Senator Klyne: My question is for the Business Council of Canada. As I understand, the council is comprised of chief executives and entrepreneurs of over 170 leading Canadian companies in every sector and region of the country, and I have to assume that many of those members will be preparing to bid on the government contracts to come from Bill C-5. On that assumption, of those contracts, many of those will be subject to the government procurement set-aside program.

Are you preparing or assisting and advising your members on how they will have to, when they reach that government procurement set-aside program, provide an Indigenous participation plan?

Mr. Hyder: Thank you for your question, senator. The individual companies will be working on that individually as project by project. They compete with each other even though I represent them all.

I think evidence shows that the projects that have been successful have been so because of Indigenous participation from an equity perspective.

I will have you know, senator, that the Business Council of Canada led the charge for the Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program in part to address this very question — to enable Indigenous communities, particularly those that may not have any corporate history, to be able to seek equity participation and equity partnership in projects, and yet to help businesses de-risk that because when you don’t have any history, we don’t know what we’re measuring it against.

The hope is to never have to use the loan guarantee. It’s there as a backstop in the event something doesn’t go right. To acknowledge this current government, it doubled it in a matter of weeks of being Prime Minister I think. It was doubled, which we applaud, because it will just encourage more opportunities for Indigenous participation and Indigenous equity and programs that we feel is one of the fastest ways to come together to find a way to build stuff in this country again.