It's 12. Thank you, Bertha.
From my experience, we've rarely been able to tap into PSAB. I think there's a bit of a disconnect going on. PSAB as a design, as a program, is a very good idea, but because of the way in which it's operationalized, it doesn't result in enough of the significant business opportunities available in the Tlicho area to actually fall within the ambit of PSAB. In fact, very few opportunities ever get to touch PSAB. There are certain rules inside the PSAB policy itself around when “mandatory” applies. I would encourage this committee to really look at those rules. The policy is mandatory, but then there are numerous interpretations and opportunities for it not to apply. Is the indigenous party the primarily affected group? Will they feel the direct benefit?
In the Tlicho region, the biggest opportunities are reclamation opportunities. The Tlicho Government has created the Tlicho Investment Corporation, a business of over $100 million. It's been servicing the diamond mining industry primarily. Reclamation is a huge part of what we do. It would be wonderful if those reclamation opportunities could fall within the ambit of PSAB. Unfortunately, the issue we run into with regard to the application of PSAB in those kinds of opportunities is that with reclamation, it's hard to prove that the primarily affected people are the indigenous people. A reclamation opportunity, of course, is for the benefit of all Canadians as well. Some of these messes are quite unbelievable; Giant Mine is coming up.
I think if PSAB is going to be an effective tool to live up to the treaty commitments, then really it needs to find a way where we're not relying on a departmental interpretation to exclude its application. It's worth noting that in the Tlicho treaty, there's a treaty right that for all federal procurement, you will in fact follow your policies. Those are the policies that would explain to us.... The on-the-ground implementation of this is that the policies are followed, but then the interpretations take the contracts out of the preferred approach, out of PSAB.
Ultimately we had a grand bargain about how we would attain self-sufficiency and bake that into the treaty, but in the application of the policy itself, which, of course, is of far lower importance than is the constitutional promise of chapter 26, it's not playing out as we would like.
We have a couple of ideas on how to fix it, and we would be happy to share those with the committee.