Federal officials told an Indigenous tribal council they could upload any document, including a “picture of a bunny,” to prove they qualified for a multi-billion dollar procurement program.
Seeking to be listed on the government’s Indigenous Business Directory (IBD), a listing of Indigenous-owned and -operated businesses, a representative from the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council asked the department what documents were required to prove their Indigeneity.
Emails reviewed by Global News show the department told them no proof was required.
The April 2024 email chain, shared exclusively with Global News, calls into question Indigenous Services Canada’s (ISC) claim they have tightened rules for a procurement policy meant to boost First Nations, Inuit and Métis businesses.
A Global News and First Nations University of Canada investigation into the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB) found the Canadian government has awarded billions in contracts without always requiring companies to prove they were First Nations, Inuit or Métis owned.
The program, administered by Indigenous Services Canada, now requires all federal departments to set aside five per cent of their procurement budgets for Indigenous-owned and -controlled companies. That means more than $1.6 billion in contract awards each year are earmarked for First Nations, Métis or Inuit businesses.
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Global News requested comment from Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) for this story. The department was unable to respond as of Tuesday.
The months-long investigation found significant loopholes in who qualifies as “Indigenous” to land lucrative contracts.
Companies employ a well-known scheme referred to as “renting a feather,” where an Indigenous person receives a cut of the contract while the work is done by non-Indigenous workers.
ISC also admitted to Global News that until 2022, they did not require documents to prove a company was Indigenous-owned before adding them to the federal directory that departments rely on to source contracts.
Email exchanges with the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council, however, raise questions about how seriously public servants are scrutinizing applications for the Indigenous Business Directory (IBD).
Michen Coté, with the tribe’s business support unit, emailed ISC in April 2024 to ask what documentation was required to qualify for the directory.
Coté was told by ISC that there “is no proof of Indigeneity required for registration of bands, tribal councils, and elders.”
This directly contradicts a July statement the ISC made to Global News that the department began requiring proof of Indigeneity in 2022, more than 20 years after the program started offering preferential treatment to Indigenous firms.
“I’m currently unable to finalize the registration process due to the requirement for documentation (of) proof of status,” Coté wrote.
“Would you suggest another way of doing this?”
“You can just upload any document just to move to the next step,” an unnamed email from the IBD email account replied.
“It can be a picture of a bunny …”
The PSIB was set up by Jean Chrétien’s Liberals in 1996 as a way to boost Indigenous companies’ participation in the lucrative world of federal procurement. But as early as 1999, internal government reports reviewed by Global News suggested the program could be compromised by “fronts” and “shell companies” trying to get preferential treatment for government money.
The 1999 report, along with subsequent assessments, where informed by interviews with both Indigenous leaders and federal procurement officials, who warned that the program would be undermined unless federal officials were stringent about who qualified for the set-asides.
As of this year, ISC could not say how many audits it has conducted in recent years to confirm that companies listed in the IBD are, in fact, Indigenous-owned and -operated.
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