Evidence of meeting #114 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You mentioned beta-testing, which is a great idea. It's perhaps similar to the agile that we talked about. How would you see that working? Would you take one department or one geographic area and test it?
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
An immediate one would be the BCIP. It would be very easy to look at the contracts let to date—as I said, there are fewer than 200; you could do that manually—to give you a sense—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Do you think a lot of the people who are trying to procure business from the government would qualify for BCIP? That, to me, is a very different thing, as opposed to the average SME.
December 12th, 2017 / 11:50 a.m.
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
No, but I'm saying that this could be done yesterday, very easily.
Then, if it was women business owners, I would look at those sectors where they are well represented, professional services. You could do that regionally, to be more conservative, and be creative in looking at the outcomes. Bring in SME suppliers to talk about those outcomes. I have not heard of an initiative to open up the conversation of what those metrics should be.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
One of the things we heard from indigenous people and some of the others was about the success they have in the private sector. They were saying that the oil sands and the energy sector especially, by far set the gold standard on providing business to indigenous and other minority groups. Do you think it would be worthwhile to copy their procurement system, or to start from scratch and rebuild it easier?
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I can think back to Suncor and some of their world-class initiatives that led the market and brought women into the trades. It was not—
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Right. Indigenous, of course.... It wasn't just procurement. It was a training initiative, and a regional commitment. I would suggest that, yes, we could learn a lot from those organizations, because it was not just procurement-based.
Conservative
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here. I'll give a shout-out to Telfer school, as I'm a graduate from there. I wouldn't check my marks, though.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I got through.
You raised a couple of issues. I was curious to find out that to this day the U.S. is not measuring success or measuring whether it's actually women-owned enterprises that are participating. That, to me.... You set a policy, but you don't measure, so lessons learned here. I know that sometimes we do that as well in the Government of Canada. We put out policies, but we don't measure the impact.
The 25% set-aside for SMEs is a recommendation that you've made to this committee. What do you think some of the barriers would be for our NAFTA obligations? Do you see any barriers to our implementing a 25% set-aside for SMEs in terms of our NAFTA obligations, with the understanding that NAFTA stays the same?
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
During these interesting NAFTA times, the U.S. has 25% for procurement, so I would see that as simply meeting the process and practices of our largest trading partner.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay.
The other issue we heard about at the last committee meeting was that sometimes companies will create a fake company essentially to create a fake woman-owned enterprise. How would you recommend that the government measure this without putting too much red tape on the other side? CFIB was here saying there's too much red tape, but at the same time, we have to measure impact without putting too much onus on the company that's either contracting or bidding on an RFP. Have you seen any best practices? I know you've talked about the City of Toronto.
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think all are concerned about red tape, but I know that the private sector also requires demonstrative certification. Again I go back to the comment about WEConnect and WBE. They are certifying with deep dives these businesses, so there is far little opportunity to window dress the profile of ownership. My caution would be that that kind of certification process should be opened up to organizations like the CFIB, which have a very strong retail/wholesale base and which would possibly qualify for contracts. More certifying bodies would be my recommendation.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Essentially the Government of Canada would say, “If you say you're a woman-owned enterprise, then we want to see that certification on the other side.”
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Correct. Absolutely.
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
There would be a third party certification.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Last week we heard that even our Canadian women's associations are using the international protocol. Would you support that, that 51% plus would be women-owned?
Full Professor and Deloitte Professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think in Canada we could do better than that. If we're building a brand new made-in-Canada product, we need not replicate. There are opportunities to recognize that as women dilute ownership in their firm with equity and they grow their firm, it would be to our loss to lose those businesses in the procurement process. Having perhaps a couple of indicators as opposed to this simplistic 51% ownership would be my recommendation.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay, great.
Mr. Chair, I'm done. Take it as a merry Christmas that all of my colleagues have done such a great job at asking great questions, I'll stop here. Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Well, in the spirit of Christmas, Mr. Whalen, one minute is yours.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Mr. Riding, earlier Mr. Ayoub was asking about this. Obviously if you're going to have set-asides, there's a perception that you will have implementation and enforcement costs and perhaps higher costs for the end bids, and so to offset those costs, we want to see other social goods and other benefits to society. Are there ways to measure those? I think that was the question Mr. Ayoub was asking before you were cut off.
Conservative