Government Operations Committee on Sept. 24th, 2024

[Philip Ducharme]

There are a lot of different consultation groups, and the AFN does sit on committees that we sit on when we talk about federal procurement and advancing the 5%. There is the Indigenous Procurement Working Group, which is made up of the ITK, the MNC, the AFN and other national indigenous economic organizations as well.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

When we talk about bigger contracts and the partnerships with those that may not be indigenous, especially with the subcontracting, is there not a requirement to have about 33% overall, in terms of indigenous makeup?

[Philip Ducharme]

I think the 33%—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Give a brief answer, because that's your time.

[Philip Ducharme]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Can you answer it quickly?

[Philip Ducharme]

Probably not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, Mr. Sousa.

Mr. Genuis, go ahead, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

As this is our final round, I just want to underline our view that indigenous peoples in Canada have struggled heroically against incredible odds, and so many indigenous entrepreneurs are doing incredible work, supporting themselves and their families and uplifting their communities.

I can say from an Alberta perspective that we see, in particular in the oil and gas sector, how many indigenous peoples, businesses, entrepreneurs and communities are part of and are benefiting from the development of our energy resources, but it stretches across all sectors, of course.

Meanwhile, the federal government, over the last nine years, broke the procurement system. We are here celebrating indigenous successes and also holding the federal government accountable for failures of engagement, consultation, responsiveness and verification that we talked about and heard about from the witnesses.

I have one question for each of you.

Mr. Ducharme, one thing I see in the procurement system in general is a favouritism for insiders, for incumbent players. The procurement ombudsman wrote about this, for instance, in the context of ArriveCAN, where you have a whole bunch of criteria put in place that say that you must have a certain number of existing contracts or existing work with the federal government. An obvious effect of those rules, it seems to me, is that they exclude new businesses and people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds who are starting businesses and who perhaps don't have the same kind of institutional history. You have, on the one hand, policies that are supposed to promote indigenous procurement, but you have other policies which in effect make it more difficult, especially for newer indigenous businesses, as well as—probably—other minority-owned businesses, to access those opportunities. Would one way of improving this system also be to simply remove a lot of these insider preferences that exist in the system so that new entrants have an easier time bidding on federal government opportunities?

[Philip Ducharme]

Of course. I think making it easier for indigenous businesses that have that previous work experience has been one of the biggest struggles. If the government wants to include indigenous businesses that don't have it, and it requires them to have previous experience with the government, well, they're not going to get those opportunities. That is one area where we've been lobbying and advocating as well, even with joint ventures.

Right now the non-indigenous partner can provide all three references. We would like to see the indigenous partner maybe having a smaller reference requirement to make it easier. Again, there are lots of people who want to keep using their same incumbent, but we have to look at that to make sure that every opportunity is reviewed to see whether there is indigenous capacity, and invite indigenous businesses to that—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

To probe that a bit, actually, it sounds like what you're saying is that the combination of these indigenous procurement policies with the preference for insiders is pushing indigenous businesses towards joint ventures, perhaps in cases in which the indigenous companies might be able to do the work themselves if there were a lower requirement on references. Is that true? I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I'm just trying to take it....

[Philip Ducharme]

I guess, in a way it, could be, but also lowering the requirements because, again, the bid bonding.... Some of these requirements for bid bonding and insurance make it impossible for indigenous businesses, and for them to be able to do it, they need to have partners.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Right, but the key thing should be whether or not the company can do the work. Isn't that right?

[Philip Ducharme]

Yes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Chief Bernard, my expectation is that the end objective of this policy is to improve economic opportunity for indigenous communities and for indigenous peoples in general across the country to benefit. The way to get to that objective, of course, is to support indigenous entrepreneurs, but with the ultimate goal of a general uplift for indigenous peoples and to move towards substantive economic equality of opportunity.

Minister Hajdu, and David Yeo in his comments as well, have essentially said that it's just about the individual and about verification. It's about verification of the individual and the individual benefiting. As we talked about, they haven't even done a very good job of providing that verification. If this policy were working right, would we expect a general uplift of indigenous communities, and how can we track it to ensure that this policy leads to that general uplift?

[Joanna Bernard]

Right now, yes, I feel there should be an uplifting here of the communities through the community members who are the entrepreneurs. If you're Métis, you may not be associated with a first nation, so there is no potential there, depending on where you live, because lots of the Métis are not associated with a first nation, so they're not associated with those communities. They just happen to be descendants, so there lies the issue.

However, definitely if the entrepreneur is from a first nation, there should be some uplifting of the community, and eventually of the entrepreneur as well.

The validation of that database of how many indigenous communities there are in Canada is easy for the AFN, because we are associated with first nations, and our membership list, which they approved, is in Ottawa, whereas if you're looking for the status of Métis people.... They just walked into the office and said that they were Métis and showed something to show that they were 10th generation, and they became Métis. They are now considered aboriginal businesses. That's where I have the problem—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I have to cut you off there, because we're out of time, Chief Bernard.

We're going to go to Mr. Battiste, and then we'll finish with Mrs. Vignola and Mr. Bachrach.

Go ahead, please, sir.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you.

Regional Chief, I think that you have done a great job of showing the complexity and the general inequalities that are out there when we look at trying to determine who is indigenous. This committee is tasked with trying to figure out how we improve indigenous procurement, but at the end of the day it falls back to who is applying.

The Conservatives believe that this is a simple process that should have a simple solution. However, across Canada, whether it's academia, whether it's business, whether it's the music industry, there are those who have benefited unfairly because of the question of who is indigenous and who is determining who is indigenous.

You mentioned that you have a committee, FNPO, that is looking at this. Do you have best practices or a working document that you'd be able to share with this committee on what your views are on how to determine indigeneity in a fair way?

Further to that, if you don't, do you know of anyone across this country who has done this in a way that would be helpful to government in figuring out this question of how we, as a primarily non-indigenous entity, determine for indigenous people who and who isn't part of them?

[Joanna Bernard]

I believe the First Nations Procurement Organization, the FNPO that I mentioned, has just started. There may be something that was discussed within the last six months since the initial meeting. If there is, I definitely can get it to you. I don't see that as a problem. Definitely the support of this organization, with the other six indigenous organizations, is important, so I just really want to put that out to the standing committee here.

It's essential to get the work done, and to get it done fast enough and be less costly means to involve us. Definitely, moving forward, we should be able to get something from the FNPO, as long as we have the funding to continue. I'm not sure where that lies, but definitely this is a request from the AFN to establish some funds to be able to move forward and let us do the work with you.

Thank you.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Regional Chief, just in terms of following up on that, I'm glad to hear that there's an organization working collaboratively with different levels of organizations to address this topic.

Can you tell us more about the FNPO? If you are someone sitting in a reserve in my community of Eskasoni and you ask who this organization is and why we gave them the mandate to determine, for the rest of us, who is indigenous, how do you have confidence that this organization has the mandate to do such things?

[Joanna Bernard]

At this point in time, I was not part of that very first meeting in December 2023. It's just starting, and I don't have a list of the players around the table at this point. However, moving forward, definitely this organization should be the one working with the government to ensure that we are looking at indigenous entrepreneurs and ensuring that it is indigenous entrepreneurs who are participating.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I take it from the chair that this organization doing this ongoing work would be given the opportunity to submit a document that might help improve the study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You're more than welcome to submit anything.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Okay.

Does either of you have any final comments on how we can improve this process?

Joanna, I heard a good bit from you, but I want to give Mr. Ducharme a chance to weigh in and give his final thoughts.

[Philip Ducharme]

At CCIB, we are ready. We have our feet on the ground, doing all of this work already.

We're talking about indigenous businesses. In this, there are almost two different sidelines here: You're determining who's indigenous, and then you're determining what an indigenous business is.

On indigeneity, my understanding is that even within the FNPO, each one of the first nations would still have to determine who their membership is. I don't know if the FNPO, as a whole, would be respected across the country. We have 630-some first nations, which have their own rules and regulations for who they have in their membership. Even some of the stuff that Chief Bernard mentioned today about who they keep on as members, even if the government.... Again, I think a lot of that with the government is a result of funding and the costs associated with it.