International Trade committee  Thank you. Do we have five minutes and then questions after that?

International Trade committee  Excellent. Thank you for having me, and condolences on the loss of a parliamentarian. I will cut right to it. I represent the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. We have a membership of more than 500 companies. Of those, 70% are aboriginal firms. We are the largest such

International Trade committee  I can keep talking.

International Trade committee  Thank you, I appreciate it.

International Trade committee  I think that the first thing and the minimum thing is the exceptions that Wayne and I were discussing. I think that expanding the scope of federal action, especially around procurements of aboriginal companies, beyond just set-asides to more proactive initiatives would be a manda

International Trade committee  If I could just second that again. What you see in the private sector are points on scorecards. You're seeing really progressive work to drill down supply chains. If Bruce Power puts out a $250-million nuclear refurbishment procurement, there's no aboriginal company that can do i

International Trade committee  Why not? What we'd like to see within the chapter is more of what we've been talking about a bit already. Some of the really key things that we would like to see are proactive tools around procurement and improving procurement in the public process. First nations communities

International Trade committee  Just to get to your point in your first question, I think what you've seen with this round of NAFTA negotiations is a really impressive crack at engaging indigenous peoples. Having the national chief be so involved, and the civil service, as well as this, is great. It's a great s

International Trade committee  Absolutely. We are a fairly optimistic organization, because we represent a lot of businesses and they are pretty optimistic, overall. It's a really interesting environment right now, because there are so many innovative frameworks for success that we've seen across Canada, for

International Trade committee  Can I just make one more quick point on that? Something we've been heartened with in the last few months that we've seen in the government is something that my boss would say, if he were here, “All roads can sometimes lead to INAC.” No matter what the issue is, we always end up

Government Operations committee  Thank you for having us. My name is Max Skudra. I'm from the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. I'm the director of government relations and research. I'd like to recognize that we're on the traditional territories of the Algonquin people. It's great to be here. It's colde

Government Operations committee  I haven't seen it, but from everything else you've said so far, I think it's—

Government Operations committee  I would agree with that. It's true for one-off projects, and sometimes it is just a one-off project, but often these JVs or partnerships will be larger than just a one-project deal. Again, in Alberta, because there are some great opportunities there, Carillion purchased an indige

Government Operations committee  At CCAB, we are primarily business to business focused. Our main focus is not skills training, although I agree with you that one of the largest needs identified by aboriginal businesses is human resources. There's no question about it. We have a skills training program. We have

Government Operations committee  I would—