PCO Spends $5.8M on Consultants, Despite Carney's Promises

0:00It's April 21st. This is Calvary News today, your AI-powered local news. The Privy Council Office, that key federal hubs supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet dropped $5.8 million last year on outside consultants for communications, marketing, and research. They already have hundreds of in-house staff handling this stuff, but still outsourced big time according to the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. A chunk of that, $3.1 million, went to Essence Mediacom on a multi-department ad deal for trade agreements from last August through March. They also showed out $641,400 for audio-visual consultants, even while spending nearly $1 million yearly on there. Own multimedia team, firms like M5 in Atlanta, Canada, got $497,500 for marketing. The CTF is calling it out-hard, saying it makes no sense to pay bureaucrats and then consultants for the same work. They slammed extras too, like $386,700 on furniture, $136,000 at a Toronto hotel, and $12,900

1:08for a yoga teacher from outside Montreal. Stuff they say could have been cheaper or free online. This comes as Mark Carney's Liberals promised to cut consultant reliance by 20% over three years and build in-house skills. But PCO's professional service is spending jump from $9.6 million in fiscal 2015-16-36 million now. Meanwhile, overall federal outsourcing across departments has more than doubled, heading toward $26.6 billion by 2026-27. Showing those waste-cutting goals might stay just words on paper.