Government Operations Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I also asked about the 60% who are off reserve. How difficult is it for PSPC to just get rid of that bond issue?

[Michael Mills]

We are actually running a pilot right now for a smaller construction procurement for which we did not require this. It is actually a Treasury Board policy for us to have security, so there would need to be some policy changes to make it more permanent.

I would also note that there are other stakeholders who have an interest in this issue. The Canadian Construction Association, for one, has noted reasons that they would prefer to continue with certain securities with respect to subcontractors—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's to keep out the competitors, yes. I'm sure they would love to.

[Michael Mills]

—so they're—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Stuff like that is very easy to do with an order in council, perhaps with Treasury Board or someone who could help out. That certainly would help a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises—indigenous and Black-owned and everything—without hurting Canadians and the Crown, I assume. That's overly general, but is that fair to say?

[Michael Mills]

I can't speak to Treasury Board in terms of how easy it will be to change that policy. We would have to work with them.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

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

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests for joining us today.

I'm curious about our veterans. How do veteran-owned businesses factor into the department's current procurement diversity goals?

[Levent Ozmutlu]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

Maybe I could start off—

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Have they been considered?

[Levent Ozmutlu]

I think, Mr. Chair, it's important to make a distinction here. When we are referring to under-represented suppliers, we are at this time talking about indigenous suppliers, Black and racialized Canadians, other visible minorities, persons with disabilities and those in the LGBTQ+ communities.

Notwithstanding that, you may be aware that there are other opportunities for veteran employment as well. There is the long-standing RFR policy for the Corps of Commissionaires as an example. I would also add that designing a supplier diversity program is something we could iterate on; it's not that the groups we've identified at this point will be the same groups that would be identified in the future.

Thank you.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

Among our bidders, does your department recommend that certain types of businesses adopt a diverse supplier program?

[Levent Ozmutlu]

We are encouraging diversity within the supply chain to the greatest extent possible.

I would also note that there is the federal program for employment equity, which is led by the Minister of Labour. That is a program whereby any company that receives a contract worth $1 million or more and has 100 or more employees in Canada has to sign up for employment equity provisions. We do ensure that the contracts we award to such companies are vetted against that list prior to award, and if they're not there, then they do have to commit to meeting those obligations throughout the performance of their contracts.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

Specifically to Mr. Ozmutlu, how do Canada's diversity goals compare to those of other countries around the world?

[Levent Ozmutlu]

Thank you for the question.

We have been looking very closely at other countries, whether the United States or those in Europe, and trying to learn some of the lessons from them. Australia has a very developed model as it relates to indigenous procurement and their certification process. Likewise, when we look at the United States, they've had a history of different set-aside programs. We'd like to see the results of some of what they have done so that we might borrow some of the strategies that are working for them.

We do have many of the same challenges. To the extent that we can take some lessons learned and make those work for our purposes, we are doing that.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay. I believe one of my other questions was already answered. It was asked by my colleague, so those are all the questions I have for today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Bains.

We'll now go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My apologies if I got carried away earlier. It's just that I had asked the witness twice to compare two SMEs, not to compare a large company and a SME.

Mr. Mills, are francophones part of an under-represented group or an overrepresented one?

[Michael Mills]

Thank you for the question.

Within the current policy, they are not one of the under-represented groups, so they'd be in the—

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

That means francophones are not an under-represented group for federal procurement purposes.

Thank you.

Mr. Lawrence-Whyte, my understanding is that it's hard for SMEs to access information on Buyandsell.gc.ca. Just for fun sometimes, I look at the site, and on average, I see 840 contracts a day. A SME with some 40 or 50 employees at most would likely find it onerous to check the site every day to find out which contracts are still posted, which ones keep coming up.

How can we make it easier for a SME to stay on top of available contracts and realize that they are open to everyone, regardless of skin colour, religion or gender?

All types of businesses should be able to apply.

Not very many people look at newspapers anymore. Is it better to go through chambers of commerce?

What can we do to make the process easier for businesses?

[Clinton Lawrence-Whyte]

Thank you for your question.

One of PSPC's priorities is to reach out to businesses all over Canada to help them better understand how things work in government. Ensuring that websites and other such tools are fairly user-friendly is also very important.

We work directly with businesses to teach them how to use the tools, so they can do things like sign up for notifications to find out when certain procurement contracts or tender opportunities are available. We help people create that capacity. We also help people in searching for tender opportunities.

For us, it's really about helping small and medium-sized businesses, mainly, navigate the system with greater ease, and we provide that service across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Johns for two and a half minutes.

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

We talked a little bit earlier about Nunavut, as a good example, with an 80% Inuit population. You said there's a Nunavut agreement. I live in Nuu-chah-nulth territory. I'm from the Tla-o-qui-aht area in the five central region nations of the west coast of the island. That area, in particular, is 50% indigenous.

Can you speak about how you're readjusting? You talked about how in Ottawa you've over-met the target of 5%, which is great. What are you doing in areas where you're not hitting the target, where you're below it? How are you gauging the 5%? You're looking at a nationwide target, but there are areas, for sure, where you're falling far short and you're not coming close to the population percentage. What are you going to do to adjust that?

[Michael Mills]

One of the things that we're really trying to work on with our broader client base of departments is to have a better forecasting of what their procurement opportunities are in the future for the next two to three years and see where those are geographically located. From that, we would be able to look at some of our strategies. If they're buying goods or services in areas, such as Nuu-chah-nulth territory, where there is greater capacity, then maybe we look at targeting more of our activity there and over-procuring there, because in other areas there wouldn't be the opportunity or the population of indigenous businesses that could meet the opportunity.

We really want to look at how we can have a better understanding of where the businesses are located and what their capacities are and, for opportunities where it makes sense—where they're going to be very location-driven—to try to take advantage of those opportunities.