Government Operations Committee on Oct. 31st, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mrs. Atwin, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being with us to continue this very important conversation.

Right off the top, absolutely, the Government of Canada takes identity fraud extremely seriously. This is an important discussion that we're having today to get to the bottom of this and to improve and strengthen this very important procurement strategy that is indeed supporting indigenous businesses and is a key pillar to economic reconciliation. That's what this discussion is absolutely about today, and it's so important to hear from these witnesses with their background and expertise in this.

I also really want to thank Ms. Anderson specifically.

In your opening, you provided very clear recommendations for us. I very much appreciate that we're putting forward solutions. That's really what we're all trying to get at here today.

I'm going to move to Shannin Metatawabin. You mentioned the idea of a first nations procurement strategy organization. On September 24, Regional Chief Joanna Bernard also told the committee that AFN and its partners are working on this. We know that it has First Nations Finance Authority, First Nation Financial Management Board and National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association all involved with this work, which is fantastic.

Can you please provide an update on those efforts? What is it like working with all of those organizations? What are the steps moving forward, and how can we see this organization come to fruition?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

What we try to do is start this process in a good way. We received an AFN resolution in 2019 to provide us with the mandate to do planning for procurement with the federal government. We've been doing that for four years. It was called the indigenous reference group at one time. Indigenous Services Canada rebranded the whole process and started another co-development table.

We have tried to work with the government on this process. I've experienced delay after delay. AFN has provided us with a second resolution in order to launch the organization. We have five indigenous organizations that collectively see the value in working together to stand up a new organization. We need to build the infrastructure, hire the people and get this thing going, but we're having difficulty with Indigenous Services Canada supporting the initiative.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I'm the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada. How can we support you in this endeavour?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I've sent a letter to Minister Hajdu and so has the national chief. I've sent a letter to the Prime Minister just to get recognition of and respect for the AFN resolution. At this point, we still haven't seen any response to that.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Do you know if there are similar undertakings for Inuit and Métis partners?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

Because of the distinct programming that the federal government does, the other heritage groups are also trying to contemplate their own processes. I'm hoping that, in the future, this first nation procurement organization will ultimately be an umbrella process with best practices internationally.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

That's great, thank you.

Following up on that, I noticed that the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business runs Supply Change. It's a platform to promote indigenous business procurement among buyers and suppliers, which is great.

In February 2024, in a Windspeaker article, the president of the council commented that a first nations procurement organization may “delay progress and create confusion” by duplicating efforts.

Could you respond to concerns about duplicating efforts? To what extent would these initiatives overlap, or how would they differ?

[Shannin Metatawabin]

In 2021, CCIB was part of the planning process. They removed themselves in 2023 because they said it competed with their process, but we are planning collectively this indigenous procurement organization.

The indigenous procurement organization is something that the rights holders in Canada have requested through resolution at AFN. We have five indigenous organizations that have the capacity and the reputation to hold up and create this organization. This is what the federal government should do: Respect rights holders and respect these organizations that want to create this so that we can have success in our community.

Thank you.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Great. Thank you very much.

Just to switch gears a little bit, I'd love to ask Ms. Anderson and Ms. Madahbee Leach this question.

Are there additional barriers for indigenous women when it comes to business?

[Dawn Madahbee Leach]

I'm not sure if I can still speak here, but I just want to say that yes, there are barriers. Right now, though, we have a program that is supporting the start up of businesses through microloans for indigenous women in Canada. It provides $20,000 in financing to help them get started.

I think this is a perfect program because since it started, nearly 500 new businesses have been started by indigenous women in five years. That's over a hundred businesses a year. This is a small program, but it's making a huge impact. It's delivered through the network of indigenous financial institutions.

We know our clients best. As I mentioned earlier, we're able to verify indigeneity of all the applicants and make sure that the funding goes to the people it's intended for.

We're seeing women starting up in all kinds of different economic sectors. In fact, 9% of our women are now earning revenues in excess of a million dollars a year, which is huge for us.

There are some really great impacts now in including indigenous women in business.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Anderson, would you like to add something?

[Jody Anderson]

Thank you.

I'll leave my comments with Dawn Madahbee and move on. She covered it very well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks very much.

Mrs. Vignola, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being with us today. I have so many questions, you have no idea.

Witnesses have told us about conditions that are imposed on first nations businesses, but not on other business owners in Canada. Can you tell me about these different conditions and describe their effect, positive or negative, on procurement from indigenous businesses?

We can start with Mr. Metatawabin and then move on to Ms. Anderson.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I think the most obvious one is the Indian Act, which is a racist policy that has been implemented on our people. It placed us away from the markets into tiny reserves all across this country. There are 634 first nations all across this country, all at varying levels of capacity and poverty and all looking for an idea of prosperity for their people.

Now this procurement program gives them a little glimmer of hope of accessing some opportunity.

I used to work for Anglo American and we had a De Beers diamond mine. Implementing impact benefit agreements for business opportunities takes time and thoughtfulness. You have to disentangle large contracts to make bite-sized opportunities for indigenous communities.

I think the government has a great opportunity to redefine how it does procurement to enable indigenous entrepreneurs to enter that door. That way, you get to know them and you'll have lifetime procurers for the government.

[Jody Anderson]

Thank you very much for your question.

I would echo the view that the impediments of section 89 both hinder the development and the progress of accessing capital and having the ability in this case to access surety and bonding. There is a cost to procuring a bid and submitting that to federal and public contracts and projects.

For indigenous contractors, while one door has been opened by the 5% procurement target, the second door remains closed because they cannot access surety and bonding. The cost to procure a bid is quite substantial. A lot of these indigenous contractors will not spend upwards of $50,000 to $60,000 to create a bid, only to be told “no” because they cannot access surety and bonding. We're seeing that.

The other piece is that often our contractors are becoming subcontractors. They don't have the opportunity to become prime contractors. The cost is the inability to scale and grow their businesses. The cost of securing capital in order to procure materials that are required for these large projects is severely stunted.

Section 89 becomes a huge impediment in terms of accessing capital to both secure materials for the bids and to execute an enforceable indemnity agreement.

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

Thank you very much.

A witness also told us about the verification of indigenous status. The method is different for a member of a first nation than for a Métis, for example. In the case of first nations, according to the law, after the second generation where one of the parents is not entitled to first nation status, the child loses that status. In other words, in this case, the government considers that the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of a first nation member no longer have that status. However, it's not the same for Métis.

First, does this have an impact on the first nation indigenous businesses you represent, in terms of procurement?

Secondly, is it necessary to leave it up to first nations to determine who is or isn't a first nation member, or is that really a federal responsibility?

I'd like to hear Mr. Metatawabin's answer first and then Ms. Anderson's.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I would like to say that the community—our indigenous community, our first nations community—is the only one that should provide citizenship to our people. It should remain with the communities and the organizations that represent them and that are stood up by them. That should be the only place that happens.

There are many challenges with indigeneity—with the Métis community dealing with that right now. I'm not Métis myself, but I know that there are organizations that are defined as Métis throughout the Red River Valley and there are other ones that are not. The Métis are more of a mix of indigenous and European, which is not the original definition of Métis. That's being sorted out, I think, by their own community, but they should be the only ones who you ask.

Thank you.

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

Thank you very much.

There are few universities and training opportunities in first nations communities, especially those that are remote and isolated.

What mode of training should be applied in these environments, in your opinion, so that young people don't have to leave their areas to get training?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We're out of time. If you're able to offer a very brief response, go ahead, or perhaps we can get back to that next round.

[Shannin Metatawabin]

I would just say that I was sent to a boarding school in a city away from my community, so having resources in the community is very important. Using the online ability of teaching like this would be beneficial to the community, but we still suffer with regard to broadband access.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mrs. Vignola.

Mr. Johns, it's a pleasure to welcome you back. Go ahead, sir.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

It's good to be back.

Thanks, everybody.

It's an esteemed panel to be on today—to join and hear from—and I feel so hopeful, actually. I know that some of the challenges and barriers have been difficult, but hearing from you, I'm also extremely hopeful.

As I was telling Ms. Anderson earlier, I think Carol Anne Hilton is one of the greatest leaders globally on indigenous economic reconciliation, and she runs the Indigenomics Institute. She is from the Hesquiaht First Nation, which is in my riding. She is an incredible Nuu-chah-nulth leader, so I'm really privileged to have heard her talk about the opportunity of creating a $100-billion economic opportunity with indigenous people in terms of procurement. She talks about moving toward “systemic inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in today's modern economy”, which is such an important aspiration. It is critical when it comes to reconciliation.

Ms. Anderson, can you give an evaluation of how close we are in terms of “systemic inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in today's modern economy”?

[Jody Anderson]

Thank you, Mr. Johns. That is a big question.

Yes, Carol Anne has been doing wonderful work. I think what we're seeing are systemic barriers that still exist under federal acts, as well as federal policies that need to be looked at and reformed with the co-development of our nations, asking or including what our nations feel would be best and how best to proceed.

We see a number of policies that still exclude the opportunity to participate in economic opportunities right across the board. In terms of how close we are to addressing that, there has been a lot of work in a number of areas. We still have a long way to go. In our work that we have done, we have chatted very closely with the Surety Association of Canada to ensure that it is aware of a lot of these barriers, and it has come to us to ask how it can help, how can it support, and how it can remove these barriers from a public standpoint. That continuous work needs to happen, as well as the inclusion of a number of bodies right across Canada.