Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank both of our witnesses for their testimony.
I want to share with you that people in my constituency are seized with the importance of advancing truth and reconciliation and, as part of that, with promoting and supporting economic development in indigenous communities. We want to make the system better. We want to do more to promote economic development. It is in that spirit that we pushed for this study to take place.
I also want to highlight that this committee has been studying procurement abuses in general. We've seen serious problems with procurement under this government. Our goal is to strengthen procurement, to provide more benefit for indigenous peoples, for all Canadians and for taxpayers as well.
Minister Hajdu told the INAN committee in March that the federal government's indigenous contracting program has one objective: to verify indigenous identity. She said, “The indigenous business directory is to provide assurances to other departments, including Public Services and Procurement Canada, that the people on that list are indigenous. That is the sole purpose of the list.”
Meanwhile, while she was telling this to a committee, according to revelations in Global News, her officials were telling applicants that all they had to do to verify indigenous identity was to upload a picture of a bunny.
We've all heard the expression “you had one job.” That one job, according to the minister, was to verify indigenous identity, and then all you had to do to verify indigenous identity was to upload a picture of a bunny.
This committee ordered documents on subcontracting, because when you get an indigenous set-aside and when you subcontract work, a certain percentage of those subcontracts are supposed to be to indigenous companies—not all, of course, but a certain percentage—yet across departments, we found that there was no tracking whatsoever of subcontracts.
The minister said that the purpose of this program is to verify indigenous identity, and then it spectacularly failed to put systems in place to verify indigenous identity. I note that as part of it, it seems that the qualification of an indigenous business by the government doesn't line up with the way indigenous business organizations and communities are qualifying and defining indigenous organizations.
I would like to hear from the witnesses what your reactions are to these revelations about an absence of verification of indigenous businesses and what can be done to ensure that procurement that is supposed to be for indigenous businesses is actually for real indigenous businesses.
Maybe we'll go to the chief online first and then to Mr. Ducharme here.