Government Operations Committee on June 9th, 2021

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I understand what you're saying. My philosophy, instead of imposing quotas, would be to find a solution to increase the effectiveness of the process in a more natural way. When you impose something on people, that is often when there is more resistance. However, if there is no choice, certainly that will have to be done.

I think Mr. Metatawabin wanted to say something also.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Rather than trying to have a paintbrush approach to it, saying that everybody is going to be fair under a system that doesn't have an indigenous procurement process is not going to work, because we are living in a discriminatory system already. There's no way that our entrepreneurs will be able to enter that door without having this door available to them.

We have to really just become good at creating this door. Do it in the right way and implement mandatory targets that are transparent so that everybody can see them. Once Canadians know that by investing in an indigenous entrepreneur, they'll see that a program for indigenous business that was $9 billion in 1996 was $17 billion last year and is looking to be about $40 billion in another 25 years, and you're going to see a lot more of the clear water type of business opportunities. If indigenous people have access to capital, have the right skills and are able to impact their communities, they are going to invest wisely.

We have to do this right. We have to foster the culture of awareness in the government.

[Donald (Rocky) Sinclair]

Could I make one quick comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Certainly.

[Donald (Rocky) Sinclair]

To present the problem, there isn't one paintbrush that's going to solve the problem for us because of the historical complexities in our communities. We're talking about not just the first nations; it's indigenous procurement. There are lots of complexities. There are regional challenges, and urban versus rural, and sophistication versus start-up. There are huge complexities.

Would there be any thought given to a concierge-type of service, a design that could meet those complexities, whether it be done regionally or provincially or some other way, to recognize the complexities and the differences within our own business community and our communities in general?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Sinclair.

I didn't want to cut you off again, so I appreciated giving you that chance to have an ending comment.

We will now go to Mr. Drouin for five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too want to say that I will be speaking with you and asking you questions on the unceded territory of the Algonquin and Anishinabe.

As Mr. McCauley said at the beginning, you've been more than patient to spend time with us. Thank you so much.

I've listened to this conversation, and it is really interesting. I've heard some comments that I've heard before.

My question would probably be to Mr. Ducharme first.

You mentioned that a lot of indigenous businesses you've spoken to are sometimes simply not aware of the federal opportunity until the RFP is out. You mentioned that you are working with the OSME office, and there seems to be engagement.

Are you mostly working with small businesses, or are they large businesses that are trying to do business with the government? I'm asking that because from an SME perspective, having somebody watching or monitoring the Buyandsell website 24-7 is physically impossible. They have to be doing something else.

You mentioned training. I'd be curious to hear what type of training we could do, from the federal government perspective, on how to best respond to RFPs.

[Philip Ducharme]

Thank you.

Again, it is a very hard system to navigate. As I said, within the aboriginal procurement marketplace that we've created at CCAB and Supply Change, we go to the Buyandsell. There isn't a consistent way with Buyandsell to show which ones are the PSAB companies. For RFPs, you go in and you do a search, and it all depends, because each one of the procurement managers has a different way of doing it. If there was one standardized way that would identify a PSAB program and check it off, it would be easy to search that. I think that would be a simple solution.

As for the larger businesses, we do have larger businesses that are trying to get federal procurement contracts, but one area they run into is the bid bonds. If the federal government looks at those bid bonds in the future, is there a way of maybe doing a 10% holdback on the contract instead of having to have that bid bond?

Ms. Suitor also mentioned insurance. Each time you apply for insurance, you could get an increase in insurance according to the amount of the contract you had.

Those are some areas that we can work with.

On the training that we do, we're a small team at CCAB. I think Shannin also mentioned that we're all coming together. This is a lot bigger than one organization, but we have been working a lot with it.

I think with the government, there are the needs.... We've done a webinar where we actually did the reverse, so that the suppliers would evaluate the RFPs. That would help them in a way as well, just by knowing what they need to do when they're actually applying to the RFPs.

With regard to training that we can provide to our businesses, I think that can go through CANDO, and also with NACCA and the financial officers that they have.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Did somebody else want to jump in there and add some comments?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

On training specifically, for the indigenous businesses, I think we are good with the AFI network interfacing with the indigenous entrepreneur and providing training. We could use some more support to ensure that we can add to our complement so that they can do the right work.

Really, the problem is within the government itself. Governments have always had a problem with aligning their own systems. You have multiple programs and services that are being done at different levels of the government. There are almost 200-plus economic development programs that ISC counted that weren't aligned. If we can get everybody to align.... It's kind of like a centralized decentralized system. You have PSPC that's providing a service for all the departments, and they're all decentralized, but a more centralized system would work, with each of them doing their own procurement.

It's a really mixed-up system, and it needs a lot of cultural awareness. If we can give the departments a reason to want to do it, they will do it.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Ducharme, I think you said that Defence Construction Canada seems to be doing a better job of engaging. I'd like to know what they are doing that perhaps the Government of Canada could adopt as a whole.

[Philip Ducharme]

They seem to be going into the directory and looking at the businesses. A lot of our businesses say that they've had a call from Defence Construction Canada. They're not going in with a one-keyword search and saying, “Okay, that's it. We're not going to go past to another company.” What they do is they look to see if there's a possibility, and they're reaching out to our business members, saying that they have this opportunity coming up and asking whether this something that is going to be of interest to them.

Again, so many times everything is just through one narrow tunnel. When you're looking, you have to expand the search. My understanding from what I've heard from our suppliers is that Defence Construction Canada is doing that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin. Thank you, Mr. Ducharme.

We will now go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Two and a half minutes is always so short!

To encourage the...

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

We had a two-and-a-half-minute intervention. Is this not now a five-minute intervention?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

No. It's scheduled as we go forward. Normally we have a one-hour meeting, and then we have new witnesses and another hour, but when we're extending, it continues on at this pace. That is my understanding.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

No, we should have a five-minute intervention now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Hold on for a second, then, please.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Let it be on the record that I am fighting for this speaking time and the rights of Quebeckers and the Bloc Québécois here at committee. Thank you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But you're using up her time.

Sorry, Ms. Vignola.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Except you're wrong.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Noted.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My understanding is that we have a six-minute round, a two-and-a-half-minute round, and then five minutes if we extend into the next round.

I've never done two-and-a-half-minute rounds back to back.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It might be because we just have one two-hour block as opposed to two one-hour blocks.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It looks like we're going to the instant replay here with the clerk. He's going to the box to check the screen to see what we have here, to see if this is going to be a goal or no goal.