Government Operations committee  Good morning. First I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. Also, thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I'll begin my remarks by introducing myself and m

Government Operations committee  Certainly. When we're responding to RFPs or RFXs, there are mandatory requirements. We sometimes see major misalignments between what the mandatory requirements are and the scope of the work that needs to be done. If you're bidding on a piece of work that's worth $100,000, let's

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I think there has been success from a FoxWise perspective. As I said, it's a door-opener. People are interested in talking to you about your business and they want to meet with first nation companies, but we've seen it all from putting in a response. The responses to these

Government Operations committee  There's typically a set-aside stream or indigenous stream, and a non-indigenous stream. The non-indigenous stream tends to get all the work. My company is based in Ottawa, and we have been based here for almost 18 years. The success that we've had is not all based on set-aside, t

Government Operations committee  Well, from my perspective, it's just regular business. I don't know. I approached the Business Development Bank of Canada that you're talking about as any other business and I got a loan from them at one point as I was developing my business. We've had lots of great relationship

Government Operations committee  I'm not really trying to change anything. I kind of shuck and jive with the changes that are put forth to me and my company. I think the only way we've been providing changes is by delivering second-to-none service, quality, and pricing. I haven't done a lot of lobbying to get an

Government Operations committee  Yes. How about we run our businesses? It's hard enough. Let's run the businesses. I don't know if we're supposed to pull together organizations to fight or push for indigenous procurement.

Government Operations committee  Yes. I just want to state that there are not just community-based businesses out there. I'm not a community-based business, and if I—

Government Operations committee  Well, as I said, we've employed 40 first nations people from across Canada to work within our company, so I think that provides value.

Government Operations committee  We still need to work hard to stimulate growth amongst first nations communities and through first nations business. I think it's paramount. It's very, very important. My point is that today it seems to be broken. The PSAB program and the set-asides aren't working properly. As a

Government Operations committee  We're probably about 65% federal government.

Government Operations committee  It's a huge chunk, and it's interesting, because everyone knows that FoxWise is an indigenous company. We're expected to bid on set-asides. Then we spend all the time bidding on these set-asides, and there's a supply arrangement standing offer, but we don't get any work. You re

Government Operations committee  Yes. I think one of the major issues is that it's not a mandatory program; it's a voluntary program. PSAB and set-asides are voluntary. There's no such thing as a mandatory set-aside. You've proven that. I've talked to lots of departments on lots of opportunities. There are no ma

Government Operations committee  No. Sometimes we ask that they relax some of the requirements a little bit, and that's typically a yes or no. You have a certain amount of time to ask questions with regard to the RFP. You know, they're just so skewed. They just don't make sense. Sometimes they've been changed