Those types of initiatives are great, but they are few and far between.
What we are finding now is that some of our companies that are starting to formulate themselves to become successful are being swallowed up by bigger companies. That's why they'll become the dinosaurs of the past, if there are no set-asides.
For example, a small Métis company in Manitoba started off with a truck, but the company owner can now bond up to $30 million or $35 million on hydro or construction projects. He's being swallowed up by big companies like Valard, which are undercutting him by $5 million to $7 million, and they are clearly doing it with the premise of getting rid of him. He basically came to plead with us on hydro that if it happened to him on one or two more hits, he would be finished. What is going to happen is that those little companies are all going to die out, and then Valard is going to be the only player in town, so those prices will go back up. It's like the loss leader in business.
We feel that the set-asides are protecting that, and we're pushing hydro and other institutions like them to start thinking that way.
In Manitoba we started our own procurement strategy in my own government. I pushed for it three years ago. Under it, 70% of all of my buying power has to go to Métis businesses or first nations businesses. I planted the seed. Now I can see the seeds sprouting out of the grass everywhere.
We spend millions on supplies, and yet we were going to Grand & Toy or Staples, even though they are not bringing anything back to my community. So now we have this procurement strategy in our Métis government. We are starting our own stationary company, our Métis “Staples”, if you want to call it that, and we are starting our own companies, which are starting to grow. We are pushing these types of strategic moves in our own economic engines, which although we have little of, we're seeing a dramatic turn of events taking place.