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.