Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 25th, 2010

[Jacques Plante]

If I may make a comment, we should look at some of the success stories. For example, the Arctic College in Cambridge Bay has developed a very simple program for training chefs. They ran a program with 20 students and they brought in an instructor from the south. They spent 20 weeks, and it worked.

There doesn't have to be a whole pile of money. Money in the right place is what I would recommend we look at. Simply throwing money at the problem is not going to work; we've tried that in the past. It's focusing on building on the success, and partnering with southern schools with an Arctic flavour is probably... Learn to walk before we run, is probably the advice I would give the committee when it comes to this type of thing. If we start getting into an argument about whether it should be in location A, B, or C, we'll be studying this for another five years and nothing will get done. And it's probably not the wisest use of funds, from that point of view.

Clearly, distance is an issue. It's a cultural thing. We think of it as being something that only applies to the north. My friend from Quebec will tell you that at Christmastime they all want to go home. I used to be in the military. I remember being in Saskatchewan and my wife asking if we were going home for Christmas. There's nothing strange about this. It's the nature of being close to the ones you've grown up with.

The real challenge we have here... You have had the opportunity to travel up north, but 95% of Canadians haven't been up north. They don't realize that it's shorter to go from Montreal to Miami than it is to go from Montreal to Iqaluit. Also, it's ten times cheaper to go to Miami than it is to go to Iqaluit. That's the real challenge we're facing.

How are we going to solve this? I believe that by studying it a little bit better, we could probably come up with some recommendations. That's my humble advice on this.

[Tony Butler]

I have a quick comment: online schooling and infrastructure for faster Internet.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Do I have any time left?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Todd Russell]

You have about 40 seconds, if you would like to utilize that, sir.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In terms of what you talked about, I think the strategy is right. One of the issues you talked about was security and getting a PAL licence, so I would see the same kind of thing happening with that, and having somebody in the north being able to train people in various locations.

[Jacques Plante]

You're correct: having people make that training available more easily.

People don't realize that we hire bear monitors, not because we want to but because they are needed. It's part of the safety program that we have in place. These people need to be trained, just from a Canada Labour Code requirement, to make sure they can handle weapons appropriately and provide the safety they need to provide.

Again, it doesn't have to be a complicated program, but it needs to be made more accessible to the people who will need it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Todd Russell]

Thank you, Mr. Payne.

Our last two questioners will be Ms. Crowder and then our chair, Mr. Stanton, and then I'll move on to other business.

Thank you.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for Mr. Butler.

You talked about the procurement process. Are you talking about small and medium-sized enterprises and access to government contracts?

[Tony Butler]

No, I'm not per se. The small and medium-sized business program is out there, but from my perspective, I don't think it has reached out to the northern communities as much as it has in the south. There's a lot of demand in the south for its services and its approach.

Within the aboriginal procurement policy and the procurement review process the government follows, you have the procurement review committees, senior procurement and advisory committees that make determinations on the level and type of aboriginal participation in projects the federal government is putting forward. Many times what happens is the decisions are made just before a project goes out the door, so that the first time the Inuit hear something is when bids are being requested.

It also means that in planning—something as simple as how you set up your schedule for how a project is going to take place—because of the travel and the transportation issues, the lead time in the north to meet a requirement is talked about in seasons, not in months. You have firms down in the south that are constantly in talking to government personnel, finding out what's coming down the pike, what kinds of businesses might be available. This is not something that occurs as often in the north, so the north is hearing about these things too late to be prepared to step in at a higher level.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

There are a couple of things. One is the aboriginal participation. But the second thing is still the SME process. Despite the view that it's working well in the south, I can tell you that for shipbuilding, for example, it's absolutely not working well. I have shipbuilding in my riding.

What would you like to see changed? It sounds as though the lead time is important, but what are the mechanics around this?

[Tony Butler]

I'll use as an example Defence, with which I'm most familiar. The defence department works very closely with a lot of defence associations. They brief them, they speak to them, they talk about what's coming along, they talk about their five-year plans, they talk about specific projects. This allows major industry players who are members of these associations to start considering what they need to do in order to be prepared to mount a reasonable bid. That doesn't happen...many times in the north the first time they hear of a project is when they hear that the bid closes in 30 days. Well, in the north, 30 days doesn't even allow you to get from one side to the other. It's not enough time.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Would part of a solution be that there be a carve-out for businesses in the north?

[Tony Butler]

I hesitate to say a carve-out, because I think the northern companies and Inuit groups are capable of delivering. There are already provisions to allow for set-asides and for a percentage of a project to be directed to aboriginals. When I think of set-asides or of carve-outs, I worry about their being made in the sense that we're just going to give them some money to go away. They have to qualify.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

But you indicated in your testimony that the participation can be seen as a tax on projects.

[Tony Butler]

Yes. That's because what happens is that as a project or a procurement is going through the review process, somebody will say, we'll make it 3% or we'll make it 5%. Bidders can then put forward that they're going to spend 3% of the total value. If the contract is worth $1 million, they have to spend 3%. It could be for anything; it doesn't necessarily lead to meaningful employment. If we look at the history of the east coast, we see that with a lot of programs, money is spent, and as soon as the contract ends, so do the jobs; so does the survivability of the firms.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Do I have time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

You have 30 seconds.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Okay.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

[Tony Butler]

Let me speak of education, just to speak to some of the successes. A number of Inuit go south for education. One of the programs out west was to provide chaperones, because when the kids arrive, quite honestly, with the noise of the city, the size of the city—and this applies to almost anybody coming from a small community, but it's especially hard for those from the north—having chaperones available increases the success rate for these students, both in finishing their matriculation or getting successfully into colleges.

If we go to online training, there's the possibility for remedial math, remedial sciences, so that people can qualify online.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Crowder.

I have a couple of short questions, and then we'll have a question from Ms. Neville as well.

Let me continue with you, Mr. Butler. You mentioned in your remarks that one of the difficulties you recognized was the problem with the bid evaluation process; that in point of fact, the successful bidders were assessed only on the basis that they actually won a bid, and not so much on the actual realization of the objectives of whatever the program is. You described that.

Can you just give us an example of what you meant, an anecdote that describes that problem?

[Tony Butler]

I'm going to make this very generic so that I'm not pointing a finger at any particular company.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

No, you don't have to mention specific names.

[Tony Butler]

I won't even mention what they were doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay...or what they didn't do.

[Tony Butler]

What happens is a company goes in, and you have price, technical management—a number of different areas are evaluated. One of the areas is aboriginal participation. The aboriginal participation plan may form 5% or possibly even less of the total evaluation. But when you have competitive bids, that 3% to 5% can be a determinant; it can be the tie-breaker. Companies can go in knowing that they might be able to shave a little bit on the price or bid a little bit more, but they can go in and commit to higher employment levels. They can commit to, say, management or semi-management positions. If they don't deliver... I can think of an individual who left a company because he wound up sitting in an office with a plaque outside, and his job was to come to the office. If they don't deliver, what happens on the next bid round is that all they have to do is say why they didn't achieve their targets and say what lessons they've learned from not achieving their targets, and that's considered a success.

Nasittuq has achieved over 300% more than they were required to. That has no bearing on the next bid.