I bring this to you because one of the motions that I brought before this committee was to look at this government's commitment under its existing policies on procurement. One of them is the federal contractors program, which has an agreement to implement employment equity for contracts that are over $1 million. While not directly related to sole-source procurement or procurement directly to aboriginal businesses, certainly this would manifest itself in strategic partnerships with manufacturers to ensure that they're meeting these employment equity standards.
One of the requirements of this is that once a contractor receives an eligible contract from the Government of Canada, the contractor must fulfill the following requirements: collect workplace information, complete a workplace analysis and provide an achievement report, establish long-term and short-term goals on equity-seeking groups, and make reasonable efforts to ensure that reasonable progress is made towards having full representation of the four designated groups.
The second designated group on the list happens to be aboriginal peoples. I'm wondering if your council has had any conversations around how procurement through the federal government is reflected in this way, or if some of the small and medium-sized businesses have been approached to partner up on the federal contractors program to ensure that these employment equity requirements are in place.