Thank you very much, Chair.
I want to speak in support of this motion from Mr. Barrett to bring Liberal Minister Randy Boissonnault back to the ethics committee.
In particular, I want to speak to the issue of the claims made that his company—a company that he owned as minister, which was also seeking federal government contracts—was indigenous. Now, the government operations committee that I serve on as a regular member has been investigating this government's indigenous procurement scandal. We've been undertaking this investigation really at the request of and in response to concerns that have been raised by indigenous leaders themselves. Indigenous leaders have asked the Auditor General to look into the contracting scandal.
The basis of this scandal is basically that well-connected, non-indigenous elites have been able to take for themselves contracts that are supposed to go to indigenous people and indigenous businesses. It is cultural appropriation leading to financial misappropriation. It's people pretending to be indigenous or entering into shady joint ventures where most of the benefit and most of the action is happening on the non-indigenous side, to try to appropriate benefits through these kinds of arrangements away from indigenous communities and towards well-connected, non-indigenous insiders.
This is a problem that we have become aware of and that we've been investigating for a number of months. In fact, Chief Bernard from the AFN said that in their view, most of those contracts from the indigenous procurement set-aside are going to shell companies.
This is a huge problem. It's a problem that has been brought to Parliament by indigenous leaders themselves, and it's a problem that we have been trying to get to the bottom of. Meanwhile, Liberals have been saying that there's nothing to see here and that it's no big deal. They're trying to check the box and wanting to move on rather than actually get into the substance of the issue and really take seriously what we're hearing from indigenous leaders.
Then today we have this revelation that not only is it just well-connected, elite insiders taking advantage of this program, but it is the most well-connected, elite insider possible, a minister of the Crown. His own company has been trying to get contracts on the basis of a claim that the company is indigenous-owned.
Looking back at the record, Minister Boissonnault has made all kinds of contradictory claims regarding his identity in various places and in various publications. In the House today, in response to a question in question period, the Liberals admitted, in fact, that this business was never on the indigenous business list. The government is saying that this company wasn't on the indigenous business list, yet the minister's company was making the claim that it was indigenous on the basis of inconsistent claims about identity that the minister has made.
This is a very serious issue, because we can see the legacy of various things that have been done to indigenous people and the tragic rates of poverty. Therefore, there's urgency for fully including indigenous people in the economy and for supporting measures that advance economic development, yet we have measures announced by the government being taken advantage of by elite insiders, including a company that, in the course of trying to get these contracts, claimed to be fully indigenous-owned and was able to do business with the government to its advantage.
We very much need to get to the bottom of these claims and the involvement of Minister Boissonnault in this very serious Liberal indigenous procurement scandal, so I'm very supportive of the motion and look forward to his being brought back to testify before this committee.
Thank you.