A First Nations business owner told MPs that Ottawa has not done enough to prevent abuses of an Indigenous procurement program, despite his own warnings to Parliament 18 years ago.
“Donna Cona has been in business 28 years, and we find ourselves up against aboriginal firms that just got into business and are running multimillion-dollar contracts,” he told MPs. “Back in 2006, I warned of the potential abuse of joint ventures. Eighteen years later, we are seeing the results of that.”
“Being aboriginal is not a skill,” Mr. Bernard said. “But yet, in aboriginal procurement with joint ventures, it’s almost like, if you’re aboriginal, all of a sudden that’s a quality you’re bringing to the joint venture – and we just don’t agree with that. Obviously, you have to start somewhere – that should be small – but we believe that the aboriginal side of the joint venture, it should progress.
In 2021, the federal government established a target rate for Indigenous procurement, stating that, at a minimum, 5 per cent of the total value of contracts departments and agencies issue go to The public-accounts committee heard on Thursday from three contracting companies that worked on ArriveCan: Donna Cona Inc., KPMG and TEKsystems.