Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I think there are a number of other potential benchmarks that we could look at. We could look to the United States. The other approach that has been suggested by some of the under-represented groups that I've had the honour of speaking with are things like demographi

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, in terms of support that we provide to various under-represented groups, including those with accessibility challenges, I'll turn to my colleague Clinton in just a second to talk about some of the things we're doing. We are undertaking a number of activities, as I ment

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, no. There are no specific targets for any of the under-represented groups from a federal procurement perspective, at least not that I'm aware of.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, right now, because of some of the challenges that I spoke about before, we're unable to measure both participation and contracts awarded for various under-represented groups. As we move forward, we will be able, through both the policy and the electronic procurement so

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, right now, under-represented groups is intentionally a very broad category. I would differentiate between two groups out of respect. One is indigenous, because of the nation-to-nation relationship we have with them. The other is what I will hopefully not get myself in

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, that is a really good question for which I don't have a very good answer. It is one of the things we're looking at—how many different groups. Within groups, of course recognizing that groups can be subdivided a little further, there are always additional levels of gran

Government Operations committee  That's a really good question for which I honestly don't have a very good answer. I don't know the answer to the question, Mr. Chair.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, there are two things I would say. One, in terms of the information, yes, we'll provide what we can to the committee. Two, our existing systems are not the fanciest ones, so it's probably an Excel spreadsheet.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. It's difficult to give you a specific answer. With respect to indigenous businesses, we found that contracts were awarded in almost every area, including computers, the provision of goods or various types of services. The same applies to businesses kn

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. The information on how the pandemic has affected different communities comes from either Statistics Canada or Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, I believe, which used to be called Industry Canada. In terms of our efforts, we launche

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, obviously, I can't speak on behalf of other federal departments and agencies in their rollout of their programs and activities. From a procurement perspective, as I indicated, in addition to the policy and the electronic procurement solution that we're putting in place

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, there are a couple of things that I would say on that. The first one is with regard to the development of the policy. The policy is the instrument that will permit us as PSPC, when we undertake procurements on our own behalf—for our department when we buy goods or serv

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, that is something we need to look at. There isn't a unanimous view on how we should go about doing these things, and I have a few things to say here. First, as I mentioned, the policy is what will give us authority to do social procurement and collect data. The second

Government Operations committee  I'll turn to my colleague Clinton to give him the opportunity to speak a bit about the office of small and medium enterprises and what its doing.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, these procurements are done within what we call acquisition programs, which involve basically two groups—defence procurement and non-defence procurement. Basically that team, which includes me, needs to get that done.