Government Operations Committee on June 9th, 2021

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Can I add one thing?

I'll tell you where Australia really made the big change. They issued the targets, but the change only really happened when the government departments were transparent with how they achieved their targets and showed them to each other so that there was a competitive environment, with your department now showing where you stand with indigenous procurement. That's when real change happened. Now department heads and their bureaucrats are doing everything they can to achieve it.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

While I certainly support that idea, I would also love to see it reflected to the public. I would love to see it presented in our reports that come back through public accounts, because, again, within the culture of the government, that's one thing, but I think there's also a forward-facing public responsibility. I can't quite get the words, but maybe I'll reference back to the Hansard if Mr. Ducharme doesn't have the wording handy.

[Philip Ducharme]

I actually do have it handy.

It was Ms. Bull who also brought that forward to the committee on February 22. It was for the “committee [to] consider measures that would mandate government departments and agencies to report on their purchases from indigenous businesses as...part of their submissions to the main estimates and the supplementary estimates committee.”

Again, when they do their supplementary estimates, they can state at that time what their indigenous procurement is. That's another form of recording it and ensuring that it is happening.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

One of the ways that I hope to document this is that it will be in the Hansard. Again, I believe everybody around this table wants to see these programs succeed.I really do.

One of the commitments I'm going to leave with all of you is that I'm going to take those recommendations and go ahead and put those into a formal letter from me, out of my office, to the ministers responsible, again just to have it on paper and on the public record. It's my hope that at this time next year, you and Ms. Bull won't have to come back with this request again. My hope is to see it actually in the systems and principles and reporting mechanisms of government, because this is a government that says it wants to be committed to being open by default, and I would like to see that accountability carried through.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Green, and thank you to the witnesses.

We will now go to our second round. We will start with Mr. Paul-Hus for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I am in Quebec City, a few hundred metres from the Wendake community, which is very well integrated in the Quebec City region. There are a lot of excellent businesses in Wendake; I am familiar with several of them.

I would like to ask a question, and I hope that the interpretation will enable us to understand one another properly.

Mr. Ducharme, Ms. Suitor and Mr. Metatawabin, you have spoken about trust. From what I understand, there is often a problem of trust between the government and the indigenous community in the business world when it comes to awarding contracts.

My next question is very technical, and I hope it will be understood properly. Do you think that the fact that the Government of Canada does not have the legal means that it needs for resolving a contractual problem with an indigenous business might be a factor that explains why fewer contracts are awarded to your businesses?

I hope that what I said was clear to the interpreters.

I would ask Mr. Ducharme to answer the question.

[Philip Ducharme]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

I'm not sure whether the question is clear, but I think you did talk about trust, and I think this is an area where we are struggling.

I know that a lot of our businesses have said.... I alluded to one company that's done 32 bids within the last year. We held a recovery forum last year through work. It was a little bit sad because we had so many businesses that said they were no longer going to be applying to the federal government for contracts. That hurt a little bit because we are working quite closely.

Mr. Green mentioned that he believes all parties are interested in this issue. That does make us feel good, and I think that's what we need to do. We will relay that message back to our businesses to try to bring them back into the fold. It seems that in the past we've taken one step forward and two steps back.

However, I think we really need to work on that trust issue with the federal government so that our businesses do look at opportunities with regard to procurement.

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

Thank you, Mr. Ducharme.

I am going to try to frame my question differently.

Might the trust problem be related to the fact that, for example, the government may have doubts about the quality of products made by indigenous businesses, and that if there is a quality problem, it has no remedy in the courts?

Do you think that might be a factor to explain why the government awards fewer contracts to indigenous businesses, Mr. Metatawabin?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Creating anything new within a colonial system in which anywhere from maybe only 10% to 15% of all employees within the government are people of colour is a big issue.

When you're asking a frontline manager to go away from what he's used to—which is going with what he knows—and to select an indigenous person, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen unless you have real targets that force that to happen.

The only way indigenous people enter the corporate sector is when the corporations open a door by creating a training program, by creating summer student employment, by creating some sort of mechanism that allows an indigenous person to say, “Hey, there's an opportunity. I'm going to enter that door.” That's the only way it's going to happen. The government needs to do the same thing.

Twenty years ago, Rocky and I were working with the Aboriginal Business Canada program, trying to jump-start businesses. They were given that opportunity of procurement: “Procurement is going to be huge. Everybody, come to the door.” However, the problem was that they never created that awareness program or made it worth it for those frontline managers to make that change and select that indigenous person. All those people who were putting in proposal after proposal and getting noes and noes and noes went somewhere else. That's what happened.

It's happening again. During this COVID crisis, we were told that we were going to be part of the COVID response. We have indigenous entrepreneurs who invested, on first nations, in creating masks. Wiikwemkoong has a mask facility, creating three-ply masks. It has not received one government contract. That's where we stand.

[Marnie Suitor]

If I might add to those comments, I do believe that trust is a huge element. A lot of the historical past is going to enter into this. Things that might not necessarily relate to the business world definitely come forward if you're an entrepreneur.

When we talk about quality, I would also say that has to do with concerns about whether or not there is hesitation on the capability to deliver. Whether it's perceived or not, or not a reality, the feeder system, the 5%—the weeding-out process, as Mr. Ducharme phrased it—is of real concern. It sometimes appears as if the system is set up to enable indigenous businesses to fail. Rather than being perceived as “how can we get you through the process?”, it's perceived as a futile exercise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Suitor. Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

We will now go to Mr. MacKinnon. Sorry, Mr. Sinclair. It's just timing, unfortunately.

We'll go to Mr. MacKinnon for five minutes.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Perhaps I'll direct the first question to you, Mr. Sinclair.

I want to pick up on something that Mr. McCauley said earlier. I want to honour the work that I know all of you have been involved in with respect to developing the indigenous procurement strategy of the Government of Canada. There have been so many working sessions and dialogues.

One of you referenced OSME and the good outreach work that's going on. We saw the budget contain some $87 million over five years to advance, among other things, the indigenous procurement strategy. Many of you have noted the importance of a trusted partner in the communities that people can look to, and also a point of contact for the Government of Canada. The Australian case has been noted and remarked upon. I think they call it “Supply Nation”. I want to ask our witnesses about this.

We'll start with you, Mr. Sinclair, since you got the short end a moment ago. How are those plans evolving? How is that looking from your various perspectives? Do you think we will continue down the road of establishing this sort of trusted partner to advance the cause of indigenous procurement?

[Donald (Rocky) Sinclair]

First of all, I would like to apologize for the audio issues I was having. I did miss most of the earlier conversation, and I apologize for that. Hopefully I'm not repeating some of the things that were said by others.

In general terms, I don't have direct experience with or knowledge of the Australian model. However, I do have limited knowledge of the efforts they're making in Australia in terms of their relationship with the indigenous peoples in their country. It really requires a resetting of a relationship, and this procurement strategy is a good example of an initiative that was ill-designed, has been around since 1996 and—

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Are you referring to PSAB now?

[Donald (Rocky) Sinclair]

Exactly—PSAB. From my perspective as an individual who has worked in indigenous business development and finance for over 30 years, it has almost been a running joke. I realize there are good intentions behind it, but certainly its poor design speaks for itself.

I believe that there also are good examples not just in Australia but within our own country in terms of establishing trust, designing programs properly and establishing good, solid trust relationships with our communities in our own institutions and in our agencies. NACCA is a good example of that. We've worked very hard to prove that what we do is important. I think those examples exist and that if you look to those examples, they will serve as a design template or a way to do things that might not have been done with the procurement strategy.

I do recognize that this strategy has existed through many election cycles. This is owned by different parties, and it hasn't changed a whole lot in terms of effectiveness on the front lines. There are many reasons for that.

Those are just general comments. I don't know if I'm answering your question in any way, but I needed to get into the mix here.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

We don't have much time left, but perhaps the others could comment briefly on the work of the reference group and the work towards establishing a business case for an indigenous organization that would work on indigenous procurement.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Sure. Since July 2020—

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Excuse me for interrupting. I apologize.

Mr. MacKinnon, I am going to add the extra 20 seconds to your time.

Mr. Metatawabin, the interpreters are wondering if you can turn off your video feed. They're having trouble with the language. Try to answer it that way. Thank you.

Mr. MacKinnon, I will give you another 20 seconds.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you.

Perhaps this is a longer topic, so perhaps one of my colleagues can pick this up in a moment.

Over to you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Mr. Metatawabin, go ahead and answer the question if you can.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I totally forgot what the question was.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

It was on Supply Nation.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Yes.

We started that in July 2020, which was far too late. This process should have started a lot earlier, because at those meetings we identified that there wasn't a lot of indigenous-led information or consultation or engagement. That's when we started the process. Now we're engaged in about five different research papers that talk about indigenous definition. There's a business plan for an indigenous-led institution, because trust is a big issue. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says the institutions need to be led and owned by the indigenous people to provide the services on behalf of indigenous people.

We see that with this procurement. It's a day-and-night thing. It's a 24-7 service that means you have to be on top of the departments. You have to know what's coming down the pipeline, and you have to get businesses prepared to submit their proposals. It's something that needs to be done fully and wholly. There are a number of institutions in Canada that support finance. We have NACCA and CCAB for corporate development and business. We have CANDO. We have a number of organizations that provide services, but an indigenous-led institution that does procurement would be the highlight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Metatawabin.

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

You said just now that a target of awarding 5% of contracts to indigenous businesses had been set. If memory serves, only 0.8% of contracts, on average, have been awarded to indigenous businesses since 1996.

First, is the 5% target a realistic figure, in your opinion?

Second, how could the government go about really achieving it?

Third, what would be a reasonable time frame for achieving that target? We know that nothing has changed in 25 years.