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View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you.
Minister, you and Minister Anand have talked a lot about the importance of our relationship with indigenous people. Originally in her mandate letter, it was set out that she would allocate 5% of all procurement contracts to indigenous-led businesses. You've talked about the importance of that, even here today.
Unfortunately, when it comes to procuring anything, really that rate is actually only 2%. It's 2% of all procurements that is being allocated to indigenous-led businesses, which is a tremendous failure in comparison to the 5% set out in the original mandate letter. In the meantime, a sole-source contract was awarded to China for PPE.
Why wasn't there a competitive process, and why wasn't opportunity given to indigenous-led businesses?
View Jean-Yves Duclos Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Ms. Harder, for asking the question.
I suppose and suspect you were there at the beginning of the meeting when we talked about the importance of thinking about procurement in a broad way, taking into account both the important advantages of providing services and goods to Canadians through appropriate procurement and also the economic advantages, the fact that we want procurement to be increasingly green procurement—
View Jean-Yves Duclos Profile
Lib. (QC)
That's exactly where I was going, because past the green procurement supply chain that we want to build, there is the social impact of procurement and supporting indigenous—
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
Why was a sole-source contract given to China instead of an indigenous-led business? They were deliberately ignored.
Roger Ermuth
View Roger Ermuth Profile
Roger Ermuth
2021-06-16 17:05
Mr. Chair, in terms of procurement strategy and what was purchased in PPE, especially during the early days of the pandemic and so on, I would defer to our colleagues at PSPC in terms of what the rationale was there.
In terms of the social procurement, obviously a lot of work is going on and obviously a lot more work still needs to be done. There has been, in terms of the Nunavut agreement, some work done up north, some really big steps up north. Ongoing work with Indigenous Services Canada, PSPC and indigenous reference groups is going on to look at how we can move this forward.
Finally, I would note that the recently released Treasury Board directive on the management of procurement has also re-emphasized or refocused procurement planning to look at market access and allow socio-economic priorities.
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
First, Mr. Easter, over this time that we've been working together, I have detected a farmer's heart in you, and I'm very thankful for that. When you were going to make an announcement, I thought that maybe you were going to cross the floor and come to the good side.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Mrs. Tamara Jansen: It has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you very much.
Now I'll go back to the matter at hand. Mr. St-Jean, we are here to evaluate the CRA's progress in regard to tackling tax evasion. I want to go back to 2015, when Prime Minister Trudeau said that the wealthiest Canadians were using small business tax rates to reduce their tax bills. He was basically calling small business owners tax cheats.
At the time, I was one of those people out there delivering flowers to customers in the heat of the summer, sweating it away in the old Hino truck with no air conditioning, which was, according to him, nothing more than a clever tax haven. I have to say that I was really insulted, as I believe many other small business owners were.
Now here we are in 2021, and the Liberals have thrown billions of dollars at the CRA to expose these supposed small business tax cheats. I know that the CFIB said at the time that his assumptions were seriously flawed, and so far there appears to be no evidence whatsoever that he was right. Does it make any sense for the Liberals to have developed this tax policy and hired so many new staff based on those assumptions, especially when we see that the CRA makes deals with the big tax cheats but keeps going after the little guy?
Charles-Antoine St-Jean
View Charles-Antoine St-Jean Profile
Charles-Antoine St-Jean
2021-06-15 17:00
Thank you very much for that question.
I think we saw that the last budget was talking about investing a lot more money in tracking the tax data, getting better systems and getting more legal firepower to the CRA to help combat tax evasion. This is the way we read the announcement from the government, which we support, but I will let my colleague Bruce Ball comment especially on the small business tax.
Bruce Ball
View Bruce Ball Profile
Bruce Ball
2021-06-15 17:01
Maybe I'll start with the first part of the question. I do know that a lot of businesses took exception, I guess, to the suggestion that they were somehow doing something wrong, and I'd agree that the majority aren't.
The issue is the underground economy. There are still business people and other people doing activities in the underground economy. Over the years we're working with CRA in trying to find ways to have these individuals or these companies come forward. Typically they're individuals, because corporations can be tracked, and there will be more of that with the registry, but it's to have these individuals come forward. We've been talking to them about education and taking advantage of the voluntary disclosure program and that kind of thing.
In addition to the money for verification, I think it's also important for the government to continue to try to get people out of the underground economy and to come forward and become compliant taxpayers.
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
I couldn't agree with you more. I know that we've been very thankful to have accountants who were honest and wanted to help us make sure we could sleep at night because we did the right thing.
Last week at the finance committee, I asked the CRA's Ted Gallivan why they were continuing to target small business owners with audits during a pandemic, and he proudly told me they had initiated a six-month pause on those audits. Considering that this pandemic has been going on for more than 15 months, would you say that aggressive audits are just another way of going after the easy target rather than the big tax cheats?
Bruce Ball
View Bruce Ball Profile
Bruce Ball
2021-06-15 17:04
I was listening to the conversation last week. I'm not sure that they were auditing small businesses generally.
What Mr. Gallivan said agreed with what I thought. They were doing reviews of the assistance programs, so maybe that was part of it. They were reviewing the wage subsidy applications and later the rental applications. I'm not quite sure what the audit activity would be if it wasn't around some of the support programs.
View Pierre Paul-Hus Profile
CPC (QC)
When you have a contact, it can work, but when you don't, you're left spinning in the void.
In the beginning, the government [Technical difficulty—Editor]; we understand that. The situation was urgent.
However, when the government asked everyone in Canada to make an effort, everyone did. When we realized that they were buying products from China or elsewhere in the world, we didn't understand why, since Canada has products to offer. It's problematic, obviously.
Mr. Dyck, you mentioned on December 11 that it was obscene. That's what we read in an article. You mentioned that everyone had set up their equipment, their production and you had kept your staff instead of asking for subsidies.
In your opinion, did the government fail to help SMEs? On the one hand, some SMEs closed down and applied for subsidies and waited. On the other hand, and this is your case, you made a big effort, but you lost out?
Is that how you see it?
Tyler Dyck
View Tyler Dyck Profile
Tyler Dyck
2021-06-14 17:18
Yes, I do think it ends, speaking not just for ourselves but also on behalf of the other distillers. I think they feel very disheartened. This is not the Canada they stand for. I think we're all brought up to treat people well and to do our best, and with the idea that if we do good things it's not that we're doing them for a reward, but that there might be some recognition. However, when that recognition goes to big multinationals that are just that much more sophisticated, I think if you asked most people out here, they'd say, “Well, they must have had contacts in government.” That's a cynical stance, and I always hate that portion of it, but I don't know how else to explain it. You have people doing the right thing who are asking for really nothing other than to be allowed to continue doing the right thing. It's hard to explain.
View Majid Jowhari Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with MP Drouin.
Let me start by thanking both witnesses for their commitment to Canada and Canadians and for making sure that they kept all of us safe. Thank you very much.
I have a quick question. I'm going to follow the line of questioning that Ms. Sahota started.
Mr. Guitor, can you share with me whether you had the opportunity to work with the office of small and medium enterprises, which helps with soft landing for a lot of organizations with Public Services and Procurement Canada?
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
Yes. Thank you.
You were just mentioning that we have grown by 15%, but we haven't seen any actual increases, which is disappointing.
Debi Daviau, President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, suggested at the finance committee that CRA's focus should be on wealthy individuals and powerful corporations who do the majority of the cheating.
I had asked her why CRA appears to be aggressively focusing on small mom-and-pop shops for audits during COVID and ignoring the wealthy individuals. She identified this actually as a real problem. Her response was the following:
I just don't think the Canada Revenue Agency is up—
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
I'm going to quote her:
...I just don't think that they have the same capacity to address international taxes that they do to address local taxes. ....certainly employees at the Canada Revenue Agency are up against, as I said, tax giants. These are people who have immense skill, technology, expertise and other big companies on their side.
It's interesting to hear how your testimony today asserts the complete opposite on how well CRA is doing on chasing down wealthy overseas tax cheats.
With the number of dollars that CRA has invested over the last years, why didn't you invest in the tools you need to go after the big guys rather than focus on those little mom-and-pop shops, especially during a pandemic?
Ted Gallivan
View Ted Gallivan Profile
Ted Gallivan
2021-06-10 16:48
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let's start with one of the premises, which was COVID. During COVID, my colleague Alex MacLean, who looks after international tax and large business, never stopped. They never downtooled those audits. We continued to focus on those taxpayers while giving six months of a kind of hiatus on contact for small businesses.
The CRA did suspend its small and medium-sized enterprise audits for a full six months, and when we resumed, we did so on a more consultative basis, checking in with businesses to see if we could start.
It would be my testimony today that during COVID the situation has actually been the the opposite of the testimony you would have received. The CRA never stopped its work on high-net-worth individuals and big companies through COVID. We made a deliberate pause because we understood that small businesses were suffering during COVID. When we resumed, we tried to make it a more consultative process based on the readiness of that business to withstand an audit.
Alexandra MacLean
View Alexandra MacLean Profile
Alexandra MacLean
2021-06-10 16:49
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
I just wanted to add how seriously we take our mandate in international and large business directorate. We have been staffing up and we have been focusing on training. As the member indicated, we are challenging very well resourced interests that have very well qualified advisors. They have very deep pockets. There is a strong focus on improving training and making sure our people are well equipped to take on the most challenging and complex tax situations.
We have also invested a lot in information technology. I think Mr. Gallivan has touched on that in some of his answers. The amount of data coming into the agency is better than it has been in the past by quite a lot. We're better able to detect relationships and transactions than we were in the past, for sure.
However, it is a challenging business. There's a lot of money at stake, as many people have mentioned during this afternoon's proceedings. A lot of resources are deployed, I guess, on both sides, but particularly in the interest of high-net-worth individuals and multinational enterprises.
I wonder if my colleagues from Finance want to highlight.... We are quite excited about some of the budget 2021 initiatives that will help us deal with base erosion.
View Robert Kitchen Profile
CPC (SK)
I call the meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 36 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. The committee is meeting today from 5:44 Ottawa time to hear witnesses as part of its study of businesses owned by under-represented groups. We have the full two hours to do the meeting and we look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants at this meeting that taking screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure that their microphone is unmuted and should say, “Point of order” to get the chair's attention.
The clerk and the analysts are participating in the meeting virtually today. If you need to speak with them during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. The clerk can also be reached on his mobile phone.
For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required for all staff at all times. MPs may remove their masks only when they are seated.
I will now invite the representatives of Aksis Edmonton's Aboriginal Business and Professional Association, Mr. Sinclair or Ms. Suitor, to make their presentation.
Mr. Sinclair, we can't hear you.
Philip Ducharme
View Philip Ducharme Profile
Philip Ducharme
2021-06-09 17:49
Good afternoon. My name is Philip Ducharme. As director of innovation and entrepreneurship of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the distinguished members of this committee for the opportunity to provide you with my testimony and to answer your questions.
Speaking to you from my home office, I acknowledge that the land is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many other first nations, Inuit and Métis people. I am Métis, with all eight of my great-grandparents attached to Métis scrip, and I am a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation.
From the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government put out calls to procure personal protective equipment from businesses. As our president and CEO Ms. Tabatha Bull has noted during her appearances at House and Senate committees over the last year, numerous indigenous businesses were prepared and continue to be prepared to provide PPE to meet Canada's medical needs. Lists of such indigenous businesses were provided to many federal departments as early as March 2020, but only a small fraction of the over $6 billion in federal procurement contracts for PPE was awarded to indigenous businesses.
Over the course of the pandemic there were two RFPs that sole-sourced from indigenous businesses. In a press release of September 21, 2020, PSPC noted that seven indigenous companies were awarded contracts for non-medical face masks in one such RFP for a total of approximately $2.5 million, with an unprecedented 233 indigenous-led businesses responding. PSPC also reported that approximately $68.5 million in contracts had been awarded to self-identified indigenous businesses for requirements related to COVID-19. We understand through discussions with PSPC and through our own combing of publicly available data that this value is now slightly higher. However, we continue to be unable to obtain confirmation of the total spend to indigenous businesses on PPE.
To remedy this information gap, as suggested by Ms. Bull on February 22, I propose that this committee consider measures that would mandate government departments and agencies to report on their purchases from indigenous businesses as part of their submissions for the main estimates and the supplementary estimates. Simply put, we cannot evaluate and improve upon what we do not measure and report.
Through Supply Change, CCAB's trademarked indigenous procurement strategy, we have had continuous dialogue with indigenous businesses as it pertains to federal procurement. What we have learned is that indigenous businesses are very keen on pursuing opportunities but have had numerous challenges, including identifying those opportunities. With this in mind, we post all federal set-aside RFPs within our own aboriginal procurement marketplace.
Other challenges that indigenous businesses have identified to us include the complexity of the RFPs. A $100,000 bid requires almost the same amount of time and resources to respond to as a $10-million bid. In many bids, previous work history with the federal government is required, and without it the bid is non-compliant, making it difficult to garner new indigenous suppliers. Another key challenge we have heard is that there is no feedback on why a bid was unsuccessful. One of our indigenous business members responded to 32 federal RFPs without success, but without any feedback, they did not know where they needed to improve on their bid.
That said, I want to note that throughout my extensive career working with indigenous businesses and federal procurement, I can say that I've never had the opportunity of collaborating as closely with various federal departments, and in particular with PSPC, through OSME, as I have in the last year. Together with the various OSME regions, we have held numerous information webinars for indigenous businesses and will continue to do so. This collaboration helps indigenous businesses navigate the complexities of responding to federal bids and is one of the ways we continue to work with the federal government to support the mandate of achieving a minimum 5% indigenous procurement target.
Additionally, other measures to increase federal procurement from indigenous businesses should include ensuring that indigenous procurement targets appear in every departmental plan and every executive's professional management plan to ensure administrative leadership and fulfillment of the government's procurement targets for indigenous businesses. This change could be made administratively, without the need for legislation, through an amendment to the government's directive on performance management.
CCAB is committed to continuing to work in collaboration with the government, our members and our partners to help rebuild and strengthen the path towards reconciliation and a healthy and prosperous Canada.
Thank you for your time.
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