Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  In the context of your committee's discussion, it's a benchmarking system, the same as we have for employment equity in the labour section that looks after benchmarking. I just want to caution you on that, because we have really bad results in some of the federally regulated employment areas.

Government Operations committee  The diversification is going to occur through joint ventures with other companies, so the companies can grow. We didn't know how to put in footings for those towers. The only way we could learn was to joint venture with a company that did it. It's the same thing when we erected the towers.

Government Operations committee  The companies will do it within the competitive bidding process. We've seen this. We're about to see Line 3 come forward. There's going to be five mainline contractors that are going to be bidding on Line 3. We know all of them and we know what the subcontracting services are that are going to be required.

Government Operations committee  To be perfectly frank, I don't know that it really belongs in that department at all. With Public Works and Government Services, the Treasury Board could make it accountable, but they need to be involved. All it does when you send it to Indigenous Affairs is that then they have to run over to Public Works to try to convince the contract guy who is writing up the contract to put some requirements in.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  The Métis manage about $55 million in employment and training assistance programs. We use those programs in those joint ventures. The 15 joint ventures we entered into in the last three months all have a training component. We incentivize those companies to work with us by using our training resources to get the people ready for the contracts that eventually come.

Government Operations committee  Yes, so it's—

Government Operations committee  No, we've been applying it. That's how Membertou got its big successes and got all those contracts, because there was a requirement. Shipbuilding in Victoria.... It has been applied. The templates are there. They lost them.

Government Operations committee  I'll give you the templates.

Government Operations committee  Okay. I'll give the clerk the templates that they've lost over there. Non-insured health benefits: this is claims processing, the back end of stuff. You submit a claim to the pharmacist and the pharmacist has to send it to somebody so he's going to get paid, right? It's all the back-shop, so where's the employment in that?

Government Operations committee  I was paid to do it for Indigenous Affairs, and then I applied it to the 2010 Olympic committee with good success. I did—

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry...?

Government Operations committee  What we found works best is to include a requirement for indigenous involvement, and guess what. Those companies find you. We did a joint venture in Manitoba on towers, on the big bi-pole transmission line. We put in the minimum requirement, and every one of the companies that were selected as the big contractors came to us and asked us what we could do.

Government Operations committee  Yes, you need to incentivize the companies.