Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Finance. I know the Indigenous Procurement Policy is in in the consultation stage. I know they've been in Inuvik. I talked to some business owners up there who have reached out to me with some questions around how that's going. I wonder can the Minister of Finance give an update on how those -- how the consultation process has been going and where they are in the procurement policy? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, Member's quite correct, this -- the Indigenous Procurement Policy is meant to be really the culmination and completion of a procurement review effort that began in the last government with a number of updates, a number of consolidations of our purposes and principles, modernizing and bringing all these things into a place that are more effective, having dashboard, and having an Indigenous Procurement Policy, recognizing this a jurisdiction with 50 percent Indigenous population and a great many Indigenous businesses that we want to see flourish. So it's really looking at the public side of what we do and whether we can do better to reflect those businesses that we have. So that consultation process is happening right now. It began last month. It's going into this month. It will wrap up over the next month. I'll also be making some outreaches directly to Indigenous governments myself in addition to the opportunities that they've had -- they or their officials may have had. Still open, I believe, on the portal for feedback from folks and would certainly like to hear. There's a number of different ways this could go. We need to find a way to define an Indigenous business and then find whether or not there are opportunities to better support them in the procurement processes so that we are really maximizing the dollars of the government for the people and residents of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I thank the Minister. And certainly I support this important work. I live in a riding with two Indigenous governments, well established, both with well-established development corporations. So my next question is there going to be -- is there any consideration -- I had originally had thought to potentially, for example, Mr. Speaker, if there was $2 million worth of government contracting work to be done in my region, is there any appetite to, say, carve out 10, 20, 30, 50, whatever the percentage would be, of that work and then have that work then with qualified businesses within the Indigenous development corporations versus direct businesses. Is that any -- been given any consideration? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a second component of what's happening right now in this space, and that is led, really, by staff at Executive and Indigenous affairs is to have discussions with modern treaty holders, specifically to determine whether or not there are opportunities to create MOU arrangements so that there can be more formalized agreements as to how procurement might happen on the land -- on the lands for modern treaty holders. That may well end up in something of the way that the Member is describing. Obviously, it's premature for me to conclude what that would look like without knowing how those discussions go.
On terms of public procurement, Mr. Speaker, there's a number of options we put forward, and one of them is to do work packages. So not necessarily region by region but by project by project that you can ensure that's particularly on a large projects that there could be set aside amounts that we say, look, this is intended to be for a specific group or particular type of business to ensure that we are, again, maximizing local capacity. And, again, I encourage people to give us feedback if they think that would be helpful. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Final supplementary. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. I know there are -- I mean, the whole purpose of this is to increase capacity in Indigenous employment in the regions, you know, give opportunities for Indigenous businesses to grow. I'm wondering -- and it's a question I've been asked -- there's also some non-Indigenous ran businesses that employ many Indigenous employees in the region as well. They've asked is there going to be any kind of a -- is there going to be any opportunity in the new policy to account for that as well, account for that to have -- if you, you know, and again, it's all about the teeth, right, Mr. Speaker. You got to be able to enforce it just like we do with the Business Incentive Policy. But is there any opportunity in the discussions on the new policy around that hiring of Indigenous people?
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A couple things. Firstly, is that, again, our existing procurement policies do, to the extent that we look at BIP and use BIP as a key tool, we are now enforcing through vendor performance management the opportunity to ensure that when someone says they're hiring northerners, and ultimately Indigenous Northerners, that we'll be monitoring that so that they do the things they say they're going to do. But secondarily, Mr. Speaker, I'd suggest folks take a look at the proposed definition around Indigenous business that we've put forward. It's really a question of saying, you know, what -- whether or not it's majority ownership, whether it's majority benefit in terms of economic benefit. Is it majority control by Indigenous people, and should it be exclusively Indigenous people who are recognized Members of northern Indigenous nations, should it be Indigenous peoples of Canada? Those are exactly the questions we're out to look at right now. The North is a place of -- you know, again, we have a lot of different cultures and different regions, and we're trying to do our best to see that we reflect that in this future definition. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife North.
