Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I'll introduce Ginny Flood, who will give the opening remarks.

Government Operations committee  Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time, and thanks for the opportunity to speak to you. I commend you for learning more about this area. It's a very important part of our business. I understand that you had a number of sessions this year, and from them I think you sh

Government Operations committee  I'd be happy to answer that. If you look at the chart we supplied, you'll notice that we go from $32 million a year to $521 million, and we have a target that we think we can exceed for next year. I should point out that the drop from 2015 to 2016 was driven by two things: th

Government Operations committee  I mentioned in my overview that there are two things we do. We always make ourselves conscious of the capabilities of aboriginal companies and communities. We have dialogues, and when we do a bidding process we have a pretty good understanding of who is interested in the busine

Government Operations committee  No, it does not. We're very keyed in to our shareholders and make sure that we hire the right companies to do the right work, and I can give many examples of where aboriginal businesses are extremely competitive in terms of price. They're very competitive in their safety records

Government Operations committee  In terms of complexity, we have a very changing environment. In the aboriginal portfolio of economic opportunity, there are new entrepreneurs who identify themselves every quarter, I would say, and there are new partnerships between aboriginal communities and businesses and with

Government Operations committee  That's a very important question. I'd like to lead off by saying that we don't demand that they do so, so it has to make sense. We have strategic partnerships with many of our large contractors who did a project in Fort Hills with some big companies there. We demonstrate to them

Government Operations committee  I'll just say it's at 10%, but I see it growing going forward. I could probably wrap it all up by saying that we don't do this because we have to; we do this because it makes good economic sense with a great labour force that's strategically committed to these types of portfolios

Government Operations committee  It's a little bit of both. I have the business we do here—Mikisew Cree, Athabasca Chipewyan, Fort McKay First Nation, Fort McMurray No. 468, which you're probably familiar with, and some others there. Certainly the bands have really done a good job on setting up their—

Government Operations committee  It's to the entrepreneur, so I would say it's both. Many times the band represents entrepreneurs, so they can represent both, but I would say reach out to the bands who have developed a lot of capability in planning in these areas and post your “ready to do business” sign with en

Government Operations committee  I would agree with Mr. Cheechoo. The reason I do is that often many of the aboriginal communities get employed as subcontractors by a major company and kind of learn the ropes, and then they spin off and become their own entity. So both of them are equally important, for probably

Government Operations committee  The work that is done has to be aboriginal content. We don't have any shell companies that represent themselves as an aboriginal group with maybe just one person. We get right down to who is doing the work and where the money goes. It's been consistent ever since we started this

Government Operations committee  We take a look at the company representing the work that's being done, aboriginally owned. An aboriginally owned company could have workers, temporary workers, who are not aboriginal, but we would look at the spend with that company.

Government Operations committee  Essentially, yes, but I'll get to the specifics on that with a follow-up note.