all the "Proud" organizations...Ontario Proud, Canada Proud, Manitoba Proud, etc. Also included, a so-called "think t
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>Note as well that bashing the Tories (conservative party) and calling them names is perfectly acceptable in the minds of woketards!
Says the AC calling liberals "woketards".
The irony, it burns.
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I could argue the first two points, but I think we'd be better doing that over a couple of pints in a relaxed atmosphere. There's good arguments on both sides. Your third one, relating to the Canadian dollar, wasn't because of a policy decision. You're right that sometimes a country takes steps, usually through its national bank, to devalue its currency. That didn't happen in this case. Canada's economic performance suffered compared to other G7 countries under Harper.
Consulting (Score:2)
If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.> [despair.com]
A $670K (Canadian) government expenditure? (Score:3)
I'm not getting why this is news... are Canadians actually getting up in arms about a $670K government expenditure? Their total budget is north of $400 billion. The given mandate probably did take a lot of work and time on the part of KPMG.
Heck, the Calgary Flames pay several times more than that to multiple individual players.
Side note - KPMG sounds like it should be the call sign of a college rock radio station.
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At least in theory...
Naturally, taxpayers have a right to be skeptical of the involvement of big consultancies in managing government affairs - here in Australia there is an ongoing investigation of PwC [wikipedia.org]
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I'm not getting why this is news... are Canadians actually getting up in arms about a $670K government expenditure? Their total budget is north of $400 billion. The given mandate probably did take a lot of work and time on the part of KPMG.
Heck, the Calgary Flames pay several times more than that to multiple individual players.
Side note - KPMG sounds like it should be the call sign of a college rock radio station.
No, the leader of the opposing, Pierre Poilievre, is a collection of Conservative memes. This submission (and story) has all the smell of a Conservative media campaign to drum up outrage.
That KPMG guy (Score:2)
is now a LEGEND.
Just stop? (Score:2)
Want to reduce spending on external consultants? Just stop. Why is thus hard?
What's missing for politicians is skin in the game. It isn't *their* money they are spending...
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Want to reduce spending on external consultants? Just stop. Why is thus hard?
Seems to me spending public money on consultants is one hell of a drug...
(And nevermind the kickbacks that are probably involved...)
Most people don't know... (Score:2)
tl;dr - These consultants are one of the biggest reasons we can't have nice things.
You give me corn, I don't give you a whack (Score:2)
How Governments Can Save Money On Consultants
You can't. It's an area rich for politicians to enrich friends and families and donors, which is why they go into government.
It has e'er been such since thugs picked up clubs and made farmers pay their fair share. It's just more genteel now.
I've personally seen this (Score:2)