The biggest recommendation I have is for the government to start applying the minimum indigenous content requirement, or supply chain, as he refers to it, to these larger contracts. We've done it in the past, and we've had push-back on it sometimes for the non-insured health claims: “We can't do that, because there's no native business that can do it.” Let's have an RFI so we have a request for information, and everybody comes, and all these claims companies from the U.S. and Canada say they'll do it. What's the number, 15%, 20%? It's the same thing in all the construction stuff. It can be done. That's what is being done in oil and gas. It's being done with the big crowns.
In fact, these guys have a program called the progressive aboriginal relations program. It's a self-directed program. These companies go there, and they get measured: how many natives you have working; how many contracts you have with them; what is the structure of the employees as to where they fit in the organization; and what's their community involvement? If you put PSAB and the Government of Canada through that program, they'd be hard-pressed to even get bronze status, and you can go all the way up to platinum.
What this committee is doing is the same thing. How are you measuring it? We said the same thing. We encouraged Indigenous and Northern Affairs 10 years ago to take the same sort of thing with PSAB and apply it to the federally regulated companies, the Fortune 500, in Canada. All of them are required, under the Employment Equity Act, to ensure that they're paying attention to natives. Some of them do it well and some don't, but it's the same thing that these guys are advocating.
Another group I'd urge you to meet with is the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council. All it does is advocate for procurement for minorities and for indigenous people. It has lots of experience coming out of the United States, and we help support them.
We need to get corporate Canada, as these guys are saying, to pay attention to their contracting practices, just like the Government of Canada, but you guys can do something about the Government of Canada now, and all I'm recommending is this. Why don't you apply that minimum indigenous content? Why can't we have natives working on the Hill across the street? And everyone goes, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
I went to the ministerial advisory board, the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board. I go to them, and they say, “Yes, we should do that“, then everybody leaves the room, and then you get contracts, RFPs come out, like on precinct two, and it's like the word “indigenous” doesn't work. “Just give them that building right in the middle, but don't talk to them.”