Mr. Chair, the Black business procurement pilot is something that we initiated in January. We undertook 12 procurements that were looking to be targeted towards Black Canadian businesses in Canada. They were undertaken across the country.
Of those 12 procurements, we have one that closed today, so we don't have the information on that, and we have two that are still in evaluation. Of the 11 procurements that are closed, we were successful in receiving bids in eight of those procurements from Black Canadian businesses. Four of them did not receive any bids. So far, we were able to award three contracts to Black Canadian businesses.
This initiative was undertaken for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to continue to experiment when it comes to procurement with regard to socio-economic benefits or outcomes. Already what we've seen is that we're drawing some lessons learned in terms of how those procurements went.
One of them, as I mentioned before—and my colleague Clinton spoke about the office of small and medium enterprises—was that we started to learn that to increase participation of under-represented groups, we really need to take a proactive approach in terms of engaging with businesses directly and also indirectly. What I mean by indirectly is through organizations and associations that represent, in this case, Black Canadian businesses, so that they can in turn make sure that businesses are aware of the opportunities that exist when it comes to federal procurement.
That initiative was undertaken in January. Like I said, we have one last procurement that closed today. We're doing the assessment of it. This is part of our ongoing learning in terms of how to operationalize social procurement within our department.