How Global News’ investigation into Indigenous contracting unfolded

Global News’ collaborative investigation into billions of dollars in federal contracts awarded to Indigenous-owned enterprises began in late 2022, when a journalist noticed that some suppliers of personal protective equipment did not disclose a connection to a First Nation, Métis or Inuit community on their websites.

Vast sums of public funds are in play.

As part of the federal government’s Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business (PSIB), businesses majority-owned by First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples now receive priority access to at least 5 per cent of nearly all federal contracts. In the fiscal year 2022-2023, this added up to at least $1.6 billion, according to a recent federal report.

It was unclear how some businesses met the minimum. Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the department responsible for the program, does not publish this information.

To take a deeper look into which Indigenous communities were benefiting from PSIB, Global News asked faculty and students at First Nations University of Canada and University of King’s College, based respectively in Regina and Halifax, to join the research and reporting.

Preparing a draft list of the industry’s top players, the team analyzed Public Accounts of Canada’s records of payments and the hundreds of thousands of contract-award records available from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Public Services and Procurement Canada. The contract awards databases include countless duplicates, which the group removed.

Reporters also looked for any relationships between the enterprises benefitting from the PSIB, examining registry documents for more than 70 businesses.

For verification of the analysis’s results, the group turned to data published by a Carleton