August 22, 2024
The Canadian government awarded billions of dollars in contracts earmarked for Indigenous enterprises without always requiring bidders to prove that they were First Nations, Métis, or Inuit, a Global News investigation has found.
A program that now helps Indigenous businesses land more than $1.6 billion in contract awards annually, the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB), used to rely largely on an honour system, said Anispiragas Piragasanathar, a spokesman representing federal departments.
Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), which currently vets applicants, and the departments that preceded it going back to 1996, did not always demand status cards or other documents from vendors until 2022, according to Piragasanathar’s statement.