In terms of the federal contractors, as I said before, I was really pleased to see the recent report on employment equity with federal employers, because there has been some great progress.
We are committed to employment equity, but we're committed beyond... It's not just those employed by the federal government. The program you mentioned and that I'm talking about actually requires that all contractors with 100 or more employees sign a certificate of commitment to implement employment equity if they want to bid on a contract of $200,000 or more from the federal government.
If the contractor is successful in their bid, the contractor must implement employment equity obligations that are equivalent to that which we see under the Employment Equity Act. So it's the federal government reaching out, not just from our own employee base, but into the private sector as well, for anybody who wants to do business with us.
The department conducts a rolling review of federal contractors. As part of the review, actually, 148 of 446 contractors were disbarred from the federal procurement process for failing to complete or fulfill their employment equity obligations. So it's not just saying that we're going to do this; it's following up and it's reviewing. Then, when they don't adhere, we actually have them disbarred from the process. It's a very tangible way that our government has used the power in our procurement process to positively affect employment equity in Canadian businesses.
Thank you for the question.