Government Operations Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I mean, the goal is 5%. Is it even possible, and if it is impossible, how many years do you project it would take to actually be possible?

[Michael Mills]

Again, when we've talked to the business representative communities for the indigenous businesses, such as the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, and the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers, they've indicated that 5% should be a floor and that there is much more potential out there in the indigenous business community to supply more than 5%.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Are there particular...? You know, you go through CanadaBuys and some of these contracts are very specific and very technical and very detailed. You just can't walk in off the street and do these. Are there specific areas that you have identified that would be more readily available to the workforce?

[Michael Mills]

Internally, I'd say we look to the largest categories, which would be in the area of construction—so, subcontracting to construction—as well as in the information technologies, from supplying technologies such as hardware and software to even consulting within the IT domain.

Beyond that, we do a number of contracts for goods that are not manufactured in Canada. They're actually companies that get the rights to distribute and supply certain goods. Those are other areas where we've seen strong potential for indigenous suppliers to be able to enter and provide goods. For example, during the pandemic, in order to administer the mRNA vaccines, we needed to use low dead-volume syringes, which were a new item and very hard to get. One of our key contracts was actually with an indigenous supplier who was able to get us a supply of those from overseas and make them available for Canadians.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Do I have any more time there, Mr. Chair? It must be pretty well five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Yes.

We will now go to Mr. Kusmierczyk for five minutes or less.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Mills, you mentioned in your remarks and in some of your answers the importance of disability inclusion. Can you speak a little bit about how we are doing in terms of procurement from businesses that are owned by Canadians with disabilities? In terms of the challenges, are there similar challenges that we're seeing with other under-represented groups? Are there different challenges that we have to focus on in terms of procuring from businesses owned by Canadians with disabilities?

[Michael Mills]

I would have to say that when it comes to businesses owned by persons with disabilities, this is actually a challenge economy-wide for Canada.

When we look at the general number of businesses owned by persons with disabilities, we see that it's very low relative to the percentage of the population. There's more work to be done with our partners at Innovation, Science and Economic Development, as well as the regional development agencies, to look at how we might build to increase the overall community of businesses owned by persons with disabilities in Canada and then make procurement.

From the procurement perspective, there are real challenges. As we move to an electronic procurement solution, one of the things we're very concerned about is the accessibility of those technologies and the barriers we could unintentionally create. That's one area that we're very focused on. We're trying to set a high bar in terms of accessibility standards for our web presence and whatnot, as well as look at how we make available other sources of interaction with businesses owned by persons with disabilities, if need be, because of that technology that has happened.

I will ask Levent to talk also a bit. We are concerned about this enough, and we haven't put as much discussion in today about what we're doing specifically on accessibility internally from an organizational perspective to try to address this.

[Levent Ozmutlu]

As indicated, persons with disabilities face two challenges: One is that they are under-represented generally in the procurement space, and the second is that they have accessibility issues that we have to be mindful of. This includes having access to procurement opportunities, as well as being able to access the procurement materials that are being provided.

The systems are very important, but we also have to look at this from the perspective of contract simplification in order to make our processes less cumbersome and the documents shorter. Even with the great technology that we do have available today, we have to reduce those barriers even further.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, sir. It's heartening to hear that this is a focus and a priority within PSPC.

You mentioned the need to grow the pool of entrepreneurs across these under-represented groups. Our federal government has a $6-billion women entrepreneurship strategy and we have a $250-million Black entrepreneurship fund. Is PSPC actively working with some of the ministries that have developed these programs and are rolling them out to see how PSPC can leverage and be partners on these programs?

[Michael Mills]

Thank you for the question.

Yes. One of the key areas as we try to develop the program is to look at where there are areas of representation and how those map onto the types of goods and services we buy and, where there are not, to have that more focused discussion with our partners about how we grow businesses in those areas where we buy commodities, where buying goods and services may actually be catalytic in growing out those business opportunities.

That's definitely something we're trying to work with in terms of having a greater understanding of the overall market environment: how our buying maps the overall market and, again, where we can leverage this to actually help to grow the Canadian market and create business.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

That's excellent.

I have one last question. The U.S. utilizes set-asides quite effectively. Can you tell us what a set-aside is and how it would work to help us increase diversity in procurement?

[Michael Mills]

Generally speaking, a set-aside would be a procurement in which you would limit eligible participants to a defined group. If you were to say indigenous business, you might say that in order to enter, submit a bid and have an eligible bid in this process, you need to be a business that is registered with the Indigenous Services Canada indigenous business directory. They would be the only eligible participants in that process.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Do you have an example of a successful process like that? I don't want to put you on the spot—you could put it in writing—but I'd love to hear about it.

[Michael Mills]

I should have had one, but I don't have one on hand. I will say that within our comprehensive claims agreement and under the procurement strategy for indigenous businesses, when procurements are for the benefit of an indigenous community, there are many examples of set-asides. They've set aside that opportunity for only indigenous businesses.

We can work with Indigenous Services Canada to provide some opportunities for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk, and I recognize that “one last question” doesn't necessarily mean one last question.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We'll now go to Mr. McCauley for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

I want to ask a couple of quick questions.

You mentioned—I think it's with PSPC—that you figure about 5% is going to indigenous businesses right now. How are you tracking that if we have all these privacy issues and this and that? How are you coming up with 5%?

[Michael Mills]

Since probably the late 1990s, we've had the procurement strategy for aboriginal business, and now it's the procurement strategy for indigenous business. Under those programs, we did make efforts to actually have businesses identify as indigenous within our supplier registration, and we've been keeping that data for a number of years.

I don't know, Levent, if you have a timeline of when we implemented it.

[Levent Ozmutlu]

Yes. It was in the late 1990s, I believe, that the data started to—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But if it's a privacy issue that you can't track it, how are you tracking it so that you can claim it's 5%? You told me earlier that you couldn't fulfill one of our recommendations because of privacy laws and this and that, but somehow you are tracking it.

[Michael Mills]

Mr. Chair, when we look at the privacy issue, we have to look at it through a number of lenses, one of which is businesses voluntarily registering in a system with an acknowledgement of what their data would be used for and agreeing to submitting their data, versus holding data within a system that we're building and having new systems, versus the questions and the information we might ask for when we run a procurement process and hold that data. In terms of the indigenous data—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry. I have one last quick question.

I just want to get back to the bond issue. About 40%, give or take, of indigenous people live on reserves, so 60% are off. How much of this bond issue is an issue for the 60% who are not living on reserve, to whom we're not saying to put up unlimited liability on land for which they can't legally do so? How easy is it just to remove altogether that bond issue in a procurement process?

We heard from the other small and medium-sized enterprises and other women-led mainstream companies that meeting the requirement to offer up an unlimited liability bond for a small contract was impossible. How easy would it be to just get rid of that bond requirement and instantly help indigenous businesses?

[Michael Mills]

Thank you for the question.

As to the first one, you are correct that for businesses not owned by first nations and not on reserve, it is not a legal impediment to them as long as they have assets off reserve.