Transforming Indigenous Procurement: Empowerment, Challenges, and the Road Ahead

The potential of public procurement and partnerships between Indigenous communities and the private sector to address the socioeconomic disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in Canada has been recognized by a host of organizations, including the Council for Advancement of Native Development Officers (Cando), the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and internationally by the OECD ( CCAB, 2019; Henriques, Colbourne, O’Farrell, Peredo, & Anderson, 2023; OECD, 2020). More specifically, the creation of national and regional initiatives to support Indigenous procurement in both the public and private sectors has the potential to create and sustain Indigenous supply chains as well as facilitate critical Indigenous community supports by building capacity, providing jobs, and offering critical re-investment into Indigenous communities (Barberstock, 2023). As such, Indigenous procurement can be viewed as a means for economic reconciliation with the potential to address economic and social injustices and what Gladu (2016) calls Canada’s unequal trade relationship with Indigenous peoples. On August 6, 2021, the Government of Canada implemented a mandatory requirement for federal departments and agencies stating that by 2024 a minimum of 5% of the total contract value will be held by Indigenous businesses. To facilitate procurement readiness and scaling, past Indigenous procurement successes as well as Indigenous businesses/economic development agents who were not successful or chose not to apply need to be examined. Understanding the Indigenous procurement experience – both positive and negative – and recognizing Indigenous rights, interests, and aspirations in federal procurement are the first steps in transforming Indigenous procurement into a viable means for economic reconciliation and nation-to-nation relationship building between the Government of Canada and Indigenous peoples. In this article, we first provide a brief overview of public procurement, its purpose, and its operations, as well as a look at the role of Indigenous procurement. We then use federally available data on successful Indigenous procurement contracts to determine the trends, value, and overall landscape of Indigenous federal procurement during January 2009 to May 2023. Next, we summarize the results of an Indigenous procurement survey conducted in 2023, as an analysis of Indigenous procurement is incomplete without looking at the experiences of those who did not win contracts. Finally, we conclude with key takeaways and a look at the road ahead. Public procurement is “the process by which a government department purchases either goods or services from businesses or individuals”(Panezi, 2020, p. 218). Procurement contracts vary in value and duration and occur at the federal, provincial, crown corporation, and municipal levels. Governments are one of the largest buyers of goods and services worldwide. The Government of Canada, for example, has spent an estimated $15.1 billion in 2021-2022 excluding the Department of National Defense, commissions, review committees, and Offices of Parliament (Carleton SPPA Research Project, 2022). Beyond being a tool to obtain goods and services, public procurement contracts can be used to fulfill economic and socio-political objectives. Procurement has been used to achieve national industrial policies (Sorte Junior, 2015), socio-economic goals (McCrudden, 2004), and political goals (Grandia & Meehan, 2017). One very interesting avenue is the use of procurement as a tool for economic growth while simultaneously helping historically disadvantaged groups – this is known as social procurement. Procurement can, therefore, be used to empower disadvantaged groups by helping to strengthen capacities while simultaneously redistributing income to said communities, thereby advancing economic equity and addressing historical injustices (Colbourne, Peredo, & Henriques, 2023). To assess Indigenous federal procurement, we used the Open Government archived contract history data from the Government of Canada’s open data platform (now called CanadaBuys) (Government of Canada, n.d.). The data include all federal government procurement contracts across all federal …