Thank you, Mr. Champoux. That's a great question.
I would say that there are a number of ways to encourage, and sometimes even require, indigenous businesses to participate in the procurement process, depending on the situation. As I was saying, the Canadian government sometimes has an obligation to award contracts to indigenous businesses in certain contexts and certain geographic locations. Generally speaking, our approach to encouraging the full participation of indigenous businesses applies to all Canadian government contracts.
In all cases, if companies submitting a proposal want to increase their chances of being awarded a contract, we encourage them to submit indigenous participation plans. If they themselves are indigenous businesses, we encourage them to include indigenous subcontractors as well. When a contract is awarded to a non-indigenous business, we encourage that business to subcontract with indigenous businesses and to demonstrate commitments to employment, training and benefits for the communities.
The fact remains that it's a competitive process. Apart from the exceptions I mentioned initially, these competitive processes can result in subcontractors who are not indigenous being hired.