Government Operations Committee on Nov. 28th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You only have about 15 seconds to solve the Indian Act issue, Mr. LeClair.

Go ahead.

[Marc LeClair]

Well, the Indian Act is not our issue, but it does create some restrictions.

I do know that the important part about this policy is making sure that the government enforces it. For example, we negotiated a building for SkyAlyne here. They agreed to take 100 offices from us. It was okay for us to go to the bank and get the $7 million to buy the building because we have a guaranteed tenant. National Defence actually did intervene and make sure that SkyAlyne is answering the mail on their commitments for procurement, so we know it works, but it's operational as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'll cut you off there. We're going to suspend and then vote. Once we've all voted and have been confirmed, we'll gavel back in. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you for your patience, everyone. We are back.

We're going to go straight to Mr. Bachrach. I'm not sure if we're going to have more bells before we're done, but if we do, I'll just give everyone a heads-up and we'll repeat the process.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm happy to keep talking until the next vote, if you like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes, why don't we just do that?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead for the rest of the session, Mr. Bachrach.

Go ahead, sir. Thanks.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back at this committee.

Thanks to our witnesses for shedding light on this issue we're studying.

I'm really pleased to have Mr. Beaton here, from northwest B.C., as someone who has a lot of experience as an indigenous business person and has thought a lot about this question of how we ensure indigenous businesses are getting more opportunities and that we're addressing some of the real injustices in indigenous procurement that have persisted for a long time, as he mentioned in his opening remarks.

I know, Mr. Beaton, that when you got to the solutions part, you ran out of time a little bit. I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about your proposals when it comes to fixing the shortcomings you listed. Perhaps you could focus in on these questions around the pragmatic issues of defining what an indigenous business is and the idea of “For Indigenous, By Indigenous”, which I think is really crucial in addressing the problems we've seen in the indigenous procurement system.

I'm happy to give you the remaining minutes to expand on those ideas and to help the committee understand where we go from here.

[Jacob Beaton]

Sure. Thank you, Taylor, for the question, and for giving me a bit more time to talk about that.

As I've said, we indigenous people should be the only judges and arbiters of who's indigenous and non-indigenous. I've heard that from my Métis friends here as well, and also that they have a solution.

We have a solution. We know who's indigenous and who's not. We know who's first nations and who's not. It's pretty easy.

As the previous Métis speakers have talked about, it's not complicated. Indigeneity is not a complicated thing. For every single first nations person who knows where they're from and is claimed by a nation, that is who you are. You're first nations or indigenous. That's all it is. Who are your ancestors, and do they know about you?

The next thing I want to talk about that's really critical is that the indigenous ownership piece of course is important, but it's only one piece of being an indigenous company, business or party, and it's a very small piece, because there are actually five critical pieces around being indigenous-led.

The simple definition of “indigenous-led” is that if indigenous people are making the decisions at every level of an organization, those are going to be indigenous decisions. They're going to be in line with indigenous values and perspectives. They're going to benefit the community. They're going to create local jobs. They're going to create jobs for other indigenous people and opportunities to advance, but the indigenous-led standard is not embraced anywhere in federal government that I've come across.

The solution is essentially that we need the indigenous-led standard to be embraced as the standard, rather than indigenous ownership. Then those who are establishing the standard, and even conducting audits, are us: our organizations, our indigenous-led authentic organizations. Then we're going to see things change, because that should be the only test. The whole reason we're here talking about indigenous procurement is that there are historical injustices that have completely marginalized indigenous people in this country out of the economy, and we're trying to fix that.

We need to fix it, guys. We're in this boat together. Canada needs workers. We need strong businesses. We have them in our indigenous population, and we're available and ready. This is like a win-win-win. Everybody wins. Why aren't we having this conversation? Why aren't we engaged in talking about these meaningful groundswell shifts that are actually going to create jobs?

The last thing I'll say, Taylor, is that it has been proven that indigenous peoples globally are stewarding 82% of the world's remaining biodiversity. That's what “indigenous-led” does on less than 1% of the world's resources.

The same thing happens economically when indigenous people are in charge. We create the jobs locally. We benefit the local economy, and you have this huge multiplier effect. Everybody wins, but we need to be the ones at the steering wheel. We need to be the ones driving it, and then we'll actually see those needles move.

Thank you for listening to me on that one.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Beaton.

I wanted to ask one more question. We have one more minute.

On this piece around indigenous-led, it's something that we've heard the government aspire to. For instance, there was a commitment to a “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” housing strategy that came with significant financial resources, yet we haven't seen any of those resources actually roll out, several years after the original commitment.

Where do you think the government goes off the rails when it comes to empowering indigenous organizations and indigenous governance with these decisions around shaping programs and distributing resources? Where does it fall apart?

[Jacob Beaton]

It falls apart in not handing over the reins to an indigenous, authentic and effective organization early on.

In those processes I've been involved with, I've seen these federal budget announcements that are, say, $30 million or $50 million for one sector of the indigenous economy, and by the time that actually hits the ground, it's been whittled down to a million dollars by the time it actually gets to the authentic indigenous organizations. That's what I've witnessed: more studies.

That's why I said in my opening remarks that we don't need to do any more studies. We don't need any more data. The data is there. We just need to get to work, and we just need to have the steering wheel. We need our turn to solve our own problems.

Thank you.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We're right on time. Thanks very much.

We'll go to Mr. Genuis, please.

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

Thank you.

First of all, I wonder if folks from the Manitoba Métis Federation could provide us with any reaction to what happened with former cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault's false claims about indigenous identity, about Métis identity. He has now left cabinet but remains a member of the Liberal caucus. Is there any reaction to those events that you want to share?

[Marc LeClair]

Well, I think President Chartrand addressed that in a CBC interview the other day. We know who the real Métis are, the Red River Métis, and I don't think he ever claimed to be part of the Red River Métis.

The challenge with this is the self-identification issue, and it's writ large in the federal public service. You just have to say that you identify as indigenous, and then Bob's your uncle. We've always had issues with that, not only on the procurement side but also on the employment side.

It really behooves the government, and this committee, actually.... I'm glad you're looking at these issues, because some oversight is really needed in order to implement these policies and to police the policies as well. The self-identification thing I think really needs to be looked at closely.

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

It's not at all surprising that if you have a self-identification framework, you're going to have a certain portion of people who are unscrupulous enough to self-identify as whatever they perceive to be in their interest in the moment. That's fairly obvious.

I want to go to enforcement now. Mr. Beaton made some interesting and I think important comments about enforcement, highlighting the fact that there are publicized cases of people who are outright making false claims of indigenous identity—the Randy Boissonnault case, for example—but there are likely many more claims of deceptive structure. It's not actually a person who is not indigenous saying they're indigenous; it's more a case of a structure that is designed to partially incorporate an indigenous company, but in a way that preserves all of the benefit for the non-indigenous side of that partnership.

Also, Mr. Beaton made the point about a lack of audits, in that claims might be made about indigenous benefits or about how that benefit-sharing or work-sharing process is going to unfold, but those claims are not followed through on and are not enforced.

I wonder if we can get both witness groups to comment on the failure to enforce some of these rules—why there's a lack of enforcement, who should be enforcing them and how we can improve enforcement specifically.

[Marc LeClair]

Lorne, do you want to take that one?

[Lorne Pelletier]

Yes. Thanks. I'm happy to provide a response.

Again, coming back to my earlier points about who authorizes lists or who validates lists and then how those lists are made available to federal decision-makers in procurement, there has to be a regime that looks at that in terms of making a determination of the list holder and the process they use to verify and validate people on the lists.

Along with that regime comes that back-end piece you're speaking about, which is how each of the different groups or the Government of Canada is going to look at the enforcement component, whether that's through an audit that follows the contracting or whether that's ensuring the right criteria or conditions are met—again, by the list administrators—going forward.

Speaking more generally, I think that on some of these fraudulent activities, we're already seeing the legal action, the legal consequences, to Marc's point about self-identification—

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

Yes. I'm sorry. I do want to give some time to Mr. Beaton on this, just briefly.

There's a real discrepancy where you have, on the one hand, 1,100 businesses taken off the list, but on the other hand, you have zero cases of consequences or penalties for those who engage in indigenous identity fraud. There's clearly a problem, but there are no penalties for anyone who is responsible for the problem.

Mr. Beaton, do you want to comment on how we can improve enforcement?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Please be extremely brief.

[Jacob Beaton]

Yes. It's through audits, absolutely, done by indigenous people. It's very simple.

Also, just keep in mind that the current system is a yes-no in terms of meeting an ownership requirement or a certain percentage of requirements. “Indigenous-led” is a spectrum, so it's not just a simple yes-no.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Next is Mrs. Atwin, please.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope I'm coming through loud and clear for interpretation.

Thank you again to our witnesses for adding very important testimony to this conversation today. It's been very enlightening, for sure.

I'd love to go back to Mr. Pelletier around the list again, which the organization kind of monitors. Can you speak to that? Has that process evolved since it began, or has it been pretty standard across the board?

[Lorne Pelletier]

Thank you very much, Ms. Atwin, for the question.

The process has evolved. We have continued to bring more rigour over the past several years, and increased integrity. Obviously, there's review of the registry as we move forward, given that you may see instances of a change in ownership in a natural part of a business transaction. You might also see some change in citizenship. We're monitoring that on an ongoing basis.

I would say that what's really interesting and really exciting about the list is that we use it to inform our own Red River Métis equitable participation policy and program. We've used it in our major contracts that we've issued. The MMF has done major contracts with non-Métis businesses that have the capability and capacity to undertake them. Then, through that, there's a process by which they can use our directory to support suppliers, subcontractors, etc.

I'll just say that on a recent $11.5-million energy efficiency retrofit project, our general contractor was Red River Métis and 17 of 22 subcontractors were Métis. We had a 28% on-site workforce of Red River Métis participation. It's substantive.