Hon. Amina Gerba: Colleagues, I rise today at third reading of Bill C-5, Part 2, which seeks to build the Canada of tomorrow. I commend the leadership of Senator Yussuff, the sponsor of this bill, who provided us with a great deal of food for thought through briefings and through his very touching and informative speeches.

This bill is ambitious. It seeks to fast-track projects of national interest, facilitate interprovincial trade and strengthen our economic cohesion. I support this bill, because I believe it is high time a country as vast, as complex and as blessed by diversity as ours secured the tools it needs to fulfill its aspirations.

We want to build quickly, but above all, we must build fairly, to ensure prosperity for all Canadians.

That is why I want to remind you that this push for economic development must include the dimension of economic justice. We have a responsibility to promote not only efficiency, but also fairness in the way contracts are awarded, suppliers are selected and construction projects are rolled out.

Proposed section 19 in Part 2 of Bill C-5 provides that certain national interest projects will be exempted from several stages of the environmental impact assessment. The goal is to fast-track the projects, but that must not be done by compromising on consultation, as others here have pointed out. Nor must transparency or inclusion be sacrificed. If the government is doing things faster, it must be twice as vigilant about who benefits from these projects and how they are carried out.

A number of colleagues have already spoken about challenges related to consulting, listening to and including Indigenous peoples, a must at every stage of these major projects. I am grateful to my colleagues, who gave us plenty to consider in that regard. I myself will be focusing on Black entrepreneurs, and I’ll also take this opportunity to discuss the study I had the honour of co-leading with my colleague, Senator Colin Deacon, here at the Senate in the summer of 2023.

I wish to express my deep gratitude to Senator Deacon for his leadership and thoughtfulness.

Senator Deacon is one of the few people who freely admits, after experiencing it first-hand, that White privilege exists in Canadian business circles and that, unless it’s actively dismantled, this privilege will perpetuate the exclusion of Black entrepreneurs and undermine their economic prosperity.

I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to read or reread our report, which clearly shows that a good business plan is no guarantee of success. Black entrepreneurs from a wide range of backgrounds, and Black women in particular, have to overcome multiple systemic barriers, which are often invisible but very real. I experienced this myself during my 25 years in business here in Canada, before being appointed to the Senate.

More recent data is unequivocal: Today, the population of Black Canadians or Canadians of African descent exceeds 1.5 million, which represents 4.3% of the total population.

Furthermore, in 2024, the Diversity Institute found that 76% of Black people in Canada were very interested in entrepreneurship, higher than the national average. There is a variety of possible reasons, including a lack of jobs, a need for financial independence and an interest in creating multi-generational wealth.

However, Statistics Canada reported that only 1.3% of Black adults were entrepreneurs in 2024, compared to 2.3% for all Canadian adults.

Just 0.7% of them are Black women. Black women are one of the most under-represented groups among entrepreneurs across Canada, compared to 1.2% of women overall.

Furthermore, according to Statistics Canada, in 2024, 53% of immigrants and 32% of children of immigrants were entrepreneurs.

Approximately 144,990 businesses were run by Black people, representing 2.4% of all small businesses in the country. According to the Business Development Bank of Canada, or BDC, and the Diversity Institute, in 2024, 83% of Black entrepreneurs had to self-finance their businesses because they couldn’t access credit.

However, 81% of them say they are optimistic about the prospects for their businesses, again according to BDC in 2024. These figures are not anecdotal. They are reflective of a system that too often reproduces inequalities instead of correcting them.

Our report proposes meaningful solutions that could be used in the context of Bill C-5: strengthening collaboration between stakeholders, consistently investing in Black entrepreneurship initiatives, collecting disaggregated data and fully embracing the government’s role as a catalyst.

However, I want to emphasize a fundamental point: Equity is not a favour; it must be grounded in competence and results. It is a societal responsibility for businesses to integrate inclusion not only as a criterion for awarding contracts but also as a measure of performance.

It is a responsibility for government to assess developers, consortia and large companies not only on their ability to deliver, but on their ability to include all businesses.

For me, business and social development go hand in hand. The one cannot thrive sustainably without the other. Economic inclusion is a driver of growth, cohesion and justice.

Building the Canada of tomorrow is not just about building infrastructure. It’s also about building a country where every entrepreneur and every community can contribute fully to our collective prosperity. Intersectionality must be integrated as a central pillar of the assessment of major projects, in order to fully reflect the complex realities experienced by all affected communities.

Honourable senators, I will be voting in favour of Bill C-5, but my support comes with a firm commitment to you here today. I will ensure that social responsibility, when it comes to equity, inclusion and economic justice, becomes an essential standard in the implementation of all national interest projects.

We must ensure that Black-owned businesses in all regions of the country are not only considered, but fully equipped and integrated into the value chains of these major nation-building projects. This is how we will ensure prosperity that is truly shared, growth that is sustainable and a Canada that reflects all of its communities. Thank you.