Government Operations committee  To answer the second question, on incentives, no, we have not been offered or received any incentives to do business with or hire any particular groups.

Government Operations committee  First of all, I don't have the exact number. I would say not enough, and I would also suggest that among the companies I've seen that try to do business with us, only a very small proportion of their senior leaders or owners are woman. There's lots of opportunity in that area.

Government Operations committee  Here's an opinion. I think when we take a look at our portfolio investment, it is largely industrial. I think if I look at what I know about the portfolio of the government, I'll see there are many other things that urban vendors supply solutions for—anything from analytics, cons

Government Operations committee  That would be correct.

Government Operations committee  It's something that we seek everywhere in the organization. It's not limited just to where it's available. I should mention that we have the same perspective on hiring aboriginal employees and whatnot. This isn't just unique to one area; it's representative of our culture, and we

Government Operations committee  I'll give a couple of examples. First of all, entrepreneurs and aboriginal businesses need to know how the procurement process works—how to put in a bid, what's expected—just so they can kind of get to the qualification table. So training, telling them how it works face to face,

Government Operations committee  Yes, this isn't a program. It's a dimension of who we are. It makes sense. In business, I often use the difference between commitment and compliance. This is a commitment that we have. It's who we are. It's the way we do things. We entrench this philosophy in the newest hires we

Government Operations committee  Okay. To reframe the question, what could we do to make aboriginal entrepreneurs and communities more successful in—

Government Operations committee  First of all, in scoring the work that's done, we look at whether they may be a performer worthy of consideration going forward. We look at the three classic measurements of any project work, and we have a very important fourth one. Most projects are measured in terms of the sche

Government Operations committee  Yes, it is certainly considered. Past performance is an indicator of the future, so if an aboriginal or non-aboriginal company comes in and makes a bid, we'll take into consideration not just what they promise on paper but also what their past performance has been. With regard t

Government Operations committee  I would. If you were a vendor of mine, your perspective should be the same as well.

Government Operations committee  I don't have the history of the number of vendors, but I can say on the 197 that we interfaced with, that is a material growth, so it's not.... Our spending has is not just increased in total, but it's also increased with the number of companies we've done business with. I don't

Government Operations committee  Just as with safety, we want people to have a reflex response to do the right thing as opposed to having to think about it. We don't want aboriginal content to be something that is an exception to any decision criteria, so it just has to be ingrained and natural. I mentioned bef

Government Operations committee  Mr. Drouin, this is a good point for me to emphasize inflect something that I've been waiting to do for this group. It's my mantra here; that is, the powers of positive deviance. We have to spend time to find out where things are working and understand why, even if it's a minori

Government Operations committee  It could be several meetings. But you know what, it's absolutely the right thing to do. Sometimes it's a tough message, but are message about what they can differently is very well received.